tunnels of gates

Stills from Howl's Moving Castle

2012-01-03T14:52:00.000-08:00

Howl and Calcifer go into communion to create a new home together (Calcifer, a falling star-being with whom Howl married mystically years before, provides the trans-dimensionality to Howl's interior and exterior castle.)

Within Howl's interior castle is a cave embedded with childhood toys. Sophie's subtle body visits this dimension during the night and finds Howl's demon-side hiding deep inside.
Master-Mother sent mystical sun/moon light beings dance around Howl to reveal "who you really are."
Howl is really half demon, but his "curse" or demon is a heroic wizard bird, bound by duty to protect his family.
Exaggerated animation evokes the feeling of fat and sweat in Howl's ex-girlfriend, who was dumped because she wasn't pretty enough. Her demon, it is explained, was greed.
Howl's is selfishness. He is flamboyant and effeminate, a shallow, selfish gentleman, who takes what he wants and has to look beautiful.
His "bedroom" contains alchemical, celestial gadgets and floating mystical eyeballs. The entire room seems awake, like an Alex Gray painting, and has a dreamy jewel-like quality, like a Venosa or Ivan Albright painting.
Its also filled with Ernst Haekle creatures. See the squid? and so many faces...
Howl freaks out because his hair turns orange. He goes into a tanrum that turns him into green slime.

" I see no point in living if I can't be beautiful." He summons dark demons from another realm into his house, threatening the life of his heart, Calcifer.
"This happens whenever a girl dumps him" the orphan boy wizard says. Sophie sigs and says "How dramatic."
Nice light. Turnup head, the bouncing scarecrow, follows and helps as a silent observer. He is also under a spell.
Strange Buddhas and Calcifer with Howl's heart hanging on for life. Howl's heart also looks like Calcifer's testicles.
Howl introduces his "secret garden" realm, and as a gift gives Sopie access. "It's a new portal!".
Insect-dragon demons with hats occupy another realm.
Mystical dancing light beings circle the world in another.
Sophie enter's the "Black portal" which only Howl's knows about. IT takes her to Howl's childhood. During his childhood, Howl swallows Calcifer the light, and their hearts fuze together. I assume calcifer didnt ant to die like all the other faling faries arond him, so he offerened his multidemtional powers to howl if Howl would take him into his body.
The light transforms and leaves his body as his heart.
They melt away into memory. Like INception, Sophie plants her image in his childhod and says "Find me in the future! I know how to help you!" and he does find her in the future, by chance, by saving her from the rapist soldiers at the beginning of the movie. Masks, disguises, meta narratives, and continually shifting dreamworlds that are real worlds. The movie, without a clear single protagonist, is multiperspectival and nothing is quite as it seems. I also find it highly symbolic, like Dune. Centered around hair, age, dreams, war bombers, and weight insecurities. Setting aside the interdimensional, space/time "moving," [interior] castle, made and powered by his childhood lover, Fire (Calcifer), Howl goes to war with himself. His vanity and beauty complex externally appear in one scene as green slime drowning his naked body (he freaks out when his prized blond hair changes color. Sophie's hair, which she always hides under a hat, also becomes an important part of the story...In the end, she offers her hair up in order to liberate Calcifer)...Howl's "dark side" black swan, who sometimes wants to harm his enemies, is a feathery (hairy) bird angel/demon, always shifting forms, while his other half is the hairless, effeminate wizard twink involved in a homophilic relationship with Calcifer, Billy Crystal, who explicitly possesses Howl's heart. The two boys/powers met and consumed each other in a secret mystical marriage in the "secret garden" of Howl's childhood. Im not making any of this up! Together they are one life creating new worlds, (remember the scene where they "move" to a different castle? Howl draws the alchemical hieroglyph on teh ground outside and in the floor inside, then enters into communion with Calcifer. Their new home is "pulled" into being by their combined magic power...it's beautiful, and gendered, oddly. "Be gentle on me.." Calcifer asks, LOL )...Calcifer, as magic fire from the sky and spirit of the moving castle, can signify power and electricity, or even technology. Howl's dark bird body resembles the bombers he is fighting. Howl can signify mankind or the complexities of masculinity, if you want, He is not just a homo-lover, but also desires to "protect" skinny, beautiful, liberated women. And he is a father. The kindhearted scarecrow provides the "Ghibli spice," and within seconds an entirely different Frog Prince narrative and alternate universe blinks in and out of our imagination, no big deal. It is a great movie, toped with shimmering psychedelic visuals and landscapes. please see it.

Last Class

2011-12-09T17:52:00.000-08:00

I had my last lesson yesterday. I showed them a short slideshow of my artwork without getting too philosophical and then we watched Werner's amazing Cave of Forgotten Dreams. During the movie I graded their "visual journals" and collected their portfolios which I will review this weekend. It was so anti-climactic. I feel like I should throw a party for them of something.

Notes on Nancy Cunard

2011-12-09T14:17:00.000-08:00

Nancy Cunard

The Portrait of Nancy Cunard (also called Sophisticated Young Lady) 1925-1927, is carved of walnut and sits about 25” tall on a black marble circular base. The ovoid form, symmetrically balanced upright, is sliced straight down the back and is topped with a spiraling wisp of wood about six inches long. This chignon is affixed awkwardly, teetering on the back corner edge of the head. One wonders if it was attached or if it is part of the original wood.

In dealing with biomorphic imagery, William Irwin Thompson reminds us that we have to move to a "polymorphic mode" in which one form contains many forms—"the kind of perception you can learn from the statues of Henry Moor or Jaches Lipschitz." In profile the entire configuration can be read as a body, the curve becoming the pregnant belly, the chignon dividing into three segments: ponytail, head, and bangs. As Nancy Cunard herself saw it: “The head resembles, at first sight, somewhat, a torso, a graceful curve, and then one sees the intention of that dear Brancusi, it is really the profile of a head extended in the lengthwise curve, with a tuft of hair, if you please, at the crown!” The ovoid shape is a reoccurring form for Brancusi and can represent the Cosmic Egg, “getting all the forms into one form,” as he used to say. The curve of Cunard can also recall the ancient omphalos or naval of the world, "pregnant with the All." The tiny, spiraling chignon is angled parallel to the under side the head’s curve, formally completing a top-bottom integration. Moreover, the straight back contrasts the swollen, pregnant profile; It looks as though the head will fall forward, and yet the chignon hanging off the top brings balance and helps activate the negative space beneath. Brancusi: “Beauty is absolute balance.” He notes that with his portraits he wants to “sum up in a single archetype all of the female effigies on Earth.” Camille Paglia makes the point in Sexual Personae that essential, primordial “femaleness” is parthenogenesis, self-referential and self-replicating. (incidentally it was evidenced just last May in Kansas by scientists who made self-replicating lizards. Parthenogenesis only occurs in female lizards.)

The burgundy brown walnut shines smoothly with a polished patina. Brancusi claims his forms follow the nature of the materials, and wood only behaves this way naturally as a seed. Nancy Cunard is both seed and tree, alpha and omega, ground and goal of the human spirit. Roger Vitrac, using terms everyone agrees with, says that Brancusi’s portraits, with their “vanishing faces,” were meant to “precipitate a step from the absolute towards us, delivering for meditation mysterious entities, higher materializations of the Spirit.”

The only real feature that may resemble the actual Nancy Cunard is the elongated face/straight back. William Carlos Williams descried Nancy Cunard as “straight as a stick, emaciated, holding her head erect, not particularly animated, her blue eyes completely untroubled.”

In this portrait Cunard’s eyes vanish and we are left with the uninterrupted surface of the wood. (Brancusi says why ruin a surface with a nose or an eye, when those features don't represent you anyway!) However, it is not so much that she has no eyes, but that she is one big eye! Her ovoid head, in and of itself, can signify a detached eyeball. Following the gradual abstraction of Brancusi's portraits and noting how the eyes extend to eventually cover the entire head, Geist remarks, “The head became and eye for Brancusi.” Anna Chave agrees that Brancusi is playing with the “homomorphy” of head and eye and suggest, “[His women] are at once unseeing and all-seeing, the image of total blindness and perfect insight.” Chave says Cunard’s head may even evoke “the unitary, all-seeing (because pupilless) eye of the Creator.”

The severe simplicity of the head underscores the spiraling form on top, making it a “striking note,” precarious, jarring, dislodged, and contrived, perhaps like a sophisticated young woman. The cut ovoid head plays the dual role of face and base for the delicate, yet swollen serpentinata form, which itself can read as an entire goddess figure sitting on a cliff.

Viewed head-on Cunard resembles the backside of a proud, standing chicken, or the Maiestra. Chave points out that it also resembles a phallus and an erect penis, the chignon curling to shape the penis head and/or a swirl of semen. The swollen configuration also reads as a vagina, with the space around the sculpture flipping to read as a solid body, and the tuft at the top the clitoris. This oscillation between phallus and vagina and the "intentional doubling, confounding, and fusing the markers of sexual identity" is noted by Ana Chave with regards also to Brancusi's eggs, portraits, and Bird in Space.

This sculpture was a favorite of Brancusi’s: he thought enough of the composition to send four snapshots of it to his friend Roche, and to mention it to the editors of the art magazine The Little Review. Interestingly, Marcel Duchamp owned only three works by Brancusi: two carved chairs and a Portrait of Nancy Cunard.

Placing the walnut head on a black stone pedestal may also have significance, such as an inversion of material hierarchy. Much has been written about Brancusi’s ‘s relationship with wood, most notably how his woodcarving is an embodiment and transmission of his Romanian heritage. “It is with wood that Brancusi is at his most Romanian.”

As for the use of wood in Nancy Cunard, some scholars suggest that it points out Brancusi’s intentional disregard for race in his portraits. Blond hair, blue eyes, Nancy Cunard was white, but Brancusi used a deep dark brown walnut to sculpt her spirit. Likewise, Shanes notes that the White Nigress and the Blond Nigress were both inspired by black women, and the black marble Portrait of Mrs. Eugene Meyer, Jr is a portrait of a white girl. With Nancy Cunard, Brancusi transforms a white women into a brown women, or better yet, a wood women, perhaps “to reveal a dark, more perfect luster within.” He may also be commenting how Cunard “colored” herself by stepping out of the white world and entering the socially coded, hypersexualized black world.

A brief look at Nancy Cunard’s fascinating background may help us recover how Brancusi “saw” her. The great-granddaughter of the founder of the Cunard shipping company, Nancy lived with privilege and met Brancusi in France during the 1920s. She was a very successful, bisexual, polyamorus, "nymphomaniac" who is recognized as the earliest proponent of “black transnationalism.” She dated Aldus Huxley and influenced characters in his novels. She founded the Hours Press publishing house, which produced the work of Brancusi’s friend, Ezra Pound. She collected African art objects, wore African jewelry, and made love to African American musicians and artists. In 1934 She organized and published Negro, an anthology, which became the very first anthology of black achievements all over the world. “Everything about the way she behaved showed how truly sophisticated she was for her day,” Brancusi said. The thought of her must have included the thought of a higher, wider, more integral and expansive worldview. However, it could have also included his own difference and separation from that world; Cunard’s aristocratic sophistication and femininity appearing to Brancusi as the “other.” Anna Chave notes that Cunard’s portrait by Brancusi is indeed a study of contrasts. William Carlos Williams wonders if the contrast between this sophisticated aristocrat and the rustic folk boy is what inspired the sculpture.

Many Brancusi scholars posit that his “simplified” forms, especially his wood sculptures, were influenced by African art and express Primitivism. That may be true, but Edith Bales, in her chapter The Myth of African Art in Brancusi’s Sculpture, refutes this belief and clearly demonstrates that Brancusi had an aversion to African art and the entire “primitivism” ideology connected to it. Brancusi even went as far as to destroy some of his works that resembled “African” influences He wanted everything to come from himself. African, primitive art, at best, served only as a “memory trigger that helped to bring the Romanian woodcarving tradition to the surface of his consciousness.” Brancusi's sculptures are “Platonic”, or “Tantric” (considering his love for Tibetan Buddhism). They are not "primitive;" not intentionally, anyway.

