Tears of a sinful woman

Mike carries a rucksack, always heavy. Yesterday he pulled out a fat old book and gave it to me.

It isn’t the sort of book you start at the beginning. I tried the middle. In less than a minute I learned that the Vinaya-sutra says, “the marks on the sole of Buddha’s foot were made by the tears of a sinful woman”

I have been searching for the title for my October exhibition. Tears of a Sinful Woman, did not pass the Me Too test. I’ll keep looking.

Dojo

This is an old drawing. It has been a couple years since the kids have been let loose on a wading pool full of these little fresh water eels. Quite fun for them to catch with their fingers, pre pandemic. They take them home for a fish bowl or the dinner table.

Maybe next summer.

New Colors

Last week I opened the box of colors I got from my sister. This week I tried them on a painting. They were not what I expected. Working with color on washi is always indirect. Colors wet are richer, darker, more saturated, and lighten when they dry. This time it was more indirect. I had the colors in the solid sticks, then the colors as I ground them on black stone, then the colors in the white dish, then on paper, then finally different again when dry. All different versions of the same color.

These new Chinese sticks will take getting used to. I like new things, even very old new things like these.

A box of color

My sister gave me these. They are cakes of color. You grind them with a little water the way you grind sumi ink. They make color that is light and fine, the opposite of oil paint, or what the modern Japanese call, “Japanese Paint,” Nihonga. They add subtle color touches to an ink painting.

This box came from China. Japanese used to make these too, in simpler days.

My little studio is bursting its seams with tools and materials. It makes a terrible clutter.  But one never knows which one will become absolutely necessary. Today's is the time for this Chinese box. Wish me luck.

Pulling weeds

Zoom, teaching - On Demand, I stretch my legs with a 10 meter walk down the alley to the temple in front. The temple has been here since the Edo Era. The gate has the bullet holes from the 1868 civil war.

The garden has a gift for every season. It refreshes.

I noticed new weeds and am tempted to pull the invaders. I begin to feel proprietary you see. But it isn’t my garden so I leave them. I walking back down my alley and notice even bigger weeds. I leave them.

In my little alley they are not invaders. They are green.

An old friend

I picked up an old sketchbook this morning and a little drawing slipped out. I made it when the Sky Tree was brand new. It still seems new to me. Wonder how many years old it is. Google says 2010, so 11 years old.

This little sketch seems like yesterday and forever ago.

I was experimenting with new ink and paper. Things were newer then. Yesterday I walked through Jimbocho I noticed something new. Jumbled collections of used brushes. Three different book stores had them in their piles of cheap books on the sidewalk.

I had noted the stores that sold brushes, washi paper and ink closing down. That was a few years ago. Now it seems the old folks that used to patronize them are turning in their brushes. Hand crafted expensive, now old and junk.

It reminded me of trying to sell my father’s law books after he died. They had cost a fortune to buy. But