https://ayakatakao.com ayaka takao Wed, 18 Mar 2026 16:51:57 +0000 https://ayakatakao.com en https://ayakatakao.com/life-is-a-garden-home Wed, 20 Aug 2025 17:44:25 +0000 ayaka takao https://ayakatakao.com/life-is-a-garden-home <img src="https://counter1.optistats.ovh/private/freecounterstat.php?c=t25qdrflbq5458abzuz9tr6epxu2kzqa" border="0" title="website counter" alt="website counter"> life is a garden ➿ and the roots are all touching 🌷 🏡 return home ✧ about “life is a garden”🗓months &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 📝 notes&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 🌀&nbsp;misc 📓 library last edited 9/9/25 https://ayakatakao.com/life-is-a-garden-absolutely-crushing Wed, 18 Mar 2026 16:51:57 +0000 ayaka takao https://ayakatakao.com/life-is-a-garden-absolutely-crushing <img src="https://counter1.optistats.ovh/private/freecounterstat.php?c=t25qdrflbq5458abzuz9tr6epxu2kzqa" border="0" title="website counter" alt="website counter"> life is a garden ➿ and the roots are all touching 🌾&nbsp;return to “life is a garden” absolutely crushing&nbsp; &nbsp; The planetarium gives me slight vertigo. My eyes are damp. C.A. says she almost fell asleep, M.C. says her neck hurts. Pedro Pascal narrated this Milky Way short film at the Museum of Natural History for some reason. I haven’t thought about him in a minute. In recent years, I haven’t thought about the Milky Way much at all. &nbsp; &nbsp; I’ve thought about time on the scale of generations, never in the millions. We’re all just rock-things twirling in a vast expanse. Knowing this, we still exist the way that we do, hurting each other and withholding. Seeing our animated solar system collide into another cosmic blob that I don’t remember the name of kind of freaked me out. Something about the rendered Earth floating through the universe in a simulated animation of millions of years past squeeze on my chest. We are so small. The sun, a thing so eternal and fixed to me, was: 1) once born, and will eventually, 2) die. &nbsp; &nbsp; We move on to an exhibit about mass extinction. This makes M.C. sad. I am indifferent in a detached way. C.A. says dinosaurs are ugly, and I begrudgingly agree. Feeling bad for labeling an entire generation of earthly beings as “ugly”, I chalk it up to our biological difference. Yeah, that's right, we can’t relate because they’re just different. &nbsp; &nbsp; We enter an exhibit about DNA. Turns out, we’re pretty biologically related to most things. ~~~~~~~~~~~ &nbsp; &nbsp; Still yet, somehow, I get wrapped up in bullshit, but I honestly think it’s fine. It builds character. I aloofly look at you and say: all of this built character. You’re not convinced you believe me, and I don’t care enough to be believable. &nbsp; &nbsp; Bataille says some shit about needing to spend more and I agree, like, we’ve accumulated too much to the point of being accursed and now the vibes are straight up bad. I don’t know about the whole human sacrificing thing, but I think we could use a proper festival or two, gorging ourselves in a ceremonial manner. &nbsp; &nbsp; And if I may add: we’re withholding love a little too much, like, please release it from the gorilla fucking grip you got there. I see your hands and they are turning purple from holding on too tightly. I’ll release it, finger by finger, kissing each knuckle if you need me to. I just want you to be happy. Your knuckles are turning white. Please, sweetheart. You’ll squeeze yourself to death. Please, sweetheart, your eyes are growing bitter from what was force-fed, bloating you to death and still lacking nutrients. &nbsp; &nbsp; The light streams through a gap between a nondescript FiDi building and another building (that would have been doomed to nondescriptness if it weren’t for the big ass Verizon sign,) and I swear to you: that shit looked angelic. I took the most ass-horrid photo of it on my phone. I guess it makes sense, since you’re not supposed to capture an angel. ~~~~~~~~~~~ &nbsp; &nbsp; Going back to the constant flux of things, going back to the unfixed nature of things, going back to dying one day: every moment is special, so special in a way that sounds so fucking banal when writing it down. You just have to feel it weigh on the essence of your fleeting short human life, feel it so painfully like a palette of bricks crashing from the sky, straight into the heart. Planets laugh at us, and we’ll never hear it from light years away.