BON ODORI

We visited the Bon Odori Festival at Tacoma Buddhist Temple. It's a Buddhist "day of the dead" celebration of ancestors. Inside the temple, we participated in an Obon service. Then we watched Taiko drumming and people dancing various "folk dances" from different regions of Japan. There was also food, booths, and a beer garden, but those lines were too long.

MONSTER TRUCKS of SUMMER

"Max," spray paint, art marker, and papercut cardboard on 4" x 6" cardboard. Monster Trucks of Summer, no. 3.

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In the past, I've participated in Poetry Postcard Fest during the summer. This year, I decided not to participate, but I'm still making art cards. I don't know why I decided to make monster "trucks" (whether trucks or cars), but here we are.

I don't know how many I'm making. I don't know who they are being sent to. I'm just creating at this point and having a blast.

BACHELOR TIME

It's a bachelor night at TWT, so The Dog(s) and I are having a few of our favorites for dinner.

For The Dog(s) it's a little bit of pho broth on beef loaf.

For TWT, it's beef brisket pho from his favorite local Vietnamese restaurant, accompanied by Royal Fresh Imperial IPA from Deschutes Brewing. This is seriously such a great pairing; I could eat it every day.

BALLOON GLOW

Balloon glow at Lakewood SummerFEST.

SWIM FREE 2023

"Swim Free 1 and 2," Montana BLACK spray paint and acrylic paint on glass Coke bottles.

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It's been six years since my mother died. On each July 10, some of my family members gather to honor her life and remember her death with art, conversation, and food.

A few days before her death, I painted a small octopus on the Bremerton Art Walls. On the first and second anniversaries, I returned to paint larger octopuses there. Then the octopus (Ann) escaped from the wall and started to truly swim free. She became a small block print, a pole puppet that made a pilgrimage to the Walls, painted rocks that were hidden near the Walls, and, now, Coke bottle garden art.

My mother loved Coke. She loved to drink it and she collected Coca-Cola paraphernalia. So it seemed appropriate to marry the "swim free" Octopus with Coke bottles. My original plan was to simply paint them so they could be placed in a garden or on a shelf. I placed them on bamboo stakes in my garden so I could paint them hands free. Once I had them inverted, however, and the base coat of spray paint applied, I realized that the stake could be part of the art and they could reside in the garden or flower beds.

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It was a wonderful day to reminisce and remember, to paint and eat, to just hang out together as a family on my father's deck. Swim Free 2023 is in the books and it was a good day.

NUCLEAR FAMILY

Nuclear Family by Joseph Han was a wonderful read. It's a novel of tradition and change. Family and friends. Growing up Korean on Hawaii. Generations and ghosts. Living and the dead. And a lot of pot smoking, so much so that I'm worried for the author, assuming he may have a lot of his own experience in bringing Grace's usage to life. The novel shifts through the stories of various family members, but mostly centers around Grace, her brother Jacob, and their parents who own and operate Cho's Delicatessen. There's a tenderness that undergirds all of the stories and the main narrative that is refreshing and welcomed. I highly recommend this for your summer reading.

FREEDOM DAY

Freedom Day. Today is the second anniversary of the start of my martial arts journey. To acknowledge it, I freed 牙 / kiba from its decorative knot. (It's a working sword and needs to reflect such.)

I've traveled from the basics of karate in a dojo for about fifteen months to training in qigong and iaido in my backyard dojo for about the same amount of time, with some overlap. I'm now incorporating the practice of zazen (Zen breathing) into my sword work.* This form of "moving Zen" reminds me to stay in the present and particular moment and to be fully present to it. (Much easier said than done.)

Year three begins here and now!

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*I've been slowly working my way through two complementary books: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki, which I've read a couple of times prior, and Taking the Path of Zen by Robert Aitken. I'm incorporating the practice of zazen into my sword work, without the sitting (instead, motion) and without breath work (instead, forms and stances). So not really zazen at all. And yet completely zazen.