Balance: Inuit Stone Constructions

Inuksuk--Baffin Island



“…art as a behavior…rests on the recognition of a fundamental behavioral tendency that … I call making special….Reality, or what is considered to be reality, is elaborated, reformed, given not only particularity (emphasis on uniqueness, or ‘specialness’) but import (value, or ‘specialness’)—what may be called such things magic or beauty or spiritual power or significance.
Making special implies intent or deliberateness. When shaping or giving artistic expression to an idea, or embellishing an object, or recognizing that an idea or object is artistic, one gives (or acknowledges) a specialness that without one’s activity or regard would not exist. Moreover, one intends by making special to place the activity or artifact in a ‘realm’ different from the everyday. In both functional and nonfunctional art an alternative reality is recognized and entered; the making special acknowledges, reveals, and embodies this reality.” (Ellen Dissanayake, "What is Art For?")

Nunavut Territory, Canada

Imagine an island that lies on the Arctic Circle. The land is tundra--no trees grow here. The line between sky and land is sliver thin. For half of the year, the ground is covered by snow and ice fields; in summer, rock slabs, lichen, berries and a few species of wildflowers and grasses emerge. Mountains make up the interior of the island and travel is often limited to the perimeter.

Although the island is the country’s largest island as well as the world’s fifth largest (just under 184,000 square miles), only 11,000 people live here. This is Baffin Island, Nunavut, located in Northeast Canada. Nunavut is the country’s newest territory and a homeland to an aboriginal people known as Inuit. In their native language of Inuktitut, “Nunavut” means “our land.” “Inuit,” plural for “Inuk,” is the Inuktitut word for “human beings.” The Inuit’s ancestors came from Alaska and Siberia approximately 5,000 years ago. Today, 40,000 live within Canada, one fourth of these on Baffin Island.

Baffin Island_Northeast

Baffin Island, NASA

Until the last few decades of the 20th century, the Inuit lived on Baffin Island as transient hunters/gatherers mush as their ancestors had for thousands of years. All materials to support life (food, clothing, shelter, etc) came from their immediate surroundings and were their responsibility to acquire directly from the source. However, theirs was not a gentle, generous land; this was the arctic tundra. There was no growing of crops or raising livestock. Literally everything that was eaten had to be either picked or hunted and killed. Clothing was made from caribou hides. Shelter was constructed of caribou hides in summer and ice in winter. Theirs was a culture in which their very survival was at the heart of every action. Furthermore, this survival did not allow for a “solid” home. Hunters must follow the food source and the Inuit had to keep moving to live.
In what seems to be a paradox, the Inuit were deeply attached to this harsh landscape. The land not only gave them life, but to the Inuit elders, “the earth was considered a great living being…(with) places of power and objects of veneration that defined the very soul of the world they knew.”

