Thoughts keep bouncing around my thick-headed cranium.  I am not sure where they emanating from.  Well, I know that in actuality they of course are coming from my own consciousness.  Sometimes it seems like I have no control over my own thought process.  The thoughts rattle around keeping me awake at night.

It can be difficult to break the bonds of negative thoughts.  We have all been there.  It appears that no matter what we do these thoughts come hauntingly back into our consciousness.  How do I rid myself of these thoughts?  The only way is to confront them and to own up to the fact that they are part of myself.  I wrestle with how to define my place in the world as a human being.

I know I am not the artist that uses his/her art to achieve political means.  I respect artists that choose that path, for it is essential for communication in our saturated society.  I am sure that I am not the artist that uses shock and sexuality.  If that is what an artist chooses the way to walk, then so be it.  I rather elevate thought than wallow in the shadows.  We must acknowledge our own shadows as part of ourselves in order to be of complete consciousness.

This brings me back to my question of what kind of art do I want to reveal to myself and the world.  Let us just say that it is a “work in progress.”  I am in daily therapy with my camera to work that one out.

There is always some color somewhere in my life.  Even as negative thoughts bounce around and cloud my path.  I am aware that within my soul lies the solution.  It is up to me to clear the way to allow that positivity to enter my thoughts process.

Today I found it in the light in the shape of a plastic pot with blooming lavender.  It wasn’t much, but it did shine some light on some clouded thoughts.  If you look for those bright paths you can find them.

A trio of plants potted in small tin planters.  Sitting in the spring time sun soaking up the warmth.  The drying goods too appreciate the warm sun.  They will be ready when the customers come around following the sunset.  A simple day in the sun for simple objects.  Just another day in Ichikawa, Japan on the outskirts of Tokyo.

I am definitely on a learning to survive so that the next stage one can thrive these days.  And on this day of rest my thoughts return to the natural world.  Nature has a way of coping with pretty much anything that it encounters.

In the dead of winter, a succulent has the ability to keep on growing.  Lifting up its fleshy leaves up to the warm sunshine.  Not only are they reaching up, but this one was sending out new shoots.

New life is sprouting forth in the middle of winter in the deepest backwater suburbs of Ichikawa, just east of the sprawl of the Tokyo metropolis.

We all got to find our ways to thrive in adverse environments.  My way and your way most likely will not be the same.  But, we will find our style of thriving!

I came across one of Japandemic’s images in Flickr the other day that just struck me like a thunderbolt.  Japanandemic describes themselves as “smart sexy cool japan what the other guys won’t show you…in bite-size bits, like sushi.”  I like that.  There website is a fresh mash up of the cool, the weird and the beautiful of all things Japan, and Japanese.  Japandemic is based in Kyoto and Osaka in the Kansai area of Honshu.

Japandemic has a way of showing you another side of Japan.  The part of Japan that you might just walk past if you are not looking with an open mind and heart.  They have a great sense of humor and their site should be looked at by anyone who is interested in Japanese culture.

The image that struck me was one of theirs that had been taken in Kyoto.  There are strings of drying kaki (persimmon) hanging in front of a persons home.  And what really drew me into the image was it included a super tight garden.  It was one of those gardens that I have been photographing in Japan recently.  A garden in such a tiny space, yet it was bursting with life.  All and all it is a beautiful images and I am thankful to Japandemic for allowing me to post this beautiful image in Lucid Thoughts.

Please take the time to browse their Flickr page and the Japandemic website.

Enjoy this amazing Japandemic Image.

kaki (persimmon) hanging to dry in front a Kyoto house. Copyright Japandemic 2011

I love geometry.  Now you might think that to be a little crazy.  Even if you are thinking about the geometry that we all have to study in school, but honestly out of all the math that I studied in school geometry was the only one that made any sense to me.  My reasoning behind that is I am without any doubt am a visual person.  I think visually.  I approach the world and how I relate back to the world though how I visually experience the world.  Now, I would never really go back and study geometry again.  I’m pretty sure the boat has sailed on that part of my life, but the lines, tangents, and bisecting lines have become part of my visual vocabulary.

