Every Love is For Us

This is one of my son Kai's sculptures that he made four years ago in his grade ten art class at Victoria's Mt. Douglas High School. Kai has been sculpting since he was a toddler. While he was growing up, working with sculpting media was the only thing that was able to entertain him.  When Kai got to high school and had access to a kiln and limitless clay, he was in sculptor heaven.

At the time Kai told me that this sculpture was about loving. I think he called it "The Embrace". What I love about this sculpture is that at sixteen, my son was able to express through his art work what most of us middle aged folks are still struggling to become reconciled to. To choose to love is to wrap our arms around a person or a passion, and it is also a choice to be speared through the chest in the midst of the embrace. That fact is the balance of life.

I am not advocating for the pursuit of dysfunctional relationships, or telling you that being abused by a lover or friend or family member is your spiritual destiny, I am simply saying there is no love without injury, and there is no joy with out an equal amount of sorrow. It is the yin and yang of life. Light is what makes the shadow. The endurance of winter is what is required in order to welcome the arrival of spring.

I frequently listen to people verbally tantrum over this balance of life. They want the light but not the dark. They want the benefit but not the price. Whatever it is that they do not have, that is what they decide to want. They hate the discomfort of yin. They want a big pile of yang. And don't get me wrong, I've been there. I too have cried for the big pile of yang.

This is almost every conversation between close friends. We report on the things that are going well, and then we report on the things we don't like that are happening, as if we could separate them from each other. But all of these circumstances are actually one thing and it is called LIFE. That is why jealousy is so silly, because whatever that other person has that looks so good to us always comes with something that is equally unpleasant, something that we probably just don't know about.

Spring has arrived in Tokyo and I am enjoying the mild weather and natural beauty that surrounds me. I take quiet walks in the nearby forest and at the local shrine, and I am overwhelmed with gratefulness for my life here. In equality at times I am overwhelmed with how much I miss my family. It is the yin and yang of my life. I love my family a lot, but I also love Japanese people with an equally overwhelming passion.

NO! NUKES NO! WAR NO! EXPLOIT NO! FASCISM some musicians on the train last night with their guitars and their political opinions... the best part of watching them was how much they made each other laugh. they had love.

I am completely convinced that there are no people more magnificent than the Japanese people, and that is why it fills me with joy to spend my time in life using my gifts and talents to help improve the chances of Japanese children to fulfill their ultimate personal potential. By supporting Japanese children now, to fulfill their potential in the future, I believe that I am fulfilling mine. Whether I am quietly puttering about my apartment, or out and about on various escapades, I am constantly plotting ways to use my unique creativity to support more Japanese children in bigger and better ways, that I hope will eventually assist them to be of greater benefit to the world. Maybe this sounds like a lofty goal, but I like to be incredibly challenged on a daily basis. That is also why I chose to raise four children instead of two. I like to be busy and to do something that will have a lasting impact. I like to be in way over my head. Not everybody is able to be my friend because of my extreme personality, and because like everyone else, I also have as many demons as I have angels.

sakura over the dead

what's not to love?!

the kichijoji funk band i get to jam with

rishu and his mom at our favourite raman place

a tokyo salary man loaded down with his loves

   In February my sister got married to her longtime sweetheart, who is the father of one grown and two almost grown amazing children. We had such a unique and private celebration of their marriage, in our empty little country church, but for the two families gathered together to celebrate this beautiful love. It was so yin and so yang. I was overjoyed to be with my family, but my brother's grave was behind the church, reminding me that one of us hadn't made it this far. All of my children were there, being wonderfully talented and gorgeous, singing a song my sister had written for the wedding, but their father was absent, and that was my fault, by divorcing him, which made me sad. But I was also so happy, because I was with my family and because I have this fantastic life in Japan, and all of this is ultimately because there is no happy without sad. Nobody gets to ditch the parts of life that hurt. Life is the dancer, we are all just doing our best to play the music of being ourselves with as much integrity as is possible.

My parents were attending their beautiful daughter's  wedding together, at peace with one another, after years of conflict, an unhappy marriage and a traumatic divorce. The balance of life. They had endured the hard stuff, and this was their reward.

This got me thinking about the purpose of love, asking questions like "Is the primary goal of love for things to work out between two people the way that they had hoped them to?" and not just with romantic love, but with every love we share with one another, our friendships, our family relationships, and even our mad crushes. Or is the purpose of love something all together different than the pressure we put upon it?

just before the ceremony, kai is on my right, my parents are on either side of the bride and groom, my older children are to their grandfather's left in a row of three. all others in the photo are the wonderful groom's beautiful children and lovely parents.

where my brother john was, we had a very cold candle lit toast over his grave after the ceremony.

I am beginning to conclude that the purpose of love is not for our personal satisfaction or emotional happiness, although those things can certainly be a wonderful perk within our loving relationships. But I am suspecting that the ultimate purpose of love is creativity and transformation. I think that love is meant to bring people together in order to create a life experience with one another, an experience that will ultimately transform them into their wiser and deeper selves.

