We flew to Tokyo for master classes.
Werner. Jerome. Landmark.
The auditorium filled with people, notebooks open.
Silent,
uncomfortable,
knowing the work that was unfolding.
No-thing.
Not nothing.
No-thing.
If you are not your body,
where is the you that you are?
If you observe something happen,
how much does observation shape what’s happening?
Where is what’s happening happening?
Where is the observation located?
We spent hours looking at the filters through which we see our lives.
By evening of the first day,
I got I’m the source of what happens.
That the man I am married to does not exist outside of me.
At night, me and my occurring husband
found cheesecake in Ginza,
tonkatsu in a glass tower high above the city lights,
back-alley sashimi still moving on the plate.
The next morning, Werner said,
“You never see people.
You never experience another person directly,
only through your interpretation of them.
You see what you decided and filed about them.
You filter them out so your system has bandwidth
to scan for threats,
to keep you small,
to keep you safe,
to let the amygdala run your life.”
He stood on stage and formed a grid with the digits of his hands
to illustrate what he calls the filter of fast-moving particles,
through which we experience life.
He said, if you can see and remove your filter,
every moment of life hits you as an aesthetic experience.
It will touch you.
It will move you.
If you don’t,
you’re run by a nervous system only interested in survival.
A reflex.
I had lunch with my occurring husband.
Ramen.
He wept, and in the reflection of his tears I saw he saw me.
Since Tokyo, even on days I don’t see him,
he says,
“You are
a good mother,
a good cook,
a good wife.”
