I have this fab uncle: Uncle Toshio. He’s getting on a bit in years but his attitude is unchanged. He’s very stoic and very quiet with old fashioned thick rimmed specs and an expression that seems stony. But he can laugh with the best of them once something tickles him. When I’m around him I can’t stop bowing, and I bow low, and when I do it he looks embarrassed and always waves his hand and shakes his head smiling. He thinks I do it too much but I can’t help it because I am proud of him and I love him.
When I was a little girl and used to see him in Tokyo he would always take the opportunity to tell me stories. Now I guess almost everyone has a relative who tells them stories, but no one tells them like him. He studies folk-tales as a hobby so knows them inside and out, but he also had this way of telling them that pulled me right in. Inflections and facial expressions covered his words with delicious sweetness and thicken the atmosphere he was trying to convey. I would lean against him and be lost for what seemed like hours. I guess it was him that opened the door within me to sensuousness. My love of books and music, scents and weather began with him and when I show him my art or play him my music he still smiles, offers encouraging words and musses my hair as if I were still five years old. He is also a photographer. I have fond memories of him with his cameras and being a perfectionist I remember him taking ages to snap just one picture of a flower. I would encourage him to show me his snaps and was enthralled. Once again, I can trace beck my love of photography to his influence. He’s brilliant.
The big deal here is that he has bought me a camera! It arrived on my doorstep yesterday when I came home from work. I am speechless! He knows I will miss the short days as I do not like the sun so he reckons getting me a camera will give me something to use after work while it is light. I already have a couple of cameras, but not one as good as this! On the phone he said he wants some serious shots of London to send him so I need to get my act together with regards to composition. I want my pictures to make him smile as his made me smile. I can’t wait to get started.
I am very fortunate to have several relatives who influence me positively. I have also been lucky that my family don’t try to steer me in any one direction. They leave me to it and offer advice and criticism, especially criticism! I like criticism and want it to be as constructive as possible. No concerns with protecting my feelings by covering it up with a polite lie. I can see through that and I see it as disrespectful no matter how considerate the person thinks they are being. Abusive criticism obviously doesn’t reach me either. Treat me like this and I won’t bother speaking to you again. Why should I? I’m not a glutton for punishment because of others’ fears and insecurities. Life is essentially meaningless unless you induce some sort of dignity and honour to this big parade. Okay, we can learn and produce works of art and such, but on its own what you produce merely becomes a marketable product. If dignity and honour are included you learn something about yourself: whether it’s knowledge and respect for your gifts, or some internal discipline that you will never lose. Who knows when I will die. I don’t think I will miss anything and welcome death when it comes: it is the beginning of a whole new adventure as vague to us now as being born once was before we were alive. If something can come together enough to make something happen, then it must be a remarkable thing.
Just look at me. I was born human. Just look at all the examples of life that exist in this apparent reality. Being born human is a very rare event and somehow it happened to me. Not by my instigation, but by some ‘other’ thing. Okay, I’m human and all things human are not alien to me. Take all the things within and give them life through action and temper them in your own unique way. That is you. You cannot be anything but you. So do things and learn about yourself. It’s one thing to assume yourself with thoughts, quite another to know through living.
And, yes…my uncle Toshio also opened my eyes to this. 🙂
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What am I doing:
Books: The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini and All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West.
Music: The Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Dead Skeletons, The Asteroid #4, Jerome Froese, Tangerine Dream, Neu, Can.
Films: Tetsuo, Shimotsuma monogatari, Saibogujiman kwenchana
Television: Various programmes on sculpture.
My Eternal Funeral 