VANCOUVER INTENTIONALLY...

We have been planning around a quick trip up to Vancouver, BC... 170 miles north of us, just over the Canadian border.

Conspiring with us is our long & deep friend & god-buddy, Malcolm, who lives in Port Townsend, which is closer, but requires a ferry. It became a complicated dance of four guys living in numerous places on lively schedules! 

We intend to visit another soul mate named Sequoia, who has been creating & reinventing his life due to health. He has just published his autobiography, titled DIVINING DESIRE.

This will be be the virgin crossing using my new passport... renewed after lapsing during Covid-19. It feels good to be traveling wider again! 

We left our condo Friday mid-morning driving I-5 after its very busy rush hour,  to arrive at an acquaintance of Stephen, who allowed us to park our car & meet Malcolm, who'd offered to drive us up in his Tesla. 

Not being a driver anymore, I was happy to retire into the back seat, having a driver... plus a spare! 

Checking into EXchange, our LEED-certified hotel began an interesting experience on many levels. First, because LEED is acronym for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, we felt we were honoring our many efforts to be good environmental citizens.  

Next because the building...the old Stock Exchange... hence it's name... is only one of many older buildings in the long bustling urban core of a historic city which preserves its earlier historic street-scape by requiring such buildings to retain at least part of the the original facades. 

We'd been given rather complicated instruction how to park... first for finding the entrance well down a one-way alley with an obviously temporary plywood structure hovering 'round the view as we began descending several steep tight loops, passing ample charging outlets for EV, like the one we are in... comforting & later useful. Then up to the modern building's dizzily wavy-tiled lobby before finding a turn into the original interior elevator lobby with its colorful terracotta-tiled  ceiling, which served only the few floors of the hotel. Finally we found welcome at the reception desk. 'Twas already a minor adventure, clothed as potential predicament.

Malcolm is a builder, so he & I were fascinated with all this mixed architecture. He later discovered a model in the new lobby which helped us understand the project better.

 Our room was fine, except for the wallpaper, printed to mimic or imply something like an detail from a stock certificate[?], but at a scale conjuring mostly sloppy stucco.

I cannot resist sharing Oscar Wilde's quote, often reputably from on his deathbed, as "Either this wallpaper goes or I do.” but what he actually said was, “This wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death.

We dressed to meet Sequoia at his apartment, well located 5 floors up from a hillside cul-de-sac above Stanley Park, where he's lived for 20 years. We had fresh vegetable rolls which Malcolm brought from the Chimacum farmer's market he helped create some years ago. I especially appreciated that they'd been garnished from the inside with toasted sesame seeds before being rolled around the filling. Malcolm is entrepreneurial as well as a true farm-foodie!

Sequoia invited us to one of his favorite nearby restaurants & we were seated in a room open to the sky. Our delightful server's name was Miriam... with sparkling Egyptian eyes. 

A lovely reunion in deep camaraderie. We all have long history of sharing many of Soundcliff's fabled Thanksgiving feasts. 

We had packed with the forecast of probable rain, planning to spend the day retreating in the UBC Museum of Anthropology, but easily rejoiced in a glorious Saturday. 

Additionally, it happened to be the re-opening day of the museum's renovation of its renowned architecture, by Arthur Erickson.  Much of its famed glass facade had not been originally built to the architect's design & was found to be vulnerable to seismic failure. That lofty transparent space perfectly housed the collection of tall totem poles originally sited in the First Nations' coastal fishing villages. 

It was explained that the youngsters were learning the traditions in situ...

Canada has wrestled with its indigenous population with more remedial attention, if still too-late, than have we in the US, where they are still usually called "Indians"... The new signage acknowledges a series of navigational, geographic & linguistic errors.  Ah, the hubris of white men, living on in ever-destructive delusions of superiority! "Sad," as one currently visible adherent pretense to great superiority that might say. 

 Stephen & I joined a short tourof the new space, being given by the director of the museum... an erudite well spoken woman who explained the care with which these poles were ceremonially "put to sleep" by members of the First Nations' people to be stored horizontally before the building's glass facade was reconstructed. It was a monumental reworking, including deep rethinking of how the artifacts were re-installed... with new , more properly & precisely written signage all with consultation... plus First Nations ceremony. 

