The sun sets in the far west.  We are never at the location were the sun dips behind the bending horizon, we are only able to chase the dream with our sight.  For many people the sun going down is the end of the day, and in some respect it is.  I am not alone in the view that the setting sun is the beginning of the day.

It is a difficult concept to wrap our heads around when we are bombarded with technical information 24 hours a day.  We live in society that keeps time to the billionth of a second.  This unnatural time keeping has caused society to be out of sync with the world.  Modern society prefers to keep it’s rhythm to the ping of a smartphone rather than the song of a cicada.  Our ancestors used the movement of  heavenly bodies to keep time.  They watched the heavens for the their time keeping.

I struggle to keep time as our ancestors did.  Does it make sense for a day to begin in the middle of the night?  I prefer to think of the day from sundown to sundown, when I can.  Even though it goes against what most of society is doing, it helps me to keep connected to my roots in this age of streaming digital ones and zeros.

It is quite simple the sun sets, the day begins.

As the day begins, our lives continue on the paths that we have set for our selves.  I will build a path from roughly hewn stones and earth.  Building the path that suits who I am.  It will be my path to build and journey on.  It is only beginning.

The rain was falling at just a slight patter as I passed this lovely house for an untold time.  It has caught my lens many times before.  I love the way in which the ivy has become a part of the house.  The ivy is not a separate entity that can simply be divided from the house.  It is part of its soul.

The ivy has creeped its way onto all the surfaces of the house.  It has finally met its match when it encountered the mailbox.  There the mailbox has been hung.  It waits for the mail that may or may not come.  The seeking vines of the ivy have found the red hued box to be quite a guilty little pleasure.

Hmmm, what shall they converse about?  I think they are holding a conversation on tones.  The music of the street.  The rhythm of the neighborhood pulses and pushes them into a lucid meeting on their northern facing wall.

Just a daily conversation.  They will decide how deep they will delve.  For I am just an observer, a note taker, with a camera.

My friend Z, was lamenting the other day how much she missed the ocean.  She, like me, grew up in Miami and was always surrounded by water.  Z now lives in New Mexico which is an amazingly beautiful locale, but the closest body of ocean water is more the ten hours by car.

It triggered something in my soul that caused me to ponder about my own relationship that I have to water.  I was really attracted to New Mexico’s energy in my youth and even contemplated a move there but the lack of ocean water was upsetting to my spirit.

I have always made my home very close to water.  In Miami one side was the Atlantic Ocean, on the other side was the Gulf of Mexico, and my neighbor was the vast sawgrass of the Everglades.  After University I crossed the lower 48 and settled in Martinez, California.  Martinez sits on the Sacramento River which let out into San Francisco Bay.  Only a 45 minute drive was the Pacific Ocean.  It was always to cold for me to swim in, but it was a marvel just to gaze out over the cold water.  I really had no inkling that one day I would cross that ocean making my home on the other great bay, Tokyo Bay.  I now look across the Pacific Ocean across it’s vastness from the other side.

Why have I always made my home near the water?  Is it because of where I grew up?  I never appreciated the ocean till I moved to California and the ocean became too cold to swim in.  As a youth I was always bothered by the salty air, the sand getting into my bathing suit and the blasting furnace of sunshine.   Now, I find myself on the edge of Tokyo Bay.  My home is wedged in between the Kyoedogawa River and the Bay.  The high levee walls are only a five-minute walk from my home.

I can peer over the river into the city of Urayasu.  Both Kasai, where I live in Tokyo, and Urayasu have long pasts as fishing villages.  On this unusually cool day in July, I watched fishing boat leaving their berthings to go out into the bay.  The traditional Japanese party boats or yukatabune were also venturing out into the bay.

Even though man has changed the land by adding concrete peers and bridges to span the gaps between the land, the ocean itself remains constant.  I think back to my sandal clad ancestors that stood on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea and wondered where the currents would take them.  Here I am now watching the concrete and steel bridge that connected my part of Tokyo to Chiba, thinking the same question.

The sea is part of my soul.  It is part of the very essence of how I define myself in this modern world.  It is a way of connecting with my ancient roots.  All we have to do is listen to the waves.  Watch the brave fisherman leaving in the twilight light to fetch bounty from the sea.  The sea, La Mer, in all continual awesome beauty.

We were up at 5 am.  That is what you have to do here in Japan if you want to go to the beach and avoid the killer traffic.  It wasn’t that bad because at least I knew I would be able to soak up the salt and sun for a whole day.

Being from Miami, Florida I really have yet to see any beach in Japan that really can compare to back home.  The beaches here are a bit like that in Northern Cali.  The sand party are small.  The rocks and hills lead directly into the water.  The water’s temperature is on the cold side for me.  I had to get pretty heated up by the blasting sun in order to take a cool plunge into the Pacific.

