I wondered around the ancient cemetry of Koyasan in Japan for quite some time indeed. What seemed like hundreds of careful attendants tweeked moss and swept paths silently, keeping it looking like the most perfect of settings for mysterious happenings to be happening. What a funny feeling to know that much of it had been there for centuries, but at the same time it was such a carefully cultivated space that the line between fantasy and reality gently dissolved in the light filtering through the tree tops. It was delicious to experience walking through the pages of my own uponatime.

I had a few meditation beads I’d made from home in my pocket and wanted to leave one on a shrine. There were so many untouched offerings, jade, chrystals and coins heaped up in front of strange little smiling figures covered in moss. Eventually I found a spot and left the little yellow terracotta bead on her lap. She was holding an orb so I figured another one on her other knee would balance things nicely.

It was only when I came back at the end of the week to say good bye that it dawned on me that were I’d placed the bead was rather significant. I’d left it on the knee of a little figure with a head transplant, under a huge mother tree  split into  equal trunks, each so large that it was only by looking right into the earth that you could see that they were actually one.