What is it that we cannot see?
What is presence?

 

I still do not have a name for it.

Perhaps it is something we sense
before it becomes language.

​

Perhaps it appears
when something simply exists, quietly.
 

Away from the noise of the city,
when I place myself somewhere still
and touch an object,
I can sense the depth of time held within it.

 

The shifting of light.

The subtle changes in the colour of the sky.
The sound of water.
The touch of wind against the skin.
The scent in the air just before rain.

An invisible presence moving deep within plants.

On a night filled with the distant ringing of bell crickets,
the feeling that time itself has come to a standstill.
 

The trace of something that was once there,
and the silence it leaves behind.

​

And when I gaze into the flame of a candle,
a sense of something without end.

Perhaps, even before we see with our eyes,
we are already sensing something
that has no name.

​

In Japan, there are many traditions and ways of living
that have cultivated this sensitivity
over a very long time.

​

Even without any special utensils,
one might think of another person,
draw spring water bathed in the morning sun on an early winter morning, and offer them a single cup of warm water.
​

Something already exists there
that cannot be expressed in words.

​

A sheaf-like ray of light
falling through a circular window.

​

Ripples of light, like the surface of the sea,
shimmering across mother-of-pearl inlay.
 

Drawn by intention,
even nature seems to respond.

And the same scene
will never appear again.

​

Perhaps much of what we shape
is always appearing and disappearing,
moving between presence and absence,
revealing itself differently each time.

 

Just as nature remains vivid and alive
by continuously changing its form.

 

Within us are sensations
that still have no names.

 

We touch them.
We linger with them,
one by one.

 

So that we may encounter
what we have not yet known.

 

SENSING THE UNSEEN, SHAPING PRESENCE.

 

This is M Ø O N S C E N T.