What if love, every love, is always, ALWAYS a gift, including the loves that result in our greatest heart breaks and our most desecrated bank accounts? Why would we regret any love? For example, so many important and hugely contributing members of the human race would not have existed were it not for the love and physical passion of some of the most ill matched and miserable couples to have ever copulated. Those loves should not be regretted.

my daughters

And there are so many other things that are created by people who love each other, by friends or lovers who take on projects, or support each other in all sorts of ways, projects that are beautiful and contributing to this world, by friends or lovers who may at some point part ways with one another in terrible disappointment.

And what about the catastrophic loves? The loves that embarrass us the most? Those can be the most transforming loves of all. Those epic fail loves can actually catapult us into heights of wisdom and prudence we would previously never have imagined as possible for ourselves.

Love inspires creativity and it has the capacity to transform us into being far more than we were before that love took us on its hazardous journey. If every love is for us, including the ones that are not happily ever after, including the uncomfortable loves with family members or friends who end up estranged from us, then nothing needs to be wasted when we are determined to find the benefit within it. We know there is always a yin for every yang, so we don't need to be surprised when the hard stuff comes up. And in regard to jealousy, we should never wish for somebody else's yang, because it would only come with an equal yin, one that we might not have the strength for. Instead we can be grateful for our own balance of joys and sorrows in life. For our every moment, our every tear, our every smile, and for our every love.

father of the bride... way more entertaining than any movie ever made

For me my sister's wedding was not only about the love of the bride and the groom, the wedding was about every love represented that day. The love of the groom's parents, whom danced together at the reception, letting their hair down to celebrate the marriage of the eldest of the seven children they had raised together in a marriage that had lasted their entire adult lives. It was also about the love represented by my children's presence, the sorrow of my failed marriage, and the glaring absence of their father, and it was about the love I have for myself that required me to tragically end that marriage. It was about the love of my brother who was there in his own way. It was about the love of the newly deemed cousins celebrating their official status, and it was the love of my sister as a step mother to her flock of beloveds. It was about the love of the community that protected the church from being sold off as threatened a few years ago, allowing us to have this beautifully private occasion in this sacred place, and the love of friends that had allowed the bride and groom to stay for the weekend in their beach house, which added so much relaxation to the weekend. It was about the love between my parents whom after such a terrible ordeal of disappointed love, were standing together giving their daughter away in marriage to the sound of her and her sister and their grandchildren singing and making beautiful music in the same place that they had christened her as a baby. I could see how my parents were overwhelmed to the point of holding back tears. That was such a beautiful moment to me, because it powerfully echoed my thought that every love is for us. 

click on the link below if you want to see the bride's family singing to the grooms family <3

my sister's wedding,video of us singing

For some reason, I absolutely love that we are singing and the church pews are empty.

me and some beautiful j babies, i believe these are the future solvers of our world energy crisis puzzle, canadians like my mother can stop the pipeline by standing outside the liquor store with petitions, and in the meantime i will prepare these geniuses with the skills they need to bring their engineering brilliance onto the world stage. let's get things done!

i is a pixie

i is a pixie
by Kristin Ormiston
December 4, 2013


i is a pixie, i's sorry but its true.
i is a pixie, sure as yous be you.
they said me was a pixie, at brownies one day.
beside the mirror pond, on the floor in brentwood bay.

i is a pixie, i's crossed over when i's seven.
i's been a pixie since, though i's confused 'round 'leven.
when they said me was a pixie, i took them vows to heart.
from the spirit of the chant we learned, i never did depart.

us pixie folks are for fixin' things, and we's jolly when things go wrong.

which oft' happens to us pixies, our list o' trouble, it be long.
at first we have a great big cry, o'er misfortunes and ugly strife.
and then we gets our joy back, by fixin' 'what just ain't right'.

.

we's got no reason to be happy, its not about things we've got.
because lots of us is poor, or in the worst of lots.
but we's jolly anyhows, like a rebel against the foe.
can't stop a pixie from dancing, ain't no matter what her woes.

she hears the music in the trees, she smells it in the ground.
the colours of the dying leaves, send her body twirling 'round.
the pixie's ma gets so afraid, she cuts off the daughter's hair.
but the pixie grows it back again, because she knows it wasn't fair.

you can't stop a pixie from dancing, or keep her close when she needs to go.
and she's a creature of the greatest vanity that you will ever, ever know.
at first you'll find her charming, you'll want to keep her for yourself.
but a pixie belongs to nobody, she's just a jolly fixer who loves to help.

if you want to meet a pixie, she'll be smiling in a pile of muck.
she'll be sorting out folks, one by one, and extra lovin' on the ones most stuck.
she'll be primpin' and preenin' like a right proud bird, ever looking to strut her stuff.
most'll forgive her for her swaggerin' ways, because they sees her heart, and its enough.

i is a pixie, i's sorry but its true.
i is a pixie, sure as yous be you.
they said me was a pixie, at brownies one day.
beside the mirror pond, on the floor in brentwood bay.


