I started a new painting and finished another.
I would love to hear suggestions for titles.
Spring
Spring in Japan is a very stressful time. This is when teachers are changing schools, as well as positions at work. The teachers get transferred to a new school or the BOE every two or three years. Just the other day one of my favorite English teachers showed up at the board of Education (where I work during Spring Break) to find out what his new there will be. He was so pissed off. “Hey Sensei, how are you doing?” “Not so well. I’m having a hard time coping with this change. Not to mention I will never teach an English lesson with you again.” He will be there for three years or so, in front of a computer, far away from any child or English lesson. Same thing applies within the schools. Teachers move to different grades or move to a different school. And, no teacher knows who assigns the transfers. That is the Mystery. Within a company people get transferred all over the place as well. This is the time when families are moving to different cities. Can you imagine working for a school district that moves you around to different school and different grades? That is how they do it here. .
At the same time, this is the season for Hanami, the flower viewing festival. This is the most beloved festival in Japan, I think. It is a week long event that takes place when the Cherry blossoms come out. The cherry trees are bread to be the most beautiful things on the planet, and during the festival people spend all day eating and drinking sake beneath them, watching the pedals fall. It will be fun to see everyone sloshed in the middle of the day. They even devote a portion of their TV news to “tracking the blossoms” and little cartoon trees with electric energy lines emanating from their flowers appear dancing around the screen.
Tomorrow I am hosting a going away party for Yasu (he’s moving to Tokushima for Grad school)) and on Saturday I am going back to the Chiiori House( a 300 year old farmhouse nestled deep in the mountains of Iya Vally. (www.chiiori.org.) I really want to climb naked through the mountains and lie on the ground, letting the leaves and the dirt hold me like a mother would. I love being naked in nature. I just read about the Jains in India and It's funny that in India if you walk around naked you are considered a holy man. People may feel blessed to be able to offer you food. But in the West one would be locked up as a lunatic or pervert for walking around naked in public.
I am that lunatic. I used to take my close off in the neighborhood creek and submerge myself in mud. I was never afraid of what kind of biting animals were lurking deep inside those mud holes (or that I might not be able to get out!). It was the lowering of my little body into the cold, thick mud, (the symbolic returning to the earth) that was so... (I used to sometimes paint mud on my body as camouflage before running around the creek or neighborhood). The feeling of the mud touching every surface of my body was so....well, you know. I also used to drink the dirty creek water in an attempt to become more one with nature (that was actually the reason I would drink it) This was all between the ages of 7 and 11 i think.
IN collage one night a friend and I went to Potter’s Lake on the KU Campus and I suddenly had a burst of this incredible earth energy and I took off my clothes and climbed a tree. I felt like hugging the tree so I could feel its cold hands scratch my entire body. I love the mud sex scene in the movie I heart Huckubees. Do you ever have this earthy kind of eroticism arising within your compounded body/mind? Or this unrelenting urge to take off your clothes and lay naked beneath a blanket of sunlight? It’s kind of equal to my impulse to burst out singing or my impulse to make art when I am inspired.
3 comments:
loved your post, and your new paintings. Not sure which one was started or finished as they both look great but the bottom one gave me inspiration. Perhaps not quite right but I'll tell you anyways :). "Breathing Under" is what came to me. Because of the birds I believe it is meant to be above ground but I got such a feeling that just below the painting there was a person beathing underwater and their hair was floating up around the bubbles from their lungs. It made me think about reality and everyone's version and what it would be like to walk through a tunnel of a life's worth of painted/drawn/scribbled reality. Can you imagine? If the images in our conscious and sub-consciousness were layed out like a mural for the entirety of our lives?? That painting just feels like a piece of a reality that is distinctly someone elses, like a section of someones mural. Perhaps yours. Would be interested to hear what inspired the piece for you.
*heart*
I feel the same way about the body and nature. Occasionally, I feel trapped by my body though. Sometimes I do this thing where I curl my mind up like a foetus sleeping in my brain. Like the body is just a host. Then I feel the weight of my body and its grossness, mass, and qualities.
I love the bird painting. Crows are mahakala.
"Bubbling up"
mya
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