kyoto journal 76 sampler

After the tsunami, Ishinomaki Cityphoto by John Einarsen

EVOLUTION is not always a slow and steady progression. Oc-casionally, a change of circum-stances opens up a fresh chance to refocus, re-evaluate, and re-envision how best to achieve our goals.

Kan Naoto, in his unenviable position as current prime minister of Japan, has rightly observed that following Tohoku’s earth-quake, tsunami and ensuing unprecedented nuclear crisis, the nation is facing its biggest challenge since the end of World War II. A lot more is at stake now than simply bulldozing rubble into landfill, rebuild-ing vital infrastructure, retrofitting essential safety fixes, and rebooting a stagnant economy. What’s needed once again — as in the turmoil following the capitulation of Japan’s disastrous Showa mili-tary regime — is an elemental reappraisal of na-tional aspirations.

This time not all of Japan’s population has to “endure the unendurable and suffer what is insuf-ferable,” but the survivors in Tohoku who have lost family members, friends, homes, and livelihoods — and the tens of thousands forced to evacuate from the fallout zone around Fukushima, with no cur-rent prospect of return — are living the reality of Showa Emperor Hirohito’s words.

With the full consequences of this all-too-pre-dictable catastrophe still emerging, it’s too soon to identify long-term changes in Japanese society, but already all across Japan there is evidence of some kind of psychological turning point. People are clearly rethinking what is most important in their lives, and in particular, reconsidering former patterns of excessive, unnecessary energy consump-tion.

Japan has a long history of major natural di-sasters, and is admired around the world for its

resilience, particularly its dramatic comeback after World War II. Japan also has a notable capacity to learn from history — it’s no coincidence that the only nation whose cities experienced nuclear bomb-ing has an anti-war clause in its Constitution.

How will Japan, characterized now by its ag-ing, post-industrial society, respond to this new post-Fukushima reality? Once again, the nation has begun to re-envisage its future.

* * *

Coincidentally, Kyoto Journal is also currently undergoing a major renewal — or “e-volution...”

Generously supported by Heian Bunka Center since 1987, up to our 75th issue (deepest gratitude to Harada Shokei, our publisher), we have just become fully independent. What better time to re-imagine the magazine’s aims, and form? Back then, printing on paper and shipping to subscribers and bookstores was the only viable way to publish. Much as we love paper and ink, however, we can’t ignore the rapidly advancing potential of digital multimedia — a new publishing world linked seam-lessly to vast social networks. (While for diehard devotees of print, we do have a print-on-demand op-tion, also applicable to occasional special projects).

KJ remains solidly based in our home city of Kyoto, and firmly committed to our core values: continuing to provide unique insights from Asia, Japan and Kyoto, both as a regular quarterly maga-zine and a stimulating, active, and wholly rebuilt website. We are grateful to all our supporters; we especially thank our subscribers and contributors for their patience during this transition.

Welcome to KJ’s 76th issue, our very first in fully digital format.

—Ken Rodgers

RE-ENVISIONING Living in the Longer Now

ABOVE (from “Remembering Gwangju”): These days, Hong Sung Dam is an established and well-known artist. During the Gwangju uprising, he says, “I was making banners and posters.” He was especially impressed by how the citizens shared food equally during the brief days of liberation. “It reminded me of the Bible, where Jesus shared his food with the twelve apostles.”

4 The Bride of Boneyard Kitaro

AS TOLD BY DAVID GREER

KYOTO NOTEBOOK10 The Old Brown Overcoat:

Kyoto in the sixties

BILL CLEMENTS

17 Crossroads

JOELSTEWART

23 Parabolic Paintings:

New art genre meets ancient temple

Brian Williams

30 KIWA: 21st-Century Woodblock

32 Behind the Brocade Curtain

CATHERINE PAWASARAT

84 Urban Nomads: Mongolia in Transition

CHRISTAL WHELAN

HEARTWORK92 Heroes of the Hills

ANGELA LONG

ENCOUNTERS97 Jungle Hermit in Sri Lanka

MATTEO PISTONO

100 Theyyam:

Kerala’s “Theater of the Double” JOHN BRANDI

NATURE

104 Curling MARC P. KEANE

IN TRANSLATION106 Aesthetics of the Nonexistent

YUKIO MISHIMA

POETRY CHEN-OU LIU:

109 Being Human KATH ABELA WILSON:

110 Flight from Yazd 111 On finding a marker between pages

in a book left by my late husband PASCALE PETIT:

112 Atlas Moth, Hieroglyph Moth

Restoring Dignity

Hearing Their Voices:

The Afghan Women’s Writing Project DENI BECHARD, LANA SLECIZ

A Tale of Two Provinces, A Tale of Two Pagodas VINITA RAMANI MOHAN

It is Difficult: The Abu Ghraib Images of Daniel Heyman

Remembering Gwangju PHOTO ESSAY BY MATTHIAS LEY

38

40

52

64

70

4 The Bride of Boneyard Kitaro


KYOTO NOTEBOOK10 The Old Brown Overcoat:

Kyoto in the sixties

BILL CLEMENTS

17 Crossroads

JOELSTEWART

23 Parabolic Paintings:

New art genre meets ancient temple

Brian Williams

30 KIWA: 21st-Century Woodblock

32 Behind the Brocade Curtain

CATHERINE PAWASARAT

84 Urban Nomads: Mongolia in Transition

CHRISTAL WHELAN

HEARTWORK92 Heroes of the Hills

ANGELA LONG

ENCOUNTERS97 Jungle Hermit in Sri Lanka

MATTEO PISTONO

100 Theyyam:

Kerala’s “Theater of the Double” JOHN BRANDI

NATURE

104 Curling MARC P. KEANE

IN TRANSLATION106 Aesthetics of the Nonexistent

YUKIO MISHIMA

POETRY CHEN-OU LIU:

109 Being Human KATH ABELA WILSON:

110 Flight from Yazd 111 On finding a marker between pages

in a book left by my late husband PASCALE PETIT:

112 Atlas Moth, Hieroglyph Moth

INSIGHTS FROM KYOTO � JAPAN � AISIA

A NON-PROFIT, VOLUNTEER-PRODUCED PRINT QUARTERLY SINCE 1986; DIGITAL FROM SUMMER 2011

g

FOUNDING EDITOR John Einarsen [email protected]

MANAGING EDITOR Ken [email protected]

ASSOCIATE EDITORS Stewart Wachs, Susan Pavloska [email protected]

ART DIRECTOR John [email protected]

FICTION Leza [email protected]

POETRY Lois P. Jones

REVIEWS David [email protected]

NATURE Winifred Bird

HEARTWORK Jennifer Teeter

MULTIMEDIA Lucinda Cowing

RAMBLER-AT-LARGE Robert Brady

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS John Ashburne, Everett Brown, Joseph Cronin, Jonathan DeHart, Lauren Deutsch, Robert Fouser, Kimberley Hughes, Jeffrey Irish, Eric Johnston, Kawasaki Takeshi, W. David Kubiak, Marc P. Keane, Robert Kowalczyk, Jean Downey, Vinita Ramani Mohan, Leanne Ogasawara, Paul Scott, Jane Singer, Kathy Sokol, Suzuki Kazue, Tomas Svab, Saori Svaboda, Ted Taylor, Toyoshima Mizuho, Markuz Wernli Saito, Christal Whelan, Brian Williams

EDITORIAL DESIGN John Einarsen, Kamibayashi Takuya Logotype by Takeda Yoshifumi

PUBLIC RELATIONS Michael [email protected]

SOCIAL MEDIA Lucinda Cowing, Stewart Wachs

KJ ONLINE www.kyotojournal.orgKamibayashi Takuya, Ken Rodgers

INTERNS Brendan Wong

SUBSCRIPTIONS [email protected]

DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTIONS (5 issues) ¥5,000 in Japan; $50 elsewhere.Single issues: [email protected]

DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTIONS ONLINEwww.redwingbooks.com

Snailmail: 76-1 Tenno-cho, Okazaki, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8334, Japan; Tel & Fax: 075-761-1433

SUBMISSIONS Thought-provoking articles on Japan and Asia are invited. KJ is a volunteer-based, non-profit publication; contributors receive a free one-year subscription.