How then can we understand the childish bulb and whimsical construction of Nancy Cunard? “Neotenous,” a term used to describe contemporary Japanese art, may do the job. The “primitive”, “simple”, “naked”, and “childish,” sculpture appears immature, but is actually communicating ancient, platonic, transpersonal faces from our future, not below modernism, but beyond it; not premodern, but post-modern; not pre-personal darkness but transpersonal light. Geist says it well in an introduction to the catalogue of the retroactive Exhibition of Brancusi’s work. “The sculptures of Brancusi present a universe of form where all is clear and filled with light. All, at the level of form, is given and given at once, without reserve, without mystery or surprise.

Feminism and Hepticity

I would like to include a Feminist and Sensory Historic lens through which we can enrich our understandings of the sculpture.

Brancusi told a news reporter: “My statue is of Woman, all women rolled into one, Goeth’s Eternal Feminine reduced to its essence.” “Essentialism” would soon take a hard hit from the feminists and poststructualists. From a feminist perspective, the use of abstraction by Brancusi, however innocent and noble, can be seen as an assault on the female body. According to Art Historian Carol Duncan, 20^th century modernist sculpture demonstrates male control and the suppression of female subjectivity more emphatically than sculpture in the nineteenth century. “Their faces are more frequently concealed, blank or masklike (that is, when they are not put to sleep), and the artist manipulates their passive bodies with more liberty and “artistic” bravado than ever.” This modernist “defense of male supremacy" that is integral to all modernist heterosexual male endeavors, finds its way into the treatment of Nancy Cunard, when seen from this expanded lens.

Moreover, going after these streamlined, Ideal Forms was not necessarily an honorable endeavor in the light of American and European eugenics. For example, Christina Cogdell argues in her book Eugenic Design that aesthetic choices made by artists in the 1920s was inspired and informed by the often overlooked American eugenics, and their streamlined artwork served as a “material embodiment” of its ideology. See Christina Cogdell, Eugenic Design: Streamlining America in the 1930s.

Brancusi was driven to render the heptic quality of the work conceptually through the optic surface. Artists “think and feel by hand," and “sculpture must be lovely to touch” Brancusi remarked. Art historian Valentiner claims that the fundamentals in understanding sculpture is the development of the sense of touch which we have almost forgotten to use in connection with sculpture. We must understand how central tactility was to ideas of beauty, knowledge, and meaning during the entire Modern period. Mark Smith: “Not only was sculpture considered at least as refined and intellectually vital as painting (most famously Michelangelo was obsessed with the power of the sculptors generative touch), but sculpture facilitated a sort of interaction denied by two dimensional art.” Smith explains that with modernism, seeing alone was considered limiting because the eyes read only the surface of the object. Touch, conversely, was deemed an authenticator, or way to access truth.” Smith further notes that true understanding and depth of meaning can come only through touch. “Seeing is believing, but feeling is the truth.” In painting, the materials (stones, oils, woods,) are all obscured, but in sculpture the materials get to be themselves, unashamed.

POINT

I believe that investigating the Nelson's 1928 walnut bust of Nancy Cunard by Constantin Brancusi interrogates commonly received narratives about "primitivism" and the “truth to materials” idiom emerging during late modernity. Even though this work was marked “modernist” and “primitive,” Brancusi was not aiming for prehistoric signifiers from our pre-personal past like other modernist sculptors (Flannagan, Picasso, Matisse), but was instead aiming for Platonic signifiers from our transpersonal future. (For the blog I will not include citations and footnotes, but if you want a copy of my full report, let me know!) If we can appreciate that sculpture is a form of thinking, we can engage this artwork and recover the interior, emotional/mental state of the artist, gaining the ability to read his thoughts, and maybe even travel through time. This will help us understand what Nancy Cunard meant tohim, not just what it meant to the critics, scholars, and historians.

Brancusi is marked “the father of modern sculpture.” Ezra Pound called Brancusi a “genius, “ and “in some dimensions a saint.” He described his life as “a succession of marvelous events,” and he wanted his sculptures to “suddenly fill the whole universe and express the Great Liberation!” Constantin Brancusi was born of peasant parents in the village of Hobitza, within the foothills of the Romanian Carpathian Alps, where life had remained unchanged for hundreds of years. Even Brancusi’s physique seemed ancient and mythic. “He had a pagan feeling for life and a pagan sense of Beauty,” wrote his friend, the journalist Jeanne Robert Foster. His father died when he was nine, and later that year Brancusi dropped out of school and lived as a shepherd. He worked odd jobs and when he was eighteen made a violin from a crate, attracting the attention of both his employer and one of the customers. They collected money and sent him to the Criova School of Crafts, where he learned wood-carving and metal-smithing full-time. He found work for a furniture factory, graduated from school with honors, and began to make portraits. In 1903 Brancusi left Romania for good to live and travel throughout Europe. He died in Paris, March 15^th, 1957.

He was good friends with Matisse, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Tristan Tzara, Picasso, Modigliani, and Guillaume Apollinair. He contributed to Dada journals and art magazines with Ducamp’s and Tzara. Eric Satie and Brancusi were good friends, played music together, and some argue that his mystical Romanian past influenced Satie’s famous Gymnopedies. As early as 1907, (or even 1894,) Brancusi became deeply influenced by Plato; five of Plato’s Dialoguesfound in Brancusi’s library are almost disintegrated from frequent use. Anna Chave, summarizing all the evidence, observed that Brancusi “would emerge as a latter-day Platonist who succeeded in transcending individual and ephemeral states of mind to arrive at the eternal and the universal in works embodying pure, essential form.”

painting all night

2011-11-29T06:07:00.001-08:00

Finally I'm finishing up the Jinno commission of their baby (they paid me up front!) I started in September. I really hope they like what I've come up with. I also enlarged the breasts and penis on The Sorcerer, added water coming out of the red box, and darkened the naked man. Thoughts?

"Naked"

2011-11-22T16:03:00.000-08:00

I was thinking about calling the new painting "Naked," (some of you Buddhist friends will enjoy the idea that the mirror represents naked awareness, as does the sky). haha.

And then I saw an episode of the bbc show Coupling, season 2, called "Naked" and it made me laugh so hard I cried.

The beginning is a fantasy Jeff has which keeps him from actually kissing his boss. His mother saying "Oh Jeffery" in his shameful head is a reoccurring theme, making the end of this episode outstanding!

no Milk

2011-11-03T09:07:00.000-07:00

Here is the beginning of a new painting. What do you think? As you know I'm still investigating "the male body" (Susan Bordo), and the significance of the penis. One thing the male body cannot achieve that the female body can is milk. The female body is AMAZING!! It can make food for people. Semen can be considered liquid life in a similar way as milk, I suppose. But it's totally different, right? And I'm not the only one who thinks about this kind of stuff, you know. Retired MIT Humanities Professor William Irwin Thompson noticed this in our collective history. With regards to its appearence in Paleolithic art he says, "In this visual system of punning, there is a logic of association. The breasts give milk, the penis gives the cream of semen. All the vital fluids, milk, menstrual blood, semen, have a numinous quality, and the magical powers associated with them survive into history and are fossilized in Tantric yoga." He also does a great job in describing one perspective of the male body and penis: "If birth is the central mystery for the female, death seems to be the central mystery for the male. The penis is a wonder, as what is small becomes great. It becomes tall and erect in dream, trance, and lovemaking; it grows like the shoots of plants, and like them it has its season, and then it falls. So the penis becomes the phallus, a symbolic complex for time, for the vanishing modality of time. Since the menstruating vulva is the wound that heals itself in rhythm with the cycles of the moon in the heavens, the vulva becomes the symbol for eternal recurrence, of the enduring and not the vanishing mode of time. The male dies, and though the female may mourn, it is she who endures. So it is that the phallus belongs to the Great Mother, the vanishing mode of time belongs to the larger and more enduring mode of time.

The male goes through an intensely sharp experience of temporality--of heroic life and tragic death--and then he returns to the Great Mother...Now one can appreciate the archetypal dimensions of Michelangelo's Pieta, the image of the dead Christ in the arms of Mary, and one can also appreciate how sculpture is a form of thinking." I could go on all day...

Thoughts?

Wutai

2011-10-22T18:13:00.000-07:00

Today Cody and I went to Wutai Mountain, a Dzogchen retreat center in Lawrence, for a free half-day meditation retreat. There I got to meet old students of Trungpa Rinpoche. I also sat with one of my old professors, Robert Price, and his wife. They told me about how Ram Dass (who I just found out has a son!) used to visit them in Lawrence about twice a year! After two hours of sitting we talked about the The Four Yogas of Mahamudra, ate an incredible lunch, and then practiced archery by the pond.

omphalos

2011-09-22T00:15:00.000-07:00

In this painting Bird flies top center as Sun-God. Leigh leaves for India in just a couple weeks!

"Unfinished." I'm doing this large painting in remembrance of Brancusi and Kristofer. They both loved playing with dual-sex imagery, integral spirituality, and alchemical hermaphroditism. That is Mt. Ishizuchi in the background; a real place. Leigh Bird took the photo I'm drawing from, and Bird flies top center as Sun-God =). We had just climbed the holy mountain and the mist suddenly rushed in. It was the perfect "Eastern" scene, the pregnant mountain vanishing, and the sunlight hovering directly in front of us behind the mist like an angel. On stage is a mythic creature made of van Eyck's Sheep- Christ, The Sorcerer, Maiastra, and prehistoric Goddess figurines moonwalking while giving life-blood to the world (a very "Western" scene). When the performance is over the mythical, phallic creature goes back into the solid, red box, yonic and vaginal. Dandelions at the bottom are also directly from the Ghent Altarpiece, which is a nice coincidence--I love painting dandelions. They are great distance markers, they take me back, and they are a kind of memento-mori/reincarnation story. The Ghent Altarpiece is significant not just because of its sacred symbolism but because it is by the van Eyck brothers who invented oil painting. They are the First Patriarchs, so to speak. The Sorcerer and other cave paintings were also oil paintings because their paint was made from dirt and charcoal mixed with spit and animal fat. However the van Eycks were the first to use glazes and whatnot. I want to go to Belgium to study the original so badly!

Best Sister Ever

2011-09-17T09:12:00.001-07:00

My sister Jane, who is in town from Atlanta for the week, stopped by school this morning to give me a coffee! It's a delicious organic coffee from The Merc with soy creamer. Today from 11 till 2 I'm working the Saturday Life Drawing Session as "Instructor." The room is filled with high school students (some from Kansas City) with permission slips from their parents saying it's ok to study the nude human form. Life Drawing is also a great way to get into the nondual Flow state. "Relax your line!" God this coffee tastes good.

Last night I saw Drive. Mr. White from Breaking Bad and the red-haired goddess from Mad Men flanked the mysterious adonis Ryan Gosling in an interesting mix of poetic, artsy, subtle love story with sensational Noe-like graphic violence.

Little Dragon

2011-09-15T22:26:00.000-07:00

Marija Gimbutas: "The thrilling hybrid figure of a man with antlered head, round eyes, a long beard, animal (lion?) paws instead of hands, the tail of a wild horse, and his sexual organ placed beneath the tail seems to be a more important personage than a 'sorcerer,' as he is called.... Abbe Breuil was right to call him the 'God of Les Trois Freres'....[This Master of Animals and Forests is] shown moving, probably dancing."

I am overwhelmed with joy. My Drawing 1 students' "Symbolic Self-Portraits" are so beautiful and intriguing. For this drawing we researched the very first self portrait, The Sorcerer of Trois-Freres, pictured above, and went from there. You might like Ken Wilber's interpretation of The Sorcerer he wrote in Up From Eden.

And a song by Little Dragon. (skip two minutes).

reflections

2011-09-06T23:35:00.000-07:00

Finally I stole some time away from my other duties to paint. That's a murky pond in my town and a dead deer half submerged, bathing in the sun. Have you ever stumbled across this kind of scene before? I want an image that can demonstrate birth, old age, death, and decay, all at once.

