Hello sludge

What a place, so much mundaneness and then brilliant bursts of incredible beauty and diversity. Surprises!
The variety of people, I counted 5,000 passer-byes tonight in the space of 2 minutes, all that humane energy, thinking about the myriad things that we think of...I just love it, my mind races along with them and I want to run and kiss them and take them in my arms and jump up and down 'we're alive! here and now!'. Am I dag or what? It is so extreme.
Have such a strong desire to soak in as much as possible, on the train me and the little kiddy next to me are the only ones looking around with wonderment. How can so many people be pretending to be asleep when there is so much to look at? I know how rude it is to be stealing glances and I do catch others surreptitiously staring, and even my eyes need a rest now and then, but the shut eye thing is amazing, I watch people get on and sit down and shut their eyes, head down just like someone switched them off completely.
Customs and rituals to the foreign visitor seem so quaint and unusual. I watched the drunk young ones tonight hugging and showing huge emotion, so funny. So uncomfortable and estranged, needing to get tanked before hanging off eachother.
I try to hang out close to the very physical ones, maybe they will mistake me for a friend and come and hang off of me.
Body gestures crack me up, the official symbol for 'no' seems to be arms crossed in front of the chest, but this can also mean 'stop'. When someone does this to me, I can't help laughing, 'cos they look like they are either practicing flag skills or going to break into a dance routine. In the last couple of days I have seen some very diminutive actions, with younger men deferring to older men, and holding their hands in a very plaintive way, wringing them in front of their crotch. So strange, and exposing the distance between generations, and respect I suppose, they were making themselves look like little boys, or thats what it seemed to me, little ashamed boys fumbling and begging for the elders grace. All supposition naturally. But its as though they are protecting their genitals, as though they older might point and laugh, and is exactly the pose struck by soccer players in front of the goal when the kick is about to happen.
I met some really nice people last night at the TWS Shibuya opening, some amazing artists, a few galleryists and a few people from LA, who smelt like perfume and one who wore a ton of gold from Israel, a richly stimulating night. I was totally comfortable, after feeling like a fish out of water the night before, when I came home I had to remind myself that it was not my opening. I had such fun, just being myself.
The Lebanese artist in the show, Vartan Avakian, said "being too polite is blasphemous", I loved that. So wise.
Dinh Q Le, the Vietnamese artist in the show made a great work concerning a farm that occupies a busy air force base near Tokyo, in Hyakuri. They plant for peace...OMG, there is a temple there with Article #9, The Renunciation of War document "The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognised", framed at the center. So powerful. There are more fighter planes than ever there, and the farmers have land within the property.
I really identified with the peace by Yuken Teruya, a Japanese fellow who lives now in Queens. His cardboard box shelters housing videos of paper boats floating in the fire-hydrant formed puddles in gutters of NYC was a delight, and a perfect metaphor of fragility and human endeavour but so so much more. Upstairs was a ping pong table, nearly fully streched out, with 2 etched glasses, precariously balanced, one for a river of tears...I have seen a number of works just so recently, tear collection agencies. There is always a plaintive cry of distress in the world.
We went for dinner, and it was such a funny place, all private rooms off the main corridor, some with tiny entrances I would find difficult to squeeze into. I wandered the halls, observing the exasperated staff, drunk idiot patrons and strange goings ons.