I finished my "Kazetabi" essay at around 2:00am this morning and immediately sent it to the editor.
It's about 6,800 characters long. The title is: If this was not the holy place at all, then. I write about several places from my past trips, including two very special spots in New Mexico (of which I really didn't want to talk), and the general idea of sacredness of the land, about how verticality is relevant to such a sense. And about the city in which I live, where there is no natural symbol for verticality.
Somebody like Mishima desperately sought after the vertical value axis for this mundane, fearless world. He dreamed of establishing a strong Imperial power as his axis mundi. I may be looking for a set of natural, local axis that has nothing to do with historically constituted pouvoir politique. But that's a big talk.
I came across two photographs taken of Omotesando: one with the Dojunkai apartments, the other with the UGLY Omotesando Hills (after 2006, that is). See what we have lost. And forever. The mirror-like wall of the Omotesando Hills is indeed the mirror to reflect our own incurable stupidity.