It was amazing watching the colors of both the sky and the sea change all day long.  It all depended on the clouds and the tide.  At times the hue was the bluest blue I had seen since Florida.  Other times it was dull green.

I just wanted to be by the seaside.  The sun singed my Teva sandaled feet.  The salty air whipped through our little tarp.  I just wanted to be by the pounding surf that rolled in with high tide.  It is another pace for life.  The ebb and flow of the water.  The fisherman going out into the cold water in search of golden fish.

Just being me by the sea.  It doesn’t really matter that most of the beach has been covered in concrete.  I can imagine a time when it wasn’t.  The shore side may have changed but the ocean is true to who it always has been.

On Saturday the intercultural group UFRA (Urayasu Foreign Resident’s Association) organized an event to celebrate the 60th year anniversary of relations between India and Japan.  The event included a short presentation on some of the cultural awareness concerning India by Dr. Rabinder Malik, Odissi a form of classical Indian Dance by Sachiko Ito and a tabla drum explanation and performance by Dr. Sudarshan Ram.

The sounds of India echoed though out the hall as many of the audience members became as entranced as I was listening to the rhythms of ancient Indian culture.  The dance by Sachiko Ito captivated many of the young members of the audience as they leaned on their elbows and watched every swish of the hips and clinking of her chained outfit.

Dr. Sudarshan Ram gave an interesting and humorous explanation on the tabla Indian drum.  He followed it up by giving a tabla solo that was accompanied by one of his Japanese students on the Indian harmonium.  Dr. Ram is a music teacher at the Indian Cultural Center in Tokyo.

I really enjoyed the dance and the music. I wish the program had allowed for more music because just as I was really getting into the music the time was up on us.

A big shout out to Meme Ise the new chairperson of UFRA, Sawmi the co-vice chair, and Patrizia the other co-chair.  It was a great event to start of the new UFRA in a very positive direction.

If you are interested in learning more about UFRA please join our Facebook page.  Even if you don’t live in Urayasu we welcome foreigners from all over Japan, and Japanese that are interested in intercultural exchanges.

One of the major differences between painting and photography is that painters have to deliberately paint images onto a surface in order to create their work.  Nothing is in a painting that an artist doesn’t want to be there.  Photography behaves differently.  Of course there are photographers that consciously place everything with in their frame, hire models to pose, and rigorously control the scene, and in post editing they can erase others.  There is nothing wrong with this approach.  I personally gravitate to another direction. I embrace the unknown accidents of photography.  Those accidents that often go unnoticed until I get into the dry darkroom.

Those are the elements that enter into a frame that I either didn’t know or didn’t intend for it to be there.  There are also camera malfunctions that add an element to an image that could never have been consciously created.  By embracing these happy accidents I fall more madly in love with the art and science of photography.

This image was a complete accident.  I had set the camera on manual in order to get a long exposure; however, somehow I accidentally set the exposure to 30 seconds, and I am pretty sure the shutter stayed open for longer than that.  I did want to capture some of the blurs in the aquarium but I got much more than I intended to catch. I only got slight glimpse of there long silvery fish.  They are only a still echo of the swimming I had witnessed with my own eye.

I took the image home and I have kept looking at it over the past week.  What is this image communicating?  What am I communicating to the image?  When the title came to me I understood what the image meant to me.  Those traces of life are there even though most  life is not visible unless one looks below the surface.  The life that is there when there is seemingly none.

Life

Echoes

Still

Movement

I inhabit a world were the constructed and the natural interact with each other.  They often don’t even know that they are intersecting one another.  It is only through the photographic medium of fixing pixels on a sensor that these universes meet each other.

I am attracted to discover the truth in this meeting.  I am exploring how human beings craft environments both on a personal home based level or in our public spaces.

Architects make decisions based on how their structure will be perceived by the viewer.  Other times their decisions are only a consequence of some cost benefit analysis.  In either case the manmade structure will impact the view on the natural world.

As society has attempted to isolate themselves from nature we are only a thin plate of glass away.  We only need to look up to see a piece of sky, if we are lucky enough to not be blocked my smog or buildings.  Our eyes can shift to the ground to see the weeds sprouting up in cracks in the pavement.  These precious pieces of sky and green are there.

It is in the greenery we plant to remind us of the natural world.  I am guilty of this too. For I have planted a garden in my own concrete suburb  to create a connection with nature.  I want to bee reminded of a time when we needed a garden for our survival.

The two worlds must be in harmony with each other.   Mankind needs to take steps to respectfully preserve nature.  We need to live in a world that utilizes nature to stimulate our lives through.  Let the sunshine wash our homes in natural light through UV energy efficient window.  Let us make homes that use simple green technology.  We want to create shared spaces where nature is free.

