The Garden Of Evening Mists

"Are all of us the same, I wonder, navigating our lives by interpreting the silences between words spoken, analysing the returning echoes of our memory in order to chart the terrain, in order to make sense of the world around us?"

This summer, I accidentally ended up in Bruxelles for one night. In the early morning, I waited for a train to take me to Germany where I had planned to go to a concert the same night. As I sat waiting, my guitar apparently caught the interest of a man, who sat down for a small talk. After declining his offers of breakfast, freshly squeezed juice and taking a later train, charming though they all were, I really felt a need to escape the unexpected and somehow always grey adventures of the cities I had been to and sink into something green, calm and uneventful. I went into a bookshop, saw the title and bought this book that I have just put down.  It's more like I just ended my stay in a land that I could not bring myself to leave when first planned. Yugiri, The Garden Of Evening Mists, created by malaysian author Tan Twan Eng is a place that can only be unveiled when walking in the mists of painful memories and feelings of injustice and blame. It is the sort of book where not much happens, that is still so easy to sink into, as if it were your own thoughts, or a walk through a beautiful painting, as if having been given access to a secret place in someone's soul that is so full of the present that time seems to stretch and become slower somehow, longer.

"The silence here had a different quality; I felt I had been plumbed with weighted fishing line into a deeper, denser level of the ocean. I stood there, allowing the stillness to seep into me. In the leaves, an unseen bird whistled, deepening the emptiness of the air between each note. Water dripped off the leaves."

When reading the book, I could feel my thoughts as well as my body soften and relax. I could sit back comfortably on my little square on the floor in the crowded train and enjoy the elegant writing and subtle changes of the narrative as if pending between morning and evening in every blink of the eye, as if meditatively moving my feet in a silent waltz with the smoke silhouette of a dream. It's not the sort of book that many will read or that one will remember but it is one that will somehow linger somewhere within the sphere of your own little life.

It's about two individuals surviving the world war II. One, captured and kept in a japanese slave camp, the other a gardener of the japanese emperor whose role in the war remains uncertain throughout the book. It's about the persistent things in life, the core of what is meaningful, the fading and guarding of memories of cruelty, the consequences of knowing that time is knowledge and that the world changes and grows with that insight… I feel that patience is a main message in this book, it is something I hope to be able to write more about later. Patience is easily misunderstood when being named a virtue. It is easier to understand as a palette or a set of strings for the mind, it's the simple source of inspiration. Waiting for patience to settle within is like pulling the curtains aside in the early morning, giving shape, light, colour, sound and motion to your senses…

"Memory is like patches of sunlight in an overcast valley, shifting with the movement of the clouds. Now and then the light will fall on a particular point in time, illuminating it for a moment of before the wind seals the gap, and the world is in shadows again."

I've grown a bond to this book, but I can't place my finger on what's so good about it other than the elegance and steady pulse of the writing. It is a book I would eagerly recommend but I am not sure to who or why… It's just full of beautiful places and atmospheres, I don't know… I can't wait to receive and read his other book The Gift Of Rain….

Don't Hang Your Head So Low

Don't hang your head so low 
don't ask the reason for this simple life I've chosen 
for the more you ask of me 
I fear the less you'll understand

The time that's passed 
was no waste 
you must learn 
to make no haste 

learn to breathe 
learn to smile
with the burdens 
that you bear 

and don't forget 
or try to hide 
from the memories 
that you have 

Don't look away as if in guilt 
to be musing in the silence you've set free
the more you try to tell
I fear the less you'll understand

The time that's passed 
was no waste 
you must learn 
to make no haste 

learn to breathe 
learn to smile
at the sorrows
that we all feel

and don't forget 
or try to hide 
from the values
that you have

The Witch's Brew

This is a new recording of one of my older songs. It's been called many things, and it's been changed a lot and is still changing... I enjoy working with it, enjoy playing the flute. It's a rough little raft, but I enjoy sailing through cold, cloudless nights on it.

For more Miyazaki-inspired artwork please visit: http://www.mioke.de/main.htm . 

