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Close: 無極 (Wuji) What an honour it is to have this young...

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 22:03:57 -0400

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...

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 21:57:00 -0400

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 gutsanduppercuts: A rare photo of Gordon Liu...

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 01:18:01 -0500

Close: Gordon Liu

gutsanduppercuts:

A rare photo of Gordon Liu performing Drunken Fist while dressed as his character from “Dirty Ho.”

Open: あけましておめでとうございます。 only in the west do whales and sasquatch...

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 01:11:37 -0500

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...

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 04:12:00 -0500

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...

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 21:02:06 -0500

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...

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 15:46:14 -0500

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.

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 21:54:10 -0500

Close: Seeds

Georgia Anne Muldrow. Madlib. Yup. Exactly.

Open: Sax “If you take even the hardest instrument and...

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 21:48:55 -0500

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...

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 00:04:42 -0500

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.

Open: Louis C.K. Homage

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 23:22:00 -0500

A ten minute writing exercise. Theme: “Someone I Admire”

You know the feeling. When the middle-aged lady in the mall has the same bowl-cut hair as her teenage son and they are slowly eating an orange together in the food court; and his sister is a young branch stripped of everything feminine and so honest and unquestioning in her foliage you know they are never going to find a husband she can love; and the grandfather is yelling instructions across the crowded tables to the father who carries a single tray with one order of fries and two small fountain pops - how are they sharing? And your little cousin with the same almond eyes and the same glossy ebon hair looks up from his Nintendo 3DS and elbows you smirking, and you smirk, laugh a little and half-heartedly chastise him. And inside you sink. Because you love them. And have been taught that everything good in your life comes at the expense of you being able to walk over to them and just say that. And you take a breath and find yourself giggling again anyways.

Close: Sweet Fruit of Patience accidentalchemy: 122. The...

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 01:54:17 -0500

Close: Sweet Fruit of Patience

accidentalchemy:

122. The Hinterlands

I’ve been sitting on this photo of Jordan’s since the early days of typophotography. I secretly hoard his photo contributions to the project for selfish purposes. They embody exactly what the project is about: one form of art acting as a catalyst for inspiration in another form. I have him to thank for some written pieces that are most near and dear to me.

{JT.}

おかげさまでね

Open: Saturday Texts

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 01:11:00 -0500

(5.16 pm)
J: It snowed so I cancelled all my plans for the day
M: Haha was there that much snow?
J: I have ultra-Kramer hair and am wearing my old "Blossom" denim coat walking through Walmart. Aside from my D&G glasses I'm indistinguishable from a hobo
J: I didn't have a snowbrush
J: Just got ID'd for a game I bought
M: Hahahahahahahahha
M: How do you not have a snowbrush?
M: And you bought a denim jacket at Walmart?
J: Rental car
J: And it`s the denim jacket from Market Collective lol
M: Oh right
M: Lol sure
J: Just scraped my windows then decided to go back in for an aux cable to play my iPod in the rental car
J: Next dilemma: should I go to the Walmart McDonald`s rather than drive across the parking lot to Smash Burger
J: ?
M: Smash Burger always
(5.30 pm)
J: Then I have to drive across the parking lot and wait for it
M: I don't know J
J: A lesbian dressed like a Walmart-brand Bieber just rolled a 60 inch LCD out on a trolley
M: Haha
J: We are kindred spirits lol
J: Oh and I think the Indian guy in the electronics centre was making fun of me with his Latina coworker bc when I paid for my aux cord she laughed and then over-apologized lol
M: Rude!
J: lol
J: All the cars outside of Smash Burger are parked in a desperate fashion, all crooked and outside of the lines
M: Hahaha join them
J: I parked perfectly for once
M: Way to stand out
M: <3
J: I think I have to write this for my blog
M: Please do
(5.45 pm)
J: Happy ending?: the cashier at Smash Burger is a cute lil thing named Logan. She has a short cropped coiffe that tends to her right. While I type my PIN number we catch ourselves looking the other over. I'm afraid she's gonna make fun of me
J: She says, "I really like your hair" lol. I awkwardly reply that it's bedhead and confess I like her glasses. I thank her by name, accept my receipt and then text you. Lol
M: Number!!!
J: Can't. The story's over
J: And I think she's a teenageer
M: Oh haha then no
J: Yup lol

Open/Close: Corona This is my prayer: What is it?It is knowing...