Students

2011-08-30T20:08:00.000-07:00

One of my drawing students sent me this video. It reminds me of Ween and Ponyo.

Teaching has been really fun so far. I feel like I have a knack for it. It's true I have been in the classroom teaching kids for five years, but now I get to teach them what I really like, and what I think about and talk with my friends about all the time: drawing. The course I am teaching is actually their Introduction to art school; their foundation course, AFND 101, You bet I talk them into a flow state when they warm up with scribble drawing and blind contour. Those intense single-pointed meditations help suspend attention and open the student up to the ocean of awareness within, that's for sure. We talk about articles I make them read (like William Irwin Thompson's Prehistoric Sculptures: The Body as the Story of Time ) and for homework I assign them a master drawing to copy. We end class sometimes drawing exquisite corpses , which point out how psychic everyone is.

Last days in Japan.

2011-08-09T22:01:00.000-07:00

After sailing we spent a few days with Melissa in Yawatahama. There she is cutting Takashi's hair. Man we had so much fun!!!

This samurai greeted us at the super market.

I went to Komatsu to stay with Mika and her family. Here are few of the guests at Ike-san. The Kuroki family I stayed with run this old-folks home/dying center in their town. It is heaven on earth, or as they say, at least very close to heaven.

The Kuroki family makes their own pickled plums, which are my favorite Japanese treat. The purple leaf is red shiso. Here are a few jugs pickling by the window.

The game Go sitting in the shrine room.

I gave him those glasses...

The family lives in the most beautiful area in an old house I helped them restore last year. This is all their land.

Great house.

This origami is a German-Japanese mix, actually. The paper turns into designs meant to be seen on windows. Astounding. I found the book Magical WIndow Stars online that might explain how to do it....

Kanta, their oldest son, and I visited a shrine. Grandfather then gave us this dead bug he found in the garden. The underside was even more magnificent.

unbelievable color.

Across the street, a japanese mini-forest! I'ts pretty convincing if you cover the top half and look only at the bottom, isn't it? This is a field of bonsai trees.

Here I am with Daisuke, one of my heroes. He is my age, and is the director of the old-folks' home "Ike-san" and has a humongous, powerful heart. The entire family is enlightened, if you ask me. Running the happiest, most wonderful neighborhood dying center, whose motto is "No Laugh, No Life" will do that to you, no doubt.

Family dinner. Most all of the food was grown by the man in center or by other family/community members, "with love" they would say.

Breakfast for the baby. Those rice balls are in the shape of hearts.

Kanta calling the sprits. He took Caleb and I to his favorite shrine near his house.

Caleb

I want to paint this.

Tiny shrines behind the main one.

We found this white, fluffy bug behind the shine. Caleb poked it gently and a tiny bit of its body came off. Suddenly all the ants around us went crazy, running every which way. They found the fluffy white bug and ripped it apart. "Wooly aphid! Ancient demon beasts."

Last year the enlightened father of the family planted two trees in honor of Terri and I. This is the sign for Terri's.

Here I am with Caleb at Ike-san.

The Kuroki family then took Caleb and I to a "power spot" deep in the mountains. At the base of the waterfall were hundreds of stone totems. The folk story goes that when children die they sometimes go to hell because they cause so much suffering up on earth, and the kids can build stone bridges out of hell, but demons come around and smash the bridges down. We can help the children in this world by stacking stones on top of each other. This sacred "power spot" was covered in these tiny stone offerings, evidence of people who have been there, and tiny works of art and concentration, all over the place. They kind of "consecrated" the space as sacred, and remind me of Kodama in Princess Mononoke.

The Kuroki family. I painted a small mural in their entryway.

After Komatsu I went with Caleb to a festival in Saijo, to watch Workaholics at his house, and to meet up with Hachidai. We also played frisbee next to this sexy sculpture at Saijo Library. This Adonis has no genitals though, which is kind of effective in evoking the phallus, if you know what i mean. By not depicting his penis, we can imagine one, and as Lacan points out the imaginary penis can function as a phallus...The "phallus" can move beyond a cylindrical or conic object and be anything that signifies power, ascension, mystery, life, a cosmic sense of appearing and disappearing, and it can therefor become the symbol for an "ultimate desire." Some say that the woman (or the feminine) IS the phallus (because she is the object of male desire and holds ultimate power) and that men feel they lack a phallus (because all we have is a penis, which pales in comparison) The masculine also tends to feel like it is powerless. This is why men must keep their genitals covered and out of the "periphic ring," of society; we have to protect the idea that the penis, aka the male body, holds the phallus and contains phallic power... I wrote a paper about just this topic...

After Saijo I went to an all-night long dj hippy rave in Takamatsu with my soul brother Junya, and here are some of the amazing people I got to spend the night with.

Then I went to Kyoto and met up with two of my favorite people on earth, Shotaro and Daifuku.

can you find Daifuku?

Almost to the top of Fushimi-inari shrine.

The Window of Realization (satori no mado) in Kyoto.

The Window of Delusion, next to the Window of Realization. Realization, or Samadhi, or Nirvana, in Zen Buddhism, comes with an "unsticking" of the mind. The Circle represents emptiness, but also an endless, unobstructed flow. The circular window allows the mind to flow and skate along its edge, like a well-lubricated wheel, whereas the Window of Delusion has many corners and corridors in which the mind can get stuck.

Shotaro poking his head into the Window of Delusion.

Local vegetable vending machine in Kyoto. In the small towns of Japan there are just boxes with veggies and places to put money and its all the honor system.

Small festival in Kyoto.

Kids sleeping on the train.

Koyasan

My hat! I put this on Jizo four years ago.

Here is an "Ah-ji kan" class advertisement in the Mt. Kukai travel brochure. Call this number and reserve a spot to experience the secret esoteric practice of "Ah-looking." The painting is of the sanskrit character sitting on a lotus thrown in the center of a full moon. "The Ah represents the secret God." it says. "Understand that God = the entire cosmos, and 'You and the Universe become one'...."

This is the back of a book on Kukai's philosophy I found at a bookstore in Mt. Koya. Kukai remember is the first transmitter of tantric buddhism to Japan. He lived in the nineth century and also became THE Leonardo de Vinci--gay artist/scientist mystic saint--of Japan. If you read above, the key to Shingon "mantra-yana" buddhism, is similar to TM, I imagine, with the mantra in this case being the "Ah"... The Ah, Kukai says, is also one with the cosmic mind, Dainichi-nyorai aka Mahavirocana. It is the mantra that is, in itself, the cosmic buddha. The Ah is also the alpha, the first sound (also the first sound in the Japanese and English alphabets), the beginning of everything, the first utterance of the Source. "In the beginning was the Ah." and the ah gave birth to all other sounds, "each of them is true." The Ah is also, I'll point out, the common sound in all major names for God--Brahma, Allah, Yahweh, Buddha, Ram, Ra, Ma...which suggests that the "Ah" may be the "true, universal name" of God...A nice coincidence! Thinking this cosmic sound, especially resounding from a ball of white moonlight sitting in the center of your sky-like head, (like Samantabadra in sexual union with his glowing white consort, Samantrabadri) is the top secret method of immediate enlightenment for this school (and incidentally also the Tibetan Dzogchen/tantric school) of buddhism. If you try it, you will see why.

After Koya I went to Tokyo to see Satoru, Kazu, Yasuchika, and a few friends from KU. Satoru invited us to a birthday party at the Tunisian restaurant he helps out at.

Then Kazu took me to his photo studio and took pics of me dancing.

And then we went to a Kukai/esoteric buddhism art show at the national museum and I got to see Kukai's original calligraphy and painting, his vajra, and his prayer beads.

Then we met up with exchange students from KU for a final night in Tokyo. Satoru then took me to the airport where we spent the night. My flight was early in the morning.

Back in KC i have been mourning the death of my great aunt Nell and my dear friend Kristofer Vorhees. My mother and I took a road trip down to Fort Scott to deliver a diptych I painted for the Weavers, our close family friends, and to drop off some of Kristofer's things to his family in Wichita. I also got to spend the afternoon with Rick Winfrey, sangha brother and soul-lover. SO many emotions!..

AH!!!

2011-07-24T04:19:00.000-07:00

Long story short, I left takashi and Ty on the boat and spent a couple of days with the Kuroki family in komatsu. Mika Kuroki's brother, Daisuke, is in charge of an old folks home and so we went there and spent the day entertaining the elderly. light in light. Hung out with Caleb, visited a power spot in the mountians and a festival in saijo, then went to Takamatsu for a rave and drum circle. met old friends, beautiful hippies, then went to kyoto where I am now. spent the day Daifuku and Shotaro, two of my favorite people ever, and we visited for the first time Genkoan Temple, with the famous Window of Realization, (satori no mado) and the Window of Delusion (mayoi no mado). We also visited sanjusangendo, my favorite, and fushimi inari, with the tunnels made of gates. pictures and stories later...

sushi, empty zen garden, tree shrine, sailing

2011-07-18T19:36:00.000-07:00

can you see the feather?
"Those who try new things never die. Those who are lazy are already dead."
Sushi with Keiichi and his family.
This is the shrine to the thousand-year-old camphor holy god-tree in Niihama. The gate represents a transition into a holy world, the red shrine serves two functions, housing a god and also housing offerings, and the shimenawa rope around the trunk marks it as a vessel of god. tiny shines, buddhas, and offerings encircle the base.This is the extraordinary zen garden in Niihama. It is totally empty of island stones (like our minds). instead the subtle waves recede into horizonless space.

we were gifted fish, sashimi, and ice from strangers. Mai cut up the beautiful fish right before our eyes, and we ate it fresh.

light mind-body bliss swells wave through diamond emptiness
we got to this island and hiked though it to the secret beach on the other side. we had to dig our way though forest and totoro tunnels to finally fall out onto the beach. here is a map of the tiny island: Itsukijima
we spent an evening in matsuyama visiting the onsen. we picked some aloe and mai put it on his legs on the train.

Tree

2011-07-14T03:23:00.000-07:00

Ive been enjoying the album re.sort by Japanese electronic glitch artist Takeshi Kurosawa aka sora. He sounds a lot like Glim, but with more rythm. Also last night I went to Saijo for Caleb’s birthday party and we ended the night listening to Tech N9ne’s new album. The last track is a song of appreciation to Kansas City, his "heart and soul" and hometown. good to hear.

Today I woke up late, worked out, ate lunch with Jocelyn, then went to visit the tree with Chuyan and Takashi. After meditating at the temple and walking along its roots, we went swimming naked in the crystal clear river, Seki Gawa, and sunbathed on the hot, smooth granite rocks.

Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease

2011-07-12T06:00:00.000-07:00

I went camping on Deer Island for the ALT Goodbye Party and found a fertility shrine by where the deer sleep. This rock indeed represents what it looks like; the grounds of the shrine were covered in stone penises and vaginas. It made Takashi angry with frustration. "This is so stupid! Why are there so many penises here!?"

Ramen lunch with the Manabes.

These are new. Alcohol vending machines have always been in Japan, but now they have ID scanners, and if you don't have an ID then the camera on the right will scan your face and tell if you are over 20 years old.

I went to Calebs crib last night and we watched Miike Takashi's film Visitor Q (2001), which blew me away. have you ever seen any of his films? Miike also made Audition.

Here are the deer with their fake friends in front of the fertility shrine.

And here I am walking by the water in my fundoshi.

with Murphy's Law.

On my friend Junya's dash the tantric buddhist vajra bell representing the primordial union of the masculine and feminine energies, ascending and decending paths, emptiness and form, and heaven and earth...nondual reality being punched by a character from One Piece, and anime which is really hot right now in Japan.

And what is really hot in Niihama right now is the Hand, foot, and mouth disease which I somehow caught last week. Red spots appeared all over my palms and the soles of my feet after a day of fevor and headaches. no problem though...it goes away in a few days.