You're a crow and you fly

where I want you to fly 

Your claws are the knives of my will

Steal rubies and silver and lay them by my bed 

but who would fall in love with a crow? 

You're a stone and I throw you

in the deepest of waters 

You don't speak but I want you to learn 

Solitude, silence and strictness if your life

but who would pity a stone? 

You're a snake you tell secrets 

everyone already knows 

but are scared to believe in 

you comfort and smile and bring words of glory 

but who would trust in a snake?

Giving Thanks

Carry the tale at the tip of my tongue
that tells of the time that I've spent
Carry the tale at the tip of my tongue
to the ends of the earth and beyond

And I bow lower
ever lower
down to the ground
to where I am bound

Sending my love with all of my heart
to the man that I'll miss ever more
Sending my love with all of my heart
to the girl that I thought I'd become


And I bow lower
ever lower
down to the ground
to where I am bound

Giving my thanks to all of the world
for the ache in my bones as they grow
Giving my thanks to all of the world
for such a magnificent show

I thank all the demons and angels that had me
I know that I've been a good child
And all of the mornings I have yet to wake
I pray they will be as they've been

For all that I know I've been broken and whole
Naked in the light and warm in the dark
Safe in danger, endangered when safe
And all the while
I've been happy
I've been sad
And the drum in my chest
Finds the rhythm in this

So I have no complaints
.

The Use Of Stories

Hm, I haven't been posting anything in a while. Since I've wanted to try to live a life calmly in the shadows, in peace and quiet, I haven't felt much like sharing my thoughts other than in the pages of a hidden notebook. I have also, put away books for a while,  in order to explore the real world around me, to practise the written word in my every-day life, to watch and observe, to analyse and locate theories I have read of being performed. I have a notion, that these periods will come and go. For now again, I have picked up some reading and after finishing "The Never Ending Story" by Michael Ende, I am really eager to dive into some philosophy again. I don't do it for some higher purpose, in search of an ultimate answer, or an ultimate way of living. I just want to live a full life.

Ende is a subtle genius. He is like that brilliant actor that acts in every movie you like, but who plays his  role so well, you never recognise him. I always forget his name because of that, but one sec, I'll look it up.

Ah yes, it's Gary Oldman! Anyway, when first reading Ende's Momo, I thought it was good. Not particularly fantastic, but good. But his words-- maybe it's more of complete concepts-- really grows on you. When I read, I usually make little notes and underline phrases and stuff to retrace the steps of my thoughts and remember what I was thinking while reading, but since I borrowed these books from my sister, I didn't dare to. So exactly what had such an impact on me, I can't say. Basically, I think it's because of his way of objectifying problems, his way of giving moral questions and phenomenons a face, a character and a story that makes his ideas so welcoming to ponder on, to develop. Simply thinking of work as a time-consumer for example, isn't a very exciting thought, because most of us live with it every day. But if you imagine there's an actual thief behind your lack of time; a grey man, dressed in a dull suit, smoking cigars made from petals stolen from your very own stock of time flowers to keep him alive, it all becomes much more exciting. So making simple phenomenons in life into something bigger, something a bit more exciting, by adding some of your own imagination, you will actually see the world with completely different eyes. At least, my life seems a lot more interesting. And it's only because I challenge myself to conjure up silly little stories that explains why I do boring things like brushing my teeth etc. I have also started to think of time as my friend, as a travel companion accompanying me through life, a friend I would not want to part from. Time's way of comforting surpasses any consolation made with words from a human mind. Time is the river that keeps us going on. If we ever feel we are growing into someone we come to dislike, we can disembark that person and wave him/her farewell. Wave until the distance have made him/her invisible to the eye, forgotten and we have become someone else. Time is also an ever growing family. Every day another you is awoken, and you know that if you wake up the next day, you will be in the company of yet another you. That way it goes on and on, until the river reaches the sea, and we dissolve into it. I like the thought.

