Above: Morning Glories screen detail (see archive for full screen) - Suzuki Kiitsu
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From the mind
of a single, long vine
one hundred opening lives
Chiyo-ni
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Artemis: I’m running late… again. :( I set my queue for this afternoon and tonight. Have a good day. :)
Étude pour nu rose, 1935, charcoal on paper
Henri Matisse
Self-Portrait, 1937
Henri Matisse
Le Lit Dans La Glace, 1919
Henri Matisse
Interior with a window, 1919
Henri Matisse
Méditation - Après le bain, 1920
Henri Matisse
Large image: HERE
Detail

North Sea Guest House, taken at Lion Peak, November 1984, 4 PM (detail)
From Celestial Realm: The Yellow Mountains of China
Wang Wusheng
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Dogen, one of Japan’s foremost medieval Zen priests, wrote in the Sansui-kyo chapter of the Shobogenzo that “to view sansui is to meet yourself before you were born.” The self before birth is a self beyond time and space. Dogen, wrote that this self is a ‘formless self’ no one has ever seen. This yet unformed self is the essence of sansui. A depiction of something beyond time and space whose appearance is yet unformed. As I stood before Wang’s photographic sansui, I could feel this acutely.
Wang’s stoicism shows itself in the strategic placement of of dark forms, at times centering the frame on forms whose blurring and gradation are overpowered by blackness.
Not mere shadows, the depth of his blacks represent …void and the silence of time.
A dark mass of mountains is not dead space but the very soul of the living mountains. The white sky in his photographs is not an empty sky but a sky shown after the passing of a raging storm, now bathed in sunlight.
- Seigo Matsuoka (excerpt from Photographic Sansui)
Born in the province of Anhui, Wang Wunsheng (1945-) has been photographing the Yellow Mountains since 1974.
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Celestial Realm | The Yellow Mountains of China
Wang Wusheng : Wu Hung : Damian Harper : Seigo Matsuoka
Abbeville Press, 2005 via: historyofourworld.wordpress
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Artemis: I’m pretty sure I’ve posted or reblogged one or two of these in the past, but I was searching for something unrelated tonight and came across them again. Just wonderful.
Pine forest in mist, taken at Stone Bamboo Shot Bridge, June 2004
From Celestial Realm: The Yellow Mountains of China
Wang Wusheng
From Celestial Realm: The Yellow Mountains of China
Wang Wusheng
Valley of Twin Bamboo Shoot Peak, taken at the Heavenly Sea December 1991
From Celestial Realm: The Yellow Mountains of China
Wang Wusheng
Himmelsberge #61C print, 1984
From Celestial Realm: The Yellow Mountains of China
Wang Wusheng
(Source: nagai-garou)
East Sea
From Celestial Realm: The Yellow Mountains of China
Wang Wusheng
J’ay Desire’ Cent Fois
A hundred times I wish I could transform myself
And become an invisible spirit that hides inside your heart
And seeks to comprehend your scorn
Which seems to me so cruel.
I would become master of your emotion.
I would discover the pulse of your nerves
As they flow through your flesh and change
Your disdain. And then I would know you.
In spite of yourself, against your will
I would be a part of your desires and your terms.
And I would chase the coolness from your veins.
So perfectly, love could set fire to you,
Then, when I saw them burst into full flame,
I would step out and be a man again.
Pierre de Ronsard
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To: JM, this is the poem that it brought to mind. Pierre. :-/
(Source: vi.sualize.us)
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a butterfly
in front and back
of the woman’s path
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Chiyo-ni
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Fukuda Chiyo-ni (Kaga no Chiyo) (福田 千代尼; 1703 - 2 October 1775) was a Japanese poet of the Edo period, widely regarded as one of the greatest female haiku poets.
Born in Matto, Kaga Province (now Hakusan, Ishikawa Prefecture) as a daughter of a picture framer, Chiyo-ni began writing haiku poetry aged 7. By the age of 17, she had become very popular all over Japan for her poetry. Her poems, although mostly dealing with nature, work for a unity of nature with humanity. Her own life was that of the haikai poets who made their lives and the world they lived in one with themselves.
Chiyo-ni’s teachers were the students of Bashō, and she stayed true to his style, although she did develop on her own as an independent figure. Today, the morning glory is a favorite flower for the people of her home town, because she left a number of poems on that flower.
After becoming a nun, Chiyo took the Buddhist name, Soen.
She is perhaps best known for this haiku:
morning glory!
the well bucket-entangled,
I ask for water
(Source: photo-nla.gov.au)
Cover of the 1903 edition of Madame Butterfly
Illustrations by C. Yarnall Abbott
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Cho-Cho-San shows her baby to Suzuki.
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The marriage broker fixes a date for Cho-Cho-San to meet Prince Yamadori.

Cho-Cho-San dressed in her finery for the meeting with Yamadori.

Suzuki holds up a mirror and urges Cho-Cho-San to get somerest before
Pinkerton’s arrival.

“Pitiful Kwannon!” cries Cho-Cho-San after looking in the mirror.
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Suzuki and Cho-Cho-San hide behind a shoji as they await the arrival
of Pinkerton.
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As night falls and Pinkerton fails to arrive, Cho-Cho-San lights
a paper lantern.

With a sword in her lap, Cho-Cho-San prepares to commit suicide.