WHY I JOURNAL

It was while writing a diary that I discovered how to capture the living moments.

Anaïs Nin


I journal simply because I need to. I’ve kept a journal off-and-on, since I was about 11. I suppose that’s long and obstinate enough to be classed as a well formed habit! Keeping a journal is also grounding and cathartic in equal measures. Admittedly, my journal is part notebook, part mental repository and part memory keeper. But that is the essence of a journal. The subjectivity - it can be just about anything a person wants it to be.

I know I seem to be constantly quoting Susan Sontag lately, but the woman made a lot of sense. She too kept journals btw, and the insight she unpacks on the subject, well they mean a lot to me…

Superficial to understand the journal as just a receptacle for one’s private, secret thoughts—like a confidante who is deaf, dumb, and illiterate. In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could do to any person; I create myself. The journal is a vehicle for my sense of selfhood. It represents me as emotionally and spiritually independent. Therefore (alas) it does not simply record my actual, daily life but rather — in many cases — offers an alternative to it.
— Susan Sontag

Journaling enables me to capture impressions of my present life in a more natural way. Words flow sometimes in synchronicity with my thoughts, other times they fall out, unsupervised and their honesty catches me off guard. No one will ever look at my journals, and I like that. There is no performance in them. So perhaps that is where the sense of freedom lies? I am free to relinquish any appearance of order to the pandemonium that resides in my journals. Crammed with photos, clippings, collages, half ideas, disjointed musings. A chaotic blur of despair, anxiety, goofy things and good things too. I even go as far as doing away with respect for chronological order. It’s my way - no excuse, no apology.

I will leave you with this morsel from Maria Popova (one of my favourite living, breathing and still kicking-ass writers)…

Journaling, I believe, is a practice that teaches us better than any other the elusive art of solitude — how to be present with our own selves, bear witness to our experience, and fully inhabit our inner lives.
— Maria Popova

Candy Colour Block Dreams

On the 5th of November 2020, heads still fresh from a night in James Turrell’s House of Light, we landed in Echigo Yuzawa Station, Niigata. There was a chill in the late afternoon air and we were looking forward to relaxing in a hot onsen waters, once we figured out how to get to our Ryokan. That’s when my eyes landed on these colourful layers of tiled block loveliness. I immediately forgot myself and clambered over my bags to take a better look (and about 100 photos) before we had to move on.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I can’t find much in the way of useful information about the delightful street furniture other than that they appear to be part of a redesign of the Eichigo Yuzawa’s stations west exit. Niigata is deep snow country so there are months of the year when these structures lay under a blanket of snow. I can only imagine how visually delicious they must look! Oh one for thing to mention! There are foot-baths right next to these. Onsen water, steaming foot-baths. Eichigo Yuzawa is one amazing train station….and I haven’t even mentioned the sake bar!

Tokyo Ordinary : Hidden Temple Gardens

I LOVE it when I stumble into an enclave of Tokyo that makes me feel like; “WOAH! THIS IS A SECRET GARDEN!”. And just for a while, in that moment, surrounded by flickering sunlight and wrapped in near silence… I feel like maybe, just maybe…I might be the only person that knows about it. Of course reality kicks in and more often than not, the city breaks my bubble. Someone will inevitably stroll into my seized moment of ataraxia.

The last time this happened was just a couple of weeks ago. Walking our regular route to a park we regularly visit, we stopped at a temple so familiar to us. It had snowed the night before and the snow had settled in neat pools on the grassy areas rendering the paths, even the tiny ones, completely bare and revealing an unnoticed pathway that curved beyond our regular sightline.

 
 
 
 

Feet followed curiosity. A whispering breeze lifted ume blossoms into the stillness. The path wound on into a scene of dancing sunlight, receding snow, water and glimmering koi.

