It was a rainy and slightly muggy Tuesday evening as I caught up with Ken Tanaka in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district. Amidst the neon blur of Shinjuku, we found ourselves enjoying Japanese “oden” and sharing some wonderful conversation. Thank you Ken for taking the time to meet up and converse.
I hope you will find the [...]
By jgrefe
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Posted in Creative Expression, Japanicity, People of Interest, Uncategorized
| Tags: Hawaii, Helpmefindparents, Japan, Japanese, Ken Tanaka, Shimane, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Youtube |
What is the symbolic complex and how does the symbolic complex transform for us the image of that person (how do we transform others through the symbolic)? Semiotician and Novelist Walker Percy, in his essay “The Loss of the Creature,” writes “Impossible to see: the thing as it is, has been appropriated by the symbolic [...]
Ten Sunday morning album recommendations for blissful passage and solitary contemplation. What they all hold in common for me is their ability to create a certain kind of mood, a dream-like state of almost cinematic beauty. Perhaps they will serve you well, too:
1. Harold Budd: La Bella Vista
2. Willits + Sakamoto: Ocean Fire
3. Daniel Lanois: [...]
By jgrefe
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Posted in Creative Expression, Sensual Culture
| Tags: anton fier, Arts, blind light, christopher willits, Composers, Composition, Daniel Lanois, david shea, David Sylvian, Fennesz, Harold Budd, Japan, Lanois, Music, naoshima, o yuki conjugate, phew, ryuichi sakamoto, Susumu Yokota, takagi masakatsu |
I have seen consultation sessions here in Japan where the client/student sit in enclosed silence while the therapist/teacher silently and patiently waits, neither saying a word until the end of the session. Perhaps it is through such silent meditation with another that we can truly penetrate to that internal space beyond spoken language, that beautiful [...]
By jgrefe
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Posted in Communication Studies, Person-Centered Therapy
| Tags: Carl Rogers, Communication, Education, empathy, Foreign language, Japan, Japanese language, Language, listening, Social Sciences, Study, tuning in |
Sometimes listening to a blissful piece of music needs to be done. Other times, walking needs to be done. The stimulus of the city can provide a necessary state of connection and so can basking in the moonlight in a silent place. The silence may bubble over with the communion of the night-insects. What do [...]
1.
Stagger, sway only into the last haul.
Jagged feet of my own that realize
such a haunting dread of displacement.
The self subsumed by currents, by the Bleak.
A path through the dense green thickness
and now an opening with branches like tendrils
tendons tickling scraping the face gently.
This, the first limping leg of the journey.
2.
And then, a gap, the [...]
Dripping shards of grass
The obfuscated sun-slime
of a bleak current
Encircle toward the Vague
If only to sink within
The shivering self
and a wind-whipped umbrella
I stumbled at last
Not so luminous under
a silk quilt epiphany
By jgrefe
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Posted in Creative Expression, Writings
| Tags: bleak, doom, Energy, Energy and Environment, Japan, nature, original, postmodern, Tanka, weather, wind |
Night cold hum and whistle from outside the window. A man standing too soft to see. The breeze floating once has now been stifled, shut off just a steady wave remains piercing the air, a dog whistle, a tone. Night cold hum and gristle from the dinnertime pork, the supple fat mashing between yellow teeth. [...]
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