I would love to live
Like a river flows,
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding.

There is this game I learned and love called art-o-mancy. A good friend, Annie, introduced me to it while we were in San Francisco at the Asian Art Museum in May of 2008. It's quite possible she made it up, and it's also entirely reasonable that this same game and similar versions are played all around the world. Perhaps I only just discovered it at twenty-seven. Anyway, it entails precisely this - a map of a museum, and someone to serve as your personal escort (preferably an open, creative and curious mind to enhance the experience). One first begins with eyes closed tightly, moving an index finger over a map of whatever museum he or she finds him- or herself in, eventually placing that pointer down upon a particular room. Some may say it is divinely guided there, others might say that it is totally random. It does not matter, really; the results are equally interesting regardless of the belief one holds. Still with eyelids shut, your guide leads your trusting shuffling steps to that room you chose, and then asks whether you'd like to move left, right, or stay straight until you finally find yourself in front of a single piece. When you are ready, you open your eyes and simply look at where you are, and what is in your presence. You engage your body, heart, mind and spirit with the piece in front of you - reacting, responding and reflecting indiscriminately. You allow all thoughts, ideas and observations to surface and be legitimate. And if you extend an invitation to your cohort for input, he or she may surprise you with their take on expressed and unexpressed thoughts and feelings in that given moment.

I'm quite sure I've already blogged this story in some way, shape or form, so I won't delve into descriptive detail once more, but I wanted to re-visit art-o-mancy because I think it relates to the John O'Donohue excerpt above. Both involve a conscious decision to let go of the self-orchestrated organizational patterns of movement and perception we so often fall into, in order to yield to an unraveling presence of being. It is not about aimless or thoughtless living, rather, we are consciously present to life - to our questions and held intentions - and attentive to what the universe brings forward - to what avenues open up, where we find ourselves, in who's company and how it might be meaningful.

Within my own experiences, this has been easier to do outside of a structured habitual routine - i.e. while traveling. Somehow, plopping myself down upon a new latitude and longitude crossing gives greater sensitivity to what I'm seeing, listening to, smelling, touching and tasting. Additionally, closing and opening a subsequent chapter in life naturally pulls us towards presence. Knowing that we are on the doorstep of change, we savor a place and all that it conjures up inside of us, or a serendipitous relationship and the world as we know it to be. In doing this, we prepare ourselves to turn the page.

I'm in Aomori, Japan this time, knowing that my good friend Melanie will all too soon be leaving for Australia. Melanie has always been here, from when I arrived in August of 2003 to teach at Toyama High School with the JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching) Program, throughout my three years living in this land known for its apples, Nebuta festival and local dialect - Tsugaru-ben, and during the past three summers when I've come back to visit. We've laughed and cried together - taken scooter trips across Hokkaido, and airplane trips to Vietnam and Australia. We've sang Alanis Morisette's Thank You sweetly and at the top of our lungs countless times in karaoke boxes, eaten who knows how many plates of sushi side-by-side with hashi - chopsticks - in hand, and had our fair share of blue bird skiing and snowboarding days in great Hakkoda powder. It's difficult to imagine Aomori without Melanie, yet, a week from today this is what will happen.

All of this, coupled with the uncertainty of where my footsteps will lead me this fall, has brought me to a place of presence. It seems, never have mornings been so magnificent. I woke up today listening to pitter-pat raindrops on the window pane beside my futon. And never have nights been more incredible. We were in Kizukuri Saturday for a farewell fiesta that ended just before sunrise. I wish I would have been able to stop the clock to make it all last a bit longer. Tomorrow I'll djembe drum with Kiyono, and on Wednesday surf with Mako. On Thursday I hop on the Shinkansen bullet train for Tokyo, and truthfully, I don't know exactly when I'll be back in Aomori again. And so today, tomorrow and the next, I'm relishing all things soon to become so natsukashii...