the end

Some background on pixies;

The Traditional Brownie Club Pixie Chant:

"Look out, we're the jolly Pixies, Helping people when in fixes"

Kristin's pixie testimony; " I was formally inducted into my pixie hood by the Brentwood Bay Brownie Club in 1976. Of course one is actually 'born a pixie' and some of us never even attended Brownies, because being a pixie is not about being a Brownie, being a pixie is having the inborn spirit of being a cheeky and joyful helper in this world. Most pixies don't "remember" that they are actually pixies until they mature into their truest life callings. That is not to invalidate my formal induction into my own pixie hood through Brownies, because it was the right path for me, but there are many paths to pixie hood, each of them as valid as the other. For me, due to my wonderful childhood experiences as a young pixie who attended Brownies, I would like to thank my Brentwood Bay Brown Owl for the encouragement to continue the good and jolly fixing activities, and for the inspirational craft making opportunities."

In regard to my recent "coming out" as a pixie photo shoot and costume, Special thank yous to Peter Blake , Tokyo photographer specializing in sports and live music performance photography for the adventurous forest photo shoot, and to Melanie Uematsu  Tokyo seamstress, instructor, and clothing designer for the inspiring costume. Your work is amazing, kudos to both of you! Thank you for making this incredibly vain pixie look so fantastic... 

Last weekend I was using the Genesis Cards created by Liane Wakabayashi to explore a very important question in my life. In response, out of the 44 face down cards, I subconsciously selected the Inspiration card. When I saw the inspiration card I cried, because it was such an accurate answer to my question. Later I was fascinated by how closely the art on the Inspiration card matched the above image of myself, a photo that gave me very mixed feelings when I looked at it from the shoot. When I first saw the photo, I did not want my eyes to be closed and I did not like how the lighting shows the scar on my face from the cancer removal surgery. In consideration of the matching card, I wondered if perhaps to reach our deepest creative inspiration, we need to surrender that control, that "eyes wide open" part of ourselves, as well as let the imperfections and scars that display the difficult places we have been in life be seen. And what if when we embrace what is, and what has been even if it isn't not what we had planned or hoped for, it leads us to the path to greatest inspiration of all? Those are some pixie thoughts.

I Stepped on my Duck

When I was a very little girl, around the size that I am in this photograph, I had my very own pet duck. My parents were raising my brother John and I on our idyllic 3 acre hobby farm just outside the beautiful 'garden city' of Victoria. My sister Katie would not make her unexpected entrance into the world for another five years.

It was such an exciting childhood to have farm animals, even if at times it was a bit scary. We had a large horned milk cow named Opal who would charge at us if we displeased her, and an overly protective rooster that would jump onto our shoulders and peck at our heads if he was in a bad mood when we went into the hen house to collect eggs. My favourite animal experience on the farm, aside from growing up with a black lab named Satan, was having my very own duck.

Perhaps you question the memory of a child so small, but if you ask my mother she will tell you that I remember more about my early childhood than she does. I remember everything. I remember my painful ear infections that resulted in middle of the night hospital visits while wearing footed toddler pajamas. I remember my best friend's grandmother's extremely large boosoms darting out toward me in torpedo shaped bras veiled in cotton gardening blouses while she watched after me in her garden when I was only a preschooler. I even remember asking myself my first existential question at two years old after I threw an empty bottle at the bedroom door from the crib in frustration over my mother's lack of a refill service. I laid on my back, took a deep breath, stared out the window and wondered, "Am I REALLY here, or is this just somebody else's dream?" after which I began to imagine that I was just a character inside the dream of another being's consciousness. I repeated asking myself this question through out my childhood and I could never determine if life was actually real or just some sort of a story being told by another.

But back to more important topics like my pet duck. He was ADORABLE. He was a baby duck, just a tiny little creature whom for some reason after he cracked open his egg, believed that I was his mother. Every day when I went out into the farm yard this little baby duck followed me round. I'd sit in the sand pile with my cars and my sand castle building toys. We had no box, just an open pile of sand from one of my father's unfinished cement pouring sessions. The baby duck would sit with me adoringly while I 'worked'. When I would go into the house at the end of the day, my mother would return the duck to his proper flock. Neither the duck nor I realized that my family's plan was for his family to eventually become duck dinners. Free from this knowledge, the baby duck would trustingly follow me down the driveway to visit that nearby grandmother with the torpedo boosoms in her garden full of pansies, or he would go down into the field with me to play chicken with the large horned milk cow. It was true love for both of us, for me and my duck.

This is an unceremoniously short story because one day, I accidentally stepped on my duck. I killed the damned thing. I was heart broken. At the tender age of two, I made a mistake and somebody died. My baby duck was dead. He was irretrievably deceased after only one moment of absence to my otherwise constant baby duck conscientiousness . I can still feel the pang of remorse, the horrific realization of my crime, the obsessive desire to go back in time in order to take back my terrible misstep and to save the life of my beloved pet duck.

