A couple more quotes

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy; And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields. And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

Kahlil Gibran

'There's a crack, a crack, in everything, that's how the light gets in.'

Leonard cohen

Aguri Uchida

I've just been sorting through one of my notebooks, it's mostly full of lists of things to do and doodles and budgets that I never manage to stick too:)

There are a few quotes from artists though, some poems that I've jotted down because I like them, and a couple of Buddhist prayers/meditations. I'm going to throw the notebook away because I'll be leaving Japan soon (woe is me) and I can't carry everything home:(

Anyway, I thought I'd put some of the quotes on here, sharing's good.

I'll add some images too from Uchida Aguri, a Japanese painter of the Nihonga style. Last year (before I started my blog) I saw an exhibition called 'The witches one times one' in Tokyo which included some of her work and I was blown away, the textures, the colour and composition, fabulous! The Nihonga style of painting is usually used to depict much more traditional imagery so it's interesting to see it used in a more abstract way.

Uchida was encouraged to "investigate the expressiveness of the internal states of human beings" by being advised to think about "the shadow of the spirits " on human skin.

Buddhist Prayer

May all beings everywhere plagued with sufferings of body and mind

be freed from their illnesses.

May those frightened cease to be afraid, and may those bound be free.

May the powerless find power, and may people think of befriending each other.

xxx