World in Union

This year, the month of May was composed of the elements.

The gold of Golden Week was more the amber of fire, four near sleepless days of feeding wood into a kiln ablaze, tempering pliable clay into the hardness of form. Miki and I in a remote valley in Ishikawa, high above the sea, surrounded by road crumbed in a recent powerful quake. There were a couple dozen of us here, refugees against the usual holiday madness, half taking part in a course on zen, the rest feeding the fire. At ten minute intervals we'd thrust arms elbow deep into the blaze, pushing toward the hoped for 1250 degrees C. We'd work a few hours, sleep a few, work a few more. There was a primal feel to this pace, far from the usual "8's" of sleep and workaday world. Time retreated to that which existed before the parallels of rails brought about the circular paths of clocktime. Meals and sleep too, became arbitrary, making room for conversation borne of silence, and dance borne of sound. I'd take my leave occasionally, a brief respite from the "we" of my adopted home, to the "me" of my birth culture, yet clinging still to the words and the music by reading my books on Japanese jazz.

During its last weekend, May took the form of earth. At the Moon (夢雲) Gallery, deep in the wilds of Nara, Ezaki Mitsuru (江崎満) displayed his forms which we'd midwived in fire. Surrounded by hills and trees, we again broke from civilized clock time, too distracted by food grown in the surrounding soil, and in the "salt of the earth" conversation, if I may be allowed to further spur on the metaphor.

Those May days between were a waltz between wind and water, gentle breezes under flawless skies begot rainstorms of sudden fury and violence.

And ether? Through this I passed, defying physics for 24 hours. Here too, clock time once again was lost as the darkness of night lasted a few brief hours, and the sun set twice in the same "day", once over the Pacific, and again over Lake Eire.

And now, entering the void of mu here in the States, not so much a figure moving through space like in my usual travels, but more as a hole in the tapestry; both a part of this space (at least in my role as an American), yet separate from it. Time again looping, looping, into a mobius strip of the man I am and the boy I was, finding it impossible to co-exist...



On the turntable: Kiri Te Kanawa, "Kiri!"
On the nighttable: Doris Grumbach, "Fifty Days of Solitude"