JOU

RN

AL

76CONVERSATION

114 Hong Ying:

Trailblazer of China’s tell-all memoirs KAREN MA

119 Know Nature:

Gary Snyder on endangered wilderness ROY HAMRIC

FICTION122 Consuella Faces the Jungle Snake

E. K. ENTRADA

RAMBLE126 More Light than Darkness

ROBERT BRADY

REVIEWS128

COVER: Scintillate

Scintillate is part of the “handseries,” a suite of aquatintetchings printed on irridescentwashi, that capture hands inlight. The hands in these imagesare mine, and were used asa moving stencil to createforms which were etched in copper. The placement expresses the way that handscan sense, touch and sculptsubtle vibrations of light(energy). Between the handsis scintillating space, the infinitepotential of what IS.

—Sarah Brayersarahbrayer.com

SARAH BRAYER is known interna-tionally for her poured washi paper-works and aquatint prints. Sarah’s art is in the collections of the British Museum, the Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian, and the American Em-bassy, Tokyo. She was the first artist ever invited to exhibit at Byodoin Temple, a World Heritage site dating from the Heian period, as part of Kyoto’s 1200-year celebration. Her work “Revealing Red” graced the cover of KJ 73.

http://sarahbrayer.com

http://www.redwingbooks.com

http://www.kyotojournal.org

BONEYARD KITARO

OF

THE


kyoto journal 76 | 5

When Nunoe’s uncle told the family he’d found a match for her in a 39 year-old veteran who’d lost his left arm in the war and wrote comic books in Tokyo, Nunoe’s father rubbed his chin and said “make it happen.”

Nunoe blinked. Up until now, her father had turned away marriage proposals the way he did un-welcome peddlers. But then again, there just wasn’t a place for her in the house anymore. Her two older sisters had husbands, and her eldest brother’s wife was more than enough help in the family li-quor store. Besides, Nunoe was 29, way past the age brides unpack their hope chests, and in Japan in 1960, especially in the village she lived — just a stitch in a quilt of rice fields, really — women mar-ried for love as often as they flew to the moon.

The cartoonist in question was Mura Shigeru, born in Sakai-Minato in Shimane Prefecture, across the bay from Yasugi, Nunoe’s village. Her uncle showed her a picture. Shigeru sat on a bicycle, right side to the camera. He had a pleasant smile, a good

build. At a time when college graduates pulled down 18,000 yen a month, Shigeru got nearly twice that for each comic book

BRIDE

Left: Nunoe, 29, and Shigeru, 39, married at the end of January, 1961. They’d first met five days earlier.

BY BILL CLEMENTS

WAITING IN THE SNOW at the Ryoan-ji bus stop on a Kyoto winter morn-ing in 1964, without an overcoat or money to buy one, my anxious reverie about the day ahead and language classes in Osaka was inter-

rupted by a woman who came out of a nearby house and, seeing me standing there, went back inside and returned with an overcoat which she helped me into. It was a three-quarter-length brown coat, and warm. That evening, on my return, I found the house and the owner, who invited me in. And when I got up to go, leaving the coat, he said, “Keep it. I’ve got another.” That was my introduction to Kyoto and I knew that I had brought my wife, Barbara, and our children to the right city. It had been a huge gamble with so little money, choos-ing to go to Japan, Australia’s former enemy, but we’d made it!

We were living at Kinugasa-shita-machi in a small ‘hanare’ (a couple of rooms, small kitchen, bathroom, verandah and garden,) found with the help of another exceptionally generous person, Kimura Mikio. By the time I’d bought futons, heaters, kitchen utensils and winter clothing for the children, there hadn’t been anything left over from my Mombusho scholarship. I wore the coat through

Old Brown

Overcoat

An

10 | kyoto journal 76

Kyoto in the

mid-sixties

K Y O T O

N O T E B O O K

research institute in Sydney, the Kanematsu Memo-rial Institute, had been founded in 1933 at Sydney Hospital. In our years in Kyoto it was possible to count Australians on one hand. And so it turned out that I was the first Australian sculptor and print-maker to do post graduate study in Japan without first going to England or Europe.

My background could have been summarized thus: the stories of Urashima Taro. Yoshi San and O Kiku and The Burning of the Rice Field, found in Victorian primary school readers, always reprinted during the war years; the Australian War Memorial publications, Khaki and Green and Jungle Warfare, with their stories and illustrations; the media of the day including comics; service on the cruiser HMAS Australia which bore a bronze plaque commemorat-ing the captain and crew who had died as a result of a kamikaze attack; an awareness of the influence of Japanese art on modernism; the post-war rela-tionships with Sydney potters; and that wonderful movie, Rashomon. That was it!

The year of our arrival, 1964, was a big year. It saw the first Olympic Games in Asia — in Tokyo; the first Nobel Prize in Science/Physics awarded to a Japanese scientist, Yukawa Hideki; the first high-speed trains between Tokyo and Kyoto. In those years, Kyoto was the destination for many people and, before the term ‘multi-culturalism’ had any

three winters and I never forgot that unknown woman and her husband. We were living in a tra-ditional house with ‘tatami,’ ‘shoji’ and ‘fusuma,’ hot in summer and very cold in winter, and which Barbara described in a letter home, referring to its geometry, as like living inside a Mondrian painting. The famous zen garden of Ryoan-ji, with its raked white gravel and fifteen stones, was around the cor-ner. It sat in the mind, and later, when I was trying to describe our country to fellow post-graduates at Kyoto Fine Arts University, I depicted Australia as a huge zen garden ‘karasansui,’ floating in the South Pacific, a bit ragged around the edges where most of us like to live, a good view being had from space. When the first ever exhibition of Australian art in Japan, Young Australian Painters, was held in 1965, a map of the country was on the catalogue cover.

Japan was not high on the travel itinerary for Aus-tralians of my generation due to the war and the bit-terness it left and also due to the colonial legacy of the British Empire to which Australia had belonged. England was ‘home,’ next door, so to speak, and artists and writers headed for London; a few went to Europe and the U.S. My experience was, despite the war and family involvement, different and I knew Australia, not England, was my home. Jap-anese studies were not yet in place in Australian universities, despite the fact that the first scientific


We were living and studying with the first Japanese generation since Akira Kurosawa’s to be free from the ideology of fascism and life under a military dictatorship...

customs, patterns — and she used the old Minolta SR7 with perception. There were no supermarkets, no 100-yen stores and nearly all goods were locally made.

We took hundreds of photos and thought that, one day, we might get around to publishing a book, one that might help open eyes, shape reconciliation. Sad to say, we never did. Other travels in the world, making sculpture, going broke from time to time — life and our six brave kids who always came with us put an end to that idea. (Our third child was born in Kyoto and received a wonderful doll from my pro-fessor, additional to an old stone Jizo Sama he and his wife had given to Barbara before the birth)

The thing about the ordinary is the way it can be transfigured in a moment; as with a human face, so with a city. Like any other city, Kyoto revealed itself in the moments when we were least prepared. It happened on my way home from my studio in Gojozaka when snow flurries danced and caught the light at night. It was the huge, seemingly sta-tionary ball of the sun floating in mist on short winter days — look away momentarily and it was gone. It was the last colour of a few persimmons


hanging high, out of reach, outside a window in late autumn; Arashiyama in spring; a summer night in Higashiyama and fire on the mountains (during Obon) and the annual syntax of festivals. It was the voices of children who called out for one another as a crocodile line of kids wound its way from house to house on their way to kindergarten and the under-standing that school playgrounds sound the same everywhere on this planet.

One day, I hope there will be an image in bronze of an elderly American standing outside Kyoto Sta-tion welcoming visitors to the city he saved back in 1945. It’s not every day that someone saves a city and that is (just in case we’ve forgotten) part of the story behind the Burghers of Calais.