Bananahead-chan

2011-07-07T20:31:00.001-07:00

Many Japanese friends have told me how the "Japanese heart" changed after the earthquakes. Yasuchika said he hasn't felt a moment of real happiness since. And Hideyuki said that some japanese people have not changed their heart, which scares him. Mai and Taka actually went to Iwate and Sendai to entertain the homeless children. Taka studies marionetting in Italy, and Mai is a musician/performance artist, and they put together the persona "Atamagabanana-chan" and would walk around singing silly songs and giving kids bananas from Mai's head, just like Anpanman. I heard that out of maybe five kids watching only one would run away crying, while the rest totally got it. Magic is the same way...

Takashi, my old student who came to visit me in San Francisco, took me to Matsuyama yesterday to experience a Ganbanyoku, or stone bath, and to see Aun play with New York's legendary hardcore punk band Murphy's Law. I ended up partying with them into the night...they recognized me from our long flight together, and the new basist, who was closer to my age, told me all about how much he loves Japan, and showed me a oni tatoo that he got as a gift from Aggressive Dog, another legandary hard core band. pics soon.

The bathhouse Takashi and I went to....I had never been to it before, Sora to Mori, sky and forest, and the stone room was out of this world. "Negative Ion air", smooth granite beds, and a "freezing room" next door when you are done.

Gifts

2011-07-05T17:44:00.000-07:00

misa and ari making sushi

I went to the fruit store yesterday to buy some gift peaches and the owner of my favorite Ramen shop was there, recognized me, and said to the clerk, "These peaches, I'll get them. David, thank you for coming back to Japan."

Yesterday I visited the Yanagis and helped them prepare for their hoji. In the evening some of my old teacher freinds threw me a dinner and then we went to Karaoke.

I am beginning to understand more and more that in order to really feel appreciation and graditude, we have to be willing to fully receive the gifts.

Japanese strangeness

2011-07-03T16:37:00.000-07:00

Satoru carrying my backpack for me.

I often speak about how Japanese people tend to take things to the extreme...or at least to a level that we in the West just dont seem to go...Here is a pair of girls I saw on the train, decked out in doll costumes. In Akihabara girls in different costumes, such as bunnies, maids, samurai, highschoolers, and office ladies (OL), lined the streets advertisng their themed cafes. We found this OL cafe magazine advertisment at our table during lunch, and Satoru explained to me that "some men want to have a relationship with an office lady, but cant in real life, so they can fulfill that desire at these themed cafes. It`s not sex...The girls just talk to you and drink coffee or alcohol with you and act like office ladies in uniform. It is very strange Japanese culture."

Satoru reading Leigh`s letter

We visited painter Miyazaki Yujiro at the Mizuma Gallery.

tasuku in meditation.

Japan loves displaying male and female genitalia in their folk art. I`m facinated with the differences between Eastern and Western depictions of genitalia in art history--Japan exagerated them, such as in their woodblock shunga prints, while the West did the opposite and made them really, really small, if at all. Pictured above is a mascot for a restaruant in Tokyo. Below is an advertizment I saw near the same place.

Saint Satoru threw a dinner party for me my last night in tokyo, with photographer Kazu Fukuda and butoh dancer Yasuchika Konno. We ate rare fish, they tricked me into trying whale, and we drank sake out of tea ceremony ceramics...incredible experiences and newness is happening all around me, and it's all gift, unasked for, enriching. that mystical, even angelic emotion of gratitude is flowing almost nonstop, making me feel so high and alive. Love japan, great to be back. but i I miss all of you back home a lot. I've thought about everyone, with longing and gratitude. What is strange is that everything is the same as it was over here...i feel like maybe i should have waited longer than a year to return! and yet, since i have changed, everything is also different. I went to an amazing beach party and bbq last night, saw many old friends and made new ones. a group of 15 year old punks joined our party and played frisbee with us. no doubt they were excited when they saw me in my traditional japanese fundoshi.

"Have a nice Japan!"

2011-07-01T09:27:00.000-07:00

sai baba vibuti.

Im back in Japan and let me tell ya, this place is so great! Tasuku met me at the airport. I exchanged my money, said goodbye to the band Murphy`s Law who i sat next to on the plane and who will perform with my good friends Aun in Matsuyama on the 6th, Ill be there. On the bus to Shinjuku we met a young, tan, cute Japanese boy who just got back from three months surfing in OC, eager to speak broken English and talk about America. He said he was shocked americans don't separate all their trash. I agreed. Then tasuku and I met up with Oga, another old and dear friend, who was wearing a t-shirt with cats all over it, and we ate dinner at a tiny izakaya filled with cigarette smoke and red-faced businessmen all in their white short-sleeved button-up shirts, all laughing and having a great time. The old man owner, who looked like a cartoon character, spoke to me in broken English and gave me the oshibori warm wet wash cloth. God ive missed those. I wiped my face and hands, poured my friends some beer, ate wet sweet eggs, ramen salad and sat in a blanket of thankfulness.

May we all wake up to the Gift and feel the flow of gratefulness.

from mother earth to lover earth

2011-05-02T22:15:00.000-07:00

When humanity moves from childhood into adulthood, we move from a receiving relationship with "mother earth" into a co-creative relationship with "lover earth." The beautiful Charles Eisenstein speaks of this new, emerging story so well. I'm a big fan. Enjoy!

If you watch this for ten or twenty minutes, and then the Ken Wilber pointing out instructions to the right, oh boy... ascension and communion all over the place. try it!

Sai Baba, Post-bin Laden America, sufferings, miracle mushrooms, The Miserere

2011-05-02T13:10:00.000-07:00

Centered

This has been a week, lmty. Sai Baba ("Love all, serve all.") died last Sunday on Easter, and although he was a controversial world saint, surrounded by magic, manipulation, scandal, and abuse, he was still a devoted guru to millions (6 million reported in 1999) all around the world, and it is sad, so sad, that someone so loved is now gone. He died on Easter, which is strange, considering he is believed to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ’s consciousness.

Nevertheless, Sai Baba established free schools and colleges, free hospitals, and other charitable institutions in India and abroad, endeavors all worthy of sainthood.

Osama bin Laden died last night (or was it in 2001?), and with him the American public's dignity, once again. Our reactions are so predictable, so childish. (We are a young country, after all), the ancient ritual of singing and celebrating and thanking god when the archenemy finally dies. “We win.” For some, all they win is a good night’s sleep, finally after ten long years...

But the news media says this will not necessarily harm the money flow going into the al-Qaeda franchise. This may even spawn more support, who knows. revenge can be extremely exciting, as the US so shamelessly shows.

The tornado storms in the South are heartbreaking...listening to all those beautiful southern drawls crying over the radio, destroyed. “I’ve never seen anything more devastating in my life” says Obama. Over 300 dead. And the horrible flooding in southern Missouri destroyed a friend’s house; so much muddy water, so many storms.

Japan is still recovering. Everything is getting better, and worse, and is staying the same, all at once. My good childhood friend is getting married in a month (!) and suffered a seizure the other day connected to a previous domestic abuse-related head injury. We are all so worried.

And my niece and nephew, twin stars, turned two this weekend! The party was amazing, I loved watching my parents, now grandparents, and the gendering, the sainthood, the apotheosis....Everyone played.

Afterward I attended a morel eating party! Yeah! Another childhood friend who is getting married (so much "more perfect union" going on!), his uncle is a mushroom nut and hunter, specifically compelled by the illusory and highly valuable morel aka “miracle” mushrooms, who migrate all around the country and are extremely difficult to catch. The other day, down by the river, to his heavenly delight he found “the mother load.” Despite their monetary value he threw a party, free of cost, and we all ate morels the size of bananas in soup, grilled, stuffed, on pizzas...omg so delicious, and meaty...surrounded by beautiful people.

I left the party and quickly returned to KU to help set up for the big open house we had on Sunday. In my studio I put out wasabi peas and peanut m&ms and played the Miserere, all a hit...I served green tea to anyone wanting it. Three Tibetan monks came, an honor, my god, and my parents came and made me so happy. Love. The show ended at four, but to my heavenly delight one of the most brilliant and celebrated professors here (and extraordinarily psychic shaman, in my book) stayed until 6:30 with her partner, talking to me about art-making and traveling. The two are very similar, no? I watched Jackass 3-D and some NFC downstairs with the beautiful “trolls of witch mountain”, found out about bin Laden, then listened to hearts of space on the floor futon cuddling with my friends...what a week.

This morning between 6:30 and 6:33 I dreamt I was in exploring a maze whose walls were made of gorgeous ceramic fire, “great wall sculptures” I thought. reds, oranges, yellows, “raku?”, and I found within the artful maze a bathhouse. I got naked and bathed with my beautiful friend (one sleeping next to me), only to find out that we were in the middle of a great futuristic campground, with hipsters filling crystalline tents and exclusive clubs. We put on our clothes and explored, finding many adventures.

Relationship Week

2011-04-25T17:41:00.000-07:00

I added a "man" on top of the mountain.
I hid more beings and softened the moss
and I painted this new frog portrait. Kyle.

Man, so much happened last week. I saw the great Dan Savage (who identifies as Catholic) speak about gayness, bullying, and his It Gets Better Project, which he started in order to help reduce child suicide. Did you know President Obama contributed a video!? Amazing. I also went to a polyamory panel discussion hosted by the KU ECM (Ecumenical Christian Ministries). Polyamory, or “Polyintimacy,” as the leader of the discussion pointed out, is natural and, in the context of Christianity, is exactly what Jesus wanted us all to accomplish. The panel was made up of professors and students who all had experience with polyamory. Monogamy may not be the best for everyone, all the time, it seems. Most interesting was the discussion about jealousy in light of Dr. Denis Dailey’s notion that jealousy isn’t an emotion but a marker of possessiveness, dependency, and low self-esteem.

The topic of the conversation turned to “shame” and when it was time for questions and comments from the audience, I contributed Ram Dass’s idea that polyamory happens as a natural result of our spiritual practice. As the veil of our minds get thinner, and our separateness becomes more and more illusory, we fall in love more often. Feeling shame for falling in love all the time when you already "have one in the nest” is natural, too, but what we all may need to do is give up what Ram Dass calls our “deprivation model” of loving relationships...

I found out that I didn't get the summer research fellowship I applied for, but I will visit Japan with Leigh and her brother Andy this summer anyway.

I also M.C.ed the talent show with Leigh and Cat at our house “Witch Mountain.” I played the Japanese flute as my talent, as well as the drums for a stick juggler and sang the bass harmony for 6 verses of home on the range with Leigh and Cat.

I had my First Year Review, where a panel of 6 professors examined all of my work, critiqued it, and then decided if the body of work passes me into the next phase of my master’s degree. It did. I passed. Yippee!

At the talent show the Tibetans examined my painting Peekabddha and decided it was depicting Dewachen and asked “how did David know to paint this?" That made me happy. They also all sang “the song of compassion” for us as their talent, and then after the show taught us all traditional tibetan dance.

Nick Ray read to us an excerpts about nipple yoga from David Deida’s book “Instant Enlightenment," convincing me to order it off Amazon. I love David Deida. Nick Ray, as a spiritual teacher and yoga instructor here in Lawrence, joyously transmits pure awareness all the time, but saturday night's was particularly poignant.

Jacob and I went down to Raytown to pick up his stolen truck. The thief put in a new clutch and filled the truck with car supplies and tools, including two very nice pool cues! Jacob was very happy, and told me how fun it was to have, for once, a positive conversation with a cop.

The week ended with the greatest Hearts Of Space I have heard, including a piece by Eric Whitacre (TED) and all of us cuddling on the floor.

new paintings

2011-04-13T21:48:00.000-07:00

Adoration of the mystic lamb

And here is a new tree painting for Leigh and her mother. I hid over a dozen fairies in there.
Here is a close-up.

San Francisco with Takashi

2011-03-26T17:45:00.001-07:00

Muir Woods. It was A LOT like Mt. Koya, only no thousand-year-old stone path, graveyard, and the forest floor wasn't covered in shines, temples, totems, and buddhas. But besides that "lack", the park was wonderful, and Alicia came with us! The five of us picnicked and then hiked the "Lost Trail," found the river, stacked some stones and drank some wine.