I would like to say that I really learned my lesson on that day, and that I never made a mistake like that again. I'd like to say that stepping on that duck  made me a better person or some such thing. But the truth of the matter is that I still step on ducks. I don't mean to, I try very hard not to, but occasionally it happens and an accidental metaphoric duck crushing event transpires. A dead duck is every bit as upsetting to me now as it was to me when  I was only two. I wonder about the purpose of it. Why do ducks have to die? Why do we accidentally step on delicate things that break? Then I lay on my bed and I take a deep breath and I look out my window and I wonder, "Am I really here, or is this just somebody else's dream?"

The sun setting at a campsite on the Izu Peninsula in August

Me watching the sunset over the ocean 42 years after the first dead duck

Keep Going Sister

My brother John died last month. The day after his funeral which I did not return to Canada for, I went on a camping vacation to probably the most incredible place I have ever visited away from the glorious gorgeousness of my own province. I went camping on a small volcanic island off of the Izu Peninsula called Niijima. The campsite was free and I was surrounded by a back drop of geographical beauty, joyful surfers surfing, and a group of creatively inspiring hula hoopers hooping. It was in the midst of this overwhelming outer good fortune that I was processing my own greatest inner turmoil both in personal circumstances and in state of mind.

Life is complicated. Death is complicated. Sibling relationships are complicated. Love is complicated. Creating our own physical and emotional health is complicated. Putting up 'boundaries' is complicated. Having a schizophrenic brother is complicated. To be honest, sometimes I am just really `gosh darned` tired of how freaking complicated it all is. But we can`t give up right? or so I am told by good friends.

Who is a person's brother to them? For every person it is a different relationship, as unique as the individuals involved and the circumstances of life they find themselves born into. Some of us don't even have a brother, so perhaps they dream of an idyllic relationship with the brother they wished to have had, sort of like a single person dreams of an idyllic relationship with a partner they wish for.  In my case I had a real brother, a complicated one. I arrived in this world two years and three months after him. It was just John and Kristin until seven years later when we both won the lottery with the arrival of our surprise baby sister Katie.

My older brother's hand was probably the first I ever held on a regular basis, but only when we were terribly small toddlers, as ours was not to be an affectionate or pleasant relationship. I adored him, but the feeling was never mutual. I like to think that during the short time when I was still a baby that my brother John didn't mind me, because from my earliest recollection, my brother did not like me at all, ever. My brother was a reserved and intelligent person, and although wonderfully friendly to others, it was no secret that I was his nemesis. I was an overtly expressive little girl who received a lot of attention from strangers over my beautiful coloured eyes and my avid interest in connecting with the people who crossed my path. But as far as my intellect, I was never in the running for any sort of academic awards and my brother`s aptitude in math was always a great mystery to me.

my eyes forty years later, surrounded by the beautiful eyes of younger women on niijima

In our teens my brother was wonderful with our grandparents and all older people, whereas I loved children and thought elderly people were grey haired kill joys. John and I were night and day. Probably the only thing we shared was our love for and giftedness in music, something that our baby sister Katie would also inherit from both of our ill matched and soon to be divorced parents. But John even hated the way that I sang and used to scold me for it. Now that he is dead, I think I can safely say that I really don`t think there was one thing that my brother John ever liked about me, except that I moved to Japan.

In 2010 when I moved to Japan and my brother John said goodbye to me, he gave me a large and genuine hug. It surprised me. We had long ago negotiated an unspoken truce between us, but when I left for Japan I could actually sense his sincere well wishes for me as I embarked on my great adventure to a country that my family has always had a love for and fascination with. Twenty seven years ago John had embarked on a similar adventure. He went off to Europe and North Africa and worked in England in order to explore and make his own way in the world. It was during his two year international adventure that his schizophrenia appeared, the mental illness that he would suffer from for twenty five years. Schizophrenia, the medical condition that would isolate him from his friends and his dreams and his aptitudes and his potential for success.

family send off to tokyo october 2010, the day i got the HUG

If I had thought that John`s and my relationship had been challenging when we were kids, our relationship as he navigated every day with a devastating mental illness, was even more difficult. But we kept going. We were a brother and sister with completely opposite lives. I had the weight and wealth of responsibilities of raising four children at a very young age, my fourth child was born to me when I was only 24. John had the responsibility of trying to stay alive, and managing his episodes of psychosis, followed by a strict regime of medication and dealing with their many side effects. I watched his journey, he watched mine. We were brother and sister, two years and three months apart.

24 and 26, a mother of four and a young man after five years of schizophrenia 

The misfortune and losses of my brother`s life are too extensive and depressing to fully list, but I was witness to how he kept going. The fact that he carried on despite of everything was ultimately how he won my admiration. It was the most difficult on my mother who would become repetitively distressed as she witnessed her son`s world becoming smaller and smaller. She was understandably tortured by the upset of him suffering from the medication side effects of his parkinsons like tremors, shaking so badly that it was hard for him to feed himself, in additional to the diseases of cancer and diabetes which were added to what John had to deal with. What upset her the most was that he spent almost all of his time alone. I don`t know when we all understood and accepted that John would never finish his degree in sociology, or have a proper career worthy of his intellect, or raise a family, or be fit and healthy and play music the way that he used to. It was one loss at a time. I guess we all just kept going.