The cubists did it the best.  They oversimplified the world that they were apart of into line, shapes, and tone.  A world that is visually experienced through shapes.  I have learned to see the world very mush though these same lenses.  I cannot help but look out into Tokyo, where I live, and see the world sometimes reduced to nothing more than lines and cubes.  I, however, know in my heart that the world is far more complicated than that.  There are shapes that cannot so easy be reduced to just a square.  The natural world, even though, it is full of repeating fractal patterns they are never quite as straight as a line of hewn stone.

This is where my lens comes in to help me navigate my way through the visual world.  Trying to bridge the two ways to seeing the world together.  That world of the straight hard edge lines that follow the rules of geometry and composition.  Then there are the rulers of the plant and natural kingdom.  The ways in which a branch grows divides and multiplies as it reached out to the sun.  I am a part of both worlds.  My physical form comes from nature.  There are now straight lines to be found on my person.  Yet I love to see a rectangular door, meeting a window at just the right moment in space and forming can conforming to our geometric rules.

The door in todays group of images is a geometric homecoming.  There are no plants visible.  There is only the hint of the natural world by the shadows that are being cast on the image.  A piece of my inner mind has left its imprint on this image.

Welcome home.  Welcome to lucid communication with myself.

The light is in a transitional phase now.  As the sun grows more distant, the temperature begins to drop the quality of the light changes.  The light of this early winter in the late afternoon shifts towards yellow.  I really am attracted to that yellowing light.  Even in the full glare of the sun colors are rich.  Hues pop out and speak to me though my senses.  Even as my throat ached I couldn’t help but reach for my Ricoh GR IV and capture some of that light.

The use of space is amazing in Japan.  The Japanese aesthetic manifests itself in sometimes the most unlikely places like small roadside gardens that are wedged into spaces that would just be discarded in other countries.  Here the space, any space, goes to some use.  I am always amazed how the zig zags of a home are often loaded with potted plants in a tightly manicured gardens.  Actually, they might not be so manicured.  Some of them go rather wild and free.  To my eye they represent the to dichotomies of Japanese aesthetics.  The reverence of nature, and the attempt to tame nature.  I see both in the way the Japanese create their personal gardens.  These are not the Japanese gardens that are listed as national treasures. They are the homeowner’s personal treasure.  A tiny space that reflects their love and interest in the natural world even if it may be surrounded by concrete and asphalt.  The flowers rise to greet the sun, and I stop and pause to admire their beauty.

The simple elegance of (your) neighbors friendly garden.

I had to bring my mac into Apple last week, and today I returned to scoop it up.  Ginza was one of those places that I avoided.  I thought that it was only good for shopping with your platinum credit cards; however, my view of the neighborhood has really changed over the last couple of years.  Besides Ginza being home to designer brands of all makes, many fabulous ethnic and Japanese restaurants are found lining the main thoroughfares and even more intriguing ones lie in wait on the backstreets.

For those of you that know Tokyo, the area that I really love to wander around is between Ginza and Shimbashi station.  There are so many beautiful little alleyways that are populated with tiny shops serving up all kinds of cuisine.  Today I was interested in how many of these backstreet shops decorated their entrances with plants.  Even though we live in a sea of concrete and steel, many Japanese make an effort to green up their spaces.  It doesn’t matter if it is their home or place of business.  The greening of the concrete landscape is beautiful in my eyes.  These tight little garden spaces that flow out onto the asphalt streets, but not in a way that will impede foot or car traffic.  The potted plants hug the tiny strip of space between the walls of the buildings and the streets.

They seem so ordered.  Everything is in its proper place.  All the plants, usually, well cared for.  It is a small greening of Ginza.  It might not be very much, but it makes those backstreets a pleasure to wander.

I am not sure exactly where these were taken the other day. The reason being that I urban hiked on the pavement between Shinagawa and Ginza.  Getting lost a bit on the way.  Getting lost in Tokyo is never that bad, because no matter how lost you get you are never really that far from a subway station.

I really dig these two images.  They are complete constructions.  Built brick by brick and tile by tile to form a fully constructed lucid communication view of my adopted home of Tokyo.

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