Threshold

I removed one of the 'noren's in the house today for the wash. Noren is a Japanese curtain that hangs anywhere from one foot to several feet down from the top of the door opening towards the ground. It covers certain amount of the opening  from one room into another. After removing it, I noticed a dramatic difference in the degree of revelation. This particular noren covered about 1/3 of the door opening from my bedroom to the kitchen. Because of this 1/3, certain parts or the room I was entering was covered completely. Of course, when you go through the threshold and enter into the kitchen, what is covered by the curtain gets revealed, but it seems that something happens in the moment you go through the threshold. First of all, since this 'noren' covers 1/3 of the door, you are only seeing 2/3 of what is in the next room. So you are not perceiving what is in the upper 1/3 of the room. Somehow, when you go through the noren, some kind of magic happens to change your perception. After entering into the room, the upper 1/3 of the room gets revealed in a different light. What was hidden gets revealed in a completely different look. This is, of course, part of the aesthetics of the hidden and obscured.

As I was experiencing this change, I remembered what I read in the architecture book about the size of the door in old Japanese houses. The doors in old Japanese architecture are made very small and low. In order to go through, you have to crouch down quite a bit. (I remember that I used to hit my head a number of times, forgetting the size of the door even if I can actually see the size with my eyes.) The reason why the door is so small and low is because of the belief that there is another world in the space after you go through the threshold. It was also believed that a spirit goes through small openings, not big openings.

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Mary-webster dictionary gives the following meanings for the word 'threshold'"

1: the plank, stone, or piece of timber that lies under a door : sill2 a: gate, door b (1): end, boundary ; specifically : the end of a runway (2): the place or point of entering or beginning : outset <on the threshold of a new age>3 a: the point at which a physiological or psychological effect begins to be produced <has a high threshold for pain> b: a level, point, or value above which something is true or will take place and below which it is not or will not

The last one ' a level, point, or value above which something is true or will take place and below which it is not or will not'. Is it ok to think 'above' is beyond and 'below' is here? So after going through the threshold, I will be in a place where something is true or will take place? If that's the case, it makes so much sense that the opening, the threshold is small and challenging to go through in order to be in the place truth is going to be revealed. I cannot wait to get back my noren to make this opening smaller.

Definition of professional

I've been thinking about the definition of  'professional'.

The other day, I went back to my favorite liquor store to exchange a bottle of red wine. This is rather unusual since there is usually a wine specialist I've acquainted well with and he is very thorough and accurate about his recommendation. However, this bottle I purchased was through someone else's advice. Luckily, I located this wine specialist whom I don't know very well and explained the situation. The wine was too sweet. When I first brought it up, he seemed to be in disbelief. Then I remembered how confident he was when suggesting this particular brand over the other one I had liked in the past. Without hiding his disbelief, he bluntly said, "you can choose another one." After picking up the one I always liked, he guided me to the casher and glanced at the bottle I picked up. "You like that one and not this one?" "this one is too sweet" "it's not sugar sweet and this one is smoother" "I'm just used to drinking this other one." Throughout this exchange, he kept looking unsatisfied as if I knew nothing about wine.

Recommending a certain taste to someone you don't know very well is tricky. I remember the wine specialist I've acquainted in this same store and how he approached his work as an advisor. He always listened to me very carefully and selected several bottles and gave me very detailed explanation about each one. From the second visit and on, he remembered my face and came to help me with the selection. And his selection always hit the mark. I compared these two specialists and wondered why this new one was less successful in 'discovering and satisfying' my preference, which is his job. Perhaps it has something to do with 'service' - the spirit to 'serve' people. In order to truly serve people, you have to examine your ego. You have to disappear in service of others' needs. It requires deep study of the information you are sharing. It also requires deep study of who the people are you are serving. It's not an easy job to be a wine specialist. Whenever I am with my favorite wine specialist, I feel well taken care of. I have the trust and can even enjoy other conversations with him since I'm not worried if the one he recommends would be overpriced or not suited for my palate. He has cultivated an air to ease the customer who comes to his store, share his knowledge, and always gives room for the customer to make a decision. I sense his pride in his work. I haven't yet had to return anything he recommended to me, but if that ever happens, I'm sure what he would do is to listen to me, consult me, bring three more options to choose, and say, "don't hesitate to bring it back if you don't like it". He sure is in my eyes, a true professional.

