Fujisan

On a recent time off from the Circus I climbed Mt. Fuji.

I shall never see the beginning of a Toho film again in the same way.

Or any of Hokusai's hundred views.

I shall always wave my finger at the nipple of those twin paraboli and say:

"See there? At the very top? Right there?

I've been there."

Satori is Manditori

Actually, the thing about climbing Mt. Fuji is that I pretty much hated it while I was doing it but now have nothing but great feelings about the whole experience.

There were times going up when I was just thinking in chunks of eight steps. Eight more steps. Okay. Eight more.

People were throwing up from exhaustion and altitude sickness to the left and right of me at points. If course this is Japan so they were throwing up in bags that they would then carry to the top of the mountain and back down with them. Some had mountain gear so painfully florescent it competed with the greenish pallor of their oxygen deprived faces. Many huffed from canisters as they squatted slack limbed in the volcanic gravel like taggers inhaling paint fumes in a New York City subway tunnel.

I just got competitive. Eight more steps. Just eight more steps and I'll pass that family of four up ahead.

Climbing down?

Worse.

This is not a respectable descent.

This is falling.

With gravel in your boots.

This is dirt and lava dust and a barely controlled death slide.

I came up what is called the ancient pilgrims route.

The Subashiri Trail.

I went down the poop chute.

Mountain hut my mountain ass.


An exact replica of Mt. Fuji on Mt. Fuji.

The thing is, seconds, literally seconds after getting down, my legs alternating between spastic and rubbery, I wanted to do it again.

It usually takes a little longer for hardship to gleam in retrospect but with Fujisan it took mere seconds.

Summit

The next day, still cursing the ascent of every subway stair I made a pilgrimage myself to Tozen-ji temple in Shinagawa.

(This is not far from Sengakuji temple, where the 47 Ronin brought, as their final avenge as it says in the pamphlet, the head of Lord Kira Kozuke-no-Suke Yoshinaka to show to the grave of their beloved Lord Asano and then turned themselves in to the Shogun and received their orders to commit seppuku a year later, which they did, their 47 bodies nestled under the smoldering incense there to this day.)

Accidental Gauguin

I was at Tozen-ji for another reason.

For it was here in 1859 that the British Legation had their headquarters at what was deemed a suitable distance from the Imperial Palace.

Accidental Jasper Johns at Tozen-ji.

The British Commander, one Rutherford Alcock, decided to take the weekend off and climb to the summit of Mt. Fuji.

When the Japanese Royal Guard got news of this affront they attacked Tozen-ji and killed pretty much everybody.

One of the only survivors was Alcock himself, who hid in a bathtub!

The joke is on the leader of the Royal Guard, who, if he had climbed Fujisan himself, would have known that after climbing that grey lava monster the first place you want to be is in a nice. warm. bath.

I climbed your mountain. You know where I'll be.

Of Masks and Macaques and Swords and Noses

On a recent week off from the circus I took the opportunity to go to Bali, rent a scooter and bop around the villages of Ubud, Mas and the Padangtegal Sacred Monkey Forest.

(Mandala Wisata Wenara Wana)

Mas Mask Mecca.

I also used the time to ramp up my Iaido training since I would be testing for shodan upon my return. Though this has the distinct quality of something the Japanese call Tsukeyakiba. (literally: added tempered edge)

The hamon of the Japanese sword is the temper line, the pattern of the hardened, martensite steel as it shows on the side of the blade including the transition zone habuchi to the softer pearlite steel.

The sword maker, who is also an ordained Shinto priest in most cases, can manipulate the appearance of the hamon as an artistic expression.

Waves, clouds, mountains, even sunrises can be depicted along the length of this deadly tool depending on the skill of these holy artisans.

Tsukeyakiba refers to the modern practice of adding a fake hamon using chemicals or polishing techniques without actual tempering. It has become a metaphor for last minute study that is of no real long term benefit. In other words you can't cram for your Iaido test.

A blister won't help me.

A callous might.

Sieza before Hidari.

The Town of Mas(ks)

Mas is the town dedicated to mask carving and I was able to meet the top carvers in the country with ease. Unlike Japan where I was only able to meet with the artist after a series of introductions, lunch meetings and an email trail yards of scrolling long, in Bali I just knocked on the door.

Every place is really it's people and Bali is filled with happy, smiling, sloooow moving, spiritual ones.

The women have skin the color of polished teak, eyes like I imagine Mata Hari's must have been (Is smoldering a color?) and teeth like Louis Armstrong.

The men are all named either Wayan or Ida and all apparently own taxis.

Beware of women with knives.

If you want to teach someone how to kick back show them a Balinese person.

They have basically turned lounging into an art form.

They have refined their reclining skills to a very high level.

It's like their ancestors did nothing but build temples for thousands of years and now their just resting for the next couple thou.

