autumn tactics

開催は後二週間弱です。毎晩一種の進行です…広告、プリント用意、またはネガの棚卸。今回の展示は七割モノクロのプリントを出しますが、幾つかこう見たいのカラー写真も展示します。これは2008年の正月、一人で角館に旅して、孤独に包まった。本当に美しかった、あの誰もいない寂れた城郭都市。

The last several days have been…vintage Rusty. Assumptions, preconceptions, goals and limitations. Extremes are still my master, I soon forget my rules and principles. But oh how the fire burns! As the flames shrink, a deeper heat, an enduring one swells within. What have I learned other than my own weaknesses ad nauseam? Small things. Small beauty more timeless and sacred than my petty aspirations. Stories told by captivating old men, designs for a home to confuse invaders and protect one’s family, through time I slipped– centuries of valor, betrayal, honor, and poetry.

Fujiwara, Yoshitsune, bakufu, and Basho… Tokugawa, Ishiguro, Aoyagi, and Odano. I hiked through knee deep snow under a canopy of dormant sakura. I ate kiritanpo and dojou nabe, visited half a dozen bars and snacks in one night, faltering only at the end. I talked with locals about the Minamoto, matsuri, wabisabi, and satisfaction with life. So many mysteries unresolved, shades of light exposed then drowned out in unfolding darkness. So many questions, so much uncertainty; like the fickle weather of Kakunodate: ten minutes indoors and a crystal blue sky becomes a swirling snow storm.

I watched all four hours of Gone with the Wind, witnessing the horrible self-defeating tragedy of mankind and the eternal yearning for fantasy (ignorance of truth). Satori seems scarce at first but perhaps there is something deeper here to bring to heart.

Today I’m starting out on my four-day tour of Tohoku (northeast Japan). I’ve been planning it for days, and set got so many pieces of the puzzle put together in advance, but somehow still managed to first miss the train I hoped for by oversleeping, and then fail to estimate what time it really was and had to run to the station to make the next departure on time. In the process I made quick grab-and-run decisions that I may end up regretting in the next couple of days. The first of these is bringing the 5D, the second leaving behind my tripod. I also forgot the Holga and my positioner. I also declined to bring the Happy Hacking keyboard with me, which leaves me with only the working set of keys on the WinBook (this does not include escape, five, six, zero and consequently right parenthesis]. But all twenty-six letters of the alphabet work, and my current login password doesn’t contain any of the dead keys, so I’m fine as long as the five-year old Li-Ion battery holds up. At least I didn’t pull any boners like leave the power supply at home. I’ve done this with cameras before though.

To get back to the actual trip, I’m travelling to Tohoku, in particular Hiraizumi in Iwate prefecture, and fan favorite Kakunodate in Akita. One of the many challenges in this journey is time management, many in the realm of transportation. In Tokyo where the Yamanote line comes every two minutes, in the country trains come once an hour, and if one’s transfers don’t line up nicely with the sparse number of departures, a nice long fifty minutes or so is spent in the cold staring off of the station platform into rice fields. Today I have to transfer four times to get to my destination, and in the end I have a fifty-minute layover to travel one station. Maybe I’ll get a bus. Maybe I’ll decide to tough it out and walk. Who knows. Maybe I’ll get lucky and get a seat on the bullet train. Maybe not and I’ll be standing. That brings to mind one more thing I forgot to bring: a book.