Estival Solstice 2025
Movement • Nutrition • Community • Purpose
My Simple Act.
An introduction of sorts for subscribers anew, a few words as to what to expect from this new s letter of mine. First and foremost I’m writing for myself, the simple act of combining words with photographs complimentary, contradictory and communicatory. A therapeutic process of internally listening and sense making of the sensory conscious world I occupy. Subsequently, thought this act, a sub-story of my —good— life in rural Japan is told. Here I live with partner and cats in an old-ish farmhouse we are attempting to regenerate along with the farm & mountain land we own.
Words and images are a creative puzzle juxtaposed in thoughtful consideration as one designs or paints. It is the creative act, it is what interests me and I’m happy you have chosen to follow along and make of it what you will.
Sometimes completed on time each Equinox and Solstice, sometimes late if crops of mint and garlic need harvesting before the rainy season descends.
Spring/summer, 2025.
J
Movement of Time
I awake as wood smoke —beginning with the burning smell of yesterday’s newspaper— wafts through the spaces of this house where earthen walls between frames of hinoki have shrunk over time. First it tells me it’s winter and second that it’s early, somewhere early between 4am or 5am as most who live in this village are older than I and wake earlier than I —it’s probably still dark if I could bring myself to open my eyes.
Pinpointing 8am is a doddle as the distant care-home keeps the regular 8am & 5pm community alarms. The changeling of bells so much more pleasant than my previous experience of a 7:30am deafening siren.
The smoke is the first subtle sign of morning, between now and the time I alight into the world, all manner of sounds signal the time. Frogs & birds; announce the dawn, faraway aeroplanes; fly away at 7:30am, nearby lumber workers; limber up with radio taiso (radio exercise) approaching 8am, and my cats —welcomely— disturbed my slumber anytime they’re hungry or cold and feel inclined to crawl under the sheets to share warmth —these are the best of mornings. Now the neighbours kids head off to school, the hustle and bustle of persuading them to exit the house is another subtle or not so subtle marker of the morning —will he break down in screaming self expressive rebellion today, throwing water flash to the ground?
Did I mention the cats? At some point we take a walk, patrol the neighbourhood, check all is well.
It soon becomes 10am and my neighbour Mr. K drives away in his ubiquitous K-Truck, with a unique homemade tool rack filling the flatbed only to return at 1pm for lunch pronouncing “meshi meshi” (food food or meal meal) to absolutely no-one but himself. After only what I can imagine a nap, he’s off again at 3pm for more of the same good mountain work; a job he will continue purposefully until the day he dies —which I expect will be the day he can no longer drive his K-Truck where he likes. At sundown returning, bear bell jangling and all.
The mobile supermarket with music so distinctively piercing tells me it’s Monday, otherwise another week would’ve passed me by. Life like that as I sit here at my desk, window open looking out front —the constant sound of the stream and the stream of regular and irregular seasonal sounds of life in rural Japan keeping me company. Rarely any necessity for rushing or distraction, for there is little chance of boredom as you accompany the movement of time; each day quietly the same yet subtly different if you afford space to listen.
Nutrition of Rainbows
Mid May and the sweet pungent smell of sweet chestnut trees fills the space mixing with the alternating music of Jeff & Mark in the kitchen. Windows open and a breeze blows sounds and smells through the entire space.
I’m cooking.
To be honest, I’m listened-out of talk about food-isms.
I’m cooking a colourful rainbow of feel good and taste good-ness.
Keep it local, keep it fresh; the herbs and fruits in my garden. Tea, seasonings, salads, juices, and deserts within reach of the hungry imagination.
Community of Consciousness
Die now and wake up to the beautiful notion of not being or doing anything. Now is enough, listen, feel, immerse yourself in the wonderment of yourself as you are; not what you think you are or what you think you want to be, but in the consciousness of each moment.
There’s a woodpecker in the tree outside my window.
It tiktoks through the branches looking for tasty morsels —it’s enough.
Call it a collective consciousness, call it awakening, Wu, Satori, Heaven, Nirvana, Jannah, Tao, Singularity, or The Hill. Blah blah blah de, blah blah. 24 years old, skateboarding, Astor Place, Manhattan, New York City. “I’m leaving for LA, I’m going to make a movie.” Mike said. Moving to L.A. was a thing, it still is? Conversations; art, film, photography, not the usual skateboarder blah blah blah. Mike was blah blah blah what photographs I was blah blah blah, Ari too.
Blah blah blah summer of 1995.
Qu'est-ce que c'est?
Fa-fa-fa-fa, fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa, better
Run, run, run, run, run, run, run away, oh, oh, oh, oh
Ay-ya-ya-ya-ya-ya, ooh
Comma, when you can, period.
Purpose of Things
No matter how hard —and I do try— to avoid the accumulation of things; the accumulation of things is ever accumulating.
Younger years were spent in the collective understanding that it was my duty to collect more like everyone else —rarer the better. Even my job reflected this pursuit being a buyer for a select shop in London’s Soho. Rummaging through 2m² cardboard box after box of used denim in Brooklyn or Staten Island warehouses day after day.
My first trip to Japan financed by sample Nike sneakers bought in New York’s Chinatown for $60 a pair; sold later in Tokyo’s Yoyogi flea market for $200 and up. A vintage pair of Nike I found for $5 in that very same Brooklyn warehouse paid for my Tokyo accommodation for 5 weeks.
There was a chicken in Chinatown that played tic tac toe, it always won.
Now my farmhouse costs a pair of flea market sneakers a month and now a pair of sneakers cost more than my farmhouse. The only thing that makes sense is that things don’t make sense. My accumulation of things diminished in inverse proportion to the rise of the internet — and old age I guess. The easier it was to acquire every desire, the less I desired to acquire every desire.
The reward lies in unburdening both —needless— things and desires.
The artist needs an abundance of things; tools of the hand and tools of the mind.
Not for external show and ego —ego is the case for some— but for internal inspiration and motivation. The artist also needs space for nothing; space in the hand and space in the mind. A room full of emptiness is as important as a room empty of nothingness.
In my house, as in life, as in the universe.
In each two seconds we will appear to cover 90% of the remaining distance back to Earth.
Notice the alternation between the great activity and relative inactivity.
A rhythm that will continue all the way until our next goal:
A proton and a nucleus of a carbon atom beneath the skin
of the hand of a sleepy man at the picnic.
…and so it goes.
J