Oddly, I found that though they are heavily reliant on tourist rupi, money takes a backseat to... Wait for it... Stories.

They seemed to love to talk and if you can tell a story they open their doors. Literally.

After sharing mine with a restaurant owner (and of course taxi driver) named (unusually) Royan, he took me to see his father, a Brahman artist at his temple/home to tell it again.

There seemed to be no ulterior motive but to laugh!

(I was probably the source of some amusement for the locals at the Villa Sonia who I'm sure wondered who that crazy farang tourist is who gets up at dawn every morning and swings a sword around on his veranda.)

And the masks.

I bought 13 of them from four different artists.

Masks carved by I.B. Sutarja


Masks carved by Wayan Dawig.

Unfinished Masks carved by Ida Bagus Anom Suryawan

Finding Myself (wanting)

Bali is a place people come to find themselves.

The same is true for me.

Apparently I am an ugly, ugly American.

I like my air conditioned, my drinks brimming with ice (a luke warm pina colada does not cut it) and my prices exactly what it says on the sign.

Haggling, though de rigeur here, is somehow embarrassing for me, especially when it is for something- say a hand carved, one of a kind mask, a piece of art, of cultural history and a valuable tool for my future work- that I would gladly pay a hundred dollars for but found myself threatening to leave the store if the price didn't come down from the original 50,000 rupis (about fifty bucks) to the finally settled on price of less than half that.

And I know, from talking to the artists, that these babies take a lot of time to make. Besides the carving, done on the floor, like the Japanese but with the mask held by the feet for quick repositioning, there are literally hundreds of coats of paint on each one.

But I guess time is less of a factor when your belief in reincarnation is so thorough.

The great thing about believing in reincarnation: no deadlines.

Although many of the masks themselves feature prominent features, the inside of the masks are not carved to accommodate my ample proboscis.

I pointed this out to master carver Ida Bagus Anom Suryawan in the temple like grounds of his home/workshop.

He handed me his mallet and chisel and sat me down to chip out the space.

I was tentative at first, lightly tapping the chisel in the fear I would crack the mask I had already purchased and uncomfortable in the Balinese mask carver's pose with the mask held between my feet for quick repositioning.

Ida suggested, laughing, to "take a whack at it" and I finally did and within minutes my western snozz could live comfortably under the mask forever more.

The Nose

Carving the inside of a mask

Held on the floor between my feet.

Mallet hits chisel.

A curlicue of Hibiscus wood

Flies in a delicate arc

And lands

Like a dragonfly

On my splayed knee cap.

Making space for where my nose will go.*

Leaf me alone

Time Peace

Bali time is as elastic as the natural rubber straps that each mask comes equipped with. I felt time bend around me as I scooted from village to village in utter contrast to the way time seemed to hang in the drenched heat of the jungle trails with their vine choked carved idols and macaque infested banyans.

Despite this, and knowing it was only a matter of time before I would be back in Japan with a demanding schedule, I did buy a new watch while there.

Unfortunately I was only able to get the price down to 30 dollars.

For a Breitling.

(Pearl Navitimer)

The most amazing part?

Two weeks later, it still works!

Ancient Dragon

Modern Dragon

Lounging

All puppet Kooza.

Don't look.

Dear Diarrhea

My return flight was an overnight affair that got me into Tokyo at 10 am.

By 13:00 I was in full regalia for my last Iaido practice at Kita Matsudo with the various Esaka dojo Sensei before my testing the following day.

Halfway through class something I ate in Indonesia caught up with me in the form of sinister rumblings down below.

I finished class in a chilled nauseous puddle and got on the train for home.

I will spare readers the details of that evening's frantic hunched scurry from the station to my toilet and the subsequent commode ballistics but suffice it to say that night was a sweaty, cramp ridden, miserable battle with frequent migrations from bed to couch to toilet.

Dawn finally came and I left the sweat soaked Ron-print on my bed and pale and shaky, started the hour long commute to the Iaido testing site.

Before


During

After

Three hours later I received my 3rd Dan in Iaido, the art of Japanese swordsmanship.

(I actually received a public commendation for my technique from the head judge.)

That evening my fellow iaidoka celebrated with lots of beer.

I had a yogurt shake.

And a smile.

*"Nose" reprinted from Scrutinies and Tangentia
Iaido pictures by Pierre Ginet

Surreal Life

About Face

Andre Breton, in his Surrealist Manifesto published in 1924 described it as this:

SURREALISM, n. Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express -- verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner -- the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.

The “absence of control” part has had a special resonance on my Search For The Mask of Satori over the last month.

First there was the earthquake.

Very unlike the ones I have experienced in San Francisco and Los Angeles, this was a protracted sloshy affair that felt more like being on the deck of a ship than anything else.