%

Crossroads How to arrange 60 paintings in a Fushimi Warehouse

K Y O T O N O T E B O O K : A R T

FOUR YEARS AGO, I began work on an art in-

stallation piece that involved painting a broad

variety of images ranging from realism to pop

forms and abstractions, on door-sized sheets

of washi and Western paper; having the paint-

ings mounted onto Japanese folding screens,

and then displaying the screens together in

various formations. Prior to this project, I had

already been working with individual screens

in a somewhat unorthodox way: instead of

painting, say, a landscape, connected across

several panels, I was treating each screen

panel as an individual “canvas,” and combin-

ing different images and styles side by side on

the screens. This installation, with its emphasis

on the effects of combining several screens to-

gether, took that concept much further.


HYOTOKO-LEAF

TEXT AND PAINTINGS BY JOEL STEWART

The idea of juxtaposing screens to

make a much larger work came to me by

accident actually, when one day my 76 yr.

old screen-maker, Fujita Masao, delivered

three small-scale screens of mine to the

studio. In his usual rush, he pulled them out

of their boxes and stood them up in random

order together for me to check. All looked

well; I paid him and then saw him off. When

I walked back into the room, I was struck

by what I saw. The kaleidoscopic effect of

all the imagery snaking around the room,

coupled with the modular, sculptural pres-

ence of the three screens playing off each

other was an epiphany for me. Not just one

screen with varied images, I thought. Many.

I grabbed my camera, took photos, and

stood there absorbing it. With the three

screens working so well together, it didn’t

take much to envision ten or even twenty

full-scale screens set up in a large space,

creating a strange kind of three dimension-

al/visual world; something with far more

impact and range than the individual works

I had been making. The seed for the instal-

lation “Crossroads” was planted.

A couple of months later, I had photos

of the screens in hand. A meeting with a

museum curator in the U.S. yielded inter-

est in my installation idea, and a museum

floor plan. I calculated that 60 door-sized

paintings mounted onto screens would

be required for that particular space and

also figured, optimistically, that making

them would take around two years. In July,

2010, four years after starting, I finished the

60th painting and had it mounted on the

last of the screens by Mr. Fujita (who had

graciously delayed his retirement for over a

year to allow me to finish). Things take as

long as they take, but the screens were fi-

nally done.


TSUBO-TULIP

THE ‘EPIPHANY MOMENT’ SCREENS

In October, 2010, I rented a large ware-

house in Fushimi ward, southern Kyoto, for

an entire month, with the intention of set-

ting the whole piece up and seeing what it

was capable of, testing out my ideas in rela-

tive privacy, before sending it (and images

of it) out into the world.

“Landscapes”The U.S. museum gallery had a 3,200

sq.ft floor space with a 20-foot ceiling and

these dimensions factored heavily into my

choosing the Fushimi warehouse space. I

wanted initially to have most of the imagery

on the floor, maze-like, but due to concern

about screens being easily knocked over

(with a concrete floor, there were no means

to secure the screens) I came up with an

idea of using pedestals. Playing around

with varying pedestal heights, eventually

I became interested in using the vertical

space as well. I was intrigued by the novel

idea of positioning paintings as high up as

20 feet — something I’d never tried before.

We built the pedestals using a modular

design to stack them to adjust the height.

Pedestals in clusters allowed me to create

forms resembling abstracted rock forma-

tions and, using lower groupings, we cre-

ated panoramic “landscapes” undulating

across the floor space.


JOEL AND THE FUSHIMI WAREHOUSE

THE FUSHIMI SESSIONS

Stacked screens and the “Wall of Sound” Several months before taking the

work into the warehouse, playing around

one day with small cutout photos of the

screens, I began stacking them vertically

into tower-like shapes. Somewhat totem

pole-like and elegant, they seemed like vi-

sual conundrums to me and, after playing

with the idea for a few days, I felt a strong

desire to build these forms too. Coming

up with a support system was a technical

challenge, however. Not wanting to subject

the screens to the weight of other screens

placed on top of them, I designed a custom

welded framework, but in the end budget

constraints forced me to search for more

economical readymade items. One day, no-

ticing construction scaffolding at a friend’s

house, I saw its potential, so I met with the

builder and showed him my designs. He

was confident that scaffolding could be

used and agreed to help with the project.

A few days later it occurred to me that

once the towers were complete, it wouldn’t

take much more effort to connect the tow-

ers into a much larger “wall” shape. The

result became nicknamed the “Wall of

Sound.” At 60 feet in width, 20 feet high,

with 40 door-sized paintings mounted on

it, it presented yet another take on the idea

of screens as visual structures.

THREE TOWERS

One common theme in my work has been

the mixing together of visual languages.

Abstraction, realism, decorative patterns,

etc. all fascinate me and finding ways to

combine them has occupied most of my

time as an artist. Before I began working

with screens, I tended to mix these stylistic

elements together within a single painting.

Screens changed how I saw these rela-

tionships. The physical “separation” of the

individual panels (though still connected by

paper hinges) gave me the idea of combin-

ing seemingly disparate imagery together

side by side. This freed me to combine im-

ages together in new ways. I could now

develop each painting on a separate, tem-

porary panel, which allowed me to paint

freely, only deciding later which works

were to be mounted side by side on the

screens. Laying several finished paintings

out on the studio floor, I would often find

unexpected combinations I couldn’t have

planned in advance. This method of creat-

ing and later assembling my images kept

things interesting and fresh for me through-

out the project.

Creating “Crossroads” was an immense

experience and hugely gratifying. What

I set out to do — taking both the visual as

well as the sculptural/architectural aspects

of the screens and amplifying these inher-

ent qualities — led to a number of interesting

large-scale forms. I don’t think I’ve reached

the end of the possibilities either. I’m not

sure I know what these forms “mean,” or

if there even needs to be “meaning.” My

usual way of working is not to question the

impulse, but to follow through and just keep

going as far as I can. The impulse is what

keeps things alive for me. I see now that

this is a piece that can contract and expand,

depending on where it’s shown and the

support materials used, and I look forward

to siting future iterations of it in a variety of

spaces.

—Joel Stewart

%


ON COMBINING IMAGERY

TREE-SPADE

JOEL WITH FUJITA MASAO

The idea of juxtaposing screens to

make a much larger work came to me by

accident actually, when one day my 76 yr.

old screen-maker, Fujita Masao, delivered

three small-scale screens of mine to the

studio. In his usual rush, he pulled them out

of their boxes and stood them up in random

order together for me to check. All looked

well; I paid him and then saw him off. When

I walked back into the room, I was struck

by what I saw. The kaleidoscopic effect of

all the imagery snaking around the room,

coupled with the modular, sculptural pres-

ence of the three screens playing off each

other was an epiphany for me. Not just one

screen with varied images, I thought. Many.

I grabbed my camera, took photos, and

stood there absorbing it. With the three

screens working so well together, it didn’t

take much to envision ten or even twenty

full-scale screens set up in a large space,

new art genre meets anc ient temple

PARABOLIC PAINTINGS

STEPPING OUT well; I paid him and then saw him off. When STEPPING OUT well; I paid him and then saw him off. When onto the balcony of the well; I paid him and then saw him off. When onto the balcony of the well; I paid him and then saw him off. When

Kiyomizu I walked back into the room, I was struck Kiyomizu I walked back into the room, I was struck I walked back into the room, I was struck TI walked back into the room, I was struck emple Main HallI walked back into the room, I was struck emple Main HallI walked back into the room, I was struck I walked back into the room, I was struck TI walked back into the room, I was struck emple Main HallI walked back into the room, I was struck TI walked back into the room, I was struck I walked back into the room, I was struck is a liberatI walked back into the room, I was struck I walked back into the room, I was struck -I walked back into the room, I was struck

ing sensation.by what I saw. The kaleidoscopic effect of ing sensation.by what I saw. The kaleidoscopic effect of Oby what I saw. The kaleidoscopic effect of Oby what I saw. The kaleidoscopic effect of ne’s eyes soar first over a by what I saw. The kaleidoscopic effect of ne’s eyes soar first over a by what I saw. The kaleidoscopic effect of

green and forested vale, and then over the all the imagery snaking around the room, green and forested vale, and then over the all the imagery snaking around the room,

urban world of modern Kyoto beyond. A coupled with the modular, sculptural presurban world of modern Kyoto beyond. A coupled with the modular, sculptural pres-urban world of modern Kyoto beyond. A -

World Heritage site, Kiyomizu is the most ence of the three screens playing off each World Heritage site, Kiyomizu is the most ence of the three screens playing off each

visited destination in Japan, and among the other was an epiphany for me. Not just one visited destination in Japan, and among the other was an epiphany for me. Not just one

most visited in the world.screen with varied images, I thought. Many. most visited in the world.screen with varied images, I thought. Many.

