mek.啓子

"Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one's bath like a lump of sugar." Pablo Picasso

[mekeiko]

Osamu Dazai 太宰 治 1909-1948 ‘No Longer Human’ 人間失格 (1948)

“Women found in me a man who could keep a love secret.” p.38

“To fall for, to be fallen for – I feel in these words something unspeakably vulgar, farcical, and at the same time extraordinarily complacent. Once these expressions put in an appearance, no matter how solemn the place, the silent cathedrals of melancholy crumble, leaving nothing but an impression of fatuousness. It is curious, but the cathedrals of melancholy are not necessarily demolished if one can replace the vulgar What a messy business it is to be fallen for by the more literary What uneasiness lies in being loved.” p.47 

“(...) something like a silent current of misery an inch wide flowed over the surface of her body. When I lay next to her my body was developed in her current, which mingled with my own harsher current of gloom like withered leaf settling to rest on the stones at the bottom of a pool. I had freed myself from fear and uneasiness”. p.80

[mekeiko]

Equilibrium of opposites, emptiness in fullness, fluidity and timing, repetition, control, breathing, the duplication of layers, an incense stick to burn the edges of the paper, all is meditation – practice and patience. Minjung Kim is a master of her craft. She uses hanji, Korean handmade paper similar to ‘washi’ 和紙 in Japan but even finer. 

[mekeiko]

We return to the city after a day at the beach, a flaming orange-red sunset, a feast of ocean’s bounty for dinner, we are high from the sun, weed and each other. Stumbling out of the car and into the apartment building – hey! There’s a pool in the yard. Someone figures out how to open the gate, the pool lights shine fluorescent green-turquoise-blue in the dark night. We jump in – let’s race – dive the length of the pool, hug and wrestle under water. Wet and happy we head upstairs. (...) The night didn’t end until sunrise when the last of us sunk into the coach. – Lisbon 2019, mkj. Paintings: ‘Nightswimming and other Nocturnal Pleasures’ by Johnny DeFeo. 

[mekeiko]

THE GRASSES

The same wind that uproots trees makes the grasses shine.

The lordly wind loves the weakness and the lowness of grasses. Never brag of being strong.

The axe doesn’t worry how thick the branches are. It cuts them to pieces. But not the leaves. It leaves the leaves alone.

A flame doesn’t consider the size of the woodpile. A butcher doesn’t run from a flock of sheep.

What is form in the presence of reality? Very feeble. Reality keeps the sky turned over like a cup above us, revolving. Who turns the sky wheel? The universal intelligence.

And the motion of the body comes from the spirit like a waterwheel that’s held in a stream.

The inhaling-exhaling is from spirit, now angry, now peaceful. Wind destroys, and wind protects.

“There is no reality but God”, says the completely surrendered king, who is an ocean for all beings.

The levels of creation are straws in that ocean. The movement of the straws comes from an agitation in the water. When the ocean wants the straws calm, it sends them close to shore. When it wants them back in the deep surge, it does with them as the wind does with the grasses.

This never ends.

Rumi

[mekeiko]

Photographer Eric Johnson portraying hip hop’s greatest in intimate, casual, in-between moments. 

[mekeiko]

“We created a world in Black Velvet where we can both exist and thrive as we take care of each other. The lines between masculinity, femininity, orientation, love, and color all seem to blur. We take care of each other and there becomes enough room for both of us to be,  and this creates the oneness of our existence.” – Shamel Pitts on Black Velvet – Architectures and Archetypes (2016)

Light and projection amplified harmony and dissonance of the moment, creating and finding 
the reality and surrealism of the world they’ve created.

[blissfullydelirious]

Chris Ofili The Caged Bird’s Song Tapestry

[mekeiko]

Walk through life Beautiful more than anything Stand in the sunlight Walk through life Love all the things That make you strong, be lovers, be anything For all the people of Earth

You have brothers You love each other, change up And look at the world Now, it’s Our’s, take it slow We’ve got a long time, a long way To go,

We have Each other, and the World, Don’t be sorry Walk on out through sunlight life and know We’re on the go For love To open Our lives To walk Tasting the sunshine Of Life.

– By Amir Baraka / LeRoi Jones 1969

[mekeiko]

Toyin Ojih Odutola: Bringing out "the deepness of the blackness". Her incredible works are layered, patterned, poised / textured movement / narrative depth. 

[mekeiko]

The Salooni Salon (Uganda, 2017)  – by Aida Mbowa, Darlyne Komukama, Gloria Wavamunno and Kampire Bahana

“Black hair practices as systems of knowledge through which culture and survivalist strategies are passed from generation to generation.”

[mekeiko]

“In all parts of the world there is a kind of percussion of drumming. But in every place the drumming is different, and it seduces me! All this contrast is wonderful!” – Rimon Guimarães, Brazilian artist/muralist

Art: Kubuneh village, Gambia • Tioman Island, Malaysia • Amsterdam, Netherlands • sem título 2012 • video: Chapéu vôo astronavega no espaço-tempo

[mekeiko]

Alphonso Mucha (1860-1939) – Winter Night Study 1920 + Solitude

“Art exists only to communicate a spiritual message.”

[mekeiko]

Music: Airy Me – by Cuushe Animation: Yoko Kuno

[mekeiko]

Shamsia Hassani: “Usually I am painting women with burqas in modernism shape on walls, I want to talk about their life, to find some way to remove them from darkness, to open their mind, to bring some positive changes, trying to remove all bad memories of war from everybody’s mind with covering sad city’s walls with happy colors.”

[mekeiko]

'A Song of Life' by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

In the rapture of life and of living, I lift up my head and rejoice, And I thank the great Giver for giving The soul of my gladness a voice. In the glow of the glorious weather, In the sweet-scented, sensuous air, My burdens seem light as a feather They are nothing to bear.

In the strength and the glory of power, In the pride and the pleasure of wealth (For who dares dispute me my dower Of talents and youth-time and health?), I can laugh at the world and its sages I am greater than seers who are sad, For he is most wise in all ages Who knows how to be glad.

I lift up my eyes to Apollo, The god of the beautiful days, And my spirit soars off like a swallow, And is lost in the light of its rays. Are tou troubled and sad? I beseech you Come out of the shadows of strife Come out in the sun while I teach you The secret of life. [...]

[mekeiko]

Egon Schiele (1890-1918)

[mekeiko]

‘Les Souffles’ de Birago Diop

[mekeiko]

Stanislav Plutenko