An interesting display at the Choseki kai

During the Taikanten there is also a suiseki exhibition held at Kennin-ji arranged by the Choseki-kai, a group of very serious enthusiasts in the Kansai area.

It is always a worthwhile trip just to hang out in the temple for an hour or two away from the bustle of the Taikanten. Please note that I would never be capable of taking these pictures. Google Images I thank you...

The stones on show were varied and interesting. This was a surprise to see...

The suiban is something I have never before seen before. I asked someone who said he knows and he reckoned that apparently it represents a zen koan, describing the futility of struggle within the human realm of existence. There is an old fable in which some learned old men get drunk on night and try to move a massive vat of water. Rather than empty it first and make it empty, they try to turn it round and spin it to move it. As hard as they tried, they got nowhere....four of them were trying to spin it clockwise and four were trying to spin it counter clockwise. Despite their struggle and ultimately realising that it had been entirely in vain, they fell on the floor laughing.

There was more to the story and it may or may not have been the basis for the Monty Python song, "Always look on the bright side"...because as we all know, when you look at it, lifes a piece of...

 

The above text may or may not have any basis in truth. The author cannot be held responsible for any further distribution of the above text which may be misconstrued and then repeated, thus becoming gospel truth, leading to 50 years of misunderstanding about the basic principles of suiseki or bonsai, simply because they learnt it from a book. (For those who still cannot read between the lines...I MADE IT UP, it's just some weird display, nothing more).

Apart from that display, there were plenty of others including this one with a lovely table. Perhaps now Doug Mudd has had his fingers sown back on, he might like to try his miracle hand at this?

Funky edges and great wood...

Mmmm.

In terms of the show, there are plenty of pics elsewhere on the internet, notably Bill Valavanis' blog, so I won't bother wasting more bandwidth on them.

What I will say is that I had a few interesting conversations with Mr. Morimae, over a Cinzano Rosso no less, about the future of bonsai and his plans. It was a...convergence of ideas. Watch this contemporary space...

 

And on a similar theme, there was this modern display at the exhibition which ranged from the downright ghastly...

I don't mean Bill, I mean these monstrosities...

But then they had these pretty interesting iron stands...again, shame about the trees.

 

And these...

Rock and roll...

It was a fairly successful trip for me, which is yet to finish, but I managed to pick up one super pimp stand, a few pots for clients and one for myself. Tomorrow back to Tokyo hopefully...

Please do not take what I say too seriously...I am deeply interested in suiseki and the world will be rocked next february when the big show is on alongside the kokufu...now that I am looking forwards to...