Seiki: On returning from Aberdeen workshop

London 3.5.10



Seiki is in the interstices.

It is in the gap between what we come up against and that which melts away on the touch.

It is cutting meat when the timing makes the flesh part on the slightest of touches. The knife does not come down hard. It does not push. It glides.

It is the heat between the hands in Gyoki. The hands come together. Sweat forms in the fold. It expands and dissipates into the graininess of the atmosphere. This is environment. A canopy that holds together as one. A body connection that becomes a movement unfolding from a hidden point into a bearing.

It is automatic like a catapult. A spontaneous evolution like a leaf unfurling. This time of when to go and the going with it in a total commitment brings responsibility. It brings two directional response. It leads to change. Because a certain phase in the way things are- a situation that one is in; the ripple of the flesh; it bunching up and slipping away again, has been noticed.

The eyes follow through from the alignment of the body that moves as one like a single snake vertebrae- from sacrum to occiput- through the pores of the skin opening out-

The smell, the breath- the small muscular groupings- the clenching of the anus- the hara, the throat, the valves of the heart, the lung, tendons in the knees, the muscle calves, the ankle and wrist tendons, the scapula jointing. All are orifices that open and close as a gage to wider association.

They work in conjunction with one another.

In that way we also course and filter though one another- through a reverberation of tendencies that work like a pump. The on-off of contact is this. It is Gyoko or breathing between the hands. Building up the heat of proximity then allowing it to unfurl in the off touch; the in and out breath.

To feel a constraint, go with it into its wringing turn like a spring tightening. To go with the disease or aggravation until at its extremity the re-wind catches in.

This is automatic release when the body moves and the conscious human association follow.

This is thought-tendencies through and through with feeling response at every minute level of interest.

There is an intermingling and a conjoint intelligence which comes through. A deep compassion lasting.

There is a gathering and spreading simultaneously. A filtering system that nourishes every cell as each turns and jostles around another.

The body breaks and is re-made. Not only once in a single trauma and total cure but endlessly.

Life and death meet in the moment. In this gap there is every kind of human possibility playing out. Seiki is about following a story and then another and then another. until they merge and talk to one another. It is a lucid and mobile time that cannot be held back.