Compared to the I grabbed my camera, took photos, and Compared to the I grabbed my camera, took photos, and I grabbed my camera, took photos, and TI grabbed my camera, took photos, and aj Mahal, Kiyomizu is I grabbed my camera, took photos, and aj Mahal, Kiyomizu is I grabbed my camera, took photos, and I grabbed my camera, took photos, and TI grabbed my camera, took photos, and aj Mahal, Kiyomizu is I grabbed my camera, took photos, and TI grabbed my camera, took photos, and

modest in scale. But it easily holds its own stood there absorbing it. With the three modest in scale. But it easily holds its own stood there absorbing it. With the three

on a list of the world’s most memorable and screens working so well together, it didn’t on a list of the world’s most memorable and screens working so well together, it didn’t

beautiful buildings. Its beauty has made it

an architectural phoenix: burnt down an

extraordinary ten times but ever rebuilt,

with the present incarnation dating from

1633. It was at this matchless and uniquely

sited treasure that, on May 14th, 2011, I was

given the literally unprecedented privilege

of exhibiting my art — debuting my new

genre of painting which I call “parabolic

painting,” to a one-evening-only gathering

of well over two thousand people.

MOUNT MUKABAKI

TEXT BY BRIAN WILLIAMS

PHOTOS BY TOMAS SVAB

K Y O T O N O T E B O O K : A R T

Like the balconies at Kiyomizu,parabolic

painting is liberating. Its curving surfaces

and edges have been freed from the flat

surfaces and straight, parallel edges of

convention. They harmonized with this

panoramic outdoor setting in a way no

flat painting needing a wall behind it ever

could. The enlivening sense of eye move-

ment that they convey, the visual space

they evoke beyond their edges, infuse

them with life. The exhibition also delivered

a timely message: my conviction that our

planet itself is our ultimate heritage. While

the exhibition included a number of World

Heritage Sites (among them Mt. Everest,

Iguazu, Easter Island, Kiyomizu itself), they

also include views of other locations, just

as beautiful and valuable. Without work-

ing to preserve and restore the Earth as a

whole, we will never succeed in preserving

World Heritage sites.

The event took place for one evening

only, but was extensively documented. It

is my intention to eventually reach a far-

wider audience than those who thronged

the temple precincts that night. I believe

parabolic painting to be a significant

breakthrough in the tradition of realistic

representation in painting. Ever since the

invention of photography, Realism has

been considered passé at worst and, even

at best, not in the vanguard of pictorial art.

With the occasional exception of murals on

domed ceilings or decorations on ceramic

art (which simply impose an image onto or

into a pre-existing curved surface), paint-

ings are universally flat and straight-edged.

One has to journey back to the Paleolithic

Art of southwestern France and northern

Spain to find any parallel with what I am

creating. The great Cro-Magnon artists fit-

ted their images to the curves and bumps

of the cave walls they worked on, with

astonishing results. The compelling sense

of presence achieved by their pictures on

these dynamic surfaces is never conveyed

by flat reproductions. Instead of relying

on ‘found’ surfaces as they unavoidably

had to, I fashion panels whose shape and

curvature suggest the moving trajectory AUTUMN GLORY, KIYOMIZU

In the early 1990s I unwitting-ly moved into a Gion Festival neighborhood. I knew it was the traditional kimono district, but I didn’t know anything about kimono, nor about the festival, and certainly not that neighbor-hoods of kimono merchants had sponsored the festival for as long as anyone can remember. One day I literally stumbled upon the festival’s gigantic floats, some as high as downtown buildings, and marveled at their exquisite adornments of exotic textiles and carvings. I didn’t know what I was looking at, but it blew my mind.

I was a budding investigative journalist aspiring to fluency in Japanese language and culture, and a few news articles gave me the excuse to ask lots of ques-tions, mostly about the origins of those eye-catching textiles, and why women couldn’t par-ticipate. Learning about the tex-tiles was interesting and fun. Freshly graduated from college,

and armed with the knowledge that historians were arguing that women formerly took part in the all-male festival, I felt obliged to educate these elderly Kyoto men that so-called tradition couldn’t hide discrimination. That made my heart beat uncomfortably fast, but I guess that was fun too.

Over time I learned that the month-long Gion Festival is a tribute to the deities who reside at the Yasaka Shrine in eastern Kyoto: Susanō-no-Mikoto, his con-sort Inadahime-no-Mikoto, and their eight children. The festival originated in the late 9th century, with a procession of halberds or hoko representing the districts of ancient Japan. They supplicated Susanō, the god of storms and pestilence, after particularly de-bilitating flooding of the Kamo River and an ensuing plague. By the 10th century, the annual sum-mer rainy season and associated sanitation-related illnesses made the entreaties a yearly event. Later, Kyoto’s kimono merchants

Behind the Brocade Curtain


K Y O T O N O T E B O O K

CATHERINE PAWASARAT on Kyoto’s Gion Matsuri

Above: Chigo on Naginata float

Opposite: Kikusuiboko, photograph by Micah GampelAll other photographs by the author

IRAQ

CAMBODIA

AFGHANISTAN

KOREA

“what does it mean to be human?”

Our greatest, most hard-won aspirations are also the simplest. Personal freedom, autonomy, self-realization; the opportunity to utilize our talents and creative intel-ligence, to contribute to and enrich our communities, our society, our culture. To choose and pursue our own paths, to hold our own per-sonal opinions, beliefs, and faith; to achieve our own full and unique potential.

Orwell’s depiction of the most nightmarish future: an authoritarian boot trampling the face of human-ity, for all time.

Dysfunctional societies condition people to forego trust, to fear indi-

viduality. The ideal society supports all personal freedoms. Ignorance vs Enlightenment.

We can submit to dehumaniza-tion, or choose to set ourselves and others free. The essential difference is whether or not we engender self-respect, the essential element of self-empowerment.

These stories, from Iran, Afhgani-stan, Korea and Cambodia, all deal with how individuals, through active support, and their own committed efforts, are overcoming dehuman-izing circumstances to regain not only self-respect, but a restored sense of humanity.

—Ken Rodgers



BY DENI Y BÉCHARD; PHOTOGRAPHS BY LANA ŠLEZIC

RESTORING DIGNITY: AFGHANISTAN


T HREE WEEKS before the November 2009 Afghan elections, I arrived in Kabul on a plane filled with re-tired New York City police officers, recruited to train

their counterparts in the provinces of Afghanistan. Arid mountains stood in the distance as I crossed parking lots guarded by American and South African security contrac-tors. Beyond the metal gates, among a crowd of taxi drivers and their battered yellow Corollas, I met a staff member from SOLA, the School of Leadership Afghanistan, for whom I had volunteered to teach. We drove to their building on the outskirts of Kabul in the school’s bus, a battered Soviet army jeep.