 

This ain’t no grand temple with an extensively laudable history. It’s local. It’s shunted up against a major road and tucked between houses on a residential and much loved walkway. Yet still, I encountered many fleeting and beautiful details here. Textures upon textures, layered with light, crisp shadows and subdued hues harkening the arrival of Spring.

 
 
 

One particular detail that has stayed with me since, is the hedge and the rock. I just can’t get over it!

A hedge trimmed so seamlessly that it appears smooth. Like a perfectly weathered pebble. The age old rock that emerges from within the hedge is rough and hewn with cracks and intrusions. A beautiful contrast of visual textures and human interaction.

THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING NEW TO NOTICE…

I must have walked right past this walled garden hundreds of times not knowing it was there. It just goes to show, no matter how well we think we know a place, there is always, always, something we have not noticed before. There is always something ‘new’ to see.


Location:

Enjōin

2 Chome-17-3 Daita,

Setagaya City,

Tokyo 1

55-0033

 

Why I WALK

“Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making a chord. Walking allows us to be in our bodies and in the world without being made busy by them. It leaves us free to think without being wholly lost in our thoughts.”

Rebecca Solnit

 
 

There's one act that genuinely and persistently cultivates my creative and observational perception as well as helps to bring balance to my mental health and that’s WALKING.

Everyone has their own way of ‘going for a walk’ which is quite different from the semi-auto pilot walk to work or to catch a train. Aside from following a mantra of walking to “see what I see”, I tend to have little direction and quite enjoy getting slightly lost. I don’t move at any great speed. My pace tends to match my speed of thought and that is rather meandering and quite often results in going around in circles. I suspect that this makes me a horrible person to go for a walk with!

 
Everything moves more slowly when I walk, the world seems softer...
— Erling Kagge (Walking One Step At a Time)
 

Thinking back, walking became an important part of my life after I had my first son. Those first few weeks were happy times yet not without dark moments fraught with anxiety, all probably exacerbated by post natal depression and a next-level lack of sleep or mental respite. I remember having to force myself to leave the house at first. I dreaded my son crying in public and having to feed or change him outside of our home. Eventually our short strolls around the block became necessary for my sanity and I would be out for four short strolls a day! It’s funny how walking unwittingly became a catalyst to a new phase in my life.

 
Walkers are ‘practitioners of the city,’ for the city is made to be walked. A city is a language, a repository of possibilities, and walking is the act of speaking that language, of selecting from those possibilities. Just as language limits what can be said, architecture limits where one can walk, but the walker invents other ways to go.
— Rebecca Solnit. Wanderlust: A History of Walking.
 

We lived in an unconventional neighbourhood, back then. Our apartment was in a mixed use block sandwiched between a river, colonies of old warehouses and former Victorian factories repurposed as live/work art studios. Opposite us was a dilapidated wall, no doubt the remainders of another factory and beyond that was untouchable land, a once dumping ground for toxic materials. Down the road spewed a concrete batching plant, a few carpentry workshops, a semi-abandoned building often used for semi-legal raves. The Olympic stadium, now the home of West Ham F.C. loomed into sight from our kitchen window. I remember that right next door to our block was Gavin Turk’s studio, it was always interesting to see what came in and out of that place. Our walks would regularly place us in the worn paths of Fish Island - a long term stronghold for London’s artists. I enjoyed walking along the graffiti lined streets. I’d happily saunter around the puddles of broken glass, illegally dumped sofas and putrid stained mattresses completely unoffended by their presence. I’d look forward to seeing what art I would bump into everyday. But artists are a wonderfully unreliable bunch who despite what social media might make people believe, are not constantly churning out new stuff. Creativity doesn’t always do well with schedules and expectations of strangers. And before long, things felt mundane. That's where the magic started.

That’s when I really began to NOTICE. Walking the same paths day after day without “switching off”, details began to reveal themselves, stories unfolded. Walking became a conversation with my ordinary surroundings and oddly enough it also became a conversation with myself. I started quite literally walking myself through thoughts. Walking brought me much needed perspective and clarity. Walking was restorative and calming. I’d collect sights along the way never fully appreciating what a treasure trove of inspiration I was amassing. It’s no exaggeration for me to say that I would not be the same person without my habit of walking.