Takashi and I went went to SFMOMA and saw great, great art.
Here we are in the Brancusi.
Thoth and Tribal Baroque. We experienced them, alongside Song Preservation Society and some other amazing groups and solo artists at the Starry Plow open mic night.

Jazz show at Cafe International in the city.
Takashi sleeping on the couch next to a painting I made with Gabriele, one of our hosts.
Here is the amazing house we stayed at in North Berkeley. Raphaele and his two roommates were great hosts. I miss them already.

Toilet

2011-02-22T08:40:00.000-08:00

The Tibetans came over for meditation and potluck last week, and right when they were arriving my phone somehow fell out of my pocket and into the toilet. So strange.

So I have been phone-free for the last few days (Thank GOD my calender was synced with my computer!)

The Tibetans!

2011-02-15T08:49:00.001-08:00

KU is hosting five beautiful Tibetans this semester (three monks, one tantric master, and one layman). This is an exciting time! It took them three years to get their visas from China, and now that they are here, they have to be very careful not to mention the Dalai Lama or speak in their native language around any Chinese--I guess there are Chinese students here at KU who will tell on them and get them into serious trouble when they return.

Thanks to Leigh, who is taking Tibetan, we got to hang out with them all day Sunday! They came over to our house and had tea and muffins. We laughed and sang and chanted. They are so funny, and playful, just like children. Then we walked around downtown and took them to the park where they excitedly ran over to the swings. It was their first time swinging! They didn't know how, so we pushed them. After that we visited their dorms and then all ate dinner together at the cafeteria.

Since Buddhism is non-theistic, the "God" Buddhists "worship" is a compassionate mind. And they actually have practices to generate more of this mind inside themselves. They do mantras and practice love all day, and no doubt this is why we all fell madly in love with them: we could pick up on their profound mental state.

But they were also just regular guys, so human, so humble. "People are just people."

My 28th birthday party

2011-02-12T18:15:00.000-08:00

I danced around all night I was so happy.
Robin read.

my mom gave me this blazing new gray sweater. cool, huh? I love it.
Here is our mantle. I love the symmetry between the Kansas Flag and the Blooming Universe tanka. (Bodhidharma is the red guy in-between).

Great conversations were had.
Beautiful friends popped in.
Leigh made a vegan coconut birthday cupcake tower. omg they were good.
Glorious Cat made my favorite snacks: Charlie Meers's raison bread/smoked tofu/spinach/tofuri cream-cheese sandwiches, and Emily Kat's avocado/balsalmic/salt and pepper love snack. Best best best.
Ishita and Leigh lighting up the world.
Thanks to all I felt celebrated and celebrated. The potluck let us feast on fresh foods and Ishita's Indian curry! My favorite. God I'm grateful to be alive today!

new work, almost there

2011-02-12T18:12:00.000-08:00

cicada shell and pinecone.

dandelions behind the house

snowman

reflection

"Non-clinging mind"

2011-02-09T22:55:00.000-08:00

I wrote this for an English publication in Niihama. Enjoy!

無執着

mu shuu jaku　

No Clinging

Now that I’m back in Kansas I’m occasionally asked, “What do you miss most about Japan?” It’s a difficult question. Wait, no it’s not. “My friends,” duh. But then memories appear in my mind—mountains, holy god oceans, fresh spring water, umeboshi, enkai, junior high kids, co-workers, trains, kyanpu, thousand-year-old god-trees (goshinboku), sunbathing naked (rotenburo), rivers, zazen, onigokko, onsen, and on and on, I can go forever—Japan is like a secret life I have that nobody here knows about, an inner wonderland that colors my world with appreciation and perspective—but it’s wrenching! I miss Niihama everyday! I’m not exaggerating.

“Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.” That proverb attributed to Dr. Seuss says it all, really. Crying because it’s over can be a form of clinging, which leads to more suffering (because everything changes). Sounds familiar. I’m appropriately reminded of the “mushuujaku,” or “non-clinging,” talk a glowing Zuioji monk gave some Sunday morning beneath blooming cherry blossom trees. As many of you know Buddhism maintains that everyone has “The Buddha Nature,” and that this “innate,” “unborn,” “undying”, “transcended,” “eternal” “unstuck” aspect of you is a center and expanse of awareness always present and “creatively detached” from your personal mind, body, emotions, thoughts, and feelings, even right now as you read these words. This part of you is aware of change, aware of time, aware of passing experiences and relationships. It is not confined to any of those, however. “The way sunlight falls upon all things equally,” this non-clinging light-mind shines through you onto things every moment as awareness itself, aka “the nature of mind,” and there you are.

Moreover practicing mushuujaku correctly cannot be escapism or avoidance or disinterest in the world. It’s not being dead inside. On the contrary, the teachings note that the “non-clinging mind” is so radically open and inclusive it embraces all feelings, all life, all loss, “like a mirror its objects.” It just doesn't get trapped in any of them.

I try to keep all that in mind.

When I got to America I immediately sought out and became friends with the Japanese exchange students. I admit it. They were amazing, yappa beautiful and generous, and occasionally mentioned how my English was the easiest to understand, and that my Japanese was the best. I guess years of living abroad helped me master pronunciation and pace in both languages. Those exchange students have completed their semester and are already back in Tokyo. Man time flies! I miss them already. Shogyo-Mujo, Ichigo-Ichie! And it’s nice to know that the more loss I experience, the more I get to practice the profound mushuujaku, and imitate mushuujaku Maude from the classic film Harold and Maude (1971).

Harold: Maude?

Maude: Yeah?

Harold: (pulls the stamped coin from the arcade out of his pocket) Here.

Maude: A gift! (reads it) Ohhhhh! This is the nicest present I've received in years. (kisses it and tosses it happily into the ocean. turns back to Harold).

Harold: (stunned, looks out to the ocean and then back to Maude. begins to form the word “Why?")

Maude: So I'll always know where it is.

work in progress

2011-02-07T00:26:00.000-08:00

A poll and my trip to Colorado!

2011-02-03T08:48:00.000-08:00

If you had to choose one, what sexual orientation do you currently identify with?Market Research

I had the best time skiing in Colorado this weekend, let me tell ya. Pictured above are the buddies I met on the trip: Casey, in yellow, is the best man and organized everything. I went to High school with him but we ran in different crowds and never met. Despite our ideological differences, however, we got along very well. He is a great guy, so generous, and looks exactly like Mathiew Kassovitz from Amelie. Next is Ben, a beautiful Messianic Jew from KC who, at 28 years old, already has five kids! What a lucky guy! I didn't even know about Messianic Judaism until this trip. He and I got along very well. And then there is Kyle, the bachelor getting married in May. Kyle is one of my best KC friends who has supported me ever since I met him in high school glee. He is a great skier, with such a cool family. Last on the bench is his uncle Steve, who is a mirror image, in looks and behavior, of Bill Murray, no joke.
Here is Kyle getting ready to destroy our first run. The weather was PERFECT the entire weekend.
All over Breckenridge and Denver I saw these hydroponic growing supply shops. Now that marijuana is legal in Colorado, I guess this is the business to be in.
We stayed at Kyle's uncle Mike's farm house way out in the country; no lights, only endless stars. Mike is a farmer and flyer, who built his own Kitfox-style plane in his two-car garage years ago and now takes people up to skydive. The wings, made of essentially thin plastic sheets, fold out. Ducktape and twisted wire hold the windshield in place. Here Mike is demonstrating how the skydiver balances and then jumps from the tire. He and his partner Marsha were amazing hosts, and heroes, in my book. They are living one of my dreams....

New Butoh from Yasuchika!

2011-01-14T17:08:00.000-08:00

Please enjoy these two new videos from Yasuchika. This is his butoh is it's best: primal, occult, scary, absurd, transcendent, other-worldly, honest, controlled, strong, spontaneous, graceful, gimmicky, and inventive, all at once. We the viewer get to sit safely behind the lights, in our protective darkness, as our shaman unfolds and transforms "the dance of darkness" before us. Out of the darkness, out of the stillness, out of the silence, and into ouselves, deep and wild.

Showing Work

2011-01-12T13:03:00.000-08:00

I'm showing some of my work at this month's Final Friday in Lawrence! The show is called "Light Bodies" and will be held at Be Moved Studio, a dance/yoga/art gallery right off 7th and Mass. I cannot attend the art opening (I'll be skiing in Colorado celebrating my soul brother Kyle's engagement!), but my gorgeous housemates Leigh and Cat will be there, along with other pure light bodies dancing and mingling, so please come if you can!

Happy Holidays!

2011-01-01T13:40:00.000-08:00

David posed for me the other day--I'm planning on doing portraits of my niece and nephew, inspired in part by Gerhard Richter's baby paintings.
Molly!
Charlie's birthday party! Joyce made her famous Indian food.

Here I am with my housemates, Leigh and Cat, and our snake, Sheldon Waterbottom.

Phallocentrism's role in censoring full frontal male nudity in Hollywood.

2010-12-09T09:05:00.000-08:00

This week a dozen people showed up to our house for meditation and a vegetarian potluck!
Also, the semester is over! You can read my final research paper for my history of the body class here . The footnotes for google docs are in roman numerals. sorry.

New Picasso paintings!!!

2010-11-30T06:54:00.000-08:00

271 Picasso pantings and drawings just turned up, worth 75 million! Unbelievable! I'm so...happy. They look great!

"271 Picasso works that were never seen, never inventoried - that's just unprecedented." It's a great, albeit shocking day for the art world!

For my world, at least.

What do you think? Were they stollen or were they gifts?

Snake!!!

2010-11-18T09:22:00.001-08:00

My good friend Kyle hooked me up with a pet corn snake, Dr. Sheldon! My house, "Witch Mountain" is extremely happy to adopt Sheldon. I had a pet corn snake growing up so this is all super nostalgic.

Tomorrow I have a show in Kansas City. I am decorating a law firm's holiday party. Over 300 lawyers, judges, and art lovers will be there!!! And saturday my sister is getting married!!!

Drunken Noah and the curse of Ham

2010-11-09T09:22:00.000-08:00

Wait, let me get this straight. Slavery was religiously justified in America because Africans, as the decendents of Ham, were cursed to suffer after their ancient ancestor saw his father naked? Wiki Curse of Ham.

I googled that famouse biblical scene and collected some of the images.

Cagnacci
Men clearly have issues.

After Noah's three sons populate the earth, young King David defeats the giant! This is one of my favorite scenes. by Dore

Jonsi in St. Louis

2010-11-03T20:06:00.000-07:00

Jared with Jonsi and Alex.

Zack, Leigh, Ulfur (aka Klive), Alex, and a member of Mountain Man.

I'm not quite sure I fully comprehend what happened last night. My housemate Jared, who pretty much lived with Jonsi and Sigur Ros in Iceland while studying there for a semester, invited Leigh and I to meet Jonsi at his concert in St. Louis. We went there, met Jonsi before the show, hung out with him and the band, enjoyed the show, wow what a show!, and then afterwards drank, danced, and partied with them. Just us. We didn't get home until 7:30 AM. Not to brag, but Jonsi flipped out over my magic tricks and even kissed me goodnight. What!? I was so impressed with him and his partner Alex (also in the band). They are both vegan raw-foodists, beautiful, nutty, totally human, no super ego or anything..it was amazing. We also got to meet their opening act: a three women folk vocal group Mountain Man. Turns out one of them loves Ken Wilber, zen, and Gempo Roshi's Big Mind Process...we had a lot to talk about.

"I see you're colourful

I see you in the trees

I see you're spiritful

You're in the breeze"

work in progress

2010-10-30T00:04:00.000-07:00

"Closure"

"Backyard"

Here are a few of my new paintings. I have my big critique in front of professors, visitors, and other grad students coming up next week. None of these are quite finished, but you get the idea (dont you? I hope so). I hid some animals in "Backyard". Can you find them?

"All in All"

"Individuation"

"Groin Vault"

"Where did they come from?"

And here is one of my contemporaries utilizing formal elements of stage magic in a completely new pictorial way. Hats off. Great ambient glitch music too.