 Watching the dances commemorating the opening, we realized that our timing in this case was not nearly so intentional as quite lucky! 

 I was particularly pleased to be revisiting this art because I had studied its influences I honored when I designed THE NORTHWEST COLLECTION linked here:

 DUCK: https://www.grbbells.com/products/northwest-duck?_pos=1&_psq=duck&_ss=e&_v=1.0   FROG: https://www.grbbells.com/products/nwfro?_pos=1&_psq=frog&_ss=e&_v=1.0                   ORCA; https://www.grbbells.com/search?q=northwest+orca&_pos=3&_psq=orca&_ss=e&_v=1.0

[Somehow, I left our hotel that day without bringing my phone/camera, so I'm pleased that Stephen is allowing me to use his photos to enliven this post.]

This image made by a handy bystander of the four of us in front of a favorite Bill Reid sculpture, portraying the story of the discovery of mankind in a clam shell by Raven. I remember being impressed by this huge cedar wood carving from my first visit to this museum 20+ years agoI still find it magnificent..  The Raven and the First Men can be studied here: https://moa.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Sourcebooks-Raven_and_the_First_Men.pdf ;

  

Stephen caught this fine casual portrait of our compadres Malcolm left, Sequoia right... both rapt & wrapped inside the intensity of learning in this treasure trove of history.

I met first met Sequoia at one of his Men In Touch retreats at the Bodhi Manda Zen monastery in New Mexico, in 1999. Stephen & I made plans to meet after separate visits to our families... he in Minnesota, me in Kansas. Both of our fathers were dying.

Sequoia has actively evolved a career from Air Force pilot to massage therapist ever deeper into the nexus of spirituality & sexuality. I have been introduced numerous times & ways into dancing with these concepts in my own life & can vouch for value added, while not feeling much need or capability to expound more here. I can happily refer to his newly published book Divining Desire... Exploring Sacred Eros by Sequoia Thom... I can invite you to read it with me if you are curious.

Sequoia has been diagnosed with stage four cancer but has been living in a remarkable state of health for more than a year, eliciting further appreciation. The reason for our visit to his home in Vancouver was to celebrate another time with him.

The weather returned toward the prediction on Sunday, when we had a brunch at the old hotel in which Stephen had first hoped to find our lodging. The Sylvia Hotel had more of our style, but the kitchen lacked some of the basic skills...like how to properly poach eggs!

As we returned, I appreciated the rather ephemerally embracing sculpture... quickly dissolving,... evaporating visually... all in the few minutes we spent driving through the pleasant woman examining our passports at the border.

Because we had such important time inside friendship, we returned home deeply satisfied. I am grateful that Stephen accepts & loves being ''my driver"!

JAPAN [two] - KYOTO...

KYOTO: The Ancient Imperial Court's city...

The second city we wanted to visit was the ancient seat of the imperial court… which moved to Tokyo a century ago, leaving Kyoto to maintain respect for deeper history…

'Seems a map might be useful to show the three major destinations on our travel.. As I wrote in the previous post, we landed at Narita [just east of Tokyo] for the first night, then on for 3 days in that city. Now the narrative picks up with a week in historic Kyoto.

Celebrating contrast to the exciting modernity of the newer city we were leaving on the very[!] fast Shinkansen… the "bullet train" from inside which the view was passing too quickly for my camera to catch anything... it was almost too fast for even my eyes!

Trains run PRECISELY on time... here is the crew of cleaners waiting... bowing, actually... for the passengers to exit before they cleaned in only minutes so we could board. At exactly the time printed on our tickets we began moving.

 

  

Glimpses only: rice fields flashing between urban areas; tantalizing views of the coast; quickly visiting a cemetery hanging above a seaside resort; patches of peeking tea, growing in tight rows; numerous tunnels through ridges of mountains giving me irregular periods of shade to more easily see my computer screen [I'm sitting at a south window seat]; tightly clipped gardens whizzing so I could not see what was planted; many greenhouses... mostly smaller home-sized, but some were quite large operations; a huge wind generator; numerous large solar panel arrays; largish factories labeled Toyota or Mitsubishi, surrounded by residential areas, no doubt for the workers; mostly modern homes, but a few looking quite traditional; high net-surrounded driving practice cages [we've seen several bits of evidence that golf seems to be popular]; a European inspired church tower of open-worked stone or concrete; contrasting numerous traditional temple roofs; many. many! power lines... this is an electric culture;

Then... suddenly, unexpectedly… Mount Fuji... peeking into the window on the other side of the train! I am so happy to have noticed her… we'd neglected to note Ryan Shaffer's suggestion to reserve seats on the right [also correct] side of the train… I scrambled to get some fair snapshots.