So there you have it. Walking might be one of the most mundane things for many able-bodied people. It might be the the slowest way to get anywhere. Writing this reminds me of a few lines from Erling Kagge’s book on Walking (Walking One Step At a Time), in it he says “Making things a little bit inconvenient gives my life an extra dimension”. He’s right! On so so so many levels and for so many reasons, he is right. Of course he is right. After all, Erling Kagge is the first person to reach the North Pole, South Pole and the summit of Mount Everest on foot. But applying this words to specifically to walking and I see myself.

So after all these words. The bottom line…..WHY DO I WALK? I walk to be me, to stay inspired and to keep going. And I mean that mentally and emotionally was well as physically.

 
So much in our lives is fast-paced. Walking is a slow undertaking. It is among the most radical things you can do.
— Erling Kagge
 

If you would like some more words on walking and all the inspiration and mindfulness that comes with it, written by brilliant brains consider these:

  • Walking One Step at a Time by Erling Kagge

  • Flaneuse Women Walk in the City by Lauren Erlin

  • Walking by Henry David Thoreau

  • Wanderlust a History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit

Revisiting: Rose Tinted Tokyo

There are times when I unintentionally walk past a scene that I’ve shared in one of my ZINES. When I can, I often stop to take a quick photo as a kind of souvenir. It’s interesting to see how places change over time. Anyway. with a heavy load of these images taking up space on my camera roll, I thought it would add context and depth to the pages of my zines if I shared more of these ‘revisits’ here, with you.

Let’s head to TOKYO TYPOLOGY 1, page 67…

 
 

Sadly it was cloudy when I revisited and it was a completely different season so the light and colours are quite different (less complimentary for rose-tinted awnings) . Also, the sunshade is affixed to a private property so I had to be extra careful. But I hope this gives you an extra impression for page 67 of Tokyo Typology.

Noticing : Artistry of Condensation

“I work in my mind. What I do is done in my mind. And what my hands do with it in writing it down is not the same as what the hands of the weaver do with the yarn, or the potter’s hands with the clay, or the cabinetmaker’s with the wood. If what I do, what I make, is beautiful, it isn’t a physical beauty. It’s imaginary, it takes place in the mind..”

Ursula Le Guin

 

I think we owe a debt of gratitude to the roles which mundane, unquantifiable and impractical activities play in nourishing our creative thinking. Our productivity obsessed society tends to devalue the magic that goes on in our heads if it appears to an onlooker that we are “doing nothing". Like staring at stuff through a window spatted with condensation.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I took a lot of inspiration from these windows. The obscuring of a view with a zillion droplets of water suddenly hints at a mystery just beyond our reach. It can be tempting to wipe it all away just to confirm what we see in our mind’s eye.


Super Ordinary Life is a true labour of love! I spend lots hours and my own money to keep the project going. I keep my space advert free and make no income from partnering with brands. Pretty much all the money earned from Zine making goes straight back into the project and pays for the website, hosting, research and zine making supplies.

If you have ever gained inspiration from my work, please consider keeping me going with a coffee or a membership. Your support makes all the difference. Arigato + Thank You!

Noticing More: Light Play

“Rather than commanding our attention, natural light might linger at the edges of our consciousness. The sun surrounds us with its light, exerting subtle effects on us that we are not always aware of.”

Glenn Shrumm (Lighting Magazine, The Natural Light Issue)

 

Sunlight has a magical way of entertaining and surprising us. Even in the most mundane of surroundings, sunlight still manages to have a heap of tricks up its sleeves. One of the themes that I am drawn to is the way sunlight behaves around exterior lampshades. The combination of reflection and shadow creates an quirky visual pun - a subtle spectacle on our familiar streets

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Super Ordinary Life is a true labour of love! I spend lots hours and my own money to keep the project going. I keep my space advert free and make no income from partnering with brands. Pretty much all the money earned from Zine making goes straight back into the project and pays for the website, hosting, research and zine making supplies.

