Just Breathe

Trembling Aspen | Series 04_My Life Here | Issue_05

I am walking along Isezakicho Mall, an outdoor arcade of shops and stores, where I walk almost every day. I pass under...Christmas decorations? Arched across the walkway, red bows and white snowflakes all lit up. Yep, what I’m seeing is definitely—and surprising to me—Christmas decorations. Many of the stores I pass have some kind of nod to ku-ri-su-ma-su. I can hear Christmas carols quietly wafting through the outdoor speakers.

I’m finding Christmas in Japan a subtly conflicted affair. As I amble along I can’t help but internally pontificate on the woeful spread of Western culture. If you’re selling stuff, it would seem, Christmas is a good bandwagon to hop on. Is that the best we have to offer the world, seasonal sales promotions? At the same time, the Japanese version of Christmas-mania is so...subdued. If we’re going to absorb this Western holiday, Japan seems to say, we’re going to do it in our own low key and dignified way. The Japanese version of Christmas is, dare I say it, calming.

There is no national holiday on or around Christmas. All the Koganecho office staff will be working until the 27th of December, and then things will shut down. New Years is the time folks head home. They’ll hop on a train to Saitama, Fukuoka, or Nagano and spend 4 or 5 days with extended family.

Winter Solstice, the passing of the longest night, and the arrival of longer days, is quietly celebrated. A local public bath, Nakanoyu, (that looks like it was teleported out of 1979) offers a speical Winter Solstice only yuzu bath.^[1]

I've been back for about a week, so far Christmas seems to be an eclectic mishmash of east and west, old and new.

*
It's now Dec 31, just before New Years. Right smack on Christmas Day, December 25th, I hosted a Christmas party in KocoGarden. For us Westerners, it was an important touch point, marking a day so embedded in our collective memories. For the Japanese artists and staff, it was an intriguing peek into what Christmas is like in Canada/Belgium/France/Spain/The United States. What is this gravy of which you speak?

I’ll show you the instagram-worthy photos in a moment. However, I feel it necessary to provide some Instagram-isn’t-all-of-reality context leading up to Christmas Day.

By my second day back in Yokohama, way back on December 6, I had KocoGarden’s grass floor back in place. I was excited to be back and to see, so quickly, the beginnings of the re-birth of KocoGarden. And yet, it felt a bit empty, a bit lonely, a bit sad.

Things weren’t as they had been. Which is the way of all things.

Re-orienting to a new life in a new country, it turns out, comes with some letting go. The letting go isn’t just The Big Letting Go, i.e. letting go of there for a new here, which is of course an on going process. It’s that life being lived here naturally starts to include here into the cycles of letting things go.

Coming back to Koganecho, and back to KocoGarden highlighted what was the same, and what wasn’t. It was a bit of an unexpected wobble to experience, in this new place, letting go of what was for what will be.

Steps forward often require steps down. “Our next life,” Glennon Doyle writes, “will always cost us this one. If we are truly alive, we are constantly losing who we just were, what we just built, what we just believed, what we just knew to be true.” Any real change requires you to die before you die—and know that dying can be the beginning, not the end. ~ Glennon Doyle as quoted by Ozan Varol. ^[2]

Yes, Glennon and Ozan. This I know. This I have lived. And what I know and have lived requires living and learning again.

As the Christmas party approached, charcuterie board procured, preparations made, I sat alone in KocoGarden, waiting. It was like a breath out, making room for the breath in. Just before the breath in is that moment of losing who I just was, what I just built, what I just believed, what I just knew to be true. A small and personal dying to KocoGarden as it was. Not knowing yet if there’d be a breath in, if there’d be the oxygen and air of something new. Genuinely sitting with that unknowing, before the breath in, acknowledging the letting go, the dying, is what imbues these small moments with the offering of life.

*
Friends are arriving. KocoGarden is coming alive with the sound of conversation ebbing and flowing as people come and go. Each is adding their unique voice to the burbling crescendo and diminuendo of conviviality. As with any good pot-luck, there is ample food and drink. Folks arrive in good cheer, with enough for themselves and others. New short term artists Pei and Michelle are getting to know the longer term artists. Mishio’s childhood friend Maude, and Ari’s childhood friend Lucia happen to be visiting. Maude and Lucia are getting to know their old friends in a new way. They’ve know their friends as artists back home, and its a new experience being with their friends here, as artists in residence, artists in community. It’s good to see, and good to be part of.

*
It’s now midnight. In the end, about 15 people at any one time were in KocoGarden. All in all, perhaps 30 people stopped by. A large contingent has just left, and the few of us still here have lit candles and turned down the lights. Conversations continue with new friends and old.

*
It’s now 2:00am. Last goodbyes were said a little while ago. KocoGarden is all neat and tidy. As I switch out the light, I breath out. KocoGarden breathes out. We're ready for the next breath in.

Hey, I’m Steve, an artist-in-residence in Yokohama, Japan. I make collaborative art, participatory art, interactive new media installations, and abstract visual art. I explore themes of home, identity, belonging and how to live your life like a work of art. I write about it all in this very newsletter, Trembling Aspen.

I’m learning out loud so we can learn together.

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