I'm in better straits than I thought in terms of being prepared for this next week. In fact, I've got almost all my work done besides a small paper. It involves analyzing three books on Japanese aestheticism and how its authors view the encroachment of the West.

They gave me the oddest notion that, thinking about it, makes sense: in darkness is a nothingness. Yet, it isn't an empty nothing. It's just hiding things, hiding details, and since it hides them you make up those details for yourself.

For example, I was struck by how something as ordinary as soup could take on a deep, almost reverent quality:

"I was once invited to a tea ceremony where miso was served; and when I saw the muddy, claylike color, quiet in a black lacquer bowl beneath the faint light of a candle, this soup that I usually take without a second thought seemed somehow to acquire a real depth, and to become infinitely more appetizing as well."

I remember from a few months back a big public lecture I attended where the professor argued why alot of people prefer sketches over full-blown paintings. In sketches you have the bare essentials of figures, angles, and lighting. While the atmosphere is laid out by the artist, how you take these elements and interpret, even combine them is up to you.

The power of suggestion continually amazes me. I think that's why more artistic or creative people prefer night: there's less to see, but more to fill in and imagine about.

Someone called it a development of "innate reality." American Beauty and other films have emphasized that what seems normal and boring, mundane, can have webs of meaning and intrigue in it.

Fun possibilities playing with lighting. Hm.

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