Chestnuts, Puja, and The Edge of Hell

2010-10-18T09:37:00.001-07:00

Obhi Hazarika stopped by and ate dinner with us on my mother's birthday. Obhi, who used to be the drummer for MGMT, took me to India my first time in 2001. It was so good seeing him again.
Cat, Leigh, Wylie, and I spent an afternoon picking chestnuts at a local farm.
Every Thursday we have sitting meditation and vegi potluck at our house. It's so wonderful.
Eli and Raphael visited from out of town. Heaven on earth.
And here is Taka, Ishita, and Leigh at the Indian Puja we attended Saturday. Taka is an exchange student from Japan I've been acculturating (a favorite hobby of mine), taking him to the haunted houses downtown, queer dance parties, mexican restaurants, etc. After watching Shortbus at my house he said "My worldview has now been changed." I asked him how and he answered, "Because I could empathize with the gay and queer characters in the movie, I feel they are no different from me."

Best.

Why do we dance?

2010-09-25T01:52:00.000-07:00

My beautiful friend Catherine just moved in with us. Now there are three.

My Japanese friends came over and made us all okonomiyaki for dinner. Leigh made inarizushi,手作り.

best.
Here we are eating breakfast with Michael Garfield. I was so thrilled he stopped by. We stayed up all night chatting in my studio with Lauren, who was visiting from Chicago. Best best best.
And the new painting in progress. Can you tell what it is?

Endless Coupling

2010-09-21T09:56:00.001-07:00

mens agitat molem

"Mind Moves Matter"

Endless Coupling...Light-dark, emptiness-form, visible-invisible, sound-silence, figure-ground, presence-absence, mind-matter, chaos-order, yin-yang, masculine-feminine, spontaneous-intentional, individual-universal, heaven-earth, open-closed, love-fear, nirvana-samsara, one-many, formally we usually like patterns of multiple mirror relationships of variations on a theme (Jazz). Teepee-house, there is a large transparent cathedral behind our wooden one there. Can you see it? You can sleep in there, in that wooden temple. Seriously, shrines and churches in Japan become huts, tents, teepees, refuges, to keep you warm and alive at night. I've slept in one of these well kept communal forest shrines and've had wonderful dreams,... I miss them so. And who out there dreamed of living in a teepee? I think I had a small teepee growing up as a kid. I actually used to think I was an Indian, I remember. On top of my nanny being half black half cherokee, the tribe I belonged to with my father was called Indian Guides. I'm Golden Eagle, son of Bald Eagle (we chose our own names). I recently heard Indian Guides will become "Adventure Guides," Princesses (girl version) will be "Explorers" and "tribes" will be known as "circles," as the YMCA programs "curriculum" shifts to a more generalized one "based on nature." I'm also a native American in that i was born here, from Kansas, the "Wind tribe". Aquarius is an air sign too, interstingly. The "Water Carrier" is the air? Here is the Indian Guides pledge: "We, Father and son, through friendly service to each other, to our family, to this tribe, to our community, seek a world pleasing to the eye of the Great Spirit.”

I'm almost done with this painting. "Endless Coupling" comes from the Noguchi sculpture of the same name living at the Nelson Museum in Kansas City. I visited there last weekend and ended up taking about fifty photos of human hands found in the classical paintings--stunning drawings and powerful mudras each and every hand. I'll post more of those pics soon. I also spent a lot of time in the Noguchi section--Ends, Energy Void, Endless Coupling, Avatar.

Noguchi was half Japanese you know, and was the only person to voluntarily enter a Japanese internment camp during the war; he wanted to help make art, gardens, and build parks for the prisoners. What an artist! He studied under the great mystic Brancusi, who studied under Rodin, who changed the way the world looks at realism and sculpture. (See my article Reexamining Realism for more.) In a famous interview Rodin got so angry with the reporter because he though he abstracted the figure in some way. "You are mistaken. I do reproduce it exactly as it is."

"Are you not compelled to change it slightly?"

"Under no circumstances. I would have cursed myself if I had to do it!" Rodin then explains that the life of the model--the soul, anxiety, breath, and the movement of the model has to be included! "I see the whole truth, not only its surface." Anyway Noguchi's work is a big inspiration for me, im not sure why. Anish Kapoor and James Turrell as well. Those two guys blow my mind. I seriously dig what they do.

Terri said

"Ahhhhhmen. Each of these artists move beauty into space like fingers making mudras."

I miss you!

Sutter Buttes

2010-09-07T07:57:00.000-07:00

I've just started a new tree painting. I'm working almost entirely from memory.
And I've almost finished this one. Can you see the feathers and tadpoles?

I went to Yuba City, California this weekend to meet some new family. I got to explore "the smallest mountain range in the world," the Sutter Buttes, with my nephew, father, and uncle. It was golden.

Pool Party!

2010-08-23T18:31:00.000-07:00

The pool party was a great success! I got to see new friends and old ones. The sun illuminated the open sky, Japanese people ate veggie burgers for the first time, and the water was perfect!

a little news

2010-08-10T12:06:00.000-07:00

Leigh and I went to our local super market and found all these beans, teas, and more! I love Lawrence.

I just learned that in June Colorado joined the 13 other states in legalizing medical Marijuana and decriminalizing possession of up to an ounce! Wow.

And last week the conservative republican openly gay federal judge Vaugh Walker overturned California’s same-sex marriage ban “Proposition 8”!

"Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples," the judge wrote in a 136-page ruling that laid out in precise detail why the ban does not pass constitutional muster.

"Because Proposition 8 disadvantages gays and lesbians without any rational justification, Proposition 8 violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment."

California may soon join Massachusetts, Iowa, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Washington, D.C. in allowing same sex marriage.

The upward drift towards legalizing marijuana and gay marriage is happening! Finally.

Final Days

2010-08-06T22:14:00.001-07:00

Here are some of the people who came to the station to see me off. Tricia took the pic.

Yoshiharu DJed for me at his house: quite the honor.

Last zen meditation at the monastery. I love the empty zen garden.

The tree was more beautiful than ever.

As was Tasuku.

a couple videos

2010-07-30T03:13:00.000-07:00

Here is Konayuki ("Powdered Snow") live by Remioromen. One of my schools sang me this song at my farewell assembly. I cried.

And here is a new Bobby Mcferrin video with a song from his new album Vocabularies. Certain parts of this song give me goosebumps.

Last week

2010-07-26T01:09:00.000-07:00

Here I am sweeping the doorway to the tiny temple dedicated to the holy camphor tree and medicine buddha, Yakushi-nyorai. I want to live here.

There is Peter beneath Matsuyama Castle.

One last look at my shrine.

Sorry I haven't posted anything recently--been so busy finishing work and moving out of my place. I don't know where to start! (Family trauma aside),

I went camping by the Kamo River with Pat, owner of Club Belinnis where I painted the mural, for three days and he provided a hip-hop rave party, bar and coffee...I spent time with great friends and witnessed childish sexuality...

Junya came up from Tokushima to give us a curry party! pure love and affection.

Here are a few commissions I worked on till the last day. They aren't finished, but what can I do?--Sell them as is and pray for the best.

Paintings usually don't ever "finish"though anyway--They just pause at interesting places and then have a life of their own. I hope they work.

I saw the new Ghibli! The Borrower Arritetty. As expected...beautiful, subtle, creative, mature, memorable. I'll write more about it later.

Then Peter and Abigail visited and everything

came alive!!!

What beautiful, glowing, friendly people! I took these Kansans all over my town. It was a hot, sunny day. Ikku Shrine with the 1000 year-old camphor totoro trees,
the river and holy tree with Tasuku,

Emily's preschool, we met some of her kids--heaven on earth. We also went to 4 hours of karaoke!
I finished my teaching work, gave my goodbye speech at some of the schools about the Japanese proverb "Ten People, Ten Colors," cried in front of all the kids, thanked them for teaching me, took lots of pictures and got presents and flowers....

Here is Peter at the tree. What a great tree.

Tokyo Story

2010-07-08T14:52:00.001-07:00

I first visited Daifuku in Osaka for one last dinner together. Daifuku gave me the traditionalOmiyage gift to give to Satoru, even though he has never even met him, because Satoru will be taking care of me in Tokyo...I love it.

And here he is! Satoru!!! This boy took good care of me all weekend.

We spent all day Saturday visiting galleries. I got to see most of my favorite contemporary Japanese painters.

Aida Makoto

Art sometimes acts as a spotlight onto the diseased parts of culture, in this case the terrifying objectification of young girls in Japan. He often depicts girls as food, smiling and giggling as they are being destroyed. . . this is a big painting, and the detail is magnificent; each one of those girls is beautifully drawn..

Tenmyouya Hisashi

Machida Kumi

Yoyogi park.
Yoyogi park was having a hippy flee market... look at her hair! real?

And it's right next to Harajuku station, where all the kids dress up and parade around showing off their kickass fashion.
a couple visual-K guys.
harajuku
Here is Kazu talking to his bird, "Bird".
I jammed with some beat-boxers at Yoyogi park.
And i got to finally see a crystal ball guy...Yoyogi park is the best. Ensembles play through the park, so walking around is like listening to a live album, for free! and there are performers who get to shine, and artists, and sports, and...everything.

This beautiful couple was fighting on the train.
We ate dinner with Nic and Namiko, who are getting married next weekend! Yoshi (far right) met us there. It was so great seeing him again.

We met Kazu at this fishing park next to the station. This place was so interesting. pools were filled with carp, and tiny polls were used to catch them. You pay by the hour, and then weigh your catch at the end for points. Hey, even people in the big city need to fish....

Satoru took me to one of his friend's bar, and there we met some traveler's from Spain. We got along very well, spent most of the time talking about Kukai and Yukio Mishima. They invited me to stay with them at their place in Spain!!!

Finished

2010-07-08T07:30:00.000-07:00

recent events

2010-06-30T06:26:00.000-07:00

I went to a party at Bellinin's in Saijo. It was filled with beautiful people, as always. Here is the smoking room I painted.

As part of my job I got to help show some American highschool kids around Matsuyama. We were lucky; we got to see the castle in the rain. Matsuyama castle is the best in Japan. I took the boys to Dogo Onsen, the first bathhouse in Japan. We got naked and found the bath filled with a highschool track team. They were excited to see us, and we ended up washing each other's backs. It's Japanese culture.
And I went to Tounaru, the copper mine ruins in Niihama with some friends and their baby. We ate lunch on a Jungle Gym on top of a mountain overlooking the city .

We hiked through the mountains, by the waterfalls and snakes...

We found an old house lost in the woods..
We even saw a monkey! Can you find the monkey?

And here is a scroll I dumpstered from a shrine near my house. It's a fascinating shinto-buddhist hybrid of Fudomyo. And there is the bouquet of flowers some teachers gave me at my farewell dinner, as well as the koyasan painting all packed up to ship to Terri.

commissions

2010-06-16T04:24:00.000-07:00

im sorry ive been so absent everyone; been working in my studio, trying to finish these commissions. I've got 4 more to go before i leave japan. What's nice about commissions is that they are ordered, in all meanings of that word. im told what to do. less chaos..I dont have to think about content so much...This person wants her horse in the same sky as the frog. Ok, done, and fun. And i can relive "the feel of the real" sky and real horse and make them come alive...but its also time-consuming work--sanding, glazing, and once i have the colors mixed and oil prepared i have to work nonstop while the oil dries, usually 4 hour sessions. And one painting usually takes between 5 to 10 of those sessions...Commissions are also a huge ego-boost. And i need the money for school. sorry guys. please forgive me.

Green Green Festival

2010-06-14T07:06:00.000-07:00

I went to Hiroshima with Daifuku this weekend to participate in the Green Green Music Festival. We rode hs little moped to the great bridge, and then Hitched it across to Fukuyama.

