Hokusai says look carefully.
He says pay attention, notice.
He says keep looking, stay curious.
He says there is no end to seeing.
He says look forward to getting old.
He says keep changing,
you just get more who you really are.
He says get stuck, accept it, repeat
yourself as long as it is interesting.
He says keep doing what you love.
He says keep praying.
He says every one of us is a child,
every one of us is ancient
every one of us has a body.
He says every one of us is frightened.
He says every one of us has to find
a way to live with fear.
He says everything is alive —
shells, buildings, people, fish,
mountains, trees, wood is alive.
Water is alive.
Everything has its own life.
Everything lives inside us.
He says live with the world inside you.
He says it doesn’t matter if you draw,
or write books. It doesn’t matter
if you saw wood, or catch fish.
It doesn’t matter if you sit at home
and stare at the ants on your veranda
or the shadows of the trees
and grasses in your garden.
It matters that you care.
It matters that you feel.
It matters that you notice.
It matters that life lives through you.
Contentment is life living through you.
Joy is life living through you.
Satisfaction and strength
is life living through you.
He says don’t be afraid.
Don’t be afraid.
Love, feel, let life take you by the hand.
Let life live through you.
– Roger Keyes
Hokusai was a prolific Japanese artist and printmaker who lived between 1760 and 1849. On his deathbed at eighty-nine, he is reported to have exclaimed, “If I had another five years, I could have become a real painter.” The art historian and poet, Roger Keyes, was so moved by Hokusai’s paintings that he wrote this poem as a ‘translation’ of what he saw in those works.
Noticing into paintings…paintings change into words…words become art…becomes life…becomes us.
Here is an invitation to slow down, be present, notice.
There is something to be said about the quality of paying attention. Really paying attention. Have you ever felt a sense of deep communion with someone when you are nowhere else, but with them, fully in that moment? Have you ever experienced flow when you are so one with something you are doing, that you forget your sense of self? This is love. This is how life lives through us. When we buy into ‘doinginess’, and rush around believing in the importance of what we are doing, we forget to notice what really matters. We forget that it is possible to just be. That in this 'beingness', the magic of knowing who we truly are unfolds. And that, is the real magic. Then everything that we do becomes enlightened activity.
Slow down. Be present. Notice.
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