image: for Genzan and Naoko, Tea in the Dark (Drinking Tea, Foot Before, Foot Behind (cleaving dusk/dawn), smudge studio 002019
Ancestor Exalt/Gazing at the Sacred Peak
What is this ancestor Exalt Mountain like?
Endless greens of north and south meeting
where Changemaker distills divine beauty,
where yin and yang cleave dusk and dawn.
Chest heaving breathes out cloud, and eyes
open dusk bird-flight home. One day soon,
on the summit, peaks ranging away will be
small enough to hold, all in a single place.
— Tu Fu (717-770 C.E), translation David Hinton
It was a grey morning in Kyoto and at 6am it was still very dark outside. 7,000 miles away, a cloudy day was coming to an end in Brooklyn and we were completing the final preparations for the project that was about to begin.
Kyoto 6am Nov. 19th | Brooklyn, 4pm Nov. 20th
One day a year, there is an alignment between Earth and Sun that creates an experiential connection between Kyoto, Japan and Brooklyn, New York across great geographic distance (approx. 6,872 mi or 11,059 km).
On November 19th, 002019, sunset in Brooklyn occurred at 4:35 p.m. (local time), while in Kyoto at the same moment, sunrise occurred at 6:35 a.m. on November 20th, 002019 (local time).
Within that same minute, the two locations passed briefly and simultaneously through the sweeping, diffused edge of the shadow cast by the Earth. Earth’s rotation animated this edge. In Kyoto, humans passed through the transition from shadow to light: dawn. While in New York, humans passed from sunlight to shadow: dusk. This shared moment held within it two perspectives of one vast and continuous planetary motion — the cleaving of yin陰/yang陽, dusk/dawn.
“Light and darkness are a pair, like the foot before and the foot behind.” — Sandokai
Through the project entitled, Drinking Tea, Foot Before, Foot Behind (cleaving dusk/dawn), we, in Brooklyn, prepared and drank tea with friends and teachers living in Kyoto, while honoring the non-duality of “day” and “night,” “dusk” and “dawn,” “light” and “darkness.” For 30 minutes, via an online video connection, we enjoyed conversation, ate seasonal sweets together, observed the quickly changing light in both locations, and then prepared tea for one another. Our drinking of tea at 4:35pm EDT/6:35am JPT, as Earth spun simultaneously into “night” and “day,” collapsed the scale of the planetary to the scale of the human. We acknowledged the intimate planetary forces that all humans share, and the ongoing rhythms of Sun that arise and pass away, generating all life on Earth.
whisking tea together, Kyoto 6:30 am Nov. 19th | Brooklyn, 4:30pm Nov. 20th
By experiencing this specific changing moment with other humans living on the “opposite side of the planet”, we rethought conceptions of separation and duality. We embodied the realization that day and night, light and dark, are the same thing—they are the ongoing transition-spin of Earth.
drinking tea together, Kyoto sunrise Nov. 19th | Brooklyn sunset Nov. 20th
scroll selected and hung by Genzan and Naoko for the occasion in Kyoto, “Tea is exactly the source of the longevity” Kan-un, 100 years old, Rinzai sect, 1859-1959
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Drinking Tea, Foot Before, Foot Behind (cleaving dusk/dawn) was the first tea of Koans for the Anthropocene: Tea in the Dark.
In the spirit of the ancient wandering tea monks who have inspired us, we welcome friends, colleagues and strangers to allow us to make tea with and for them as Koans for the Anthropocene: Tea in the Dark. Please let us know if you have ideas you would like to share for micro-productions, private teas, or ways to collaboratively activate smudge studio’s Tilt of the Earth 23.5º Teacups.
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