Baffin Island Inuit legend tells of “Tunniit,” “the ancient ones” who came before the ancestors and prepared the land for the Inuit. Legend also tells us it was the Tunnitt who built the first stone constructions. Oral cultures, such as the early Inuit, did not use written records and depended on verbal and visual communication methods for the telling of cultural knowledge and information. For information within an oral culture to be held in memory, and subsequently passed on, verbal information tended to be highly descriptive while visual information tended to be aesthetically striking so as to viscerally affect the viewer. This was the intention behind Inuit stone constructions. “For the Inummariit--those who lived on the land in the manner of their ancestors--the sinew of their world was the oral tradition, a graphic language made up of stories, images and vital geographic and cultural information that was passed from parent to child, from generation to generation. Within this spare world, one devoid of writing instruments, inuksuit were the material forms of the oral tradition. They created a profile in space.” Frobisher Bay, Baffin Island Inuksuit are the most common form of stone constructions on Baffin Island. The word “inuksuk” (singular of inuksuit) means to “act in the capacity of a human being.” Primarily utilitarian in function, a hand-constructed inuksuk literally stood in the place of the human that built it and conveyed a message from its builder. Norman Hallendy, a man who spent years living with and learning from Inuit elders and families, described his perception of these forms: “When moving on the land under all sorts of conditions, I regarded a looming inuksuk as I would a protective parent or a beloved teacher. During my travels throughout the Arctic, I came to appreciate these seemingly simple stone constructions as a nuanced and once vital form of communication, a language as rich yet more elementary than the one in which I am communicating now. An inuksuk is a proxy for a human in every sense of the word; it provides comfort to the travel weary, life-saving advice to the disoriented, a focus of veneration to the spiritual seeker. It is a timeless language of the land for a people who existed on the land. As one Inuit elder told me, ‘This attaches me to my ancestors and to this place.’” As an Inuit’s life is characterized by their nomadic hunting practice, so too is the inuksuk’s message. Inuksuit are highly site-specific. They are constructed to speak of an exact place such as where caribou cross a river or where meat is cached under winter snow. They speak of where fog tends to distort the landscape or where ice tends to float away underfoot. They point in the correct direction of the next camp when there is no sunlight to see the way or where there is a rock overhang for protection when a winter storm unexpectedly catches the hunter, or the preferred spot to land a “qayaq” (kayak). While there is an assemblage that resembles a window and another that resembles a pointer, the shape of the form does not necessarily allude to a word, phrase, or message. “Instead, they act as mnemonic objects, cues that are a reminder of some condition or particular thing of importance. To truly understand an inuksuk, you need three essential pieces of information. You must record in your mind every detail of the landscape and the objects upon it. You must memorize the location of the places in relation to one another. And you must know the shapes of the inuksuit that are known to your elders, as well as their location and the reason they were put there.” As an example, Hallendy was offered this travel advice from an elder prior to a trip by boat (note the human characteristics attributed to the inuksuit): “Traveling along the coast eastward from Kinngait, you will first come upon a inuksuk that from a distance looks like a person walking toward you from where you came. He is particularly helpful in reminding you of the safest way home when the visibility is poor. Farther down the coast, when you reach the first island lying off to your left, you will see an inuksuk made from an old barrel with a stick pointing up from its top. Because this is summer, the inuksuk is only resting (in other words, of little significance). The currents here are very strong, so be sure to stay close to the side where the inuksuk stands. But in spring, if you are traveling on the ice and see this inuksuk at the foot of the island (moved there by previous wayfarers), it means get off the ice at once! You may lose your life by ignoring its message.” Inuit often speak of Inuksuk in the present tense. Some may have been built hundreds and thousands of years ago, but they continue to stand and speak. As a culture that lives on the edge of the world, the Inuit not only honor, but even more so depend upon the wisdom of the elders who carry their collective cultural knowledge to survive. And as an inuksuk “acts in the capacity of a human being,” its messages are understood as being spoken by an elder. The viewer is “seeing the thoughts of another person left upon the land…” Inuksuit usually range in size between 18” and 6’ in height. Here are a few Baffin Island inuksuit. Nappatuq--a single upright stone indicating a direction or a specific spot to be remembered such as a meat cache. Inuksukjuaq--tended to be larger than average size to be easily seen from a distance; directional aids at headlands or entrances. Tammariikkuti--the small stone balanced on top determines the function; made by a traveling hunter to tell those who come after him where he has gone. Niungvaliruluit--window shaped for directional use; aligned with a point in the distance or a star. Inuksuapik--known as the most beautiful of inuksuk; indicates joy and gratitude by its maker Inuksugalait--one of a few spots throughout the island where multitudes of inuksuit have been placed close to one another. Inuksugalait is a 3-1/2 acre parcel of land on the coast in southwest Baffin Island that contains over two hundred constructions in various sizes and shapes. The site is so ancient that the elders do not know of its original purpose. Akitsiraqvik--a sacred Inuit high council site where judgment was rendered and sentences carried out. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Not all stone constructions are inuksuk. Those that do not “act in the capacity of human beings” cannot truly be called inuksuk. In fact, a commonly constructed and widely recognized form that is often called an inuksuk is not one. This is the innunguaq, the name of which means “in the likeness of human.” These are constructions that seem to stand with open arms and are intended as symbolic gestures to welcome travelers or show respect for a person who has passed on rather than act in the place of the human. A second non-inuksuk construction is tied to the Inuit’s shamanic spiritual practice. “Spirit” is not an abstraction to the Inuit; there is no separation between the spirit world and their “real” world. The spirits of animals and people are intertwined and live in the rocks and the earth and the sky and the sea. Sacred stone constructions are deeply respected and interaction with these forms are guided by strict cultural customs. “Their spiritual or religious function was rarely divulged. They are a physical manifestation of spiritual power, and many are objects of veneration. Some served to mark the thresholds of spiritual landscape for the Inummariit (the real people), who felt compelled to build them out of love, loneliness or fear.” The tupqujaq was a doorway through which shamans, their holy men, entered the spirit world. Other assemblages included the kattaq, two upright stones which marked the path to a sacred object or site; the sakkabluniit, upright stones that were believed to possess spiritual power; and the kibvakattaq, a pyramidal form with a huge boulder perched on top. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ As Dissanayke’s bioevolutionary theory positioned the arts as an innate human behavior that existed because it was necessary to the evolvement of the human species, so to were the stone constructions of the Inuit necessary to their evolvement. These were people who literally lived on the edge, not only the edge of the thin line between sky and land, but also the thin line between life and death. These constructions are an assertion of their very being-ness within the harshest of environments. The stones stand as balance, a counterweight to forces that would otherwise break a human. For the Inuit, the way to live in this stark and strikingly beautiful land is to completely embrace it. There is no separation between the spirit world and their “real” world, between the land and themselves, nor between the stone constructions and themselves. Simeonie Quppapik, Hallendy’s longtime Inuit friend and mentor told him, “Look around you…Look at the hills, the sea, the inuksuit everywhere. We are all made of the same stuff. We all possess a spirit, only the way we are arranged temporarily separates us.” ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Today, the use and understanding of the stone constructions is shifting. Inuksuk and inunguaq are rapidly becoming popular cultural artifacts, not only of the Inuit, but of the Nunavut Territory as well as Canada as a whole. Nunavut was officially formed from the eastern part of the Northwest Territory in 1999 in an agreement between the indigenous Inuit and the Canadian government. Granted sovereignty, the Inuit developed their new flag with an inuksuk as a primary symbol. Nunavut Flag Over the past few years, an inunguaq that is “called” an inuksuk, has been informally adopted by Canada as a symbol for the entire county. Amid some controversy from native elders, an inuksuk has been chosen as the emblem for the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010. Tourist shops now sell little carved inuksuit as well as inuksuk mousepads and shot glasses. On Baffin Island, most Inuit now live in settlements or small towns including Iqaluit, the capital city of Nunavut. In these towns, the newest generation of Inuit travel by snowmobiles with global positioning systems. But they have grown up under the guidance of their elders, both stone and human, and know the stones will outlive them. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Discussion Question (I have really enjoyed the questions that have asked us to go back to our own lives to find parallels and so here is one for you…) Literally and figuratively an inuksuk is an Inuit “touchstone,” a place or an object to which a human can (re)turn for the purposes of grounding and/or guiding oneself. This made me think of my own touchstones--the assorted rocks spread out on my living room mantelpiece that I’ve gathered from various places across the country, the woods I walk within every few weeks, and a photograph of my grandparents listening to the radio on a Sunday afternoon. What are your touchstones? To what do you (re)turn to ground or guide yourself and how do you feel being in this place or with this object? **All quotes except Dissanayake from Norman Hallendy as found within various sources. Recommended Reading Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation, “Places of Power: Objects of Veneration in the Canadian Arctic.” Norman Hallendy, Inuksuit: Silent Messengers of the Arctic. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2000. Mary Wallace, The Inuksuk Book. Toronto: Maple Tree Press, 1999. Wikipedia, “Baffin Island” Wikipedia, “Inuksuk” Photo Credits (All stone constructions located on Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada) Norman Hallendy: “Innunguaq” Norman Hallendy/Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation: “Akitsiraqvik,” “Inuksuapik,” “Niungvaliruluit,” “Tammariikkuti,” “Tupqujak,” NASA/Wikipedia: “Baffin Island” Asgar Walk: “Baffin_Island_Northeast,” “Inuksugalait,” “Inuksuk - Baffin Island,” “Inuksukjuaq,” “Nappatuq,” “Niungvaliruluit 2” Paul Landry: “Frobisher Bay” Wikipedia: “Nunavut Flag,” “Nunavut”

