Category: rough ideas

The other night Peter Hoffman talked about his early experiences at Omen Azen. Peter, a former chef and restaurateur in New York [his memoir: What’s Good? was just published], described his response to the first time he ordered the house sake at Omen. First he recounted the easy possibility of ordering a glass of wine at a New York bar and being served a skimpy pour. So, he says, you look at the bartender and say, “really, that’s all?” So maybe you nudge them and ask, “please a little more?”

Thus, Peter was startled when ordering sake at Omen. What arrived at the table was a wooden box, often on a woodfired saucer with a high foot and deep sides [one of mine]. The waiter or perhaps Mikio himself would begin pouring into your box from a spouted ceramic serving bowl. They would pour, filling the box until it was overflowing into the saucer. Peter noted that this gesture of of abundance and kindness in New York City was so welcome, so surprising, so enjoyed that for him–and all of us–it became emblematic of the man behind the restaurant and his spirit of generosity.

Last night Warren and I ate our dinner at Omen. We ordered the house sake to experience Mikio’s kindness lurking in the shadows of the sanctuary he has created at Omen-Azen.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

–Naomi Shihab Nye from Kindness

Last night our friend, the fine art photographer Mitch Epstein, read a few words of his correspondence with Mikio over the last couple of years. The one that has stuck in my mind came after Mitch had sent Mikio a photo of a tree . “Thank you for a beautiful work given to me. The meaning of my name Mikio: miki means trunk, o is a man. A man of trunk, a man of tree, the image speaks a lot to me. Thank you, best, Mikio.”

Bill T Jones, the choreographer, said last night that Mikio always liked him to sing of spiritual things. So Bill sang to us in his deep, resonant voice, dressed handsomely in a big black hat and yellow scarf.

“I shall not,

I shall not be moved

I shall not be moved

 just like a tree

 planted by the water.”

In memory of Mikio Shinagawa and a great friendship. another expression of nothingness:

Tonight we were at Omen to express our love for Mikio as well as to celebrate the community he created–the 40th anniversary of Omen Azen in NYC. Patti Smith sang the following song for Mikio when she saw him on the street a few months ago. She sang it at the memorial tonight. She has usually sung it for Mikio on her birthday often celebrated at the restaurant. My transcription of tonight’s Wing:

I was a wing
in heaven Blue
out on the ocean
soared in the rain
and I was free
I needed no body
It was beautiful
It was beautiful
I was a vision
in another eye
and I saw nothing
nothing at all
and I was free
I needed no body
It was beautiful
It was beautiful
and if there’s one thing
could do for you
you’d be a wing in
Heaven blue
and if there’s one thing
would do for you
you’d be a wing
in Heaven blue.

–Patti Smith

Spending time with a newborn we have often spoken about circadian rhythms. We watch this small being wake, eat, poop, pee and sleep. He has not arrived with an apparent preprogrammed clock. Slowly he is more wakeful, more fussy at some moments, and settled and sleepy at others. As parents Zoë and Mike aim to find a delicate balance.

In my life in Virginia I have my habits, the times I sleep, wake, walk, eat, and work. My schedule relates to the landscape and to the season. Zoë has always told me one of the things she loved about the time change in the autumn was that we ate dinner earlier. Even when I am in the city I am drawn to get outside in the velvety shadowy dusk. I need to be free to slip between the awareness of daylight and the certainty of night.

It’s dusk, dearest. (In passing, isn’t ‘dusk’ a lovely word? I like it better than twilight. It sounds so velvety and shadowy and—and—dusky.) In daylight I belong to the world; in the night to sleep and eternity. But in the dusk I’m free from both and belong only to myself—and you.

–L.M. Montgomery, from Anne of Windy Poplars, Oxford City Press, 2012

When I imagined my Decembrance for 2021 my intention was to look forward, to find optimism for the next generation. Instead it has been full of remembrance for a great friend. I have been also feeling lucky to be part of the nest my daughter and her husband have created for their newborn son. It’s a privilege to help them as they find their way as parents. Any infant is a huge reminder of the basics of life. We make soup, we hum, we remember, and we look forward. We arrived back in Brooklyn tonight, surprised to feel it dark so early and relieved to learn that tonight is the earliest sunset of the season for this place.

“Give the ones you love wings to fly, roots to come back, and reasons to stay.”

— Gyalwa Rinpoche, the 14th (current) Dalai Lama

Over the last week Warren and I have been pouring through almost forty years of photographs looking for photos of Mikio. I am struck by how much has changed not only in our bodies but in the technology used to make photos–slides, prints, phones. I look at photos from the ’80s and then in my dreams I wander out of the frame and around familiar rooms, having conversations with family and friends who are long since gone. I am thankful for the impulse to click the shutter at so many events and mundane moments. In the daylight I shuffle around outside considering leaves, the brown curls, tattered edges in piles and drifts. I choose a few specific ones. The camera allows me a transformative moment of appreciation of plant material, pottery, light and memory.