If you have ever gained inspiration from my work, please consider keeping me going with a coffee or a membership (memberships are coming soon) . Your support makes all the difference. Arigato + Thank You!

Finding Connections : Pairing Pics

Over the years of running Super Ordinary Life - and probably for many years before, I have amassed a massive archive of images. Sometimes I feel really need to train myself to organise them in a more sensible and routine way. Yet in the moments when I actually attempt to do something about it, I end up flicking through images which then collide with memories of other images and so I wind up in a rampage through my camera roll to find the photo that my memory has made a vague connection with. This ridiculous and often exasperating exercise urged me to explore pairing images.

At first, I was fascinated at how pulling together images in this way creates a visual conversation that spans disparate moments and places. It’s a new method of storytelling, for me at least. Pairing is like doing a freestyle jigsaw puzzle with one-fits-all pieces. There is no wrong way to do this. The freedom in finding combinations can be daunting and overwhelming and I am not at a place where I am entirely satisfied with my attempts. But even then, even in my dissatisfaction, pairings have a way of revealing new layers of meaning, connection and yeah…inspiration, too!


Super Ordinary Life is a true labour of love! I spend lots hours and my own money to keep the project going. I keep my space advert free and make no income from partnering with brands. Pretty much all the money earned from Zine making goes straight back into the project and pays for the website, hosting, research and zine making supplies.

If you have ever gained inspiration from my work, please consider keeping me going with a coffee or a membership (memberships are coming soon) . Your support makes all the difference. Arigato + Thank You!

Hidden Architecture : Itsuko Hasegawa

“Walking is mapping with your feet. It helps you piece a city together, connecting up neighbourhoods that might otherwise have remained discrete entities, different planets bound to each other, sustained yet remote.”

Lauren Elkin

Doing my best to get “a little bit lost” during my routine march to kindergarten, I headed straight past this modest looking building, before I did a complete about-turn and headed right back with my iPhone camera poised for action. Perhaps aside today’s architectural aesthetic, this building might seem unremarkable or a bit odd . Yet this building has been on my radar for some time and I was delighted to finally “meet” it face-face.

Hidden Tokyo Architecture. Itsuko Hasegawa.

PANAMA BOY was originally Itsuko Hasegawa’s Atelier in Tomigaya, Tokyo, completed in 1986. What is especially interesting about this building, to me, are the perforated aluminium panels on the façade. Designed to emulate cloud patterns, they obscure the interior of the building whilst creating mesmerising optical effects. These screens became part of the visual language of Hasegawa’s structures. Henry Plummer aptly described them as…

Weight-destroying screens which drift like a fog around buildings by Itsuko Hasegawa are not so much taut curtains, as freely formed, cut-out webbings that simulate soft fleecy clouds, or ocean spray sparkling in the air
— Henry Plummer

Image Credit: Itsuko Hasegawa

Tokyo Architecture Light Shadow Screens

Credit: Itsuko Hasegawa

Credit: Itsuko Hasegawa

Credit: Itsuko Hasegawa

Hasegawa, like Toyo Ito and Fumihiko Maki expanded the concept of the paper and wooden screens of traditional Japanese architecture to the gauzy and lustrous metals we see in modern architecture today. Whilst dark wood and washi is often replaced with metal and commonplace materials, the profound Japanese love for unadorned beauty is still very much expressed in the industrial starkness.

Hasegawa referred to her aluminium screens as “hanging gardens of light and wind” and although I have never been in one of her designed building, I am still fascination with her ideas of using perforated metal to simultaneously screen and invite light into a building. I can only imagine that light streaming through the countless perforations renders the cold metal into an illusion of gossamer.