Something that has been interesting to me since John`s death is realizing what happens when a family group carries a member who is sick for many years. When that family member dies without warning, the group is disorientated. That person who needed us, to whom we were so important to has suddenly vanished. Twenty five years of our family group`s journey has included taking care of, and including, and being concerned about a person who was mentally ill. By his death, although it was of natural causes, the physically weakest person in our family group who in some ways defined us, has abandoned us. What do we do now without our person to carry? Who are we without our John?

John has always made me re evaluate my thoughts about what we each `contribute`in this world. I cannot imagine raising my four children without a schizophrenic uncle, as he so greatly contributed to who they are so far as developing their compassion and kindness toward others. Using his intelligent mind to converse with each of them while caught inside of a shaking and suffering body, my brother John taught my children to respect all people, including those in unfortunate circumstances.

Now that my brother`s life journey is over and the story of his spirit has been told, it feels like I have a greater amount of responsibility to tell the stories that are mine and yet to unfold. John`s death at 46 sent me into a crisis about my own life, about where I should be, and about what I should be doing with the story of life that I have been given to tell.

I had to take everything apart and figure out if I should return to Canada to be with my family in the immediate coming years, or if I should stay in Japan. It has been a long long time since my big brother John has held my hand, but by him leaving this world last month, as I faced a future without him, my hand has never felt emptier.

So there I was on Niijima at a Hula Hooper retreat in one of the most beautiful settings in the world, trying to sort out what to do with my life again. Fortunately I was with my Jewish friend Liane Wakabayashi, an artist and a writer who created the Genesis Cards. The Genesis Cards are these wonderfully beautiful tools that can be used to facilitate creativity and life direction through the intuitive process. http://www.genesiscards.com/ With the Genesis Cards Liane patiently helped me use my intuition to map out my life direction.

My assumption that I should leave Japan was clarified as a ruse. I will stay in Japan. It seems that I have more stories to live out in this great country. I feel grateful and excited for all that comes next for me, even though I also feel deep sadness that I don`t have a brother back home anymore. Keep going sister. That is how I feel about my life when I think of my dearly departed brother John. In the beauty of the earth I hear John saying `Keep going sister.`

Scroll down to see related videos. One from Niijima, and one from Canada.

The music festival on Niijima with the surfers and the hoopers

My younger sister`s song `If I`m not Dead`with her band Pawnshop Diamond in Vancouver

top photo gratitude to Rob Moreno

The Things that Break Us

Oshika Peninsula Miyagi Tohoku

Today is the last day of March. Winter has confirmed its reprieve and the sakura cherry blossoms are  in their full and glorious bloom. It is the season of new beginnings, of school year starts, and for gathering in parks with friends and family for picnics and outdoor baseball games. March is also the anniversary month of Japan's Great East Earthquake. Two years ago the earth broke Japan while the world heard and watched it being shattered via live aerial footage. All of Japan has been affected economically by the break, with an estimated recovery cost of $309 billion, the most expensive natural disaster in the world, but the people of Tohoku are the ones who have had to live with in the circumstances of the country's brokenness every day since, including coping with the memories and terrible traumas of the events that transpired immediately after and continued during the initial weeks after the disaster.

This month I had the opportunity to visit the Oshika Peninsula, one of the areas that was hardest hit by the earthquake and tsunami, a body of land estimated to be 17 feet farther to the East since the quake. The land on Oshika has also dropped by over a meter making previously beautiful sandy beaches a memory as they are now submerged under the tide. On the streets where there were once homes and businesses there are now only remnants of empty lots with cement pads that used to be foundations. The land is owned by local residents currently staying temporary housing units. The owners are not permitted to rebuild their homes because their land is now too low in relation to the sea.

 I went up to Oshika in order to 'volunteer' in hopes of being a little bit helpful, but mostly I was just reminded that I am a complete idiot comparative to those who are walking out their lives after being broken by the earth.

Caroline Pover, an active leader in local recovery efforts on Oshika and the mastermind of brilliant practical help projects such as school uniform sponsorships and the 'free store' gave us a tour of the peninsula. One of the other volunteers mentioned that her husband had visited Tohoku shortly after the quake. A resident living in the disaster area told her Japanese husband that he felt that Japan had been split in two on 3/11. He said that now there are two Japans; the Japan that experienced the disaster face to face and now understands the meaning of life, and the Japan outside of the disaster zone that does not yet understand the meaning of life. This comment made me wonder what it might be like to understand the meaning life, and how that wisdom looks to have come at the most terrible of prices.

