Close: 無極 (Wuji)
What an honour it is to have this young artist’s gaze fall upon me. I can’t wait to see what you do next, Michael.
Follow @mikt97 on Instagram for more portraits and sketches. He is also on tumblr.
Open: 太極 (Taiji)
Mariella Villalobos produced this sketch for me at the 2012 Otafest. Already an established and practicing illustrator, Mariella was volunteering her time and talent to draw portraits in exchange for donations to Japan’s tsunami relief. Needless to say I was impressed by what she was able to produce in a short amount of time, and with much patience and sensitivity.
More examples of her work can be found here.
Close: Gordon Liu
A rare photo of Gordon Liu performing Drunken Fist while dressed as his character from “Dirty Ho.”
(via musashi-no-kami)
Open: あけましておめでとうございます。
only in the west
do whales and sasquatch roam free;
go visit justin
(transliteration: “akemashiteomedetougozaimasu.”)
Open/Close: Mandala of Compassion
On a certain day, at a certain place and at a certain time, when my light is just right, I look over at the mother sitting across from me on the CTrain. She is beautiful to me - yes she is beautiful to me in the conventional sense, but more importantly for this moment, not like that. I regard her in the sunlight for a moment, then I want to ask her about the scarf that frames her countenance. I’d like to know how the patterned chrysanthemums seem to be blooming from the oval formed from the upturned corners of her mouth and the downward curl of her eyes. I won’t ask but I will smile. I love her.
On another day, at another place and time, there is an old man standing in front of me waiting for the light to turn so we can cross the street. He has laced dignity into his shoes up through white socks pulled tight up around his ankles. He is beautiful to me. I want to rest my hand between his shoulder blades and, standing beside him, ask him where he’s heading in those shoes, with the tattered leather tassles. I want to know so I can take his hand and walk with him. But I don’t ask; instead I will hold the door open behind me and leave just the edge of my shy smile, looking back. I love him.
When I gazed at the completed mandala I felt how I do when I see these people. There is so much beauty and love in the world that is circumscribed by their lives; there is a circle around them that they illuminate through the little things - their unaffected gestures, the way their bodies are held, the unnoticed cadences and syncopation woven into their actions. The value of their lives can be seen even without really knowing who they are - it is self evident. I don’t need to know where it comes from - the light is simultaneously its own source and emanation. To feel this is a great mercy. Ah but what of my thirst for knowing?!
Every other day, and every other place there is a woman I have come to know well. There is so much more to know and my questions flow from me. I mingle them with answers of my own. I know the melody of her smile, but I want to know the rhythm. I know the lyrics of her steps but I want to dance to the music. My own heartbeat is deafening and I can’t hear anything else. My heart breaks! I know she’s beautiful and I love her.
Every other minute there is a man I know so well. I’ve asked him all of the questions I could think of until now. I know why he grins and why he runs. He knows why I smirk and why I walk. The strands of our mutual knowing are braided into a rope of deep, ancient memories we both hold. After so long my fingers have become numb and standing so far from me it is hard to see him, but I hold onto my end. My heart aches! I know he’s beautiful and I love him.
Where am I in all of this? I am alive and so I travel towards knowing. I don’t know much. I have no answers from which to brew a panacea for the exquisite pain that accompanies living. But through my natural step, the way I cock my head, the way I shape my fingers, the way my eyes ignite when I’m really seeing, the way I dance - there is a source-less and self-perpetuating wisdom that lights my path and tells me I should not give up. It’s okay that my spirit feels hunger and thirst. I should forgive myself for not having the certainty of satiation. Only when I lay down that burden will I be light enough to keep walking, and mingle my light with the beautiful people all around me, loving.
-Jordan Baylon (1/12/2013)
(Photographs: These are the itinerant monks of Dzongkar Cheode Tibetan Buddhist Monastery. Leading them is Lama Jampa Sopa, abbot and teacher, and master of Buddhist mandala arts and Tibetan Buddhist rituals. Five monks laboured together over the course of five days to create from memory an intricate meditation on compassion out of coloured sand. After the completed mandala is consecrated with a prayer, it is ritualistically destroyed, the sand swept up and dispersed into flowing water.)
Open/Close: “you and i”
you and i
of hearts and eyes
we sit
inscribe a circle
you and i
the scotch beside
sip and
light the vesper
you and i
let slip a sigh
we pull
the circle closer
you and i
our fears confide
reflect
and cleanse their poison
you and i
we rend our ties
and break
the circle open
you and i
in love abide
our light’s
the sun’s - not hoping
Jordan Baylon (12/31/2012) -artwork by daniel j kirk
Open/Close: Holiday Haiku II (Becoming Tanka)
Again sleepless and dazed, I wrote couplets to complete last year’s haiku. This year I opted for a three-hole pamphlet stitch binding. I owe the covers to my good friend, print-based textile artist Julie Baratta. Woody Allen and rum-soaked eggnog constituted my only sustenance for the intensive 10 hour process from binding to writing and to inscription. Enjoy.
L.T.
still, water is drawn up veins
by thoughts cast far below roots
S.T.
to echo just be still, but
to sing breath must become voice
J.T.
and all his dreams are born
from that air he so brightened
B.T.
only that beat never errs
in finding good earth to drum
J.G.
so not all fruit is destined
for the cup - some you must plant
L.K.
our eyes make the difference
seeing nectar past the thorns
M.B.
supple limbs are made to spring
and to fall - do both often
A.K.
let the warm sun blanket you
and all the leaves fan you cool
C.T.
tiny spring droplets ripple
and find their way to summer
M.T.
the ponderous mass dresses
itself in everything ‘round
D.T.
does the mirror only see?
or does it paint with our eyes?
N.T.
how many colours, flavours,
shapes and sizes await you?
(Jordan Baylon 12/25/2012)
Close: Seeds
Georgia Anne Muldrow. Madlib. Yup. Exactly.
Open: Sax
“If you take even the hardest instrument and have three months to play it, you can learn to play fifty songs with three notes”
“Did you have training in that sense?”
“Man, I didn’t even have two cents”
-Sept 22nd, 2012
Close: “Contemplative Middle Aged Man”
10 minute writing exercise. Had the above phrase chosen and then entered into a google image search. Look who showed up!
What a strange world we live in. This is our everyman. We were all born divided into siloed pockets of conciousness and we honestly try our best. Really though, let’s be honest and say that even when we were being shitty, that was us trying our best at that moment. Not that that particular shittyness means that we never had a better best, but that sometimes we just have to look at life and say “that’s what it is.”
Here he is, not thinking that, but living it. Breathing through the ache of this moment’s shitty best. Not hoping, but making the best of it. And I look at him and I’m right there too. I’m not tired: I am fucking aware of the existential miracle of even breathing and am exhausted by knowing, never mind actually breathing!
And what do these breaths buy? The ability of my aggregate of shitty cells to make my legs move one in front of the other so I can pick up my daughters from my shitty ex-wife, who is also just another best that just is.
This is what love means now, in cold streets and in apartments lit by what’s filtered through the haze of windows and clouds.