This "ofrenda" is offered for my parents. Mom passed away in December 1983 and Dad in July 2001. I can not separate myself from them. The reader would say "of course you can't separate yourself from your parents." My version is that I still think of them every day. And in some ways they live on in my house. I use Mom's pots & pans & big spoons and Dad's end table sits beside my living room sofa. Mom's grandfather's desk is my desk; Dad's storage chest is my storage chest. I understand myself to be part of their linear path.

The picture on the alter is of the two of them walking back down the aisle after their wedding. It is October 9, 1948. She is 22 and he is 25. He has returned from an Austrian POW camp at the end of WWII. She is an only child who loves to dance. They meet at Duke University and marry after she graduates. Their life is before them and they do not know what it will contain. They do not know how hard they will work for the next 30 years. They do not know of the 4 children they will have, or of the cancer that will start to consume her in 20 years. They don't know of the anger and hurt and frustration any more than they know of the joy and love and laughter. They do not know of the crazy pets, including a squirrel named Pepperoni that got equal billing at one of the daughter's wedding, or the houses with water pipes that freeze in the winter or cars that backfire and scare the neighbors. They do know, however, that they have joined hands and have chosen to set out together.

Under the picture in the middle is a small blue salt dish filled with salt. The salt dish was my grandmother's and then my mother's. There is also a red macrame strand attached to a bell--one of Mom's Christmas decorations, and a celadon green stone--the color of love. In front stand 6 candles: one grouped in a foursome--four cardinal directions/four children and a candle for each Mom & Dad, in silver candlesticks they received as a wedding gift.

To the right of the picture are flowers from my garden--yellow St. John's Wort and one magenta coneflower that bloomed this past week! There are also two dishes of candy. The dishes are from my grandmother's china that we used at Christmas. One dish contains butterscotch for Dad--a first generation American who parents came from Scotland. The other dish holds candy corn--Mom loved it! Behind the dishes is an old deck of cards. We were a family of card players--hearts, spades, double solitare. Also on the right are two glasses of water, should Mom and Dad get thirsty.

To the left of the picture is a glass of wine (cheers!), a big jar of buttons handed down from my mother's side. In it are buttons from her mother, herself, and me. I will pass it on to my daughter. For sweet bread, I offer them applesauce muffins. These are a family favorite--Mom made them at least once a month and they never lasted long... I've also added a small brass dish shaped like a porthole. This was Dad's. I gave it to him one Christmas and asked for it back when he died. He always had boats--big boats, little boats, boats that worked and boats that gave out. "Running aground" was a common term in our family... And finally, a quirky little set of carved dice from Mexico that I found in his desk while cleaning out his house--why he had it I have no idea, but knew it had to go on the altar!

I now live in the same neighborhood we lived in when we moved to town in 1965. I'm the only one who has stayed in Greensboro. Everyday I live in my memories--driving past Friendly Shopping Center, going to the Farmer's Market in the dark morning, Mom teaching us to drive on these streets--I think of these things as I move through my days, now in October 2006 and everyday before today. There is no separation between then and now--it's a continuation. I miss my parents. I feel them around me, although I couldn't say why or how. I wonder how they are doing, if they see each other, if they see us 4 kids and our kids and our crazy pets. I would love to hug them once more...

