smile
your smile just for me more precious than all the stars in darkest of nights
さくらさくら sakura sakura
singing in pink light this crown of floating petals carries my heart home
What is it for you, which carries your heart back to your faraway home? Be it geographical or temporal distance? Have you ever felt that? That twinge? That pang in your heart when the great distance announces itself abruptly, with such eloquence? Suddenly, in a moment, you are both here and there. Or rather, simultaneously there and not there.
For me, it is sakura*—the cherry blossoms. Their delicate lightness acquiring a new sense of gravity in a home away from home. Bittersweetness, in full bloom. And so still, i dance under the trees of pink reverie; drunk with beauty. Here and There. Everywhere.
*While the chrysanthemum may be the national flower of Japan and the seal of the imperial family, sakura—the cherry blossom—is without doubt, the national “people’s flower” of Japan. When sakura blossom in spring, many people enjoy walks or picnics and parties under the soft canopies of pink petals. Many years ago (before the date which it was published), I wrote another blog post which illuminates the significance of sakura in Japan: https://michiruadrienne.com/2021/06/02/grace/
airspace
i dream skies clear blue an airspace of love and peace encircling one world
“You may say I’m a dreamer”, but in fact, what comes first: the dream or the day? Imagination or reality? Perhaps the difference between the two (dream and day, imagination and reality) is not so distinct after all—one bleeding into the other as our dreaming and waking worlds are nothing more than a continuum of one consciousness, of one stream in time and space navigating terrains all at once sublime, spellbinding, and atrocious.
“You may say I’m a dreamer”, but is it not the dream that gives rise to words articulated and actions initiated? And ultimately to that concept which we call “reality”—which is indeed precisely that, a concept, a conceptualization of the mind. It is the mind which dreams and thinks and creates. It is the mind, consciousness itself, which is the ultimate “reality”. We all dream; we are all dreamers—inevitably. So direct your dreams and your desires beyond what you have been taught is possible, beyond the visible horizon and into skies of clear blue.
“I see no conflict between reality and imagination. They are not in fact separate. Our real lives hold within them our royal lives; the inspiration to be more than we are, to find new solutions, to live beyond the moment. Art helps us to do this because it fuses together temporal and perpetual realities.”
~Jeanette Winterson
Flowers For Humanity
In this one weave of life we are all connected. Ultimately, there is no real separation and there is no real other. And in actuality, there is no real enemy to fight. It is the conceptualization of enemies, which allows for hostilities and fighting. This is the very simple reason wartime propaganda aggressively demonizes the “other”, the so-called “enemy”. For without an enemy, whom are we to fight? But in the very creation of “enemies” we ourselves become an enemy—our enemy’s enemy—and the realization of peace vanishes instantly. In the very moment we conceive an other as an enemy, we ourselves are already defeated; our own peace shattered instantly.
Indeed, everything is energy. The life-sustaining light of the sun is energy; the life-annihilating force of nuclear weaponry is energy. We cannot shield life from the destruction of warfare with more violence; only love can do that. The energy of rage and indignation—whether expressed as anti-Putin or anti-NATO sentiment, whether experienced by perpetrator or by victim of violence—is essentially the same energy. Liberation from violence does not come through violence itself; only love can liberate.
Ultimately, peace is an alignment with love; whereas war is a state of misalignment—imbalance and disharmony. In the pursuit of peace, the important question to ask is not: How do we defeat the enemy? But rather: How do we align with love?
Can we not see that the light of the sun shines everywhere, on everyone, equally and indiscriminately? And that the flowers blossom simply because it is their very nature to do so? Love is our very nature, and by design, love does not discriminate.
So whoever you are, wherever it is that you come from, whatever your walk of life…
in these times of fear trauma and hate of senseless violence hold on to your light your love and your beauty offer to the altar of life the sacred flower of your heart
This post will be in place of my usual weekly post on Fridays, 12:00 a.m. UTC. I expect to return to my usual schedule next week on March 11. Thank you so much for reading, and may love and light be with you always.
~michiru adrienne
skin
~a short meditation on water, one~
When you go to the water—be it river, lake, pond, pool or puddle, or the ocean—do you not wonder what world is there, underneath that surface? Surely it has its own ongoings, and a deep story on the other side of seen. Behind these eyes, beyond these body-bound perceptions, what emerges? Can I just be, the water? All fluid, swirling, and free?
skin the surface skin of water is its own song of an unseen underwater world where together with my love we dream we dream and we dance this heartbroken this wounded and oh so weary, world anew
pinxit
under this new sky pink is the only color alight in my heart
the tryst
Just a friendly reminder for those who need it: Valentine’s Day is just around the corner! Monday, the 14th of February, 2022, to be exact😁 It also happens to be one of my favorite holidays, so here is a little romantic poetry for all the lovebirds out there…😽
the tryst
come for me, whispered the flower to the sun gather my soul with your warm light, rising into the deep and endless blue your brilliance is my raison d’etre my love for you i perfume the winds pink and dance gracefully inside this humming song of pure light
shine for me, whispered the sun to the flower unfurl your soft petals and let me into your sweetness your deep nectar your glowing beauty is my pleasure my delight for you my fire burns, ceaselessly into the night and boldly across the cloudless blue sky
postcard from the seashore
Dear Human,
in my round body this hard and heavy world rests carefree and content
Yours truly,
Rock
Commercial Break
In place of my usual weekly essayette and/or poem, I’m sharing links to a short radio interview and a magazine article on my work which were produced last year. I hope you will take a moment to experience (i.e. hear and see) my work through these other media channels. As always, thank you so much for reading!
In September 2021, I was invited to join “Bridges Across World Communities”, a local radio program sponsored by the Nishinomiya City International Association (NIA). Hosts Floyd and Thelma interviewed me about my first self-published book of poetry and photography: Twelve Moons & The Sea ~ A Journey Home. The interview was conducted in two short segments which can be accessed with the links below:
Part One (from 5:10)
Part Two (from 5:07)
In October 2021, my work was also featured in Tokyo Weekender’s series TW Creatives, which highlights “various works by Japan-based writers, photographers, videographers, illustrators and other creatives“. Please check it out below:
Links to the above radio interview and magazine article can also be found on my new media page on this website:
beginnings
Some poems seem to take on a life of their own. Apropos perhaps, I do not remember when I wrote the first version of the poem below—only that it was a very long time ago—and it seems also to have no end. I’ve come back to it multiple times, tweaked it here and there, but its completion is forever illusive. Like snake tracks in the desert sand, it evades capture. This poem of beginnings and endings, has neither. Maybe we are all like that, without beginning nor ending, in reality… and our essential self too, like snake tracks in the desert sand, evades capture.
beginnings
In every beginning
there is death
and in all death, there is rebirth.
Do you remember your beginning?
We are a continuum, of
eternity & nothingness
polarity & unity
a quivering consciousness sometimes shackled
by words.
Freezing bits of existence
into b/l_o.c+k-s tumbling
from our mouths
we trip
in the rubble of our own expression.
Until weary, perhaps
with splintered and twisted feet
we lay down, seeking
nothing
other than earth
and sky.
Here we find, an infinite desert.
Here our hollowed self, shimmers
alive
reawakened
in an instant of eternity.
A single drop of rain falls
into the soul
and the membrane of each cell shivers
shedding itself
into currents of grace
flowing and
flowing like blood into
crevices
and over rocks and into ancient
ravines
returning devoutly
inevitably
to firelit waves of a primordial sea.
Do you remember
your beginning?
Michiru Adrienne 