The Japan I first saw

Before I lived in Japan, I visited Japan with my husband. We were living in NY at the time, and I came here that first time to meet his family, and to have our wedding.
I remember that first trip. We took two airplanes, several buses, a train, and at last a boat ride to reach his family's home/island. I felt as if I'd run away to a place so far away that no one would be able to find me.
At the same time, I'd felt as though I'd been here before.

This was the boat we took to his island;
and one of my first impressions of Japan.

I don't know why I've come to look at these pictures now.
Hard to believe, it was 19...1990.

The other morning while my daughter was getting ready for school there was a program on t.v. A man was judging a photo contest, and on the screen they flashed the winning photos for a few seconds each. Then someone made captions for the pictures. One photo showed a man from the back. The man was facing a fork in the road, and the message was that it didn't matter which one he took because he'd meet the person he was destined to meet regardless.
The photos had a cliche-like quality that was just the right amount of cliche mixed with a good eye, a combination that kept me drawn to the screen.
The last photo before I left to take Ya. to school was of a couple, probably in their 60's. They were seated with wineglasses in the foreground. They were looking at each other in a loving glance, which illuminated their faces and made them go from ordinary to extraordinary in their age-less glance.
When I saw that photo, I thought, that's how I want to feel with the person I love as we age.

(edited post 3/2 JGY
It's all 'Thinking out loud', I like that concept, that I read on Jodi's blog
http://cheandfidel.blogspot.com/)

Oita Diary

Walking home through the castle park I saw these blossoms and leaned down to pick some up.
I remembered these were ume (plum) trees, though the flowers look so much like cherry blossoms to me.
It was raining lightly, and there were not many people in the park. Another woman stopped at the same tree that I was by, and we began to talk and I told her how to me the ume and cherry blossoms look similar. She explained what type of ume this was, and then we both watched a small bird stop on a flowering branch. That's a meijiro, she said.
Oh, I told her I hadn't known what a meijiro looked like. A meijiron is the Official Mascot Bird of our city, and I have only seen the person who dresses up as a fuzzy yellow and green bird at all our city's sports events and festivals.
The real bird is so delicate, and sweet. The white around its eyes is what gives it its name, the woman told me.

I had been on my way back from a guitar lesson, so I had my guitar on my back. The woman asked me if I played.
I just smiled and said I'm learning. I didn't tell her, but I'll tell you the song that I'm practicing now is an old folk song from the 60's. It was even popular in the US. The words go "Ue o mu-uite, aru-ko-o-o-u,..."
which means, 'look up as you walk' or 'keep your head up'. Its very sweet and almost corny, but I must confess, I like the light and catchy beat. It makes me smile.

A palette and a pineapple

A sentence from a dream

I woke up this morning with this sentence from my dream:

Live "ai" everywhere.

It stayed in my head, so at those times, I have to write it down. Live "ai" everywhere. "Ai" means love in Japanese, so if I translate it it means Live love everywhere.

In Japanese there are 2 words for love, "Ai" and "koi". Ai is "Love" in the big sense, Love for all things, the power of love , the energy of love. "Koi" is love reserved between people in love, the first stage of love. Anyway, that's my interpretation.

In my dream the message was to live out Love everywhere.
How do I live it here, in this post.
What act of love can I bestow on you?
Already you are kind to visit here and read these words.
Thank you. It makes me happy that you did.
To anyone who is, thanks for being here.

Musings on Love

Is love an acknowledgement of each other, whoever we are, for being here.
Is love something simpler than we think.

One of the 10 commandments says to 'love thy neighbor.'
Do we love our neighbors.
Do you love your neighbor.
I can't say I do, but what if I do love my neighbors.
Already the world has changed.

Word of the day

Today looks like a sonsy day.
May good fortune come your way.

Cleaning the Castle

I don't feel an inspiration of a poem or a picture these few days. I'll blame it on the hay fever.
But I wanted to change the scenery on my site, so I picked these from this same time last year.
Spring cleaning in our local castle park.

PS You can see in the foreground the branches of the cherry trees which beautifully line the moat of the castle.
They are all in buds now, getting ready to open. A few blossoms have already opened, the early risers.
You can see a post from this time last year, 'Foolish Cherries'. I wonder if the ones that are open now are the same blossoms that I photographed last year. 'Ka', a great Japanese word which is simply ...a verbal question mark.

A chocolate house that Y made, and filled with chocolate-coated potato chips

Y. has been planning this for days. She has quietly been an architect, designing a house for a potato chip lover.
She jumped out of bed the other nite to write a letter, to the boy she wanted to give it to.
I kept my doubts silent, sure that at these moments that's what it takes to be a good mother.
But I did ask her casually about her friendship with the boy who she was writing the letter to.
"He takes a long time to write back", Y explained as to why she needed to write the letter so early in the week.
Oh? I asked.
She then surprised me and went on:
"I gave him a love letter last semester and he still hasn't written back."