Reading Coelho

'Aleph' is the second novel by Paulo Coelho that I have read. I never looked for him, were never drawn to the titles or descriptions of his books, and to be honest, when I unexpectedly had one of his books placed in front of me, I found him very bothersome to read. I will try to explain why. 

In one of the most famous of Plato's texts-- the symposium-- Socrates and a gathering of other men takes turns keeping a eulogy for love. When it is Socrates turn, he says that the others have not at all done what they said they would do. Instead of keeping a eulogy for love, they gave love qualities and characteristics it does not have. They romanticized and beautified it all, which made it into something else and, in the end, quite pointless.
       I feel that Coelho is doing just that. It is not 'wrong' to be doing so, not at all. But he strays off far from reason and honesty and explains things he does not understand by mixing God and vague spiritual phenomenons in his writings. Had I not known he has the kind of influence he has over people all over the world and that they look to him as to some sort of spiritual leader, I might have enjoyed reading him more. If he had approached the theories he has in a different way, if he had not tried to give them the approach of a global truth, if he had not let his success rise above his head and had he not called himself-- indirectly-- a prophet*, I might have found his work slightly more worthwhile for its mysticism and artificial beauty. Let me try to explain further. Conviction is man's most dangerous weapon. To be convinced is to stand aiming with a loaded gun with the intention to fire. A weapon is to many something used for destruction and  disruption, while according to the Oxford American dictionary it is "a means of gaining an advantage or defending oneself in a conflict or contest". To me, it is something useful if you desire change. But wether it is the first, second or third, it is quite irrelevant when you put a weapon in the hands of someone who does not know how it works; how you load it, how you pull the trigger, where the bullet goes out, what you are supposed to aim at and why you aim at something at all. Someone who does not know all of this, will cause great and pointless pain. The sense of value and conviction must come with reasonable arguments that we can all understand. Saying things such as "love always triumphs over what we call death. {...} If you don't believe it then there's no reason my trying to explain.", puts a weapon in your hands, if you let yourself be convinced by the above (and it is easy because powerful words are used). But it does not give you the wisdom to use it, nor the wisdom not to use it. Letting faith and belief fill in the blanks and answer questions you can't answer yourself with truth and reason is a good way for yourself to deal with the problem on short terms, but not for others to understand the question asked, if you catch my drift... If you don't, I will probably dedicate a post solely to this topic sooner or later.

 And you will not free yourself from guilt by expecting forgiveness from others. Nietzsche wrote, I think in 'The Gay Science', that:

"Although the most acute judges of witches, and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was nonexistent. It is thus with all guilt."

Forgiveness comes from yourself and is about accepting the present and the situation you are in. Sometimes it is easier to do this with an act of kindness, a word of forgiveness from a loved one, but in the end, it comes only from yourself. And remember that by saying "I forgive the world and all its evils", you are also accepting the world and all its evils, which is all well, but best to be remembered to avoid misunderstandings...

But! Not once yet in my life time have I read a book which has had nothing of value to say to me. 'Aleph' brings up the subject of aikido a couple of times and its teachings of the path to peace...:

"The Path to Peace flows like a river and because it resists nothing, it has won even before it has begun. The art of peace is unbeatable because no one is fighting against anyone, only themselves. If you conquer yourself, then you will conquer the world."

"The Path to Peace appears to be a fight, but it isn't. It's the art of filling up what is missing and emptying out what is superfluous."

And my favorite:

"Train your heart. That is the discipline every warrior needs."

Read 'Aleph' with a light heart. Do not read it if you are looking for answers. Read it if you are looking for adventure in an everyday life full of tedious routines. Just make sure you don't find yourself armed after having turned the last page...

* Right after Coelho had finished his journey on the trans-siberian rail road (which is what the book is about), he was summoned to Moscow to meet Vladimir Putin who had heard of his adventure. The conversation that was held bothers me a great deal. There was nothing of any value in it. Why was it so important for Coelho to meet Putin if it was only to chit-chat? 

Dancing On The Edge

Run far from here. 

I take back all I said. 

I dance on the edge.

I wish that I would fall.