A personal note here. My middle name is Storie and it is from the Scottish side of my family. The "story" goes that the original spelling was "storey" but my parents changed the spelling. As many Gaelic names are tied to occupation, I've often wondered about storytelling in my history...And that's the reason for the name of my blog-I tell stories about art.

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Irish Folk Tales

I swear I could hear traditional Irish music playing in the background while reading these stories. Even more so, the stories became songs--the main character walking (or running) in the course of their journey became the fiddle; high and low points of the journey became the strings and drums; pauses in the stories were pauses in the songs; and all came back to the beginning through their inherent cyclic nature--fantastic!

Folk tales were passed down orally, as was the music, and characters took on larger-than-life qualities. The mythological journey in the landscape was a journey of the soul, with tricksters and giants and monsters to battle and wise elders to guide. And at the end of each journey, after having learned a bit more, the protagonist returned home to the self, wiser and stronger for having made the passage.

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The King of Ireland's Son
This is a young man on a moral journey that stems from a killing he has committed. Yet we see early on he is a good person by the payment of a dead man's debts. This soon-to-be ruler is kind and protected by others, but not very effective in his own right. The story is quite circular--each meeting of new people who join the group along the way is told in the same words. While the little green man asks for a kiss as his reward, the other 3 only wish for a place and a garden--a home. Every night the king's son can not see a place to stay, but his little green companion can and approaches the giant owner of the place in the same way--and each are giants who fear bigness! After several lyrical stops and starts, the son finds the one woman he can marry, only to be thwarted. But the little green man's perseverance and quick wit saves the day so the king's son and the woman can marry. The little green man is the one who carries the story although it is supposedly about the king's son--a comment on who really does the work in Ireland?
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Dreams of Gold
Anthony stealing from a church? Rather than having a blatant devil-monster emerge from the ground to swallow Anthony, it is the thought of another real person seeing the theft that stops Anthony. Then the storyteller remembers another story about how a cobbler helped a man from Mayo. The cobbler dreamed of gold in the man's own garden and so the man returned home (treasure lies within). No monster under the bridge either---this one is rooted in the everyday.
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The Birth of Finn MacCumhail
A terrific story with all the elements! Love, danger, killing, family preservation, wise elder, mythological half-human half-animal creatures, hiding in the woods, self sacrifice and ultimately, advancing the well-being of the greater whole. Like the king's son story, "Finn" is circular--parts are repeated as the characters move forward. Yet this time, the king is not benevolent. Instead, the king is the enemy and Finn is his grandson. Even more so, unlike the king's son, Finn has to earn his royal blood. Yet because he is the next ruler, he sees the necessity of working for the greater whole (rather than from self-interest as his grandfather did). And so Finn's story ends with his ascension (his birth) to true leadership.
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Usheen's Return to Ireland
Another Return to Home story, this one more soft and luscious, yet not triumphant in the end. Usheen journeys into the water, the source of life, and finds a heaven that is "in everyplace, all about us." He misses his old way of being and so returns only to find all of it worn away. He forgets his "heavenly" source and guidance, touches earth, and immediately withers away. A Garden of Eden story...
~~~~~
The Man Who Had No Story
Brian is a simple man with little sense of self. Each day he does his job and goes home--that's his life. And so when his job stops, he does not know what to do. How many people today rely on their jobs to describe themselves???? We've been doing this for years apparently! Anyway, he sets out on a journey to find himself. Others see him differently than he sees himself. With their declarations, he becomes a fiddler, a priest and a doctor! It is so easy! He only had to believe... And in the end, magically returning to his starting point, Brian learns he is so much more, and does, in fact, have a story to tell, as do all of us...

The Essential Rumi