Photography is naively believed to reproduce visual actuality, but in fact the images our eyes take in and the images the camera delivers are not the same. Taking a picture is a transformative act. Avedon’s high-contrast black-and-white photographs render people as we do not see them in life; our eyes spare us the particulars of decrepitude and sickness that the camera almost gloatingly records. In the case of my aged and diseased leaves, the camera exercises another of its transformative capacities: it confers aesthetic value on the apparently plain and worthless.

–Janet Malcolm, from Burdock, The New York Review, August 14 2008

For years I had a postcard in the studio by my wheel titled Nothingness, a calligraphic image by Mikio’s father, Tetsuzan Shinagawa. That image has loomed large in my imagination like the moon in December. It was both a pattern and an idea that slowly worked its way into my brushwork. I understood nothingness as an image, like Cézanne might have understood the mountain that he repeatedly painted. I looked at the quality of line and the openness of the mark. It was both structure and freedom and it moved through my body to be translated by my hand. I have made many bowls and plates for Omen over the years that are based on nothingness, and it has given me both direction and great freedom.

Mikio worked with the well known designer Stefan Sagmeister to design Talk To A Stone: Nothingness. Two years later Sagmeister said, “The first 60 pages are about nothingness, but I really only understood the concept about half a year ago. That if you understand that life is nothingness what unbelievable freedom that creates. If life is empty and with no meaning, then you really can start to build whatever you want to build, that nothing holds you back.”

–Stefan Sagmeister, quoted in, Sagmeister: Made You Look, by Peter Hall, Abrams, New York, 2001

I am struck when I look at pots in the bright light of our home or studio how different they appear than when they are in use at Omen Azen in New York City. The dark wood tables, the deep patina of the exposed brick and the soft light from the hanging paper lanterns emphasizes deep hues and alternative contrasts. During the short days of December I often find myself racing to photograph these images in the long shadows of shortened days.

“One of the characteristics of Japanese food culture is to first see and enjoy the food before it is eaten. To appreciate the meal with all of our senses is a fundamental root within Japanese culture. For both Catherine’s and Warren’s work, not only is there a beauty in their ceramics that we see, but we can also sense an essence that we cannot see with our eyes. It is the beauty of the artist’s heart informed by the soul and spirit of the imagination. Reminiscent of stars in the dark sky that twinkle and shine, we feel and capture the presence of Nature and Love.”

–Mikio Shinagawa, essay in Omen Azen: Whiteness to Nothingness, catalog and calendar, Sketchbook Press, 2013.

Yesterday and today I spent part of the afternoon planting garlic. Being outside, hands in the dirt, weeding and pulling out old vines, shifting compost—all these tasks move me out of my head and into physical attention where I notice the nuances of nature and relationships between growth and decay. I am struck by the smell of the frost bitten dill still hanging on by a thread or the withered Mexican marigolds that are particularly fragrant. Today’s goal was to plant garlic. I slip the garlic bulbs into the holes, sweep soil over them and cover them with a mulch of shredded leaves. The bulbs hold potential but are now gone from my sight. I trust they will grow. It is actually a mystery, the mechanics of how it all works, but perhaps that is why it is thrilling when they sprout and later when they are harvested.

In our friendship with Mikio he would often disappear for stretches of time, sometimes we might even be in the restaurant discussing a potential plate or bowl. I was left to wonder what next? He would return with an idea. His absences to Japan, Italy or California were often a mystery but for him nuances and projects were brewing. It was not unlike the miracle of garlic growing in the ground in the winter months.

“According to Buddhist teaching, there is a very close interdependence between the natural environment and the sentient beings living in it. These verses express the essential gentleness of the human spirit. They tell us that we should not only maintain gentle, peaceful relations with our fellow human beings, but that it is also very important to extend the same kind of attitude toward the environment.”

—The Dalai Lama, April 11, 1997, in the preface to Mikio’s book of his father’s calligraphy, Talk To A Stone: Nothingness, A Joost Elfferts Book published by Stewart, Tabori & Chang

I grew up as an atheist. But after losing someone in our close circle I can’t help but feel like I see them everywhere. I dream about them. I hope to speak to them again. I remember the turn of a wrist, the habit of speech. One of our early visits with Mikio was at the height of autumn at our house in Maryland. Mikio brought one of the chefs from Omen who had not yet been out of New York City. Our driveway was stupendously covered in yellow maple leaves. The chef took a walk at dusk and returned after dark covered in yellow leaves like he had been rolling in nature.

The Lesson Of The Falling Leaves

the leaves believe
such letting go is love
such love is faith
such faith is grace
such grace is god
i agree with the leaves

–Lucile Clifton