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; I look at D.T. and B.J. and A.Y. and start howling; we keep shortening words to oblivion, rendering language into sweet, nebulous little nothings that only live to serve as a conduit of laughter. Nothing we say makes that much sense anymore, and yet, we relish. Each friend group thinks they are so special for this, for inventing a new language, but honestly, that’s just really the truth: it really is special. Every act of love is a miracle, every cluster-system of friends an achievement of a microscopic margin of success. &nbsp; &nbsp; So I text D.T. and i say oh my god I’m going to die one day and things will never stay the same even if we continue to know the same people because circumstances change, life around us changes, so we might as well accept a beautiful evening full of laughter even if it feels fiscally irresponsible and it finally hits me that we live in a culture of debt and guilt, that i am yet to fully accept good for what it is. I want to have a good time and let it just be that. I'm working on it. related notes: ★ the accursed share, george bataille&nbsp; 🌾 return to “life is a garden” last edited 3/18/26 https://ayakatakao.com/life-is-a-garden-things-i-do-not-ask-for Fri, 14 Nov 2025 22:01:41 +0000 ayaka takao https://ayakatakao.com/life-is-a-garden-things-i-do-not-ask-for life is a garden ➿ and the roots are all touching 🌾&nbsp;return to “life is a garden” draft, incomplete as of 11/21/25 3:41 PM EST&nbsp; a speed run of my deepest darkest fears (11/21/25) this week brought a lot of subterranean fears to the surface. we had a new moon in scorpio on nov 19th, pushing me to confront “hidden truths” (as google gemini ai summarized for me). a better, less technochratic description of the new moon was was written by my friend ocean here on her substack. i don’t think about my “daddy issues” often, like, i genuinely forget i have them most days. yet, my body definitelyyyy remembers, especially when my nervous system enters fight-or-flight-overdrive like i’m some kind of war veteran. i have to tell myself i am not in the trenches, that this is just a grocery store. no one is trying to kill me, the plans i made are just getting (reasonably) rescheduled. everything is okay. the people i love do not secretly hate me. my father has abandoned me once, but (hopefully) not again. besides, no one worth mentioning is plotting my downfall (or so i think???).&nbsp; it feels so stupid writing it out, but really, that’s just where i’ve been lately. deeply uncomfortable, (barely) bearably depressed. &nbsp; so, this week i’m parsing through my file of... daddy issues that i’ve kind of shoved into a manila folder and pushed towards the back of my emotional filing cabinet for... my whole life. i stumbled upon it during a regular deep clean of my psysche. it’s corner sticking out, aged and faded, revealing itself to me like the classic magicians trick of all those fuckin’ hankercheifs in a hat. it never ends. i start to unravel it and it keeps going. oh god. it never ends.&nbsp; i won’t bore anyone with the details. TLDR, essentially, events have transpired for me to have a deep distrust in men i am supposed to love, who are supposed to be my primary source of love. this is problematic for a few reasons, a couple being that, 1) i am attracted to men, and 2) i need to trust people in order to have good relationships. do you see where i am going with this, lol.&nbsp; bad things in my life have made me really funny (i guess this is subjective) and drove me to a need to be Good At Things at an unrealstic standard (this is more objective). would i be a Mid Bitch With Bad Vibes if i didnt have daddy issues? would i be a mid bitch if my fathers were consistent in their love for me? would i have bad vibes if my father committed to raising me?&nbsp;we all want praise and to be loved. i just didn’t really know to what extent i really wanted those things. i needed to be funny to survive. i needed to be good at things to survive, too.&nbsp; seventy fifth birthday party (11/20/25)&nbsp; i can’t live the same way as anyone else because duh and i’m just gonna love whoever i love because thats really something i just can’t help and you know love isn't transactional and isn't going to be a consistent give and take like maybe i really am the friend who texts first all the time and as someone who got bullied i equate infrequency of contact to someone thinking negatively of me or because my father(s) left me i think that people will just straight up disappear hahahahahahaha or because i didn’t find out my grandfather passed until a month after he already died i just really don’t like being in the dark about things like its funny to think that my inability to cope with death makes me a good project manager and i know these insecurities aren’t true people love me people adore me people want me in the room and i shouldn’t take it personally and they want me there in their hearts and next to them but i keep them at a distance because i’m scared i’m a scared child i’m scared you’ll leave i’m so scared you wont be at my seventy fifth birthday party at my seventy fifth birthday party it’ll be everyone ive ever loved in the same room and were all laughing like remember when so-and-so got in a big fight or remember when you and so-and-so weren’t talking and that person i had beef with is gonna be there standing right next to me and we will laugh it all off we really will and we will all drink negronis even though were old as shit and it’s gonna be awesome and were gonna be able to laugh about everything i really believe it i really do humor and parties are the same for me in that they are the salve to this cold hardened world and we deserve to laugh we deserve to celebrate we deserve to commiserate we deserve to be with one another we deserve to level on the fact that life is really fucking hard and horrifying and beautiful and worth it and we all