It also made me think about the kinds of things that break the rest of us, those who aren't living in an area that has been hit by a natural disaster. It made me wonder if the things that break us are also the things that are bringing us closer to understanding the meaning of life, perhaps considerably more slowly than the residents of broken Japan. The events and circumstances that break us regular people, like the untimely death of a person or animal or business who is a center piece within our world, and the things from our pasts like being victimized by a person in a position in power over us when we were vulnerable, or the separation from a person we love due to circumstances, or being estranged from family members or friends, or an addiction that is drowning us, or the impractical messy things like unwelcome long lasting economic hardships that devour our best efforts to provide for ourselves or our families,  or illnesses and injuries that take us away from our loved ones and our dreams, and events of the heart like a lover's abandonment, or a partner's betrayal, or deeply loving while not at all being loved. Those kinds of experiences of not having the things that we really really need in life whether they be economic, physical, practical, or emotional can sometimes break us on the inside the way that the earth broke Japan from the inside out in Tohoku two years ago.

In the disaster hit areas of Japan where it is estimated that nineteen thousand people lost their lives and where ninety thousand people are currently residing in temporary shelters instead of in the buildings that until two years ago they called their homes, people have gone without many of the things that they really needed and yet because so they seem to know something that the rest of us don't.  What meaning of life can we also come to know by our comparative lesser brokenness and what can we learn from this part of Japan that already 'gets it'?

In addition to visiting Miyagi twice this month, I have also been hosting an old friend from home who is visiting Japan. He and I attended school together from the age of  twelve and we were always both a bit broken. His brokenness was manifested in the perfect combination of hilarious hyperactivity with intellectual brilliance that resulted in frequent detentions in Mt. Newton Middle School's supplementary desk next to the janitor in the bowels of the boiler room.  My brokenness was more along the lines of being a religious zealot, which was and is so much less cool. While this friend of mine was here visiting I wondered who each of us would be if we hadn't both been a bit broken from life.  Is it even possible to separate ourselves from our brokenness, and therefore is it possible to separate the people of Tohoku from everything they have endured together over these last two years?  Who is Japan without this busted up part of it that still struggles with the very basics of life, where idiots like me visit in an attempt to be of  some 'help' like we did last week throwing in a couple of extra hands for the local seaweed harvest, or a few weeks earlier by cheering up the residents with live music and an art workshop? And should we attempt to help anyways, even if they are so much the wiser than ourselves?

Artist Liane Wakabayashi and I at the workshop

 I think it is important to try to help, even if we are not of as much use as we would hope. Because I think it is important for the people who are living with the long term consequences of 3/11 to know that the other part of Japan, the part that does not yet understand the meaning of life, is still their Japan, and that they are not forgotten amongst the members of the rest of their beautiful country or by the rest of the world. Our visiting faces assure them that they are remembered as is  their struggle to recover some sort of normality. No we do not understand it, and we will never equal them in their wisdom, but they continue to be loved by us, and love as each of us knows, is always the very most important thing, even and especially between those of us who have always been a bit broken. 

Portraits

Twelve months ago I meandered into a stand up drinking bar in Shibuya by accident, because I had a bit of extra time in the late afternoon, and because it seemed like an interesting place to be. I had been living in Tokyo for three months and had just come through an unreasonable series of travails. Still weak and recovering from a bad bout of pneumonia that had seen me hospitalized a few weeks earlier, and only arriving in the country six weeks before that, I was still completely and passionately in love with the enormous city of Tokyo, a place  that seemed to pull to it my kind of people; creative, eccentric, and brave souls. Being happy hour, the bar began to fill up with an equal collection of Japanese and expatriates who were winding down from a long day out on the job. It was there and then that I met the talented photographer Alfie Goodrich, who would more importantly become my friend. Alfie was with another photographer, and the two of them and myself began a fascinating and humorous conversation with an interesting young journalist from America who spoke with a strong Southern accent. 

Sometimes you meet people that you understand very quickly, and who understand you. Alfie and I were like that. We were born in the same year, 1969. We were the baby busters who arrived on this planet after all of those baby boomers had already blazed their path to greatness and used up a considerable amount of resources in doing so. Both of us understood what it is like to get to the table too late for the big helping of easy come opportunities. Alfie and I also had the shared history of being freelancing artists, him as a photographer and me as a performer, who had managed the pressures of supporting children without the security of being an employee. Pursuing your professional passion when it is only your own provision that you are risking is one thing, but to pursue your passion with a small crowd of foot growing dependents that need supper every night, that is a more complicated and costly type of bravery. 

After discovering that we had a lot in common, Alfie suggested that we do an exchange of talent. He would photograph me and I would write an article about portraits for his website Japanorama. This would also allow me to meet his beautiful family. About a week later the two of us did the planned portrait shoot and I got to spend an afternoon with the Goodriches. I even got to take a nap in the kids room before eating the delicious supper that his wife prepared for us that evening, because people who are recovering from pneumonia need a lot of naps. Supper with the Goodriches was actually my first meal shared in a home since I had arrived in Japan. Until that evening for almost four months my every meal had been in isolation, in public, or in a hospital bed. 