From the rutted, trash-strewn street, SOLA appeared to be just an ordinary house. Having passed so many fortified compounds on the way there, I was surprised to see its quiet façade, without concertina wire or flood lamps, the perime-ter wall low enough to climb over. But what went on inside, I soon learned, was far from unimpressive. Free of charge, the school prepared top-tier high school and university students for study abroad, and served as a hub for numerous other programs, including the Afghan Women’s Writing Project (AWWP).

AWWP had been founded earlier that year by the Ameri-can journalist and novelist Masha Hamilton, to create a fo-rum for both Afghan women’s education and their voices. She wanted the world to hear them directly, not in the words of male relatives or the media. The inspiration for the project came to her in 2008, during her second visit to Afghanistan. In 2004, on her first visit, she had witnessed Afghan women

THEIR

LIKE A CHILD, the girl in the mirror sees the world as my grandmother did.

In my grandmother’s stories, there is goodness and wickedness, but good always triumphs. Good people are always successful. The girl in the mirror is as cheerful as a shining sun and she is able to smile no matter what happens.

When her school was destroyed and she had to stay home during the war she never lost hope. She studied books and developed herself. She could be-lieve in everyone. In her world, everything is brightly colored. The green grass is the earth’s carpet and the blueness is the sky’s cover. She is like a bird flying in the world of dreams. She thinks she can do anything.

I am very different from the girl in the mirror. My world is black and white. I am cold-blooded and pessimistic. Making a decision is very difficult be-cause I fear that whatever I start will not go well. So I don’t want to try.

The people in my country suffer from instability and it is difficult for me to cope with this situation. Many people cannot pay for a better education for their children and the poverty is increasing every day. Thinking about it kills me because I am disappointed that I cannot help.

I see a world of self-interest. Unlike my grand-mother’s stories, where good people help you with-out asking for anything, my classmates only help me when I’ve done something for them. Everywhere seems cold and cloudy. The wind of violence blows everywhere. The trees, the grass, the flowers seem buried as the white clouds and the snow mix togeth-er. I am afraid to be in crowds or around people. Alone-ness, that is my best friend.

I am jealous of the girl in the mirror. She is the opposite of me. I wonder how she can be so humble and optimistic. I see her whenever I look in the mir-ror, smiling at me. She looks just like me, but she is happy and excited, optimistic and hopeful.

We are two sides of the same coin. She looks di-rectly into my eyes and something crosses through them and into my heart. Her self-confidence gives me hope. She tries to make me believe, to make me grow and thrive again. But my vanity refuses her ev-ery time.

We are two opposite souls in the same body, al-ways in a struggle. She wants to make me be like her and I want her to be like me. One day, I hope for us to merge into a perfect person. %

BY FARIDA



FOR COMING HOME AGAIN WITH EMPTY HANDS

FOR HAVING BEEN BORN AS YOUR CHILD

FOR BEING A STIGMA IN YOUR LIFE

BUT, MOTHER, I DON’T HARM YOU INTENTIONALLY

IT IS A PUNISHMENT OF NATURE

MOTHER! FORGIVE ME

FOR BEING A GIRL

BY EMAAN, MARCH 2011

% THE EVER-JOYOUS KROEM KEUN still supports herself financially by making noodles to sell at the market in Andouk Kien village, Phnum Den commune, Kiri Vong district, in Vong district, in VTakeo province and survived by hiding her Khmer Krom identity from the Khmer Rouge. PHOTO

BY JUSTIN MIN

VINITA RAMANI MOHAN; PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROTHANY SRUN AND JUSTIN MIN


I N THE HEAT of the mid-day sun, a researcher and advisor to the Documentation Center of Cambo-dia found himself with a Cambodian translator

standing in the middle of a verdant rice field in a province not far from the city of Phnom Penh. They were studying the seemingly innocuous patch of land in front of them to ascertain whether it was a mass grave from the Khmer Rouge era. A toothless old woman peered at them from a distance and slowly hobbled over.

“What are you doing?” she asked.“We’re gathering evidence, ohm,” they said, ad-

dressing her respectfully. “We’re looking for bones, so that we can help the Khmer Rouge Tribunal find out who committed these terrible crimes.”

The woman squinted under the sun, broke into a chortle and gently slapped my colleague’s arm.

“Oh, that’s easy. I can tell you who did it,” she said, as though teaching a nursery rhyme to a child.

Before my colleague could respond, she confi-dently stated, “The Khmer Rouge!”

The old woman — a witness, a survivor and a storyteller in her own right — questioned the very efficacy and necessity of researchers, investigators and scholars with her startlingly simple response.

I can tell you who did it.Scholars, social scientists and forensic anthro-

pologists in the midst of painstaking field research in a post-conflict country are liable to balk at such a statement. When he related the incident, my col-league laughed because in a sense, she was abso-lutely right. But in the field, he admitted he smiled politely, thanked her for her insightful comment and carried on with the rigorous work of collecting data.

I THOUGHT OF THAT STORY again last year, tak-ing notes under a tamarind tree in the dirt-poor central-western province of Pursat in Cambodia.

RESTORING DIGNITY: CAMBODIA

WAT PRATHEATH (pagoda) in Kbal Damrei village, Kouk Prech

commune, Kiri Vong district, Takeo province. Once the site of

a notorious prison and torture centre where Khmer Krom

were interred and executed, today it is a stunning testament

to local Khmer Krom memoriali-sation initiatives

PHOTO BY JUSTIN MIN


it is

I AM AN ARTIST AND MY WORK IS ABOUT SEEING.

I AM AN ARTIST WHO BY A STROKE OF GOOD FORTUNE MET A BRAVE AMERICAN LAWYER WHO REPRESENTS SEVERAL HUNDRED IRAQI DETAINEES IN THE US FEDERAL COURTS.

THE CASES ARE COMPLICATED AND I’M NOT A LAWYER. BUT I’VE LEARNED

THIS MUCH: THE IRAQIS I INTERVIEWED, RELEASED BY THE AMERICAN MILITARY

AFTER MANY MONTHS OR YEARS OF DETENTION,

WERE NEVER FORMALLY ACCUSED OF A CRIME, BROUGHT TO A TRIAL OR GIVEN

LEGAL REPRESENTATION. WHEN THEY LEFT ABU GHRAIB, MANY WERE GIVEN A

$20 BILL AND DROPPED OFF IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT IN A RANDOM BAGHDAD

NEIGHBORHOOD — THIS WAS CALLED “THE HAPPY BUS.”

ANOTHER INTERVIEW BEGAN: “WHY WERE YOU THERE (AT ABU GHRAIB)?”

ONE FORMER DETAINEE TOLD ME, “I HAD A BEARD.

THEY SAID THEY WERE AFTER MEN WITH BEARDS

WHO LOOKED LIKE BIN LADEN.”

THE MAN ANSWERED: “I DON’T KNOW, I WAS NEVER ACCUSED. AT 1:30 AM I HEARD

HELICOPTERS NEAR THE HOUSE. IN

SPEAKERS I HEARD ‘GET OUT OF THE HOUSE! WE ARE GOING TO BOMB THE

HOUSE.’ I CARRIED ONE CHILD, MY PREGNANT WIFE

CARRIED THE OTHER CHILD. A SOLDIER HELD A GUN TO ME AND

TIED MY HANDS. SOLDIERS WERE ON THE ROOF.

THE ABU GHRAIB IMAGES OF DANIEL HEYMAN

RESTORING DIGNITY: IRAQ

RestoRing Dignity: koRea

Thirty-one years ago, on May 18, 1980, students and citizens of gwangju,

south Korea united in the gwangju Democ-ratization Movement, and rose up against Chun Doo-hwan’s military dictatorship in an incident known as the gwangju Uprising. Within ten days, however, the movement had been brutally crushed, with hundreds of citizens beaten to death in the streets or slaughtered by paratroopers with bayo-nets. thousands were injured or tortured in prisons. Citizens who questioned the of-ficial figures of 165 citizens dead, 65 miss-ing, and service casualties of 23 soldiers and four policemen, were subject to arrest; the actual death toll has been estimated at between 1,000 and 2,000 people. While the survivors and victims’ families have suf-fered physically and mentally until this day, the gwangju Uprising and Democratization Movement has largely been forgotten by the Western world, unlike the tiananmen mas-sacre nine years later, which is still covered prominently by Western media. that is why, from october to early December 2009, and for three weeks in 2010, my Korean wife and i visited gwangju to research and photo-graph for my self-funded project, “remem-bering gwangju.”