I encountered another professional on TV. A while ago, I watched how an autism specialist works with children in a TV program called "Professional." She had opened a center, like a nursing home, where the autistic children can stay and spend time with other autistic children and the caretakers. There was one impossible child who kept escaping from this home. Noone seemed to have a solution to solve this child's problem. His manner was violent and his situation was clearly severe. After about the third escape of the day, the reporter asked the specialist, "what are you going to do now?" Without changing her facial expression a bit, she replied," I'm going to keep working with him until he becomes well because I'm a professional. I will never give up."

Am I professional? When things don't go well, am I not finding the excuses? Am I not making a leeway for myself? Being a professional means  to be able to take responsibility for your work. Professional means to pursue the goal of your work no matter how long it takes or how complex it is. Also, professional means to think about your work and its relation to the people who are affected by your work. It means to invest in the question, 'what is the relationship between my work and the world's present?'

Proof of existence

I participated in Dance Hakushu Festival last summer in Hakushu, Japan. As I was reading some of the e-mail exchanges amongst the staff members, I ran into one of this year's participants' blog. He was someone I had known from almost 19 years ago in Japan. At that time, he and dance seemed inseparable. I firmly believed that he was going to dance until the end of his life. I myself was just starting to make a serious commitment to the 'act of dance' and 'performance' without thinking too much about motivation or meaning. I clearly remember the time he faced me and asked me this question in a serious manner: "why do you have to dance?" He told me how 'he could not live without dancing". Dance was a proof of his existence. I didn't understand what he had meant at that time. Now I'm slowly starting to understand it. When asked, "what do you dance for?" after one of  his performances at PS 1 in November 2007, Min Tanaka answered, "first for myself, then for others, but I'm always in need of others's eyes." When I cast that same question onto myself, do I have an answer now?  I dance to explore. What is possible? Where is the boundary? Limit? How does inside and outside co-exist? How does past, present, and future co-exist in my body, through my body? How can I disappear and exist at the same time? How can I transcend this body? What is self? How do you reach ego-less body? Can I go there or am I staying here?

Dance is a quest to find the answers to myself. Answers to my existence. My existence in relation to the universe. The existence of the universe. It is a way to investigate what it means to exist. For me, it is a way to examine what this whole thing means, not to prove it.

In the blog, this dancer mentioned that he hadn't danced for quite a while since his ways of proving his existence has been shifted to his other business. After calling this opportunity his 'last time to dance', he casts a question, 'I wonder what might happen if I dance now. Would this really become the last time or not?" I wonder if this occasion is going to become a trigger to shake and move his existence and if that's the case, I wonder if the reason for him to dance might now be to find himself, not to prove himself.

Visible/Invisible

Recently, I attended one of my friend's mother's memorial service. The service was conducted in a church she used to attend.  While I sat on a pew and listened to the pastor's talk, one phrase caught my ears. "What's visible is temporary. What's invisible is eternal." It was a quote from II Corinthians and it does have a highly biblical meaning. However, for me who has been thinking visible/invisible, this phrase came as a revelation. Isn't it true that what's visible, what is on the surface, what is showing outside doesn't last long and what's invisible, what is in deep inside, what is unseen and unsaid lasts much longer? I wonder what happens to things we thought of saying but don't say? Where do they go? I often think of visible/invisible in dance. What is visible is very minimalistic, but what is invisible is vast, deep, and huge. The viewers 'sense' what is invisible, what is undefined, and what is hidden. Minimal action evokes indefinite, undefined, deep response inside of the viewers. This, to me, is a much richer experience and therefore, the phrase 'What's visible is temporary. What's invisible is eternal' resonated with me so strongly.