autumn tactics

I woke up again inexplicably at five a.m., and deeming it too early went back to bed. I missed the sweet spot around seven-thirty and woke up at nine, but I had a dream that had me whistling on the way to work.

I wore my pink and grey striped three-quarter sleeve under my reversible vintage down vest, blue nylon-side out. It felt _fantastic_.

I left the work of multi-threaded allocators at nine and swung by Yodobashi on the way home to undo the damage I’d done the night before. I returned the Fuji Rembrandt fibre stock for some Ilford RC pearl coat. It’s not quite as vibrant and textured as the Gekko stock I used for the Enoshima show but it should be more in my range for darkroom experience.

I’ve torn a couple drawers apart exposing the complete lack of organization the last three years’ film stock has been subjected to, but it needed to happen sooner or later. Going to the darkroom tomorrow has just given me the kick I needed to get down to brass tacks. Saturday I’ll probably pick up a couple more Hakuba albums and get it all in order at once, chronologically and labelled as God and Phillip Greenspun intended.

Anyway now I have my material sorted and about thirteen shots or so to try out with the new medium tomorrow. And then on Saturday evening I’m off to hit up Gentenkaiki for a long, hippie rave of a three-day weekend.

日記を最近みたら、人物の写真が多いと感じてるかもしれない。そう。そうですね。残念ながら去年と今年はデザインフェスタに展示した時代よりあまり写真を撮っていない。しかも、コマ数的に今年は恐らく新記録です。七月の江ノ島個展のため14本で、来月のギャラリー個展には既に17本を越えています。要するに被写体のバラエティーが少ないからもしかしてあなたが飽きているかもしれない。すまん。

しかも個展向きで、一貫性が強いの写真展を精一杯撮っています。自分も微妙に飽きっちゃいそうほどですけど、ビジョンを強化しつつ、表現したいことを絞っています。

今回の一番難しいのは技術の課題かもしれません。モノクロ写真は自分で手焼きします。久しぶりの暗室セッションは金曜日ですので、今日帰り道で紙を買いました。GA…ギリギリ閉店だったので、急いで間違えてバライタ印画紙を買ってしまった。それで明日こういう風に進むか、返品してRCを買いなおす。困ったなぁ。(_　_~)；

Autumn always seems like a time to reboot. The heat goes away, so doing things, simple things, isn’t laborious. Autumn has a lot of anticipation, too, so that adds a little fuel to the fire. I think part of it is programming from all those formative years where autumn meant new grade, new classes, school supplies, activities, aspirations, dreams. “This year it’s going to be different, I’m going to join all these clubs, make a million friends, be the top of my class and get Mary Jane Perfect to go with me to homecoming.”

But you can’t escape the drama. The drama follows you around basically forever until… well… if you’ve been talking to me a lot lately you know exactly what I’m talking about.

This weekend I.am.out. For better or worse, I’m going to Gentenkaiki with the two Satomis. This is a 3-day affair so I am going to pack to-the-teeth. There will be moving water, grass, quiet, Buddhism, noise, dancing, alcohol, ?1?#$, and undoubtedly drama.

But that’s my life in autumn. Drama.

Who are you? Is it your parents’ love? Your friends’ influence? Something you saw on television? What the girl on the street told you to be? Maybe all of it. You have no choice really, existing is experience, and the all the mind does is absorb and make it your own.

There’s something inside of all this, like an uncarved doll in a supple piece of wood. The question is will my conscious mind where the tools are kept listen to the wood?

I need to grow. But I am growing, or…

Plants grow, or they die. If they don’t receive the nutrition and care to sustain life, they die. But if they do, they grow. How they grow depends on a number of factors, some of which may be attributable to chaos theory and randomization, but more or less if you give plants a certain kind of environment to grow in, they grow a certain kind of way.

So I eat food, sleep, and move about. Life is sustained so I grow. Do I grow well? That’s another issue.

I think I am growing differently these last few months, and I think this is a good thing. It’s painful, but I think it’s more honest and truthful. Honest to myself more than anything I suppose. I wish it would hurry along, bringing all of the love, peace, and fulfillment that my stirs in my heart. But maybe it won’t be, or maybe it will be, but not for weeks, months, or years. I just don’t know. There’s so much that doesn’t make sense now.

But when a tree is cut, and its trunk is bent another way, things will always be unbalanced at first. So that’s what I have to find, balance. But balance takes time. So for now I focus on my ideal, and I pray.

Autumn has finally come, and the rides to and from work on my bicycle are envigorating. The balcony feels wider, cleaner, fresher. The house air is cool and carries a faint tint of paperbacks. My heart swells with the energy of the season, and I have no end of things to do.