These photographs feature loca-tions related to the uprising, interwoven

with portraits of participants, accompanied by their own statements on their experi-ences and memories. even though it often made them literally sick to dig out painful memories of personal horrors, many gra-ciously gave their time, often talking for hours. i have the deepest respect and ad-miration for these courageous people, who, despite their immense sufferings, are mod-est, soft-spoken and noble.

In aUtUMn anD Winter, the ambi-ent light in gwangju has a special quality.

Whereas in Japan it can be sharp and harsh, here the light is creamy soft, low-contrast but still brilliant, even on an overcast day. at around 4 pm, when most of these por-traits were taken (with a cumbersome 4 x 5 view camera), the light was perfect for capturing the somber mood i sought in my photos. through the series, “remembering gwangju,” i hope to keep alive the memory of those ten tragic days in May, 1980.

—Matthias Ley

Photo essay by Matthias Ley


On May 21, 1980, a 14-year-old boy living near the Provincial Hall went there to

watch the demonstrations. Park Sang-chol was standing to one side when the

soldiers suddenly opened fire on the crowds, killing and wounding many. “Every-

where was blood and screaming, and everybody tried to run for safety,” Park re-

calls. He was shot in the spine, and has been confined to a wheelchair ever since.

To this day Park suffers extreme nonstop pain, and he needs 500 heavy painkillers

every month. Because of the pills, he has difficulty waking up in the morning. And

since the number of pills obtainable from one hospital is much less than his needs,

he has to collect his medication by visiting several. Once a year Park has to go to

Seoul for two months of treatment, and ten years ago he was treated in the U.S.,

but the pain persists.

PARK SANG-CHOL


Yoon Je-cheon (right) and Jang Myeong-hun (left) were taxi drivers in May 1980;

both joined the uprising. Yoon Je-cheon was pulled out of his taxi and severely

beaten, resulting in many broken bones. He managed to escape and stumbled

home, where he hid, terrified, not even daring to go to hospital. Yoon was un-

able to work for one year. On May 20, Jang Myeong-hun joined a big taxi and

bus convoy which drove to the Provincial Hall. “Near the Cheonil Building,” he

says, “I was attacked by paratroopers and nearly killed, but some brave citizens

rescued me.” Both men still require weekly hospital treatments for pain and other

symptoms.

YOON JE-CHEON & JANG MYEONG-HUN



Nomads in Mongolia are increas-ingly quitting the land and opting for a new life in the country’s capital, Ulaanbaatar.

Although the immediate reasons are as numerous as the nomads themselves, the underlying causes are political, economic, legal, and cultural. Following the country’s Democratic Revolution in 1990, sub-sidies from the Soviet Union ended and the Russian presence waned. Industries that had once thrived during the communist era became privatized yet lacked the capital and the know-how to continue to function with any efficiency. What occurred in the town of Kharkhorum, the ancient capital of the Mongolian Empire, represents a scenario replicat-ed across the whole country: formerly prosperous factories simply shut down and lay abandoned in a barren landscape. This coincided with the fledg-ling nation’s new Constitution, which revoked a law that had prohibited movement across provin-cial borders for over thirty years. Those who had formerly worked in these rural industries gained a new freedom of mobility and flooded into Ulaan-baatar with the hope of eking out some kind of livelihood. Herders who had lost livestock, no lon-ger protected under the safety net of government

MONGOLIA IN TRANSITION

nomadsCHRISTAL WHELAN

Former herder raising a family in Ulaanbaatar

BY ANGELA LONG

It's just after ten a.m. when the power goes out. But Darpan is prepared. He switches on his headlamp, beaming light onto my left ear. “Inhale, please,” he says, positioning a needle above Shen Men. “Ex-hale, please.” He pricks the skin. I wince for a split second then relax, remembering I’m in good hands. Darpan is no stranger to needles. For fifteen years he used them to inject low-grade heroin into his veins. But now the only needles he uses are fine-tipped and sterile, aimed towards strategic points on the outer ear.

It’s the beginning of week two — the final week of Acupuncture Detox Specialist (ADS) training at Kurseong’s Red Cross in the Darjeeling Hills. Out-side on Pankhabari Road, groups of tea pickers hurry past, baskets strapped to foreheads, braids


They’ve come

to learn a three-

thousand-year-old

Chinese medical

practice and apply

it to one of this

region’s most

modern tragedies:

soaring rates of

HIV/AIDS.

H E A R T W O R K

swinging. Overloaded share-jeeps — public trans-port of this region — careen downhill towards the Plains, honking at anything that crosses their path. But nothing distracts Darpan and the three other ADS trainees — all male, all ex-addicts — from the surface of my outer ear.

Hand-picked by Kalyan — a harm-reduction network formed to educate communities about the risks of injection drug use — the trainees have traveled here from idyllic towns known more for premium tea gardens and Himalayan treks than drug addiction. They have come to do what has never been done before in these parts — to talk about clean needles and abscess management, con-doms and collapsing veins. They’ve come to learn a three-thousand-year-old Chinese medical prac-tice and apply it to one of this region’s most mod-ern tragedies — soaring rates of injection drug use and HIV/AIDS. Rates which have caused India’s National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (NICED) to declare an epidemic requiring urgent intervention on local, national, and international levels.

But interventions have been slow to trickle into these hills. So slow that it’s the addicts themselves taking matters into their own hands. And it’s a lone doctor from Canada — trained in acupuncture and naturopathy — who has volunteered to help them.

Dr. Laura Louie adjusts her headlamp. “A little too far to the left,” she advises Darpan, and inserts a new needle into my ear. The other trainees gath-er around, casting beams of light across the Red Cross, taking note.

The Lonely Planet warns to expect the unexpect-ed of this country. I didn’t expect to meet Dr. Louie — a fellow west-coast Canadian — while drinking Darjeeling in the dining room of a colonial-chalet hotel. I didn’t expect her to invite me to the Red Cross to meet a group of ex-addicts training in the National Acupuncture Detoxification Associa-tion (NADA) five ear needle protocol for chemical dependency, a widely recognized therapy, she ex-plained, used to reduce withdrawal symptoms in


substance-abuse programs throughout the world. “Injection drug users?” I asked, taking another

sip. “Acupuncture?” The irony was too hard to resist. But I could tell Dr. Louie was too busy for irony. “Will you come?” she asked.

Anyone who has met Dr. Louie will tell you she's impossible to refuse. Not because she’s five-foot-ten with Chinese-Russian blood, ultra-educated, and from the prominent Canadian H.Y. Louie fam-ily that owns London Drugs. None of this com-pares to her infectious humanity.

Dr. Louie makes you want to put down your cup of tea and help. She makes you want to wear long, swishy skirts and necklaces weighted by chunks of art. She makes you want to fly to India with thou-sands of acupuncture needles to donate stashed in your luggage and just walk through the Nothing to Declare door smiling.

She makes you say things like “You can practice on me,” to four overly eager trainees whom Dr. Louie must remind to dispose of used needles, and to always, always unwrap new ones. “We have plenty of needles,” she constantly re-assures them.

Darpan adjusts his headlamp. “Inhale, please,” he says, positioning a fresh needle above Sympathetic. “Exhale, please.” He pricks my skin. I try not to wince. Even though I want to help, I’m terrified of needles. But Darpan’s touch is gentle, his voice soothing. I focus on his T-shirt embroidered with a Chinese dragon, then at his face as he searches for the next point on my ear. I wonder if his six-year old son, the son he told me he isn’t permitted to see

Dr. Louie makes you want to put down your cup of tea and help.

