an 'it-should-have-happened'- outcome of the japanese waiting in black and white, moving quickly and dissonantly from lows to highs and highs to lows

Sitting in front of the kettle.
The water boiling for my guest,
my guest of honour.
The last drop of tea
is now one with him.
My hands clean the bowl
returning it
to the old beginning.
The sound of the boiling water
is the wind in the pines,
they say.
Listen -
i say to you
with my silence -
listen to the sound of light
sweeping through my body
as i turn towards the shōji
and face the garden of spring
through the transparent paper.

Gentle as a wing
his fingers stroke
the bamboo mat.

Kneeling in front of the kettle.
The whirlwind for my thief,
my thief of the sweet wound.
The last drop of tea
burns now inside.
My hands the poison
lifting the bowl
to your lips.
The sound of blood
is the storm in the pines,
they say.
Listen -
i say to you
with what's left of my day -
listen to the sound of darkness
piercing through my body
as i turn towards the wall
and face the garden of grief
through each and every stone.

Harsh as ravens,
his fingers dripping
my petals of snow.

Almost inevitable notes (waving at ffflaneur :-):

1. the 'wind in the pines' is a classic tea word, matsukaze 松風, alluding to the sound of water boiling in the kettle.
2. shōji
3. the next day after i took these pictures, the precious bowl you see here in almost every image was broken. it is not important how, or how long i have grieved - only that fate wanted these pictures to be the embodiment of such unredeemable loss. not without a sense of irony, knowing what photography means for me and what most of this blog stands for. the bowl you see in the 5th picture is its double, all the more precious now. they were my summer twins: natsu-chawan 夏茶碗 is a special type of thin, wide bowl used mainly in summer. if i had been Rilke, i would have written a Requiem for a bowl, if i had been Eliot, i would have written the perfect line: The stillness, as a Chinese jar still / Moves perpetually in its stillness. As it is, i only have my clumsy pictures to remember.

THANK YOU

Susan Kruse, a wonderful artist, decided to give away her works, in a splendid gesture of joy and freedom. She chose something for me, something she thought I would love above all, something so simple and yet essential in my floating world. The tea bowl. She wanted me to have her tea bowl, the beauty and the silence reflected on the bridge between me and the other. Preparing and serving tea is the calm embrace of love.




She also sent me this shell. On the shell, it's written: the tide withdraws leaving cowries and our minds filled to overflowing. Untranslatable into words, the richness and yet lightness of the spirals, the frailty of the human touch bestowing sense upon life and world. Gentle, who took these pictures for me, saw the shell floating on bird wings towards light. She also saw the broken shell, the wound each one of us carries inside forever. Also the wound helping us to be. Our overflowing being, until we disappear in the immense, more and more free, as the poet sings for all of us, the silent, the searching ones.

flowers and the Tree of Life 1

Simplitatea nu este un ţel în artă, dar ajungi fără voie la ea pe măsură ce te apropii de sensul real al lucrurilor.
Constantin Brancusi

Simplicity is not an aim in art, but one reaches it unwillingly, as one approaches the real meaning of things.

flowers and the Tree of Life 2

flowers and the Tree of Life 3