Despite all these light-filled poetic ideas, the reality remains that yet it is so easy to walk by her once atelier and be none the wiser of the story that she unfolded here. Tokyo is a city adept at hiding architectural gems amid its ordinary neighbourhoods. It pays to walk slower and look again here. It really does.


If you like my Hidden Architectures series, you may also like my blog on Ko-fi about an unexpected Shin Takamatsu building I encountered when I veered slightly off course on my regular walk.

Documenting Street Side Gardens

I am currently working on a zine, yeah I KNOW! I am ALWAYS working on a new zine! But this one is MEGA one that I have been quietly working on for nearly 2 years now. But anyway….in the run up to it actually becoming a thing that I can hold and flick through in real life, I thought I would share a section of it online via a dedicated Tumblr account. So, without further ado, here is STREET SIDE BOTANICA!

Street Side Botanica is an anthology of steet side gardens. Don’t get to hung up on the word “garden”. These are informal collections of plants that spill out onto the public pavements. Most of these are potted gardens, but not all. Most of these are in Japan, but again, not all.

I’d love it if you could follow this side adventure!

ART ZINE : SMALL CANDLES

In some ways, completing a personal creative project, one that I’ve been working on for months, feels like a purging.

LIKE……..

…Finally….I have got the IDEA out of my head and into my HANDS where I can hold it! No more mental treadmill, trudging over and over and over the spirit of idea till it becomes a heavy nebula.

Personal projects are often solitary journeys. Internal ones that can’t easily be expressed to others. They can be lonely and with that, there comes tinges of mental frenzy. It feels go to finish these works.

This is my latest. Small Candles. The zine that I didn’t mean to make but love that I did.

A light contemplation of small candles removed from expected contexts. Each spontaneous still life was captured during 10 minute intervals in my mundane mornings during the anxious Spring of 2021.

Photos printed on fine mulberry and hemp washi handmadby a 300yr old paper maker in Tokushima, Japan. This paper was chosen for its moody ethereal translucency and tactile quality. Each inkjet printed page has been hand-cut and perforated by me.

The front and back covers are made from thick swirling mulberry washi, chosen for its soft strength and unique texture.

Each delicate art zine has been double stitch bound by me. (I literally hold my breath while stitching through each copy - I don’t want the stitches to run away).

BUY A COPY HERE

Noticing More: Thomassons

Akasegawa Genpei is a hero of mine. I find his work hugely inspiring and he often influences how I perceive urban streetscapes. Akasegawa was born in Yokohama in 1937 and died in Tokyo in 2014. He was an artist and prize-winning author who emerged into the Japanese art scene in the 60’s as part of the “Anti-art” movement before gaining involvement with the Neo Dada Organizers and the Hi Red Centre. His incredible “Model 1,000-Yen Note Incident” (1963-1974) cemented him as an inspired conceptualist.

Akasegawa spent the following decade absorbed a meticulous study of mundane objects and activities. It was during this time that Akasegawa and his friends began noticing and documenting what they referred to as “ Hyper-Art” (chōgeijutsu). Hyper-Art encompassed ordinary but useless street objects that unintentional resembled conceptual artwork. What begun to stand out to the group were the overlooked “architectural objects around the city which though maintained served no apparent purpose, aesthetic or otherwise”. They called these objects “Thomassons” .

WHAT IS A THOMASSON?

Thomasson are essentially useless architectural remnants left behind as our cities evolve and expand. At times these Thomasson are oddly well maintained and other times, they are left to deteriorate. Here are a few examples:

  • Useless staircases

  • Bricked up windows and doors

  • Utility poles with no wires

  • Bannisters for stairs long gone

  • Redundant walls and architectural supports

  • Outlines of former buildings that remain as patchy silhouettes on walls. I think you get the idea, right?

