The Orange Moment

Part of being an Artrepreneur is creating. And your art should not be constricted by time. Some of the best work you've done, might have been hidden for 10 or 20 years. Just keep creating. Someday, time will give it context. Recently, I've been rediscovering a lot of early writings on old discs. So I took the time to transfer them into the cloud. This includes a book of poems, photos and short stories several hundred pages long. Mostly from 1993 - 2005, my time in Atlanta, Japan, Hong Kong and LA.  I was searching a lot then. 

Here's an excerpt from the short story "Losing Hong Kong" which is part of the larger tone  "Elementality: Water, Fire, Wind, Air." 

The Orange Moment

By Michael M Clements

I'm losing Hong Kong, slowly but surely, like I did Japan, like I did my youth. It's a process; a natural process. Letting go never takes effort – unless you're talking about love. Instead, the releasing of places in your past – those blocks of time, when, when you were in them, seemed endless, periods that neither had ways out nor connections with events past. They were just "the moment." The current situation. 

But I do remember the countryside in Japan. I lived in a town called Izumo; translated as "the place where the clouds come in." On most days, that's exactly what happened. The most orange day of my life happened in Izumo. Located on the West coast, mid-Honshu main island, Izumo is Japan's oldest settlement – quite a feat for one of the world's oldest cultures. 

But each day in LA takes me away from all of that. Away from the past. Away from green rice fields and mountain-lined seas. Further away from the most orange day of my life, which happened in Izumo, Japan. I know, I  already said that. They told me that in the fall, the winds pick up dust from the Huangzhou River in China. The dust finds its way across the East China Sea, Sea of Japan, or Sea of Korea, or whatever. It's no Spradley's, but still. The crappy yellow river dust flies over to the Western Coast of Japan causing these absurdly beautiful orange sunsets. One day in particular, ever so often, there is an extremely orange sunset. So deep in tangent red and Tangier orange that the world beneath lays bathed in a burning orange haze.  

I was doing the dishes. This light, this warm, heart-numbingly pacifying light, embraced me. I had to go outside. I dropped what I was doing, darted outside and was hit with an epic dark orange, burning, cloud-layered sunset – which was happening over a large rice paddy next to my house. It was almost harvest time, so the rice was tall and green, but not tonight – tonight it was orange.

Sky on Fire,  Izumo, Japan c.1997.  By Michael M Clements with instant camera. 

I sprinted back inside to grab my camera; the entire house was humming in the transcendental glow of sunset. The clichés rang true – time stood still, still stood the time, still the time stood, the still time stood, and so on and so forth.  When I returned outside camera in hand, the sunset had nearly just past its most brilliant point. Nonetheless it was still awe-inspiringly magical. When things surprise us, catch us off guard – that is when life is most beautiful. 

We are predisposed to account for the shift in the environment, thus predicating a reaction by said initial action. For every action there is a reaction, and for every reaction there is certainty for more action. Snap. Photo taken. Later this photo would come to represent my 3.5 years in Japan. A snapshot, a burning yellow-river induced orange sunset. But it is more, much more. But dig too far into the past  and all you will find are picked over bones. The real nourishment of life is not in the past or future – it's in the moment. The orange moment. ~  Los Angeles c. 2004

Published via Genki Media. All rights reserved, 2013.