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 21:58:10 -0500

Open/Close: Corona

This is my prayer:

What is it?
It is knowing the not and saying no to it
It is knowing yes and saying yes
It is being everything I can be when the sun rises
And only what I am when it sets
May the two ever become the same
And therein become a third

Jordan Baylon, May 16th, 2012

photograph taken December 12th, 2011

“Who bathed me with their divine gaze, and through what gilded gate, and how do I go forward still bearing that glimmer, and why?”

Close: Breaking Silence Jordan Baylon - 7/30/2012

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 06:18:40 -0500

Close: Breaking Silence

Jordan Baylon - 7/30/2012

Open: So begins my love letter to daniel j kirk …I now...

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 20:53:00 -0400

daniel j kirk, artist's studio, January 2012

daniel j kirk, artist's studio, October 2012

Open: So begins my love letter to daniel j kirk

…I now urge my patients at such times actually to paint what they have seen in dream or fantasy. As a rule I am met with the objection: “I am not a painter.” To this I usually reply that neither are modern painters - for which very reason modern painting is absolutely free - and that is anyhow not a question of the beautiful, but merely of the trouble one takes with a picture. How little my way of painting has to do with “art” I saw recently in the case of a talented portraitist; she had to begin all over again with pitiably childish efforts - literally as if she had never had a brush in her hand. To paint what we see before us is a different matter from painting what we see within.

- Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul

Open in a Close Jordan Baylon, “Blue Moon” Kitchen...

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 22:37:43 -0400

Open in a Close

Jordan Baylon, “Blue Moon”

Kitchen Lithograph, September 16th, 2012

Close in an Open Jordan Baylon - “Blue Moon”...

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 01:06:57 -0400

Close in an Open

Jordan Baylon - “Blue Moon”

Windermere, August 31, 2012

Close: I.M. Maya Kosaka Strange isn’t it, when you are...

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 00:13:20 -0400

Close: I.M. Maya Kosaka

Strange isn’t it, when you are just wandering and someone else’s world finds you? When you are no longer fastened to the tracks of your own time and can hear the echos of another’s?

I remember being lulled to the artificial pond on the campus by bells chiming a convocation. Lawn, shrubbery, flower bed - hell, even sight-lines - all looking like they were copied exactly from an adolescent artist’s sketchbook, because that’s when even a promising illustrator’s line tries to hold onto everything, never to fully capture any one thing. That time when everything in a picture can include only exactly what it says it does, and never anything more. That’s the message the bells quoted, like a challenge.

So I sat on the bench and watched the graduates pose with their families, trying really hard not to let other graduates and their families slip into the frame. Each wore a polyester robe and cap they would later doff as their toll of passage from that place. Each paid their smiles to unnecessary flashes lost in the afternoon sun.

To the bell’s melody my head drifted left to the tree, and then spun me round to face the plaque that anchored my back in coolness. I nodded to someone, maybe to myself and also not. Only when the bell could be ringing from inside me could I get up and walk again.

- June, 2012

Open: One Sentencefuckyeahzen: One night in February of 1968, I...

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 00:04:03 -0400

Open: One Sentence

fuckyeahzen:

One night in February of 1968, I sat among fifty black-robed fellow students, mostly young Americans, at Zen Mountain Center, Tassajara Springs, ten miles inland from Big Sur, California, deep in the mountain wilderness. The kerosene lamplight illuminated our breath in the winter air of the unheated room.

Before us the founder of the first Zen Buddhist monastery in the Western Hemisphere, Shunryu Suzuki, had concluded a lecture from his seat on the altar platform. “Thank you very much,” he said softly, with a genuine feeling of gratitude. He took a sip of water, cleared his throat, and looked at his students. “Is there some question?” he asked, just loud enough to be heard above the sound of the creek gushing in the darkness outside.
I bowed, hands together, and caught his eye.
“Hai?” he said, meaning yes.

“Suzuki Roshi, I’ve been listening to your lectures for years,” I said, “and I really love them, and they’re very inspiring, and I know that what you’re talking about is actually very clear and simple. But I must admit I just don’t understand. I love it, but I feel like I could listen to you for a thousand years and still not get it. Could you just please put it in a nutshell? Can you reduce Buddhism to one phrase?”

Everyone laughed. He laughed. What a ludicrous question. I don’t think any of us expected him to answer it. He was not a man you could pin down, and he didn’t like to give his students something definite to cling to. He had often said not to have “some idea” of what Buddhism was.

But Suzuki did answer. He looked at me and said,

“Everything changes.”

Then he asked for another question.