A rainy, cold night--a perfect time to go into Rumi...For the personal exploration of Rumi I selected three poems that spoke of unexpected gifts: "Quietness" (p. 22), "As Ripeness Comes" (p. 290) and "Refuse the First Plate" (p. 336).


Quietness

Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
you're covered with thick cloud.
Slide out the side. Die,
and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign that you've died.
Your old like was a frantic running
from silence.

The speechless full moon
comes out now.


I fought becoming quiet. Fought it tooth and nail. Fought it for several years. And then one day I gave up. I realized the quiet was not going to go away and I was the one who had to acquiesce. This is the "die" Rumi speaks of. It's a letting go of old ways that don't work anymore. But you don't know they don't work anymore--that is what you discover when you are quiet. This poem makes me think of being out on the water in my kayak. I love to paddle under open skies. I go by myself or with a close friend who is as quiet as I am in our paddling. We move out from the shore and warm up our stiff shoulders After a bit our bodies fall into a rhythm--paddling is done with your whole body, not just your arms. We move steady and fast and silent for the first 15-20 minutes. Then we stop and see where we are. We do not like to talk, we watch instead. And we breathe. And we dip our fingers into the water to see how warm it is that day.

I have paddled under a full moon on an otherwise dark night. It is an act of trust, of faith. I have come still in the middle of a lake on the dark night and looked up to the moon. There is nothing between us. I am there because I choose it. That was the odd thing about surrendering. I now choose quiet as much as I can. I crave it. I came to like myself in the quiet. I am myself in the quiet.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

As Ripeness Comes

What souls desire arrives.
We are standing up to our necks
in the sacred pool. Majesty is here.

The grains of the earth take in something
they do not understand.

Where did this come from?
It comes from where your longing comes.

From which direction?
As ripeness comes to fruit.

This answer lights a candle
in the chest of anyone who hears.

Most people only look for the way when they hurt.
Pain is a fine path to the unknowable.

But today is different.
Today the quality we call splendor
puts on human clothes, walks through in the door,
closed it behind, and sits down with us
in this companionship.


There is a saying I have learned over the last few years that comes back to me every now and then: "Suffering is optional." Now when you are in the middle of a really crappy time, that edict sounds trite and condescending and you want to smack the person who presents it to you. However, as hard as it is to believe, it is true. I wished I'd gotten that one earlier...

"Majesty is here" is a beautiful line. Majesty is always here. That which is royal, that which stands above, that which makes us small--a towering tree for example.

Ripeness is a natural progression. This makes me think of old bananas that are sweet. Their outside skin looks brown and bruised, but inside is at its peak. Banana bread and banana pudding can only be made with ripe fruit. The fruit starts bitter and becomes sweet over time. Aging is bitter-sweet.

Gifts are everywhere. Acknowledgement of a gift is as much a prayer as pleading is.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Refuse the First Plate

There is a deliverance that comes
when you move from eating greasy scraps
to more beautiful, noble food.

One kind of food gives you flatulence
and diarrhea, a heaviness in your stomach.

The other keeps you light
as you ride the ocean.

Fast, and watch what arrives.
A materially full person is not alert
for dishes that descend.

Don't always eat what's offered.
Be lordly. Refuse the first plate.
Wait, and the host will send out better food.

Lift your head like the tallest mountain in the dark
that the dawn turns red, then gold.


More words (like "majesty") that allude to a kingdom: noble food, dishes that descend (from above?). Be lordly. Lift your head. Be shown as gold.

One of the hardest things to do is to put yourself first. Do you take scraps because it is offered and you do not want to hurt someone's feelings? No, you say "thank you, but no" and smile with kindness. But it is rude to turn down what others offer! No, it's not. This is one of the unexpected gifts of becoming quiet. You learn to hear and listen to your own voice. You learn to trust your own voice. You learn to be still and watch and wait and see what happens. You float for a while and see what happens. And you do this because you honor yourself. To allow yourself to be shown as gold is hard. We want to deflect and turn our eyes downward. Rumi said to stand in your place, and allow yourself to be shown as gold. Because when you do, the one next to you will want the same for themselves. It's how we feast at the table together...