I was even able to compose a poem during it. The font of the handwriting in my notebook can only be called Tokyo Earthquake.

Most of the artists and crew of Kooza were looking at each other with wide eyes and weird half smiles as the very ground we walked upon became this suddenly surreal landscape.

Of course the subsequent tsunami and nuclear disaster was unknown to us at the time.

3 days later, when news of these horrors started to come in and the constant aftershocks were busy jangling the nerves of some of my cohorts, many of whom are the most fearless humans I have ever known, Cirque du Soleil decided to evacuate us.

With about half an hours notice I was told to get my ass to Narita Airport. We were all going to Macau where we would be staying at the Venetian Hotel and Casino while they decided what to do with us.

This set into motion the crossing off of three items on my bucket list in quick succession:

1. To run at full speed down a gangplank and dive into a plane as the doors are closing.


2. To sit in 1^st class.


3. To catch a night ferry in the fog from Hong Kong to Macau.

Accidental Keinholz in Macau.

Twangly

The less said about the next nine days in the gilded, carpeted hell of the Venetian with its chlorinated canals amongst the constantly yelling Chinese vacationers with their annoying twangly voices and their razor sharp and ever ready elbows the better.

Surreal.

Suffice it to say we were glad to get out of there.

Arrivaderchi Macau.

Finally the word came down that we would be offered a plane ticket for anywhere in the world.

As long as we had an internet connection and could check in about seven days later to see whether we were to report back to Tokyo and that the show was to go on we could go anywhere.

Many chose to return to Tokyo. Many went back home to wherever it was they lived to see family and lick their wounds.

Some went to ports of call in Asia just to save money and be close.

I went to Paris.

Accidental Faces (Paris/Tokyo)

Accidental Ooooog.

Avid Reader.

Avid Eater.

If these cobblestones could speak...

Thank You, Cheeses!

Dreaming

I rented a flat on Rue Tholoze’, up a cobblestone street from Place de la Abbesses, a few doors away from where Tristan Tzara lived slightly less than a century earlier.

.

Neutral Mask. Not So Neutral Mask

My nights were about Jazz, Theatre and dancing at the Caveau de la Huchette. My days were museums and food. I visited the Catacombs. I ate many baguettes. I soaked in to the city and apparently it soaked into me a bit as well.

(Many times I was asked directions by tourists, so convincing was my manner. Eventually I would just tell them to fuck off, completing my disguise as typical Parisian.)

Jazz Chats Taking It To The Bridge.

Jazz Rats in the Caveau.

Man vs. Rodin

On the same alleyways and at the same cafes where Dali, De Chirico, Breton, Tanguy and Arp did their thing I scribbled poems and dreamed away.

Everyday Dream.

My wake up call was in the form of an email from Luc Trembley that Kooza would indeed be starting up again in Tokyo.

Three days later I was on a plane. Six days later I was performing again in Japanese for a sell out crowd in the Fuji Big Top.

Surreal.

Zen King

Le Poisson Soluble

Then, on a day off, I went with my fellow clowns and an acrobat to see the Surrealist Exhibition at the Tokyo National Gallery.

It felt like the set up for a joke: “Three clowns and an acrobat walk into a Surrealist exhibition.” but it was really quite thorough and we were all inspired by both the work and the thought behind it.

How do you depict with vigor and accuracy an inner landscape, a world that is ultimately undepictable?

“Beloved imagination, what I most like in you is your unsparing quality.”

-Andre Breton

Apparently Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto was written as an article for Le Poisson Soluble. And there in a glass case was an actual copy. Tangible, real.

Yet what it was attempting was to somehow catch the Poisson Soluble, The Dissolving Fish.

And what could be more elusive than a fish that dissolves!

Cadavres Exquis

We attempted a few Surrealist inspired Cadavres Exquis, or Exquisite Corpses the next couple of days and clown alley became a kind of little artist colony.

Joining us in this experiment was our resident pick pocket Pierre Ginet, who did not accompany us to the exhibition but who is, let’s face it, French.

"If Hearts Could Tell" by (in descending order) Ron Campbell, Colin Heath, Pierre Ginet, Sean Kempton

"Breathe" by (in descending order) Colin Heath, Sean Kempton, Pierre Ginet, Ron Campbell

Un Obliged

Things are seeming a little less surreal now as Tokyo gains its equilibrium but flashes of that fine madness do surface occasionally. And I still get that odd feeling, just after I flash my pass at the security gate at the big top that the guard is going to stop me. He is going to say:

“Summimasen Sir. This is not your life. You are not about to perform for hundreds of people. You can’t just walk in here with your coffee cup in hand and your Parisian jacket. You are dreaming, sir. You have to go back to real life.”

But he never does.

And I keep walking.

"It is not the fear of madness which will oblige us to leave the flag of imagination furled."

-Andre Breton

Trying to find a middle ground.