THAT made my day! We live communing with with one of her distant cousins, so I passed along Tahoma's greetings to what is indeed... even at such speed... one gorgeous lady!

Kyoto is like arriving in another country... it actually is more "country" in the sense that it contrasts the " megalopolis" of Tokyo, having no skyscrapers. The train station is an amazing contemporary construct of spaces where interiors of rail concourses open to a series of seemingly endless escalators going up/down toward each end of a vast architectural "valley"… recalling that the city lies inside its bowl of mountains.  A broad, long stairway lights up into images, including Halloween greetings with spiders as yet another culture celebrates a becoming-universal holiday.  The complex contains a huge department store & a big glitzy hotel... Dozens of small restaurants & shops scattered on every level of this urban extravagance... Presided over by the Kyoto Tower... a colored light mushroom lofting.

Bells began to find me...

The city is the ancient Imperial capitol... like more than a thousand years ancient! It is built on a plain in a bowl surrounded on three sides by mountains… not the Rockies-big... at the junction of two small rivers...laid out on a grid with the Palace near the center.

We stayed first at the Westin Miyako Hotel, famous from the late1800s & built onto enough to now comprise hundreds of rooms, but with all its added-on parts, over a century it has become too big for its britches. It was quite a contrast to the Andaz, but served us well. It offered a birding trail & a garden I never got to see, because we were constantly running to meet the times we'd reserved at the Imperial Household Agency on the first day... four tours.

Each tour began with admittance 20 minutes before the tour time… after we'd stood waiting for the reliable precision outside a gate in the walls surrounding the Imperial acres inside. Our tickets were checked by the guards before we were allowed entrance to where our passports were examined to match the information on file from the IHA. Verified, we joined our group... usually several dozen folk, mostly Japanese.

First, a video of the route we were to take through each of the gardens, with some bits of history, all in Japanese except for a few breezy English subtitles... not terribly useful. The guides spoke only Japanese... the headsets we were given in English were not much more informative…sometimes offering a bit of helpful information.

My eyes did not need many words...

While I love the dazzle, 

my eyes are always also drawn to the 

hardware & plumbing...

This demonstrates the roof construction of cedar fibers. familiar

to us living in the Northwest USA, where the First Nations people use cedar fibers.

 Tile is used as well... frequently looking quite metallic!

I studied methods for propping-up trees as pertinent to supporting our own recumbent native cherry.

Geometry is practiced with interesting care...

Finally, here I'm sharing some of the hoped-for classic images of bridged water surrounded by the carefully positioned stones & the studiously shaped pines...

Each of the two palaces... & the two villas, which were retreats overlooking the city... were situated inside a complex garden, which is what we wanted to see.

We were brought up only to the "porches" of any of the buildings to be able to peek through the open exterior screens into the interiors with noteworthy painted screens. Much became repetitive & thus familiar, but the gardens, while equally true to some forms, were quite different in terrain.

Gardens are part of what we especially anticipated seeing. We visited so many... including those in numerous temples... that I felt almost as exhausted as if I were in my own garden trying to keep up with Tom!

These are immense landscapes … tightly planted, designed with amoeba-like waterways into ponds; bridges of wood or stone, sometimes earthen topped, create walking paths of rocks & various rustic pavements meandering over small islands to arrive at teahouses placed for spectacular viewing... so many artfully placed stones!

Those light & fragile buildings, honoring wood from the forest & paper from the field, are well grounded with stone… communing with its garden… well watered all this evolves into quite a fantastical version of nature.