  • Arboreal Thomassons - trees in public areas that seem to be consuming a fence or a wall etc

  • Useless bridges

Through a series of articles in a countercultural magazine column, Akasegawa called on the general public to seek out, photograph and submit reports of the Thomasson they found. The project was a resounding success and became a popular, participatory exploration of urban environments that went on to become a cult hit with people sending in Thomasson observations from all over Japan and even Europe and USA..

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Super Ordinary life Thomasson 1

“Gary Thomasson was a major-league ballplayer in the United States, before the Yomiuri Giants lured him over to Japan with a lavish contract. He had a good swing. The only problem was that this infamous swing never seems to make contact with the ball: his bat would whiz futile through the air, until at last he ended up on the bench for good. In fact, if you write out the name “Gary Thomasson” in Japanese characters, it spells out the word for “hyperart”. And in the space between the gnarled topology of these two words, the wispy image of an urban ghost appears… Akasegawa Genpei

Junsui taipu 純粋タイプ. Spotted in Bow, East London. UK.

Junsui taipu 純粋タイプ. Spotted in Bow, East London. UK.

Useless gate. Spotted at Orchard Place, London.

Useless gate. Spotted at Orchard Place, London.

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

No longer a door. Spotted at Bow Wharf, London

Ghost sign or a possible Jōhatsu 蒸発 Spotted in Hackney

Ghost sign or a possible Jōhatsu 蒸発 Spotted in Hackney

Useless window. Spotted in Hackney Wick, London

Useless window. Spotted in Hackney Wick, London

Genbaku taipu 原爆タイプ. Spotted in Tateishi, Tokyo

Genbaku taipu 原爆タイプ. Spotted in Tateishi, Tokyo

Monokūki もの喰う木. Spotted in Victoria Park, London

Monokūki もの喰う木. Spotted in Victoria Park, London

Hisashi ヒサシ. Spotted in Daizawa, Tokyo

Hisashi ヒサシ. Spotted in Daizawa, Tokyo

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Genbaku taipu 原爆タイプ. Spotted in Arakawa, Tokyo

HOW TO CATEGORISE YOUR THOMASSON OBSERVATIONS:

Picking up the threads of Akasegaw'a’s cult study, publishing house Chikuma Shobō, went on to publish the "Thomasson Illustrated Encyclopedia" based on Akasegawa’s Thomasson related writings and in it they created clear categories of Thomasson (source: Wikipedia):

The Useless Staircase - Muyō kaidan 無用階段

Also known as a Pure Staircase. A staircase that only goes up and down. Most used to have a door at the top. Some useless staircases exist that were useless right from completion, due to changes or mix-ups in the design.

The Useless Doorway- Muyō mon 無用門

Even though it has been blocked up, a Useless Doorway still maintains the majesty of its original purpose. In other cases, a Useless Doorway exists in a place that has no need for it, with no wall or fence around it.

The Hisashi -  Hisashi ヒサシ

Hisashi is the word for "eaves" in Japanese. This refers to useless eaves: ones that no longer have a window or door underneath them to protect from the rain.

The Useless Window - Muyō mado, 無用窓

A blocked up window: one which is still beautiful due to the care taken in blocking it up.

The Nurikabe - Nurikabe ヌリカベ

Nurikabe is the word for "plaster wall" in Japanese. This overlaps with the Useless Doorway and Useless Window categories. It refers to a door or window that was meant to be completely sealed up with concrete, but a difference can still be seen between it and the surrounding area.

The A-bomb type - Genbaku taipu 原爆タイプ

A 2-D Thomasson. The outline of a building that remains in silhouette on a wall. This can be seen when a section of a tightly packed row of buildings is torn down.

The Elevated type -  Kōsho 高所

These objects are normal themselves, but exist in a higher than normal place, therefore seeming strange. For example, a door with a handle on the second floor of a wall. These often appear when staircases are torn down. They can also appear when a winch or crane is kept inside the building, but a standard door is used on the outside.

