Day 9 - Kyoto, Naoshima

Kiyomizudera, one of Kyoto’s biggest tourist temple attractions. The temple is ancient, heavy, wooden, and juts out over a cliffside. It was once considered a great blessing to jump off of this 4-story stage. 42 jumpers have lept to the concrete and foliage below and 85.2% have survived. Wow. I saw a crackhead do two stories on worldstar.com once and THAT was bad. 

A mad dash later and I’m on a train to Okayama, a small city I would visit on my last day. A switch to Chiyamaya and another switch to Uno Port.

The Art Islands

Naoshima

Teshima

Ahh, here we are at the Art Islands. I check into Kikusui Ryokan. I hop on the first ferry to Naoshima Island, one of 2.5 major islands constituting the Art Islands. I am too late to rent any sort of private transportation. I putter around and eventually hop on a community bus to the only museum still open — the Benesse Art House -- considered the second best traditional art museum on the islands… I THINK… and I agree with that.

Benesse Art Museum

I let loose and had an amazing time at the Benesse. the first piece I saw was the Secret of the Sky.  When I sleep talk, for no reason known to me, I sometimes ask “why is the sky so complicated?” Naturally, I had to check this one out. I pushed on the window facing outward to the exhibit and it budged. This was no window it was a door — the people around me shared enthusiasm in this discovery. We entered the Secret of the Sky and I laid down on one of the rocks, looking at the sky and listening to the birds... 

This was a metal board covered in 100 neon slogans, housed in a — hmm — concrete dome. The acoustics in here were otherworldly — I loved it. More, the art operated so that only one slogan of the 100 would highlight at a time. They would alternate, every 5 seconds. For me, this created a random poem. Each slogan carried connotations and the random pattern smashed them together, causing loop-de-loops in my brain. Very cool! 

I met a bunch of friendly, fascinated, and diverse people in this museum. I continued meeting these same folk over the next two days. My new friends and I discovered a quite secluded roof area and witnessed an amazing sunset. As per usual, I hopped the fence into an area I was supposed to go. Completely surprisingly -- I may have found my tribe on this island -- the group on the roof, after some hesitation, all helped each other hop the fence and joined me to snap the sunset. There was no surveillance so we sat down, chatting, watching the sunset and snapping fantastic pictures. 

Secret of the Sky

 I've no secrets to share. The sky is what we thought it was!

100 Live and Die 

Art Friends

Colluding under a blood-red sun, laughing and loopy.

I'm at summer camp, again.

We've taken our lives and experiences to the island but left our baggage. Our personalities are shining through, were in the moment, and were exploring like children. I didn't know this place existed in me -- anymore or ever -- I can't remember. A wise man told me that this island rhymes with itself. That reminded me of George Lucas talking about Star Wars. I cant wait for this rhyme to echo forever.