Not quite knowing what to say, I watched her scamper off smiling to the low table in the next room to write the letter.
I listened to her fast breathing, the sound of the pen dashing across the page, and the sounds of her enjoying her happiness.

Note:
A follow up to the story, as I write this on the 'appointed day' of her delivery of the chocolate house.
She delivered the goodies at the planned hour, and came home smiling. Then the boys mother called to thank her and invite her to play. I felt her happiness at having made something happen that she wished for all on her own doing.
Something I never could have done when I was 9, and something I am still learning to do now!

Happy Valentines Day!

A Valentine Poem that folds, multiplies, and passes on

1.
I could write poems about you,
you know that what I mean is:
you're the kind of person I could write poems about.
Here's where it gets tricky though.
I'm not writing to you, but rather to
you who once told me that
you knew everything
before we even met.

2.
All thoughts multiply
a thousand-fold
or I don't know how many folds it takes
before we are all
folded into
one.

3.
The card on the table says:
You are beautiful
both inside & out.
You are kind & warm &
bright.
You are funny & sweet,
Loving and altogether
wonderful.

I turn it over to verify it's authenticity and it says
'recycled'.

Next to it, a postcard that says 'childhood wallpaper in the Ca d'Or' written in pencil with light washes.

Print Club (2)

It's a dreamy afternoon.
We choose the scene we want to be in.

Then, we enter it.

Can you see the heart

I wanted to 'end' tonites posts with this, it's something I 'FOUND' on the window of my kitchen.
Can you feel the love?
That's a song by Elton John.
The heart is by Y, I didn't see her do it. It just was there when I turned around.
Soon it will be a full moon.
Now its a heart.

Sweet dreams to you where it's night.
Sweet dreams to you where it's day.

More about time--the 25th Hour

Last nite when we were snuggled under the covers in our futon (I still put my daughter to sleep and she is 9), Y and I were chatting. I said we had to stop talking , because it was getting late and she won't be able to wake up for school.
'I wish there were 25 hours in a day', Y said.
And we both agreed that this time of nite just before she falls asleep, was our favorite time to relax and talk freely;
and that we would use the whole '25th hour' just for that.


(after which we didn't stop talking, but went on about how time is an artificial construct and why not make a day 25 hours, or why not just 1 looong hour, or why not make all days into one and not cut them up into so many segments, and why not make the whole of a lifetime into that one hour, one second, one...precious....

W.A. (Harmony)

I love to write in cafes
among dishes clinking and cliches
like babies crying and
sounds of conversation
in a language I know
but not well enough
to distinguish when
it's spoken in background
rhythms of
ah ah ah
Ha ha ha....
Clink clink cink
Kon na...
Ya ya, it all becomes
a blur and whish of
humms and dish-
es
Resting my notebook on a volume of the
First Collected Paperback
Edition of Complete
Prose
Rose-
es
can't compare with
being where we
are.

Base Sauce

I'm looking at a large can marked "BASE SAUCE" in orange letters.
The words are framed in a light blue/dark blue bordered diamond
set into an air brushed arrangement of bright red tomatoes on a yellow-orange
ground that wraps around.
If everything's a metaphor is "BASE SAUCE" a reminder
of the gravy that we swim thru everyday.

Reiki Journal

Usually I write a 'post' first in my notebook, and then copy it here. What about you, do you write directly or draft it first?
But for this post, guess what, I'm writing it straight, fresh from the experience. Can you tell the difference in style?

I was at the accountant's, and had my pages of records and receipts spread out on the table for our brief once a year meeting since I started a small Art and English business 3 years ago. I was showing the accountant a page from January when I noticed a full size tissue wrapped around his finger; the fresh red blood showing thru was a contrast to his starched white shirt.
I asked what happened, and if the cut was deep. Then I asked him if I could give some healing energy to his finger. As I mentioned a few posts down, I have been learning reiki and lately I have become more open to use it. If a wound is fresh,it is the best time for reiki energy to be effective. I wanted to try my hand at his. He said ok, and I closed my eyes and began reiki healing. When I opened my eyes after about 3 or 4 minutes, he thanked me and said the blood seemed to have stopped, and that he could sense the wound closing. The amazing thing was after that he asked me some questions about some receipts in a more free and conversational way. Not about the amounts or figures, but about the content, like there was a ticket stub from an art event and he asked me about the artist, and on another page he asked me who drew the scribbled drawing on one of my notes, was it a student. I couldn't help but think that the energy that flowed from our hands also opened up our hearts.

Do birds mind the rain

That pigeon perched up there
looks so debonair

As the rain drips down on me
I have my canopy

I can stay dry for the most part and listen to the cold wet sounds
dripping down from my suspended crown

But that heron over there
do you see
how he's crouched
on a stone in the moat

Would he rather be
inside on a soft couch

sipping fishy tea?

Self-portrait

Do we post who we are?
Or who we want
to be.

I have a friend I thought I knew,
but really he's a mystery;
Sometimes he'll reveal to me a side I never saw.
And when he does I start to see
I love him even more.