I wake at three a.m., dress quickly, cross the footbridge, and find my taxi driver waiting inside his car. We bump up the cliffs in over-cast dark, ocean pounding in background, and rumble out into the web of backcountry

villages surrounding Kannur. After asking direc-tions, the driver turns up a bone-jarring lane, and halts. I exit between randomly parked cars, walk a short ways through dripping trees and find myself in a cluster of simple tile-roofed houses fronting a tamped-earth square. In one corner a bonfire is shrinking into coals. In the other a small wooden shrine is strung with lights. At the roof’s peak is a mask of Yama, god of death, guardian of the south. As one of Shiva’s envoys, Yama is known as Kala, “time,” whereas Shiva is Mahakala, “great time,” eternity. A huge tree graces the compound’s far corner, oil lamps blazing under its branches. This enormous beauty may well have been the original shrine, an arboreal pillar uniting heaven, earth, and the underworld. Under the tree is a dressing room plaited with palm leaves where the Theyy-am performers apply their makeup and attire. The earthen square is empty right now; the ritual is in the in-between time.

Theyyam derives from the Sanskrit, daivam, “god,” and commonly refers to the ritual dances associated with the calling into presence of spir-its benevolent to the villages of northern Kerala, on India’s southwest coast. The performances take place in the dark, after the monsoon has subsided, during the winter months. Theyyam deities, unlike

Hindu deities represented by idols or objects, man-ifest themselves much like the Hopi kachinas do in the American Southwest: in the form of living gods who interact with humans through empowered im-personators.

Entering the family compound in the dark was like approaching the heart of a spider’s orb. Blink-ing lights between dripping trees created a kaleido-scope of spun-candy luminosity. Glowing coals il-luminated shadowy figures. For a second I thought I was back in Bali, walking into a village séance, a place “out of time,” a realm connected to one’s own heartbeat—to mists, darkness, a blur of meld-ing worlds. An official, wrapped in white lungi tied around his waist, showed me to a raised pavilion where a dozen or so people were gathered under a thatched roof. A plastic chair appeared and I was made comfortable. “You have camera?” a man asks. “Oh, too bad. Good Theyyam.” Photographs are prohibited at Pueblo ceremonies back home, so I never considered a camera here. Looking around, I realize that not only am I the only foreigner here,


Kerala’s “Theater of the Double”JOHN BRANDI

E N C O U N T E R S

curl ing

dear cloud

i have been a fern unfolding.

in a forest of deep slanting shadows, close to the ground with its many tiny scratchings and slitherings, surrounded by the steady rumble and rush of a waterfall, i was a fern. in the early spring, as the frozen ground melted and water wicked up through the deep soil with the sputtering sucking sounds that springwater makes, as the sun streamed through jagged webs of naked branches casting thousands of black lines across the mossy ground, as hundreds of tiny creatures scurried about with their busy preparations, calling awake!, awake! with their many little noises, i lifted my furled head from the forest floor, slowly, slowly, a coil of life unwinding toward light.

the motion was so graceful. this rising and outward rolling, expanding and opening, beginning as a clasped inward thing and ending fine and frail and stretched out to the sky like an opened palm.

summer came and i hardened and thickened, autumn tinged the edges of my leaves with bronze and russet, and as winter set its frigid nights upon us, i withered, my stalk weakening until i bent, curling up on the ground, brown and dry.

i have been a fern.i have been a kangaroo pup, just born and twined around a teat in my mother’s pouchi have been a spider, dried by desert winds, tucked behind a rock on a high stony plain,

pulling slowly into myself, balling up to die and be blown like tumbleweed from stony pocket to stony pocket

i have been an infant snake, wrapped around itself twenty times inside an egg, unreeling through a hole in the soft shell

i have been a jacamar chick that fell from its nest and broke on the ground, my wings fold-ing ever tightly around myself with my final breaths.

i have been many things. around here, you begin curled. uncurl. and curl again at the end. it is the way of things. in and out. like breathing.

%

This is an excerpt from KJ contributing editor (and garden expert) Marc Peter Keane’s new book, dear cloud, a series of letters home by a long-distance traveler with the rare empathetic gift of being able to fluidly enter other existences — of people, animal or plant species — and to merge even with the essence of particular places. Available online, as paperback or eBook. mpkeane.com/writing/dear_cloud.html


eBook. mpkeane.com/writing/dear_cloud.html

N A T U R E

Sarawak rainforest, John Einarsen



the heart

has no name

no address

it only pretends

to be in

the body

it hides there

in the chest

curled up like a fetus

not knowing

how big

it can get

the heart

is always

ready to escape

it is not

man or woman

animal or bird

the heart

is always

waiting

tapping its foot

in the queue

from beginning to end

always

taking off or landing

applauding the pilot

flight from yazdKATH ABELA

WILSON

KATh AbeLA WiLSon created and directs from Pasadena, CA, Poets on Site, a collaborative poetic, musical, dance, multi-media perfor-mance group at the scientific, natural, musical and artistic sites of their inspiration. She has traveled with her Caltech mathematician husband Rick Wilson for eight years to Japan, China, iran, S. Korea, europe and through-out the united States. Travel is the blank page for her, the heightened perspective.


but i think of his sereneexquisite taste for beauty

equaled only byhis empty anger

i was not surprised how easilyhe let go of the life he did not wish to hold

in the beginning and the endhis love seemed real but distant

even his love for this perfect poemwas wishful thinking

i wish but i do not thinkthat he came to understand

his own dichotomythat remains unexplained

years later in my new life i read a poem on a train to Yuyuan Garden

the red Chinese sun’s on firein a smoky sky like a crazy full moon

over an old lake where words trembleto shape stones long embedded

and views change as dynastiesfly by outside the window

This dynasty endedwith one last breath

he left mehis books

i paged through them for a long time hoping to come to some understanding

after ten years i found a markerin “Chinese Poetic Writing”

he always said he loved quietnessand longed for truth

he’d often go to his room for hoursclose the door to think on these things

suddenly he’d come outin a rage

as if he thought new stars could be made by shattering

i remember this sadlyas i read the poem

perhaps he wanted meto find it

more likelyhe did not care

on finding a marker between pagesin a book left by my late husband

it is not

man or woman

animal or bird

the heart

is always

waiting

tapping its foot

in the queue

from beginning to end

always

taking off or landing

applauding the pilot

I didn’t see the whole thing, didn’t catch the name of the small town, just saw the last bit of a news report I guess it was, then it was gone; clicked in right where some Japanese schoolgirls age 12~13 were walking cheerily along a just-cleared road amidst mounds of tsunami destruction in one of the severely afflicted towns, a place of narrow valleys among small steep mountains where folks still live at heights the tsunami didn’t reach.

As the girls walked they tossed a volley ball up into the air, chatting and playing, passing through the devastation they had just survived. They were on their way to a playground somewhere, I thought, taking that to be the point of this little clip: have hope, don’t give up, get some fun, live on and brighten — until they arrived at a rare surviving building, slid back the door and entered, put down the ball and each shouldered an old-fashioned basket backpack that was heavy with something. They then departed and with their burdens began walking once more, this time in twos up the steep walks that threaded the sides of the mountains and

1

R A M B L E

More Light

led to houses up there, mostly occupied by elderly folks cut off from a world that was no more, a world erased as far as they could see.

As the girls neared each house they called out a friendly hello, said their names and here’s lunch; from within came a glad response, the pair then entering to bring a meal to one or more elderly folks who had been waiting. Thus the girls went from house to house, calling friendly greetings and being welcomed with happiness. In this way they were meeting the elderly people in their town, folks they would never otherwise have known existed but now were visiting daily, knew now by name and feeling, saying good morning not by rote but in a friendly, even familial way, bringing food and new companionship to these elders who in their lonely places were grateful…

At each house they’d chat a bit, those elders now having two young girls in their daily lives, like family, bringing them aid without obligation, in return the girls having all these grandmas and grandpas; they do this every day and they like

it, they like the smiles that greet them and the cheer they cause, the chatting with and helping all the elders only yesterday absent from their lives, as it is also for the elders, who are joyed to have a youngster come to their home and relate to them personally, in a caring way — it was uplifting to behold.