We are here too late for most blossoming plants yet too early for the full autumnal color… which is just beginning to tinge the maples. One can imagine the coming glories, however the basic sculpture of the trees is a study in & of itself. All have been tended... if not almost "tortured"... carefully from early in their lives so that they are sculpted to dance with their siting & with each other, inviting transitory compositions opening to vistas long & short. Many become steep in places rising toward spots of choice overview. They are places of very long-term fantasy resulting from years of labor in pruning alone! They are the bones of these gardens.

The Imperial taste was seemingly "simple"... refined toward an appreciation of natural beauty… not gaudy or gilded in the European manner. The palaces & villas are thatched or shingled wooden structures with paper shoji screens & shutters to enclose/protect as well as to boldly expose/open to the gardens. They seemed quiet, private places not much made for show in the usual sense. Of course, one knows there were many additional aspects to the Imperial life which would add the color & pattern of robes & kimonos, sounds & rhythms of ceremony, which are not evident to us as later tourists... who were constantly in each other's way as we all were shooting our cameras at every turn...not really enjoying anything "natural" about where we were.

So I must enjoy being the tourist & trust my memories as they mature with the images' help... I've done this before. My new fancy camera is not yet comfortable… I must continue enjoying the full plate of learning… Learning life.

Speaking of plates: I will make a post about the fabulous food fun, but this morsel for now. We walked a lot & once got happily lost in an unexpected... color-coordinated... urban rice field.

I'd begun collecting advertising fliers for their design & color… thinking gift-wrap. One flyer informed me about a NETSUKE museum. I have long been entranced by these miniature sculptures… which originally functioned as counterpoise on a cord holding the inro, a small purse hanging from the belt of a kimono. They were always collectors items. 

I recommend a recent bestselling book, The Hare With The Amber Eyes which tells the story of one such collection.

The museum is housed in a handsome 300-year-old home set back in a garden behind a gate at the street. A collection of some 400 small exquisite pieces displayed in magnificently inappropriately designed cases! One could not get close enough to actually see the pieces... which others had realized, so they placed magnifying glasses on clunky stands to highlight one detail… obscuring the rest of the piece! All was sharply lit from above all that reflective surface! These displays were absolutely stupidly rude to their contents.

Netsuke are intimate personal objects, meant to be held... fondled... which freedom I know to be impossible in a public exhibition. I have seen other museums show such collections at eye level in thin glass cases... so they can simply be viewed from both sides with much more clarity & ease.

It was very frustrating to this jeweler already suffering from loss of too much of my youthful visual acuity. Photographs were not allowed.

I tried to console my disappointment by moving through the opened screened spaces between the actual objects to a series of videos featuring the techniques of some of the contemporary artists being displayed. Those offered some tighter viewing, but would have been much better had they been edited so as not to be so tedious, sometimes even silly. By now I've been around filmmakers enough that I recognized these to be almost amateur.

The saving grace was the building, complete with the kitchen... which functioned as the video theatre. It featured a huge black cooking stove, its pipe soaring into the two-storied space... served by a steep stairway. A water well or cistern was covered with sturdy bamboo laced to roll back…. with a crane to lower or raise the wooden bucket. Clay pots were covered with wooden lids, two parallel bars for handles... All a bit over-sized.

More netsuke were much better displayed up in what must have been the bedrooms of this large home. I'm glad to have seen it all, even as I wish I had been able to actually see what I'd paid to see. Ahhh, life!

The better experience, later that same day, was the International Manga Museum. I knew very little about this particularly Japanese art form... Thinking of it as "comics" because it is usually drawn like that... pages of cells with words, often in "balloons".

I met this lively one on our first night in the gift shop under the Tokyo Tower... He seems to be part of what Manga's about... While I will probably never quite understand the persistent overlay we saw of plastique phantasm in both print & 3-D forms... so much of which I cannot easily appreciate except as [too] "cute" or as kitsch was commonly considered fashionable.

This sculpture made in the technique of paper lanterns crafted on bamboo framework was the only permissible place to make photos.. so I did!

 That will serve as a light dessert to our deep appreciation of the old city's charms... we have many more photos, of course, but... enough for now.

Our last two days in Kyoto, we moved closer to the train station, first in an urban, rather vertical ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn with tatami mats where you sleep on futons. The last night, we moved across the station to another hotel which allowed us to catch our train the next morning to the island of Kyushu, where our friend Terry Welch had arranged for us to stay in a real ryokan!