The Outie - Debeso でべそ

A protrudence from a sealed up wall, such as a door knob or tap.

The Uyama - Uyama ウヤマ

A sign or hoarding with letters missing. The first example of this was a shop sign which contained the words Uyama, but the rest of the lettering was missing, hence the name.

The Castella - Kasutera カステラ

A cuboid protuberance from a wall, named after Castella, a Japanese sponge cake. For example, a blocked up window which sticks out from the wall. The opposite of this, a sunken blocked up section, is known as a Reverse Castella.

The Atago - Atago アタゴ

An object sticking out at the side of the road, with no clear purpose, possibly used to stop cars parking. The first example of this was found by Akasegawa whilst walking from Shinbashito Atago, hence the name.

The Live Burial - Ikiume 生き埋め

A roadside object which is partly submerged in concrete.

The Geological layer - Chisō 地層

A patch of ground that is different in height from that around it, usually where multiple construction works have taken place.

The Boundary - Kyōkai 境界

A guardrail, fence or wall whose purpose is not immediately clear.

The Twist - Nejire ねじれ

A part of a building which is normally meant to be straight, but is slightly twisted. Often seen when an object that was created to be used straight is used at an angle.

The Abe Sada - Abe Sada 阿部定

The remains of a telephone pole cut down. The name refers to the Abe Sada Incident; a famous case from 1930s Japan in which a woman strangled her lover and then severed his genitalia with a kitchen knife.

The Devouring Tree - Monokūki もの喰う木

A tree which absorbs part of a fence or wire whilst still growing. However, this is not a particularly rare phenomenon, and occurs quite often. If there is no human involvement then it cannot be called a Thomasson, just a natural phenomenon.

The Useless Bridge - Muyō bashi 無用橋

A bridge over a filled-in river, or a bridge that has become useless. In the case of some covered drains, a bridge is still necessary for cars or heavy vehicles to cross. In this case these could not be called Useless Bridges, as they only appear useless.

The Pure type - Junsui taipu 純粋タイプ

An uncategorizable object whose use it is impossible to fathom. For example, the Pure Shutters, which open to reveal a blank wall, and the Pure Tunnel that exists without a surrounding hill. The Pure Staircase of Yotsuya belongs in this category.

Evaporation - Jōhatsu 蒸発

The fading of color on a sign, or a monument with parts missing: an object whose meaning has become hard to work out. Cases often appear due to the long-lasting material of the object. This also often occurs when a sign's key phrases, painted in red for emphasis, disappear, leaving the rest of the sign hard to understand.


THOMASSON RESOURCES

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HYPERART:THOMASSON

Publisher : Kaya Press; Illustrated edition (January 31, 2010)

Language : English

Paperback : 352 pages

ISBN-10 : 1885030460

ISBN-13 : 978-1885030467

99% Invisible did a great podcast about Thomassons

Japanese hashtag: #トマッソン


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SHARE YOUR THOMASSONS WITH US

I’ve got my fingers crossed that this post will inspire a few friends and readers to keep an eye out for Thomassons. If you do happen to sort one, please do send them my way. Email, message on Instagram or Twitter. I’d love to make a collection of Thomasson posts on this blog and it would be miles better with your help, please.


Noticing More: Lemons + Sharp Things

Mental health is a delicate balance. I spin many plates to keep mine in check.

Playing around with objects in light and shadow is a fun pursuit for me, it’s my “just for fun” way of indulging my curiosity. And while it often (re) shapes my perspective and mood, sometimes, while I am busy putting things together without much vigilance, the fractal roots of past trauma finds its way in.

An isolated and complicated childhood of witnessing violence, abuse and experiencing loss is at the root of my trauma. I live with it daily and do my best to just keep going. Despite this, I am happy enough and I am not offended when my subconscious serves up reminders of my past to me in this way. It’s just my inner voice reminding me to check in with myself.

 
 
 
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