The festival miraculously took place at a Rinzai Zen Temple complex (!) deep in the mysty mountains. we had to take a thirty minute shuttle ride through the forest just to get there. . It rained on and off all morning.All the bands were good, really good, mostly rocksteady ska and old school reggae. There was Spinna B-ILL, a Lenny Kravitz-mixed with Saul Williams artist, this bad ass Japanese african dancer, the handsome Ucoca, really great ska.. I met Rickie-G sitting alone writing in his journal by the meditation hall, pictured at the top of this blog. I descended the stairs behind him and immediately noticed he was white. I thought i was the only one! But he writing in Japanese. I started bothering him..turns out he's half, near perfect english. I had a thousand questions but didn't ask. 'found out he's the headlining musician, performing as the last act at the festival, kind of a big deal in the japanese ska world... I had no idea...It was fun meeting him not knowing who he was though; a seriously lovely man, glowing....

ill give you all a more detailed account of my home stay experience and the music later.

Bike Ride to school

2010-06-09T14:34:00.001-07:00

Here are a few scenes from my bike ride to school yesterday.

Tadpoles swim in the rice feilds now. Hurry up and grow! The water is receding.
I pass by a dozen shrines on my way to school..here is one.
Poor baby. what a beautiful form though. This is going to be a painting.
I found a tree in Firefly Park that at first appeared to be shimmering, but turned out to be filled with butterflies, thousands of them, mating and emerging from their cocoons. I took video.
I found a chicken farm by the school. Putrid stench. dirty, sickening, but the light was beautiful.

After school I found some students playing in the river. I joined them.

I worked on this new painting all evening yesterday. It's a new view, with more ground.

sailing to shishi island

2010-06-05T17:13:00.000-07:00

photograph of the sea by Hiroshi Sugimoto, mounted on a 13th century bronze buddhist reliquary fragment.

Two of my best friends decided to take me on a sailing trip to see a sacred tree.

Our captain: Ty Curtis.

His boat, Watermelon.

Shortly after pushoff, an old fisherman pulled us over, told us to stay clear of his nets, and then gave us some really nice fish (kurodai). We ate them for lunch the next day.

That's me.
Caleb
Ty
We sailed into the night. Strong wind, sweet sake.
In the morning we landed on the tiny island Shishijima, home to a 1,200 year old camphor tree. Only about 30 people live on the island. Near the top was a large abandoned temple, housing beautiful buddhas and deities. It's a real shame there is no monk there to take care of the place. I dream that I will come back to the island and be the monk for the large temple next to the 12oo year old tree. Have you seen The Fountain? It would be like that, mixed with Spring Summer Fall Winter Spring.

The first thing we saw on our way to the tree was a seriously strange cemetary...tiny shrines all brightly painted with bamboo screens covering their doors. I lifted a screen up; there was nothing inside...The shrines were all empty.

This man met us on the dock and gave us some sake and rice.

Here we are next to the abandoned temple. After a short hike through the town and up the hills we reached the tree.
Due to a mud slide many years ago, most of the tree's trunk is underground, giving us a great view of its body. It's like we got a bird's eye view of the tree.
standing on the hill looking down at Ty. That blue through the leaves is the ocean.
That is shikoku seen from the island. This was easily one of the best trips of my life.
God. Please enlarge these pictures to see all the detail.

osaka

2010-06-01T03:03:00.000-07:00

I went to Osaka this weekend to visit some friends. First thing I saw was a horrible accident.

"I am always in improvement."

That's my bike helmet. Daifuku drove me around on his bike all weekend.

hippy fest and hanging on to stuff

2010-05-23T15:29:00.000-07:00

That is Guitar Panda performing at this year`s hippy fest in Imabari. Even though it rained and I didnt get much sleep, I had a great time. Japanese hippies are the best. I met young Japanese people who lived in India, South America, Mexico, Nepal....really cool cats. lots of dreads and tatoos and wonderful foods.

And here are two new marimokkori I got from friends. Can you believe thsi guy!

I'm beginning to pack up my house, organize my papers and pictures, throw away old cards and letters. it`s really hard, throwing away my stuff. for example, i opened up a drawer I hadn't opened in years. I had no idea what was in it, so technically i could have thrown away everything inside, right? i wouldn't have missed any of it. But as I leafed through the papers I found letters from old lovers, pictures of people i might never see again, inspirational articles..all this sentimental crap I wanted to keep. Half of the drawer went into my "important stuff" pile. Damnit!

"Have you noticed that their stuff is shit and your shit is stuff?" George Carlin

I`m constantly reminded of my favorite Ram Dass lecture "Cultivating the Heart of Compassion", where he talks about putting stuff in boxes that follow him around wherever he moves. We think we will "run out of the here and now", and when we do we can look back at the old days and find satisfaction. But as we get older, the here and now just becomes more and more rich and wonderful...

But I hold onto stuff not just for my own records, but also for my imaginary son...He might want some of this stuff. Or someone i love might find it useful..or i might be able to use this in an art project....I'm a pack rat, like my mother.

i need a fire.

or to be more like Maude.

....Harold gives Maude the tiny ring.

MAUDE: "Ohhhhh! This is the nicest present I've received in years." She kisses it and tosses it happily into the ocean. She turns back to Harold. His face is one of disbelief. He looks out to the ocean and then back to Maude. He begins to form the word "Why?"

MAUDE: So I'll always know where it is.

holy tree

2010-05-09T00:24:00.000-07:00

Over the past five years I've accumulated tons of pictures from friends and family, many of which I put on my refrigerator. Yesterday I took them down and assembled them into a tree. Can you find yourself?

Fire, Satoru, and the Tree

2010-05-01T05:50:00.000-07:00

This has been an intense time for me. My family’s good friend and spiritual advisor, Dr. Elbert Cole, died a few days ago. He was such an amazing man, huge inspiration, a positively religious figure. "Elbert was the greatest of the greatest generation. He was always there supporting, caring, loving. I have spent most of my life trying to be like him." ~My Dad. And if you met this guy, you'd know immediately---He was enlightened: And an angel. Compassionate heart, clear mind, energy and humor. All the time. I remember when he lead the service at my grandmother’s funeral (I attended via skype). He began the service with the story of the Buddha walking out of the forest for the first time after his enlightenment—a classic story. It was a sunny day, the Buddha, clothed in a simple robe, glowing in love, walked out of the forest. Someone walked over, blown away by his beauty, and asked, “Are you an angel?”

“No” Buddha replied.

“Are you a God?”

“No.”

“Are you a king?”

“No.”

Then what are you?

“I am Awake.”

(That story gives the listener an opportunity to ask “Well, am I awake?” and alas, they are! We all have basic wakefulness.)

Dr. Cole then led us in a service of appreciation for the beautiful life that gave us our own: my grandmother. God it was a great service.

Ecumenical, transreligious, serviceful, saintly, (the breadth of his work and sheer number of people he inspired is outstanding.) I’m sad he is gone, sad for my family, but also grateful, and happy that we had the rare opportunity to meet such a great being. What grace and good karma we all have! Grace!!!! I’m thankful for Dr. Cole’s long and inspiring visit, and feel deep joy waving goodbye to him. Thank you for your visit! We are all more awake and in love because of you. Infinitely more, and infinitely less.

Speaking of which, Satoru, another sparkler, is visiting ty, em, and I for golden week!

And, there was a big fire at the sumitomo chemical plant in my town. Everyone gathered in the street to watch. It felt like festival.

view from my apartment

Emily took satoru and I to the tree. The light was spectacular. and I just stumbled accross some old notes:
In "The Phenomenology of the Spirit" (1807) Hegel (echoing Jesus and Buddha) asserted that the human being contains, enfolded and shrouded within, the spirit of the absolute. This indwelling spirit, emanating as consciousness, comes to know itself as infinite only by assuming the limitations of finite existence and triumphing over them. In other words, the human is the vehicle by which God (or Buddha), as infinite Spirit or Consciousness, comes to Self-recognition...
Good to know.

Recent Life

2010-04-22T01:48:00.000-07:00

I found this Vairocana (Cosmic Buddha) Marimokkori on my student's desk today. At first I was like "how sacrilege," but actually, a lot of buddhist deities are depicted with boners, so it's not so out of place.

This may be the most beautiful Shrine i have ever seen. We visited it after hanami in saijo.

Look who it is!!! Richard came to visit with his fiance! Emily and I were honored.

My new friend Daifuku.

Keiran is in town! We hiked up to temple #60.

Public bathing; what a gift.

2010-04-20T15:31:00.000-07:00

Most all my western friends here in Japan absolutely love onsen (public bathing), and go about once a week, sometimes more. Tricia, Sarah, Ty, Caleb...my friend Hideyuki actually tells people his hobby is onsenning. I’ve been with him many times, we went last night, and I tell ya he is a textbook nudist: the clothes come off and he is happy as can be, dancing around, stretching, relaxing...He especially loves the outdoor baths, as do we all; sunbathing naked, or lying in the rain..it feels great on the body, doesn't it? I think public bathing also feels great on the soul.

It can even evoke a kind of spiritual (or universal) awareness, if you ask me. John Ince: “Social nudity helps erode social boundaries. Clothes are powerful visible cues of social division: between the rich and the poor, the trendy and the unfashionable. Nudity is like a uniform, signaling the most inclusive of all forms of membership—our humanity. Yet this primal uniform is at the same time ultimately individualistic, reveling the very essence of our physical idiosyncrasies. Thus the shedding of clothes simultaneously promotes social equality and personal authenticity, a sense of community and a sense of individuality.”

There is that great artist, Spencer Tunic, who makes the news sometimes for his art happenings and photographs. Many of his volunteers say that it was the first time they had been nude in public, and with huge smiles explain how thrilling and liberating it was. Anyway, check him out, and the onsen, if you havn’t.

Ingrid Lezar - I was a bit of an apprehensive beginner, but now I love the onsen. My reflections so far have mostly revolved around ageing. So of course at the onsen you have everyone from babies to the oldest lady in the world whose bones and muscles are so contorted that it's hard to understand how she even moves around every day... and here we all are, enjoying a hot bath. It's like... whatever life throws at you, there will always be giant warm baths, and you can enjoy them no matter what.

Soul

2010-04-04T20:02:00.001-07:00

Well, it’s over...again. 魂--"Soul" or "Spirit" in Japanese, my third collaboration with the famous butoh dancer Yasuchika Konno, and my first experience with the swami, spiritual teacher and sitarist Atasa Sangeet, over and done. I’m happy, inspired, exhausted, sad, angry, disappointed, energetic, spacious, in love, in light, and free, not all at the same time, but in waves that kind of unfold an emotional blanket with dreamglowy seams.