The images that come to mind when I think of India usually include people. I see crowds bathing in a river in a religous ceremony and masses of people at a street market, bicycles and cars and animals all using the same road. I think of masses a yellow marigolds from a movie of several years ago that told of two modern Indians marrying in a traditional ceremony. I think of another movie--Gandhi and again, masses of people following him into the water. I think of dusty lands, a hard dry climate. And I hear a music that draws me in, but I dont' quite understand. I think of Hindu gods with multiple arms and animal parts within their human bodies

And the images of China: I see the Great Wall stretching for miles and miles through mountains, as far as the eye can see. It's funny, although China is a heavily populated county, images of people don't come to mind as they do with India. And I see mountains rather than water. I also think of Tibet and the Dali Lama and Buddhist monks. The rice fields of Pearl Buck's books come to mind as do images of natural elements found within the I-Ching--water, mountains, wind.

Finally, images of the Middle East. I think of Jerusalem and holy palces. I see heat and beige buildings. But mostly I respond with an emotion rather than an image--the emotion of compassion. I feel so sorry for people living in that region. How does one stay innocent and open hearted amid the pervasive fear and hatred? What other part of the world has a wailing wall?

The Turkish tales reminded me immediately of the fairy tales our mother read to my sister and me when we were little--like Rapunzel and the Billy Goat's Gruff. There's an element of trickery--not harm, but slight of hand. The stories are parables or indirect lessons. All three stories included some sort of indirectness being the twist, like the indirect birth prediction of an old man and the indirect rescue of her marriage by a wife. Not unlike the Japanese, we Americans must seem direct to those from these other eastern and middle eastern cultures.

"Kani Yamabushi" and "Kamabara" were pure fun. Literally, play squared?

There's a tension within these Kyogen plays that gives the works their life and energy. What would seem to be severe limitations (24' square stage, minimal props, predetermined patterns of movement and voice) actually give rise to the passion that comes forth. It's like the squeezing soap metaphor--squeeze tightly and the soap expels outward. The characters' emotions are the soap. And so with humor as the intended outcome, the actors' comic telling of their stories explodes out of their bodies--one joke after another. It's great fun!

I do not know "one"liners" to associate with it, but a character comes to mind. Remember Frank in "M*A*S*H"? What a falsely courageous guy. Thought very highly of himself and loved (and used) the benefits and power of his rank within the army. But what a ninny!!!

One more thought....returning to the 24' stage. 24 is a significant number. 12 twice--12 months, a number of completion; 6 four times--6 a number of nurturing humanity; 4 three times--4 a number of foundations (4 corners of the earth, 4 cardinal directions); 3 four times--3 a number of spiritual and religious significance (trinity, etc.); and 2 twelve times--2 a number of balance and partnership. Like other components of Japanese culture, the stage dimensions are intentional and the gifts are in the unfolding.

Moving onto Japan--

My first impression when I think of Japan or Japanese culture is a mixed one. Io the deep respect for nature and an Eastern aesthetic. At the same time, I am intimidated by its people. I never knew why I felt intimidated until we read Hall's "Hidden Differences." As Hall pointed out, Americans seem to consider everyone their immediate friend, whereas Japanese, while polite to those they meet, reserve the status of "friend" for someone with whom they've bonded over a considerable length of time. So in instances of interacting w/ bits of Japanese culture (in larger cities w/ Japanese populations such as D.C. and L.A), I sensed that reserved quality and felt like my actions under the guise of "friendly behavior" were rejected. Now I understand they were perceived as intrusive to one who associates initial distance with respect.

What makes me laugh? Unexpected humor that plays into what it is to be human and trying to figure out or deal w/ regular life "stuff." Like the zefrank video that Peter Dean posted. And like the interaction on this site (turn your sound on and check out "manic mode"): http://www.saab-stuff.com/pop.swf. However, I don't like "humor" that hurts another, such as a practical jokes or something that makes someone looks bad. Cruelty disguised as humor is still cruelty...