This is the way it should be, these young women happy to be giving a gift that is more than just the food they bring, each day doing wonders that they never thought of before, in turn receiving the gift that many never come to in all their lives: the understanding that elders need the young, but the young need elders just as much. How better to uplift a society than by such ways as this? Things should be like this, things should always be like this: no distance between the generations, no life without their touch.

On they go even now, the girls among the smiles, beyond the end of that brief part I saw — they lift up all those lives with their baskets of food, their warmth and words, happy in calling out Good

morning! Hello! See you again tomorrow! and going on their way, up to the next neighbor on the mountain. They are heroes, those girls, to themselves and to us all, even to those who have not seen this little story.

I will never forget them, walking through that wreckage, laughing rich with future, on their way to share that wealth with those who yesterday were isolated strangers having nothing but a roof and what was left of life, who thanks to the girls have lived to see beauty rise from devastation with a shout and the wave of a hand, living proof each new day that the heart holds more light than darkness—

As if to give some other depth to the value of this task, at the end of the clip the adult female reporter, who has been following the girls around the mountain paths for the story, one morning tries on one of the baskets filled with bento, staggers backward at the heaviness...

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ROBERT BRADYPHOTOGRAPH BY KIMBERLYE KOWALCZYK

Robert Brady, KJ’s regularly featured Rambler-at-large, blogs daily at

pureland.blogspot.com

Than Darkness

http://pureland.blogspot.com

In the Shadow of the Buddha: Secret Journeys, Sacred Histories, and Spir-

itual Discovery in Tibet by Matteo Pistono. Boston: Dutton Adult,

2011, 272 pp.

Even truth needs to be clad in new gar-ments if it is to appeal to a new age.

— Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799)

CONTRIBUTING an adventurous page-turner to Buddhist read-ing, American author and po-

litical activist Matteo Pistono adds adrenaline to what’s often a philosoph-ical pursuit. Interwoven with his ac-counts of risky journeys to, from and through Tibet and Nepal conveying messages between high Buddhist lamas, and human rights reports to non-prof-it and governmental organizations, Pis-tono relates a narrative of the life and work of Tibetan mystic Tertön Sogyal (1856-1927), as well as the story of his

own reception of Buddhist teachings. It’s an engaging story, and Pisto-

no’s courage and dedication are admi-rable. Providing a helpful overview of the current situation of Tibetans living with the Chinese occupation, it focuses on those practicing Buddhism, or try-ing to.

The scope of the book is one of its gifts, as we follow both author and Ter-tön Sogyal through different places, adventures and lifetimes, although the transitions between them can be con-fusing. Since Tertön Sogyal was both spiritual and political advisor to the Dalai Lama XIII, he provides a fine counterpoint to the author’s struggles with politics and spiritual practice.

As a student of Buddhism, I found this an excellent story of a human


R E V I E W S

Tertön Sogyal and Present-dayTibet

UPPER LEFT: The sacred lake and moun-tains of Nurbu Yurtse in Golok, Eastern Tibet. (photo by Matteo Pistono); Right: Tertön Sogyal (1856-1926) one of Tibet’s great mystics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, teacher and political confidant to the XIII Dalai Lama. (photo courtesy Matteo Pistono)

VIDEO TRAILER: www.matteopistono.com/disc.htm

Updates from Bhutan, Nepal and Sri Lanka: http://nekorpa.org/

http://nekorpa.org

http://www.matteopistono.com/disc.htm

rights activist’s travels in Tibet and his efforts to integrate passion for his work with a growing meditation and devo-tional practice. The book’s presenta-tion as a Buddhist tale didn’t make a lot of sense to me, however, because some key elements were missing to make the Buddhist side of the scale outweigh the political activism. Primarily, the Chi-nese that enforce the occupation at the expense of Tibetan people and culture seem to be painted as the Bad Guys of the story. From a purely human rights activist point of view, that’s a no-brain-er. But while the Tibetans’ suffering is clear and terrible, Buddhist understand-ing requires us to perceive how much the Chinese “perpetrators” are suffer-ing and will continue to do so. In terms of negative karma, the sum total of the Chinese perpetrators’ suffering is actu-ally greater than the Tibetans’, a stag-gering thought.

The current Dalai Lama impresses me greatly with his public statements about his regular prayers for the wellbeing of all Chinese people, whom he doesn’t consider to be Tibet’s enemies. Though a few references are made to this line of thought — usually in the words of one of the Tibetan Buddhist teachers Pisto-no meets — like many of us the author wrestles with the demon of anger in his heart.

This is perfectly human and, given the circumstances, understandable. It just would have felt more appropriate if the book were presented as a tale of hu-man rights activism conjoined with ex-plorations of Tibetan Buddhism, rather than the other way around.

The author’s comments on the role of the consort also struck me as rather un-der informed, as it goes far beyond his definition of it as a source of inspira-tion. For example, the world has ben-efited enormously from the teachings of Guru Rinpoche — who introduced Buddhism to Tibet — in no small part thanks to his consort, Lady Yeshe Tsog-yal, a fully awakened being and teach-er in her own right. She documented her consort’s voluminous works and hid them in remote locations for treasure

revealers like Tertön Sogyal to discover centuries later.

Pistono has undertaken a commend-able path. I look forward to his future work.

—Catherine Pawasarat AKASAMEDIA.COM

The Strange Case of the Disappearing

Zen WomenZen Women: Beyond Tea Ladies, Iron Maidens and Macho Masters

by Grace Schireson. Somerville, Massachusetts: Wisdom Books, 2009,

375 pp., $16.95.

T HERE IS MUCH to value about Grace Schireson’s calm, care-ful scholarship in Zen Women,

which has taken up the long overdue task of remedying two thousand years of both careless “forgetting” and dili-gent erasure of Zen women from the re-cord — despite the acknowledged exis-tence of powerful female Zen ancestors. Some recent scholarship even suggests that Prajnatara, the immediate ances-tor of Zen’s take-no-prisoners found-ing father, Bodhidharma, may in fact have been a woman, the record subse-

quently “doctored,” accordingly! The book’s subtitle promises spirited stories that will take us well beyond the scant traces of unnamed women serving tea to refresh pilgrim monks and challenge their dharma eye, or the occasional named, invincible tough-nut Zen nuns and female practitioners of a very male kind of “samurai Zen.”

Certainly it takes us beyond the cli-chés to meet a large number of signifi-cant figures, previously “lost” to the re-cord, who managed, despite tremen-dous obstacles placed in their path not only by their time and culture but by Buddhism itself, to fully enter the Way and powerfully convey their Zen. We meet some important previously un-known women, such as Zhiyuan Xing-gang, a seventeenth-century Chinese dharma heir in the Linji (Rinzai) line, as well as Miaozong, Jingchen, Kaku-zan, Kim Ilyop and Song’yong Sunim; we also meet more fully some, such as the nun Iron Grinder Liu, and the Pang daughter, Lingzhao, whom we have en-countered in the koan literature. We also miss meeting some luminous souls unearthed and restored to the record in other places, for example in the “Kaha-waii Koans” collection published in fe-ral (roneoed) form by women in Rob-ert Aitken’s Diamond Sangha in the 1980’s. I regretted the absence of some of those remarkable, clear characters, and of their playful spiritedness that demolished and clean swept away all presumptions and prescriptions about what a woman (or a man) may be!

Schireson searches for evidence of whether there were not just “Zen’s women” to be recovered, but also a “women’s Zen” — the dharma itself presented differently, more humane-ly in some cases, but with no sacrifice of clarity. And in uncovering what she can of that, she frequently brushes the question of what has been lost, to the dharma and to women practitioners, by the hostility of the Buddhist tradition to women that she maps from earliest times in India and then on to China, Korea and Japan. She ends her survey with observations about gender issues


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