20 paintings sold, I got three commissions, and about 50 people came to the collaboration. Amazing success. Go We! With this final collaboration I wanted to give Niihama a spiritual expereince, “spiritual,” here meaning Universal, or deeply human; The Soul Level, or the Human Being level. I invited a butoh dancer who breathes bushi and budo, the real deal, traditional Japanese through and through, and yet avant-garde to the max, contemporary corn-rows, contemplative outlook, his chiseled mind and trained body channeld dance from the creative void--is he acting or for real?, terrifying, people gazed transfixed; the shaman took them away, deep into themselves...god it was breathtaking. And I invited a Japanese sitarist who went to India in his twenties and met his guru Osho, who gave him his name which means "The Soul of Music." He now teaches meditation and the joy of living creatively around Japan. Together our three souls created a space where people could forget themselves, remember their Selves, and ride the crazy waves of humanness; emotion, celebration, expression, invention, and our innate spiritual awareness (unlimited compassion, the human heart and soul.) I think we succeeded. I put Tibetan prayer flags and Japanese shide around the outside of the gallery to create a kind of sacred atmosphere. Shide can designate a space open for god, and tibetan prayerflags (prayers for peace) can bring to mind the people suffering in the world, inspiring compassion. Yasuchika made everyone take their shoes off at the door, another ritual for the invocation of the sacred... While people were arriving and sitting down, I played the drums, bells, and sang the Vajrasattva mantra to purify the space and please the local gods. Then Atasa and Yasuchika came out, we all bowed, Atasa gave a little talk, made everyone laugh, and then began the performance with three chimes of the Tibetan bell. I started playing the singing bowl, and the sitar slowly began to fill the room, making everyone high. Suddenly, Yasuchika, who had been sitting like a stone in meditation, sprang into the space and began his terrifyingly controlled, breathtaking dance. “The dreadful thing is that Beauty is not only terrifying but also mysterious. God and the devil are fighting there, and their battlefield is the heart of man...” Dostoevski. Atasa went back and forth between his sitar and flutes, I played the djimbes tabla-style, lightly muted with scarves, and Konno danced for about 30 minutes. After that we took a break. The lights went up and everyone walked around looking at my series of paintings, "Subtle Worlds" Second half, Atasa led us all into an amazing tonglen meditation, hands on our heart-chakras, and then two of Atasa’s friends joined us for a final jam. They were beautiful women, one played the Hang and the other her voice. “You will love her voice.” Atasas said. “She gets all here melodies directly from...” and he gestured upwards. The Japanese woman’s voice sounded like a musical instrument, Bjork mixed with Inuit throat singers, and the Hang sounded like a haunted steel ufo, taking us to the ghost world. They were a perfect accompaniment for Yasuchika’s final dance. An excerpt from the end of Atasa’s tonglen meditation: “You know how this world is a kind of hell for many people. Many people have so much suffering. Imagine taking all of their suffering into your heart and, holding it in there, the heart is so strong it transforms it into joy, and breathe out wonderful joy and peace, sending it to all the living beings.” Promply at nine, the owner of the gallery told us to stop. My friend Hachidai’s three year old daughter gave us all flowers, we thanked everyone for coming, chatted, cleaned up, and then a group of us went to eat dinner before ending up at my house. We drank sake and stayed up till 5:00 talking about everything. Atasa spoke to Yasuchika and I about the importance of selfless art and bringing beauty into the world, “not just reflecting beauty, but actually bringing more beauty into the world.” He spoke seriously about letting the self die. “Who is dancing? There is only the dance!" When your ego dies and your art is all that’s left, then it can really heal you and others. Then is comes from a more universal demention..a soul, or subtle level, one that resonates in a more mirroring kind of way for the guests.

First Day

2010-03-30T04:06:00.000-07:00

Today was the first day of the show. I had a pretty good turn out, three paintings sold, and some of my 6th grade students stopped by before baseball practice. It was a great day.

more art

2010-03-22T16:38:00.000-07:00

floral portal

I am so honored. The art director at Integral Life decided to use paintings from some of their featured artists for the back of their staff's buisness cards. Can you find the two that are mine? Other artists included in this project are Bo Bartlett, Philip Rubinov Jacobson, Michael Bergt , De Es Schwertberger, and Adam Scott Miller.

Details about the new Show

2010-03-16T06:00:00.000-07:00

The Alphabet and Naked Buddha are hidden in this painting. Can you find them?

mt. ishizuchi

there is a great video of this scene to the right. "Rick and Shikoku"

Highschool Yearbook sign. I decided to go all out.

corners

Some of you might notice that this is the fourth painting in the "Omens" series (the other three depict only three birds, an "omen" I saw again and again while studying with the Dalai Lama in India. Four is considered an unlucky number in Japan because it's a pun meaning death. "Shi." The square, like the triangle and circle, is sacred geometry and mandalic/(archetecture of heaven). Two of those birds were actually there that cloudy day (I took their picture). The other two I made up.

How many creatures and patterns can you find in the clouds? I love how our minds, in real life, can see animals and memories in clouds. It's an old pastime and great optical illusion. closure...

All my paintings from this series use photo references, sketches, or actual memories from places around my town on Shikoku (a japanese holy island and pilgrimage sight. people come from all over the world to complete the famous 88 temple pilgrimage circuambulating this island). This places and characters depicted are all real--real lived experiences I've had, while at the same time they're pure make-believe, memories at best, illusions, dreams, made up spaces, empty in the end. (just like our lives?)

That's the crazy thing about attempting realism with painting; from the very beginning it's totally unbelievable--it's just paint on wood! And yet, hopefully, with a little light, shadow, sfumato and magic, the image can trigger certain cues inside the viewer's brain and body, and the art, like a magic trick, can hover ahead of them as a kind of momentarily believable space. Then their state of consciousness can...mingle..with the painting, and some sort of exchange can take place. The dreamy situation depicted below some of you have actually visited. It's down the road from my house, by the river. Right next to that tree is a meditation room (with the secret buddha and mirror) and I swear it's on a special energy vortex or something; I always get into deep meditation very quickly there.

That's you there, embedded inside the dream-scape, quietly wandering over to the other side.

I really like how my old roommate and fellow Kansan Artist Bradford Kessler is playing with the dream theme, but in a far more multi-media trained voice. His stuff blows me away. It's so thought-full, and acts as an artifact from our new, holistic, interpenetrating multidimensional matrix post-postmodern reality. You gotta check his stuff out.

The theme of my painting show this year mom is "Yuugen," 幽玄.We don't really have a word for this in English, so I chose "Subtle Worlds" to be the other theme. The postcard:

Yuugen is a term mostly used to describe a certain aspects of artistic expression and perception. It also has religious (Buddhist) connotations. To give you an idea of what this word can mean in Japanese, the first character "yuu" is used in the word yuurei, 幽霊 which means spirit or ghost. The second character is in the word "genkan," 玄関、which means entryway or opening-space. Together, these two kanji (yuu and gen) describe the subtle feeling of profound meaning we get from certain works of poetry, dance, music, art. It's also an important aspect of wabi-sabi aesthetic. Wabi-sabi (good link) is the Japanese idea of beauty in imperfection, beauty in the old and rotting and transient, beauty in the glaringly true, and its particular to Japan, an outward expression of an inner cultural value and acceptance (the spiritual flavor of the japanese mind appearing in the art). At the beginning of tea ceremony we first bow to and honor the dead tree branch, or cracked flower vase, or wilting flower, all of which are "beautiful" in a wabi-sabi kind of way, and all of which can be powerful symbols (with dreamy meanings and transformative energies) in a yuugen kind of way. Nothing profound is necessary with Yuugen, though. Yuugen is just a subtle feeling of meaning, suggested lightly within, like a distant sound of a ship-horn, or a tiny coincidence, or a long-lost memory suddenly appearing like a ghost in a dream....

That's the Japanese theme of this show. The English theme, Subtle Worlds, I'll let you decide what it means. (although I'll just say that if you could see the series together you'd notice they all contain subtle gradations of color. I love subtle gradations..)

The Cove

2010-03-14T06:45:00.000-07:00

New pic of David and Margot. I can't wait to see them again!!!

other news:

God, I am a total wreck after watching the academy award winner for best documentary The Cove; I”ve been waiting years for this movie, having been an activist back home, and now I tearfully remember the many reasons why I stopped eating fish. My god, I had forgotten. I had forgotten and fallen in love with wasabi and raw tuna.

Conclusion: We have to give the ocean a break! If we don't, the ocean will die and we will loose the fish forever. That’s the story that makes sense. And it’s in our own fish-eating interest to cut back. Setting aside the ethics behind giving rights to other sentient beings, in the spirit of imperialism and selfishness we should cut back on our meat to ensure its existence in our future. After looking at it evenly and thoughtfully, I can see why that’s the rational thing to do,

But people addicted don't act rationally when they are threatened, do they. Addicted to money, power, drugs, or meat, most people don't think about it. They just try to get it while they can because they know it won’t last. This may be a “pre-rational” initial reaction, but it’s natural.

I like to think that one person not eating any meat counts as two or three people cutting back. That’s great power.

And then, there is the terrifying truth that dolphins are indeed sentient, they have a neo-cortex implying they can think. They show signs of kindness, creativity, and are almost unanimously agreed upon to be playful in nature. The ones in Taiji must, in their last moments, like Jacob in Lost, hope they are wrong about us.

Thank god the film makes it very clear that the creepy Japanese fishermen in the film are not “the Japanese.” They interview people who live outside Taiji and predictably nobody knows about it. I’ve tested that here in Niihama and its true; nearly nobody knows. In the movie they are shocked that it goes on. “We Japanese like dolphins, We don't think dolphins are food.”

God, the terrified city hall worker and father with two sons, five and seven, who says if they put the contaminated dolphin meat in the lunches the kids will have to eat it. He stares into space, says nothing else...

The movie surprisingly ends on a good note; light, wondrous hope... My tears of sadness flowed seamlessly into tears of joy, which allowed them to safely increase in power—a very strange and new experience (I don't cry often).

The music could have been better, but it was good enough to not impede on the erupting emotions (so much music in films just dams it up for me...it’s awful).

I often speak of film in High Praise for being, in many important ways, the greatest works of art ever, or should I say the ones with the most power. Not just monetarily...films have the power to move the viewer to tears. On occasion dance can do it, acting can, music can, and a painting can but only to very sensitive people. food can, sex can, but its rare. Not even death can always move us to tears. Film, on the other hand, if done well, can take us away into dream land and cause us to weep uncontrollably. We loose power, lose it, and flow open in new ways. No doubt it’s because they use so many other forms of art to capture the senses, Truth and Writing for the mind, composition for the eyes, sound and music for the ears, acting or directing for the body, goodness for the heart, everything is captivated with film. The art is coming at us from every angle.

This isn’t just “Art as Entertainment,” but also “Art as Mirror” reflecting cultural views and values, and “Art as Creator”, actually co-creating new views, and thus new worlds. It’s “Art as Helper” helping usher in a new, more free, more full, more healthy, more good, more true, and more beautiful world.

Will this film also exemplify Art as Healing or Art as Medicine? I hope so.

I can see why it won the Oscar.

Bobby Mcferrin, New Paintings, and the Poster

2010-03-05T00:45:00.000-08:00

moon point

reflected light

I've become obsessivly fascinated with how tiny puddles in the ground can magically reflect the vast sky and myriad of beings within it. Now that's a Great trick! I painted a bunch of crows in this painting. How many can you find?

Mt. Ishizuchi (unfinished)

Gates

Poster for the upcoming Butoh collaboration "Soul". This year, the famous sitarist and Swami Atasa will be playing with us. Unbelievable.

puddles, this weekend

2010-02-21T14:22:00.000-08:00

Can you spot four changes between the two pictures above?

"Goodbye chickens! Don't worry, I will be back soon."

the 2-year-old spoke slowly and clearly before closing the window and climbing back into the room..

somebody drew this on my kapibara stationary.

"Are you getting fresh with me

vegetables"

brilliant.

subtle gradations mixing into each other....

friendship

A new purikura for my students.

Kids watching Caleb try to win a wii at the movie store.

Celebrating Matt's birthday in Matsuyama. Everyone is so damn beautiful! I like these people very much..gonna miss them dearly, for sure.

Then yesterday I got to help my friends fix up their new old house. Kanta, their 2-year-old son, played dangerously around the unfinished house while we worked stuccoing the walls with "keisoudo," a kind of Japanese diatomite. I was amazed that this little kid could play with knives-he helped slice us all bread for lunch!-drills, hammers, climb around old rusty furniture, and play with chickens all barefoot, with his parents completely ok with it. He'd knock stuff over, spill things, put holes in paper walls--he spent a lot of time pressing the empty electronic drill into the steel kitchen sink, making beautiful music..The parents (who are pure light) just laughed and laughed. Their genius kid didn't hurt himself once, or cry..and I saw him step on some pretty sharp stuff.

Afterwards I went to see the band Aun play at Niihama's livehouse. That is the lead singer Katsu on the right. I've known Katsu for over four years now. Miss him already.

News on the Sun and 2012

2010-02-15T03:35:00.000-08:00

Click to play

Our friend Michael Garfield at Burning Man talking about the sun...His lecture is outstanding! I'd watch it 2 times. link here.

side-notes here.

"...doubtlessly the most important speech of my life so far: a half-hour presentation on the emerging science of biogeomagnetics, a discipline that studies the relationship between living creatures and the electromagnetic fields of our planet and star. By describing how magnetic fields trigger the release of various human biochemicals, and by grounding the presentation in the understanding that mind and matter are two perspectives of the same phenomenon, I suggest that the 2012 prophesies may actually have a legitimate, modern, naturalistic explanation – and that biogeomagnetics may offer us a prescription for how to stay afloat through the tumultuous years to come."