During the photoshoot before my nap and supper with the Goodriches, I was surprised at how quickly and accurately Alfie was able to capture the images that expressed what I was feeling. Before we got together I had confided in Alfie about some of the things that were happening in my life and what I wanted to say in the portrait. At that time it had taken everything I had within me in order to survive and to overcome the initial circumstantial difficulties that met me upon my arrival in Japan, the place where I felt so passionately it was my destiny to be. My youngest son was eighteen and back in Canada living in a small apartment on my friend's property during his grade twelve year. The trials I was encountering in Japan were making it hard for me to predict my long term situation and my ability to provide for him. Popular opinion back home was that I should give up on things working out in Japan and return to Canada. However after almost dying by myself on my apartment floor in a city full of strangers a few weeks earlier, and experiencing fever induced hallucinations, and honestly being terrified that my young adult children were possibly hours away from not having a mother anymore, I had come to believe, possibly for the first time in my life, that I was actually an incredibly important person. Since those scary moments of facing my mortality I  believed that I was important enough to pursue my dream of having a life in Japan where I felt I could be of much greater benefit to others than in a dead end local job back in Canada. It was in consideration of the way that I was feeling, stronger than ever in spirit, albeit still needing frequent naps due to my physical state, that I wanted Alfie to record those emotions visually through the medium of a photographic portrait. I wanted him to capture my feelings of spiritual strength during a time of physical weakness. I knew that I did not need to return to Canada. I knew that I just needed to be myself, to stick some tough things out, and to believe that things would work themselves out, which they did. 

A brilliant photographer and a beautiful person, Alfie put into images the sentiments that I was feeling. He helped me to express that I was not ashamed to be who I am, to pursue what I feel is my fate, and to ask for and to receive help along the way to it. The photographs that Alfie took remind me that I am an intense woman who resides in a physical form that reflects exactly who I am; strong, solid, mature, feminine, and non apologetically passionate. I do not behave in a way that has a stamp of socially accepted responsibility on it. Instead my life is about learning, experimentation, and the determination to be of the greatest benefit possible to others by using my talents and accepting and rejoicing in the life experiences that are uniquely mine while following the exact pursuits that bring my soul the greatest amount of joy. I found almost dying while alone in a foreign country a wonderful reminder of such things and I am grateful for every single circumstantial trial that met me upon my arrival in Japan. Those experiences made me a stronger and more determined person. 

The above would make a wonderful conclusion to what happened when Alfie and I collaborated on a portrait session, however there is more to the story that makes those photographs from one year ago even more meaningful to me. The unexpected and unpleasant event of having plastic surgery on my face four months ago due to a cancer diagnosis has permanently altered my appearance. I will never again have the scar free face that Alfie photographed. How much more precious to have those Alfie Goodrich images now that I am temporarily disfigured and awaiting my physical healing and long term facial changes as created by my plastic surgeon? Alfie and my portrait session and the circumstances that followed reminded me of the importance of grabbing the moments of now, to work with the artists and circumstances that are available to us in each moment in order to create what we can, when we can, things that may no longer be available to us in the future. I believe it is the fleetingness of opportunities that makes our 'now's so precious. Thank you Alfie for grabbing that winter now with me and for giving me the gift of documenting images of my strength and beauty in Tokyo in January of 2012. You are a wonderful artist and I consider myself privileged to have been photographed by you and to call you my friend.

To see more of Alfie's amazing photography click on the links below;

More of Alfie's work

A couple of roosters meet up in Tokyo 

trying out those crazy ass japanese boots... not so much

The Good the Bad and the Ugly

I really really wish that I was only a super wonderful person. This is not a self esteem problem, this is a reconciliation to reality problem. Because although sometimes I am a super wonderful person, there are other times that I am neither super nor wonderful.

I would like to be only super and wonderful the same way that I wish that life were always happy and filled with the experiences that I seek each day instead of the ones that are trial some. I have noticed that most of us like to categorize everything into a good box and a bad box. We like to fill up and sit inside of the good box, while shooing away anything less than pleasant over and into the bad box, the one that we want to drive off and drop off at somebody else's house, preferably at one of those bad people's houses. But as far as I can tell, life is not only good or only bad, and neither are we. My observation is that all of us have beauty, all of us have blessings, all of us have pain, all of us have travails, and all of us behave in ways that we later regret, especially when we find ourselves caught in the wrong set of combined circumstances. Those times when unfortunate events seem to pile up on us in a way that makes us feel terrified or furious or out of control are like terrible storms that bombard our souls. Everybody gets caught in a storm now and then because there is no set of rules we can follow in order to avoid all of the pressures that life throws at us. President Clinton later referred to his infamous Oval Office sex scandal as a time in his life when he was under incredible external pressure that resulted in him winning a battle for the country while losing a battle for his family. We have all had moments when a storm blew in and our piles of sandbags were breached resulting in things that we loved getting washed away or damaged.