Let us not view the world in US versus NATURE, but be in harmony with nature.

On Sunday I joined the streaming families as we all walked around Tokyo Sea Life Park (葛西臨海水族園).  I hadn’t been to the park in about 15 years.  My recollection was that it was small and cramp, but this time I found the space to be spacious and intriguing.

There were hordes of families enjoying the wonderment to be found under the waves.  Children pressed their noses up against the plexiglass to watch the fish swim around in their tanks.  Parents huddled over their children and all gazed at the wonder.

There is a whole land that is unknown to us.  The unique animals carve out little niches for their kind under the waves.

It was a pleasant way to spend a Sunday in the park.  Watching the families.  Watching the penguins glide through the water. All while the misty rain would fall on my skin.

June is quickly drawing to an end.  The rainy season has come, and without many downpours it has seemed to have already moved on.  There was the unseasonably early typhoon and the heavy Friday rain of last week, but that is about all that has really intensely fallen.

The weather still has been quite odd.  I even had to pull on a sweater on Monday due to the chill.  I am NOT complaining!  I am only observing this oddity. I am thankful for a bit of cool summer weather because, I know that the sticky hot months of July and August will be upon all the city dwellers soon enough.  Those days where the humidity is so high that walking out one’s front door is like getting slapped in the face with a hot wet blanket.

As I stroll around in the spare moments that I have I am more attracted to the way nature and mankind’s creations interact with each other.  Sometimes that interaction one of the two is winning the battle; however,   there is often quiet détente playing out between the uncomfortable neighbors.

The large blooming hydrangeas cast sharp shadows over it’s concrete neighbors.  The concrete prohibits the flowers’ roots from seeking more fertile ground.  There they both exist influencing each other.  No one wins no one truly looses.  In the camera’s mixing palette both gain an non combative posture.  In the lens they acknowledge each others presence.

We must deeply love the natural world.  Without love we will never be able to survive as a species.  Our interactions must be done out of love and respect for nature.  Let some areas be completely wild, while we attempt to tame others.  Let us bring some of that wildness into the spaces that we occupy with our homes, offices, and public spaces.

In the meantime I continue to inhabit this détente between the two dynamic spheres.  My heart sees the two clearly, and I search out those frames where there isn’t a struggle it is only cooperation.

That is the intersection between the leafy green and the poured concrete. The delicately balanced harmonious interactions between those worlds that enter my heart by way of a piece of ground glass.

From shadow we come into this world and all will return to the shadows.  The way we choose to live in the sunshine defines us as the person we become.  We have decisions to make along the way.  At times we run towards the shadows and attempt to hide from our true nature, but that is only running away from ourselves.

Once we are in the light all can be revealed if we consciously search for the truth.  We will never to be able to find truth if we look for it in darkness.  It is only in the light that we can begin to comprehend what the word truth means.

What has been framed out of this image.  What lies to the left side?  What can one find if you were permitted to gaze over the edge and into the city?

My photographic frame is my frame of mind.  It is my often feeble attempt to visual record my life’s stages.  In my argument at least I am searching for answers, even if I may never find them.

It Sunday afternoon and I am napping on the side of my building.  It is pretty cool here in the shade.   I can catch up on all my missed sleep from my running around the neighborhood the night before.

Wait a minute some has stopped his bicycle in front of my mansion.   I lift my ears and then my eyes to figure out what is going on.  Could they be here to give me some tasty tuna bits?  Are they here to try to nab me and bring me off somewhere?  I could hardly be bothered.  I just wanna be here by myself.

I don’t really know.  All I know is it is a bit hot outside and I have the whole afternoon to do nothing but just sit in the shade.  I hear the world go by around me but I barely raise and ear as long as they just leave me alone and let me nap.

Perhaps in a little bit I might stretch my legs and take a stroll around my territory to make sure no one has tried to set up shop in my part of town.  I just couldn’t stand that.

That is a thought for another day.  I am content to just lie on my stomach and dream of tuna, catnip and little furry creatures to chase.

I am a cat, so let me sleep, and dream.

The rain came streaming down.  Endless rivulets of water pounded the pavement.  The hydrangeas just smiled as they opened their mouths to catch their liquid gold.  I sat and sat on my bus.  Watching the water condensate on the ceilings and windows.  Droplet by droplet they would slow cast themselves down to the floor, by way of my raincoat.

Soothing tunes piped into my ears as I just stared out the window.  The world was moving by so slowly in the rain.  We would pause at a bus stop and barely anyone would get on or off.  People were just lined up waiting.  They were waiting for something else.  Do we as a people always wait for something else?  Are never satisfied with our journey?

