Ska and sea breeze

Here is an aerial pic of niihama. i live in the top center. This week my friend Dave is visiting me from Tokyo and yesterday we went to Tambara to have English pancakes with Abby and David. Three davids in one room. Afterwards we went to Imabarai to dance at a Ska/Rockabilly/punk show. I met so many people and danced to old ska songs that I used to skank to in middle school. Warm happy. We stayed in Imabari with a friend and in the morning visited a temple where I found a shrine dedicated to Paintbrushes (those are paintbrushes on the offering block). We then walked along the beach beneath the gray blanket of sky, the trash and seashells sang the song of creation. my eyes filled with tears when I saw the distant mountains covered in cloud, the waves of the ocean ushered me to that painful place where I know that this earth is dreamy and divine and mine to delight. The train ride home was lazy warm golden seashell conversations covered in railroad rhythms half awake half asleep.

Tiny Mirrors

as many of you know i am having my first one man show at a gallery ever this june. Here is some of the work (soon to be on my website). and the artist's statement:

“Tiny mirrors”
My newest work circles around issues of impermanence, natural forms and patterns, mystical symbolism, and Light.

The intention is to place these images into a context of contemplation or spirituality. One way to do this to invite the viewer to consider these images as tiny mirrors shining into aspects of themselves. (Or, in other words, invite the viewer to perceive more and more of this world as a gesture or play of the Divine.)

If you click an image the name will come up in the address bar.

I Just got this link. please go to it. it made me very happy.
http://www.sonnyradio.com/chrisbliss.htm
Also, here is niihama's "avenue of the Giants," thousand year old Camphers, a doodle i made, and a Ken Wilber quote.



"You cannot look for this Spirit,
for it is doing the looking.
You cannot see this Spirit,
for it is doing the seeing.
You cannot find this Spirit,
for it is doing the finding.

If you understand this,
then Spirit is doing the understanding.
If you don't understand this,
Spirit is doing that.

Understand it or not,
just that is Spirit."

i must be dreaming

Walking along the rock river after school, i found a colorful old rusted can, some slimy rope, a nest of big, old broken pottery, I fell in love with the patterns on its surface, took many pictures, plan to paint it. walking to the sea, looking down at the myriad of rainbows and ripples and rips in the rocks, and, what the? oh! a jizo san! a bodhisattva i found stairing up at me from the wet ground. hello. then, i found another, and another, and soon i realize im surounded by tiny drawings of Jizo scattered all over the place. walking further i find more adn more until.. ..are those eggs? and rice? what the? ehhh?
Here are the pics. please enlarge them. if you have time. the stick and can are quite wonderful, if you ask me.

oh, and i am reading "the essence of alan watts," and listen to this part: "trying to convery the idea of smells to you in words has the same sort of frustration one gets trying to describe color to the blind. I have a friend who was born blind. She has no idea what darkness is. And so I had to try to give her an idea of what stars are and why we love them. I said, "Imagine when you touch the edge of something, you feel the edge, and then you move your hand away and nothing obstructs you hand, so there is space, nothing obstructing. NOw imagine if you could put your hands out and feel around yourself a large collection of randomly distributed prickles, sharp points, that don't hurt you. At least not like the point of a needle. They're kind of pleasure-pain. We get this impression with the things we call our eyes, a friendly prickle coming at us from all over space when we can see them at night." So we try to translate the language of sight into the language of touch..."