A few weeks ago Storm Sandy hit the East Coast of North America with a vengeance. Some terrible things happened in those communities as a result of a bizarre and random set of combined barometric pressures and powerful weather systems. But when you look at the image of Storm Sandy from space it is actually quite beautiful. How could something so destructive simultaneously hold a form a beauty? I think it is because every thing and every person has both an element of beauty and an element of ugliness, or a shadow. I don't like this fact of life because I only want to be beautiful. I only want to be the super and wonderful person that I am when life is running smoothly. I hate that I am also one of those bad people that I want to put in the bad box and send away to that bad person's house. I hate that I lose my temper. I hate that I have a jealous streak. I hate that I am self righteous and stubborn. I hate that I am incredibly self absorbed and at times insensitive to the feelings and needs of others. But so far as I can tell, this is life. Each of us like Storm Sandy are simultaneously beautiful and ugly. 

This concept of beauty with ugliness, light with shadow, can also transfer to the way we feel about the things in life that we automatically put into the bad box. One of my favourite pass times is people watching. Here in Gotemba we have an Outlet Mall, an ideal place for people watching. Shoppers come from Tokyo and other areas to spend the day buying things in a quiet and peaceful setting. A few weeks ago when I visited there with a friend I noticed a young couple with their only child. She was about ten years old and severely handicapped. They were having a day out as a family at the Outlet Mall, a place that their daughter's wheelchair could easily be pushed around. The mother was connecting her daughter's feeding tube as the other shoppers were going into the Food Court while avoiding looking at the handicapped child. This young couple had things that most of us would put into the bad box, a child so severely handicapped that she could not even be fed orally. Who would want that life? But as I watched the couple they were actually having a really wonderful day together as a family. It made me wonder about the secret beauty that might be hidden inside of that storm, the moments of love that they may be sharing with a very special little girl. I wondered about who that little girl had transformed her parent's into due to all of the physical challenges she faces every day. I wondered if perhaps these two people should actually be envied rather than automatically pitied. 

Later that afternoon I went into the Prada store. The items inside were undeniably gorgeous. I could not help but enjoy the beauty of the quality fabrics and designs. It would be impossible not to be excited to bring something home from that store as it would be an experience of owning and touching and having something beautiful. But while I was looking at the clothing I noticed that there was nothing in that store that would have actually fit my bodacious and curvy physique. Apparently Prada, as well as the other extremely expensive stores where we are supposed to envy the financial ability to shop in, do not have any clothing for a woman who has any other body type than that of a stereotypical display mannequin. Am I really supposed to wish that I could be this prototype of what has been culturally decided as desirable and elite? And why would I want to be in this elite social status when achieving what I am supposed to want looks to me like a tremendous amount of internal stress and pressure toward attempting a life style of perfection in order to look good to others. The constant attention and effort toward a supposedly perfect appearance that creates an experience of being envied by those with less social and economic power looked incredibly burdensome to me in that Prada store. I saw the shadow of having what is also beautiful. I would still love to own something from Prada and I am not saying that having beautiful things is less moral or undesired, I am only saying that there is also a measure of pain, a burden that comes with having what other people envy and that there is a dark side to every experience of light.

This made me wonder if we should automatically pity the parents of the severely handicapped little girl while envying the people who can afford and fit into the high end designer clothing? And if we might be wasting our time chasing an evasive kind of happiness while the most peaceful people on the Outlet Mall grounds are quietly connecting a feeding tube while being thankful for gently slanted concrete walkways? And is it possible that all of us are actually equal, that we are all having our own varied experiences of joys and sorrows, beauty and ugliness, light and shadows, whether it is coping with the emotional stress of self imposed pressure to attempt perfection or whether it is coping with the challenges of finding places you can easily walk around with a little person in a wheelchair? 

This makes me question my attitudes toward others, especially the bad people, as perhaps they are not the bad people at all. Perhaps they are simply people who have been caught in many terrible storms and not given enough love when they were young and vulnerable. And as much as I would only like to be one of the good people, I know that I am both beautiful and ugly. I am light and darkness. My self absorbed, stubborn, self righteous, and jealous streak is as intact as ever. Can I be reconciled to my own humanity and can I use it to give me more empathy toward the humanity of others? 

What kind of life can I create by including those things in my bad box, the things that make me sad, the unwelcome events, the things that I want to send away because they cause me pain? Maybe I need to stop trying to send that bad box away and start being grateful for those shortcomings and life heart aches because they help me to find joy in the little things, the things like the beauty of a full moon every month, the same way that the young couple at the Outlet Mall found joy in the smoothly raised cement walkways.

Maybe life is less about having things like relationships, security, or desired circumstances, and more about what we can create for ourselves and others by being a whole person, a person who accepts that they have good, bad, and ugly parts. Perhaps that is why I should not automatically pity the parents with the severely handicapped child, or envy the person who's lifestyle meets the target market of a Prada store. Neither life is all good or all bad, both are about becoming and about learning. Everybody's life experience has value and maybe accepting our own humanity and failures and life circumstances enables us to accept the humanity and failures and misfortune of others in order to create more forgiveness, compassion, and kindness in this world. Maybe the things in our bad boxes are our secret treasures. I like this idea. It makes getting cancer on your face seem pretty lucky.

link to seeing sandy from space