There she was, with her umbrella, waiting for the bus that was not mine.  Rain falling down from the skies.  Standing holding her umbrella and wondering when her bus may come.

Coming from Miami, Florida I am one that is pretty accustomed to stormy weather.  As a youth I remember storms that would blow through town, knock out the power, and leave trees upturned.  Many of these storms weren’t even hurricane strength.  They were just storms that packed a lot of punch.

I have now been in Japan for more than a decade.  I have seen typhoons come and go.  I have yet to see one hit Tokyo with as much force as some hardcore Miami thunderstorms.  This is not to say that the Japanese typhoons are weak, they surely aren’t.  I wouldn’t be writing this if I lived in Okinawa, or more southern Japan, where the majority of the gale force storms come ashore.

In some ways I usually look foreword to the storms.  The howling winds and the gushing rains bring me back to those humid day of my youth in Miami.  I keep an eye out for the bustling winds.  I peek out my window to see how the storm is progressing.  This storm I learned some lessons the hard way.

My wife and I decided to start a patio garden this spring.  It had been something that we had talked about but never had put it into action until this year.  We have always had plants, but they were mainly large potted fruit trees that have been on our patio for many years.  Actually, they really aren’t that large.  The are more like giant bonsai, because of being restricted to growing within the boundaries of their white pots.  This garden was different.  We were trying to supplement what we eat with fresh herbs and vegetables from our own garden. We put many hours in to the garden.  My wife in fact had become a bit obsessed with gardening and I could often find her out on our veranda tending to our plants.  We had to fight back infestations of bugs with soap and oil.  Cut off leaves that seemed to catch some mysterious ailment.  We had planted baby carrots, potatoes, eggplants, peppers, tomatoes, watermelon, all sorts of leafy veggies that made our way into our dinner table.  We even had a little bit of excess that we started to pickle from scratch.

This all changed this typhoon.  Our garden was decimated by the strong winds.  Stems snapped, green tomatoes were thrown about the patio.  The eggplant leaves were so battered that they look as if they had been nibbled on right on down to the spines.  The meter high corn stalks were all laying flat out on the container next to them.  I was a bit upset and at the same time I knew that there was really nothing we could do.  There was no way we could have brought the plants inside.  I had to have faith that they would survive at least some of them would.

On my way in to work the morning after the storm I got to think about most of the world that are subsistence gardeners.  They grow food so that they have something to eat.  I was came to a realization that our garden only supplements our diet and I should be thankful that no one in my family was injured by the storm.  If this had happened in a land of farmers who very live depends on what they are able to reap from the earth they would be facing hunger after this storm.

I am sure that our plants will rebound.  Nature has a way of fighting back against itself.  Already my mint plant has started to sprout some new leaves out of the blackened sufferers. The rain also brought out a field of mushrooms at field on my way to work.  The spores had managed to spring up inspire of the torrential rains and forceful winds.

Somethings have to wither so that others can grow.  I am thankful that I have access to food and I can spend time gardening as a hobby.  My heart goes out to the farmers in Japan that lost crops because of the typhoon.  My heart aches for those that would have gone hungry if a powerful storm had hit their farms.

There may be a typhoon heading towards the Tokyo Kanto area, but the hydrangeas could care less. They are content just being their blooming selfs.  They have no knowledge of the torrential rain that could come.  All that they know is that it is time for all of their tightly closed buds to open up and soak up  the rainfall.

Sometimes I wish I could be a simple celled life form.  No worries to cloud my thought process.  I would only have my instincts and DNA to tell me what to do.

These are just fanciful wishes.  I am glad that I am capable of higher thought, even if that higher thoughts are murky.  It is better to be conscious of our own actions and determine the course that is best for ourselves rather than have our lives decided for us.

Enjoy the rain at least watching it from the comfort of your home or you can go out and prance with the raindrops.  The choice is for each of us to make.

The skies finally decided to dry out after a sopping wet Saturday.  I took a ride over the bridge into Urayasu to spend some time with friends.  The sun was strong and I was thankful for not wearing my windbreaker.

turned off the main street to pedal down one of the streets in the warehouse section along the water’s edge.  It being Sunday the streets were deserted.  The large aluminum sided building stood silently.  The gate closed till they reopen on Monday.

Door to door asphalt is what I thought I would find, and that was there, but there is an incredible amount of greening in process in the industrial neighborhood.  Small potted gardens lineup up outside the offices.  Gardens had been planted in the entrance ways to break the monotony of factories.

Flowers sprung up from the ground like notes on a musical score.  Reaching for the sunshine as they swayed in the breeze.

Nature given time will grind these factories into compostable dust.  All it takes is time and for the human element to leave them be.  In the meantime, I watch the struggle or the harmony of it all.  It all depend on how you choose to view the world.