2-6-2022

Work and other issues drove the newsletter clean out of my mind on Saturday night, despite the fact that I’d been writing pieces of it since Tuesday. Thus, the late missive. A morning meditation session with Buddhist Geeks teacher-in-training and photographer Dida Kutz helped me get back on track. Thank you, Dida! It seems appropriate that, on Tuesday, I decided to change the subtitle to “Here and Now”:

~~UPDATE~~ HERE AND NOW

The word “update,” as a heading, is starting to bug me. Being in the “here and now” is always something I work toward. It’s a place to begin, a place to be. And “update” sounds like a word tossed out of an office cubicle. “Hey, you—over there! Gimme me an update!”

So, where am I? I’m starting to write the newsletter on Tuesday, in my little cottage. It’s sunny outside and I’m at the dining table, looking through the windows out to the brick patio (which serves as the tiny front yard), where there is one very old, very large, dead rosebush, a knotted skeleton of itself, leaning on the trellis fence, where it expired a couple years ago. In front of it there is one smaller potted rosebush—very much alive with tiny pink blooms.

We haven’t removed the very dead rosebush because this is a rental, and the owner (whom we have never met) does not seem interested in removing it. Anyway, the birds find the hardened limbs to be useful, as a place to perch, rest, and scrape their beaks after a meal. They also like to keep an eye out in case we humans fill the makeshift bird bath or toss out some squash seeds or unsalted popcorn.

As for “the now,” I’m sitting here after breakfast wondering what work I should get to, since I have multiple editing/writing jobs which generate multiple emails and tasks.

I can simplify the complicated situation and say there is art and there is work—two dominating sides of my life. Sometimes it seems the only place where the twain meet is in this newsletter. Otherwise there seems to be a gulf, a dark crevasse between the two. Do you know what I mean?

Speaking of a “crevasse” I’m writing this on Wednesday as the US begins sending troops to Eastern Europe, and I feel a weariness from all the wars that have come and gone and remained during my lifetime.

And now I’m writing this on Thursday as Biden announces US forces have killed an Isis leader, which I imagine will lead to retribution. It just seems never-ending.

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WRITING

Current reads: Finally diving deeper into David Graeber’s thick book, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, and determined to finish it (lent to me by my neighbor, Joe, who has been very patient). Also: Mary Talusan’s Instruments of Empire. Both books are part of the research I’m doing for my personal project, a non-fiction book about my parents, their life and times, based—at least partly—on their letters to each other during and after WWII. At least that’s what I’d like to think is going to happen. But all that may change once I actually read the letters.

I had been procrastinating about going to the storage rental to get the box holding my parents’ letters, because once I open them, that’s it. I will know things. Maybe some things I don’t want to know. I’ve been holding on to these letters for years, now. But today I finally went to storage and retrieved them. I was surprised, actually, at how many of them there are—three boxes packed full. Now I will have to take this question, about whether or not I should write this book, seriously. Am I opening Pandora’s box?

Any good non-fiction books you know of about WWII in the Philippines, especially in Manila?

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ART

In the same spirit of “here and now” this is a new piece that I’m adding to the “Unmapping” project. You can learn more about it on the Projects page of my website, JeanVengua.com

“2/5/2022” from the “Unmapping” project. Ink, watercolor, and paper (collage) on Shizen watercolor paper, 10 x 10 in. By Jean Vengua.

I’ve been thinking about Saatchi Art. I’ve sold less than a dozen pieces on that site over the last 4 or 5 years, and I’m not sure it’s worthwhile for me to continue, since—like so many of these art platforms—my work gets lost among the thousands of other artists who use it. Their commission fee is quite low, and I appreciate the fact that they send a courier to pick up and deliver the work, and insure it, yet it all feels so . . . distant. Anybody out there have experience with that platform? Any thoughts? Time for me to leave? I keep feeling that focusing more on my local and regional arts community is the way to go, and that it will ultimately be more fulfilling.

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EVENTS

Feb. 11, 6-7:30 pm: If you are in the area, come and join Melissa Smedley, Terese Garcia, Jean Vengua, and Linda Lay for a poetry reading, “Moments of Courage” and open mic, at Captain + Stoker, 398 E. Franklin St. in Monterey. Here’s the sign-up form if you’d like to share your poem, story, or song relating to women’s “moments of courage.” This reading accompanies the Courage Within: Women Without Shelter exhibit at the Monterey Museum of Art.

Fri., Feb. 18, 6 pm: I will also be participating with a number of local artists in the art exhibit, “Sustaining: Our World, Our Community, Ourselves,” sponsored by @mtrypearlworks and @EmergingArtsAlliance. Proof of Vaccination required.

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LINKS

Some interesting people are writing letters to each other, and conversing in this manner, on letters.wiki, a free and completely ad-free site. These are not written like tweets or Facebook posts. These are letters, each one with a proper salutation, body, and closing.

Iona Italia on “The Humane Art: Why We Should All Read and Write Letters”—even if they’re in a public, digital format.

The artist and arborealist, Paul Newman, works in graphite; walking, observing, and learning about his locale is central to his work.
From Booooooom: Sweden is recruiting crows to clean up cigarette butts in return for food (UK Guardian).
“Paper Suns” by artist Livien Yin, also on Booooooom. Yin explores the history of Chinese migration to the U.S. during the “Chinese Exclusion Act” years.

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SOUNDINGS

Kishi Bashi’s moving “I Am the AntiChrist to You” resonates partly because it’s beautiful, and partly because I just read Bunyu Fujimura’s book, “Though I Be Crushed.” This memoir of incarceration was recently “rediscovered” by members of the local Salinas Japanese Buddhist Temple. Rev. Fujimura was a minister of the BCA when the Japan’s armed forces bombed Pearl Harbor, and Japanese American families in Salinas (and in many other areas of the U.S.) were incarcerated in during WWII.

Kishi Bashi’s song is a track on his EP accompanying the Songfilm, Omoiyari. I think it’s worthwhile to include the lyrics here:

[Chorus]

Who are you? Who am I to you?
I am the antichrist to you
Fallen from the sky with grace
Into your arms race

[Verse 1]

Lucid lovers me and you
A deal of matchless value
I was always quick to admit defeat
Empty statements of bones and meat
And my heart it shook with fear
I'm a coward behind a shield and spear
Take this sword and throw it far
Let it shine under the morning star

[Chorus]

Who are you? Who am I to you?
I am the antichrist to you
Fallen from the sky with grace
Into your arms race

[Verse 2]

One for my heart and two for show
Three tears for all the souls below
One day we made them into figurines
Burned them all with all my favorite things

[Chorus]

Who are you? Who am I to you?
I am the antichrist to you
Fallen from the sky with grace
Into your arms race
Who are you? Who am I to you?
I am the antichrist to you
Fallen from the sky with grace
Into your arms...

Sven Helbig’s “Metamorphosis.” What happens when you combine Reishi fungus and a violin? Helbig writes that the video and music are “contemplating about the change of values, the need for renewal and regeneration and about hubris, that always comes before the fall.”

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Until next Saturday . . .

Eulipion Outpost

2/6/2022 #51