FILL: A Train of Snails?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting 17 November 2008

A short sketch.

It's a lovely fall morning here, with the sun shining and the air crisp. And on the way to work, one of the neighbor boys stopped me with a question. He was wearing his school uniform, black shoes, white socks, black shorts, black jacket and white shirt, little black cap, and his black leather backpack. He had been digging in the dirt, but stopped when he saw me and stood up.

Then he looked at me and asked in Japanese, "Do you know the train of snails?"

I paused, ran the question through my slow translation process again and it still came out as a train of snails, and then answered him, "No, I don't think I do."

He then pointed up the road ahead of us and advised me to watch for it.

I thanked him and went on. I will admit, I looked as I went, wondering just what he meant. I didn't see anything that seemed to fit. And at the office, I poked around some in my online Japanese resources -- yep, that's train of snails, and nope, nothing seems to fit. So I'm still a little baffled as to what he was referring to. But I do admire the image that it summons to my mind, of a set of snails, all slipping along in line, forging ahead at their pace to a goal that only snails can imagine.

There is a slight vagrant thought that the backpacks that the kids wear to school could be snail shells, but that's a pretty sophisticated metaphor for a little boy. Although now that I think about it, they do tend to line up and walk along, one after the other. No trail of spit, though . . . I doubt that he meant that. But what a fascinating image to hold up to the world on this fall morning, and wonder where it fits. A train of snails . . .

There are other neighbors who tell me that this boy is a bit odd, and to just ignore what he says. But you know, I don't think I've had anyone else introduce me to the snail express, and that's pretty cool.

inching along in the morning sunshine

FILL: An Artist?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting 20 November 2008

If I'm not sure if I can get this across in text. But it should be fun trying.

The Japanese public television sometimes has some very interesting pieces. This particular one started with a little introduction to the art done by a woman. These are fairly large prints -- the early ones in simple black and white, apparently large woodblock prints. Some of her later work involves additional colors -- one that caught my eye had some brown in fairly large areas, along with at least two shades of green providing leaves for a tree. Almost all of the work includes strong architectural settings.

Then they ran through a little bit of her biography. If I understood correctly, she was born in Taiwan to Japanese parents. Then she lived in Japan for a while, and also had spent some time living in America.

And in the part of the show that really caught my attention, she was visiting Taiwan. A middle-aged woman, well-dressed, with a camera. She did seem to have colorful scarves as part of her outfit. But mostly she seemed almost cool, looking through her glasses at the buildings and other points of interest in Taiwan, stopping to take a picture of a plaza, or getting up on a balcony to take pictures of roofs with colorful dragons at their edges. No smile, seemingly a plastic observer.

Then she met an old friend in a plaza. He invited her to his studio. In this large open space, he had several works under way around the edges. She looked at one or two, without much evident interest. Then he laughed and got out a plywood sheet -- 4 x 8? He laid it on the floor, red side up, and sat down on the floor with it. He got out a small gouge and started carving. Suddenly she was on her knees, smiling, eyes intense, fingers almost twitching, clearly inspired. He took a piece of chalk and scribbled on one part of the work in progress, then grabbed a magic marker and scribbled over that -- and started gouging pieces of that section out. She was watching intently.

That moment of transformation -- when the cool observer suddenly became the involved artist -- was the part of the show that I certainly enjoyed.

They also got out his unfinished piece -- a scroll about a meter wide, and I'm not sure how long, that he's apparently been adding things to for 20 years. A chinese clown face on a baby torso, a looming architectural arch, and other bits and pieces. I gather he has no particular intention of trying to finish it or tie it together into some sort of a finished piece, but the pastiche or hodgepodge felt like there is an underlying unity, a theme of growth and excitement despite that. Almost as if history -- as experienced by an individual person -- was captured on that scroll.

But that's another story.

Maybe the key to this piece is in the kind of art that she does. After all, the sheet of wood with its red coating, carved and chipped and cut, is somewhat cool and reserved. Then coat it with a little ink or paint, and press it into the paper -- and when you lift it up, there's a fresh new picture, shining, unique, just created in that moment of contact between the stiff wood and the soft paper. That's almost the feeling I got, watching the well-dressed photographer suddenly transform into an intense presence at the side of the artist carving on his board.

Fun!