I live by myself, spending long, quiet nights and weekends in solitude, but in my mind I’m never alone. There is a deep warmth inside that makes me smile. This is a blessing.

In late November I will have my second private gallery showing of the year. I more or less have in my mind what I want to say, but there has been a pall over any concrete progress. I could be procrastinating, or the subjective nature of what I want to achieve may be disturbing my focus.

Still, photographs need to be taken and I’m working with portraits, so over the last three weeks I’ve taken seventeen rolls of film, all of which I have back. Now I need to evaluate if there’s a strong, unified concept, and see if I can make this work. Fortunately, muse visits me from time to time.

This weekend I should go to class and go over the material with my instructor, but the call of a three-day autumn rave is calling strong, and I need to do some deep meditation on matters that have been troubling me.

今日また家の中が暑いです。額には玉の汗が吹きだしてきました。疲れが溜まって筋肉がいたぎもちいい。

準備は全部土日とためでしたので、今日予定なにも入れていない。珍しいけどちょっと幸せ。これから久しぶりちゃりをぶらぶら乗って、芝大神宮のだらだら例祭に行きます。生姜をかって、人生に感謝します。

天気に感謝。いたぎもちいい筋肉痛に感謝。友達に感謝。

とても長い間に頭を使って、技能と腕で世界を制覇できると思った。けど徐々に別のことが重要のは気づいていた。

Voici mon secret. Il est très simple: on ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.
Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

今日九月の大撮影会が引き続きました。朝一番に元気なるためは納豆でしょう？

午後に久しぶり河童橋を経て浅草にモデルさんの写真をとりました。

写真教室の後にちょっとだけBREASPHEREに行って踊りました。YOZOは気持ちよくて、クラブなのに野外の盛り上がり雰囲気だった。

There’s something I was supposed to do today… lots of things, actually. But for the life of me I can’t remember any of them. I am alive, very much so, but exhausted to my core and rind. There is an effervescent haze that encircles my every thought like a Shanghai summer, coughing up black.

Tomorrow I leave for Thailand, fulfilling my two international trips a year quota early. I want to be quiet and peaceful, I want to say little and listen much, I want to walk through ruins that look like the set of Ico and have ages’ old Buddhism seep into my subway-texting deadened pores and give me some kind of vibrance deeper than I can extract from any brown, small caffeine-laced bottle.

Oh the road so far out it doesn’t even make sense from a map or my mind. The texture of stone.

この24時間はどうしてのか空前な写真家として充実な一日でした。昨日PLACE Mのワークショップに写真を見せずに90分の他の人の写真をじっくり分析した。他の素人をみると、自分がどこで前に間違えたのか振り替えて、まだ間違えてるところを洗い出す。目が覚めた。

昨夜遅くまで誕生日会で、午後までゆっくりして、SHANEを視て分析した。監督の精選はなぜそういう風にした。なるほど。

午後からMASUO亭の写真を撮るのが依頼されて、店の魅力を表現するために5Dと露出的にアンダーの環境で挑戦した。それ後夜with triangleの伊藤さんと出版業界について下北のFREE FACTORYに話し合いました。

紹介してくれたり、熱心が移ったり、レベルアップさせたり．．．

感謝。

感激。

昨日代休を取って、海に行った。初めてクラゲが刺すの経験した。変な感じ。

今日色々作品を整理して、写真ワークショップ久しぶり出席した。夜にマイちゃんの誕生日会．．．カラオケ、ボウリング。なっくんが居た。古い友達と楽しめた。新しい人と知り合った。

心の中で、懐かしい好奇心が生えた。思案しています。

やわらかくて刺激的。

Waiting is.

All I can say is…

感謝です。

Thank you, everyone.

It’s hot again, but pleasingly so. Sitting on the edge of the sofa right now in front of the fan feels good. The moist spots in the backs of my elbows are sticky-soft. It would be so nice to just fall asleep here now, though I have the feeling it would alienate my customers to be so relaxed. I’ve made up the gallery to be cozy. The sofa has my blankets from home, the coffee table is adorned with my albums and a flower bouquet. The super maneki neko smiles on his pillow. Ah, peace of midday. World traveller Keiko stopped by on her way back from the store to give me a cold bottle of tea.

It may be the heat and the fatigue, but this is surreal. It’s easy to forget why I’m here, in fact I’m not even sure anymore, it’s like a dream. It must be too early to be patting myself on the back… I put so much emphasis on the setup that I may be off the mark on the execution. But so drowsy, so comfortable.

舌を巻いた。