deserve to be here together now because fuck it everything really changes i love you i love you i love you even when i act like a fucking asshole at my seventy fifth birthday party we will have cake and we will kiss and we will hug and we will dance and everything that was hard will become dust yea its gonna be so awesome at my seventy fifth birthday party and we will be sad about everyone who isn’t there because we have lost them but that’ll give us even more reason to hold each other so tightly and so yeah i think i will cry at my seventy fifth birthday party an ex recently emailed me about making amends as a part of the twelve steps and it really got me thinking that on my deathbed i’m going to be surrounded by my husband(s) and life partner(s) and my dearest pals and all my ex boyfriends and ex girlfriends and were gonna laugh about it and be so glad we were in each others lives even if it was sometimes hard and i cried and i felt worthless and i hurt them and they hurt me because more than half the time the battles we are fighting are in our heads and were just trying to distance ourselves from the genesis of our fears which is our parents which feels so unfair because they are just people too but that’s just how its gonna be and when im a parent this is something i’m just going to have to live with and that shit freaks me out but i’ll tell my baby i love you i love you i love you even when i fall short i want you to be at my seventy fifth birthday party which is why i can’t say everything i’m thinking because i just want you to have the time you need to become even if it means distance so i hope you know i’m not withholding i hope you know i am thinking of you i hope you know that i am always always thinking of you and i am just taking my time with this thing because i’ve always rushed because i was always so scared but i’m trying to trust that you’ll be there for as long as it makes sense and i want you there at my seventy fifth birthday party i really really do whatever it takes sometimes i wonder if the abandonment fear that sits at the core of my being is a flaw to be fixed to be mended to be destroyed and done away with and locked up with a forgotten key but look at me look at this life i’ve gotten here to somewhere so beautiful not despite it all but because of it all and because i know what its like to be so lonely i’ll do what it takes to build a world full of love and warmth and a space with softened edges for you to be allowed to feel shitty when the world crashes all around because i know i’m intense and sometimes crazy but here in my heart i protect you like a little egg nestled on the softest pillow i love you i love you i love you even when we’re scared and that's like the thing you know like all this stuff that we think is flawed or bad or things to be done away with about ourselves are all in the fabric of who we are and if any of that stuff didn't happen or wasn't there we’d be fundamentally different as people and i’m not one to believe everything happens for a reason but i do believe that we do the best with what we got so maybe i’ll just wear this on my chest like yea i’m kinda scared you’ll disappear one day without notice and thats why i’m acting so distant and aloof but i’m doing my best whenever i text first and thats just who i am baby this is my purple heart from my battle with daddy issues and my fear of abandonment battalion world tour jacket to commemorate the journey it took for me to even get here to where i can admit yea i move crazy but yea i’m doing my best look at all the patches i got along the way we’re all afraid of being alone even if we’re okay with it and i’m here admitting it i’m saying it out loud i want to be loved and i want to share my life and i want to try in earnest even when i’ve been knocked down over and over again and i kind of don’t want to stop being insane because whatever what fucking gives what fucking ever i love you i love you i love you so i’ll see you at my seventy fifth birthday and if i’m really lucky i’ll see you other times too like at the park or on the street or in your apartment and we will laugh and cry and be mad at each other and all the things that come with opening up your heart and i feel so lucky to move through complicated feelings with the people i love so yea i love you and i’ll move past my ego i’ll love you for who you are i’ll meet you where you’re at and these days i don’t really have an agenda because fuck it i just want everyone to be happy including me and i want to remember that this life is oh so short i really do i really feel lucky and i love you i love you i love you i love you&nbsp; things i do not ask for (11/14/25) Sometimes I forget about what my whole thing is. My whole thing is to, like, ease suffering and make this world a less lonely place or whatever. To love. Sometimes I just get all in my squishy ol’ head about shit that doesn’t even matter. I tell B that I am avoidant which feels like an epiphany but instead of being surprised she just laughs like okay, we all already knew that. Apparently everyone else knows me better than I know myself. WTFDYM. I tell her I want to change but I don’t know how. I tell her I am a scared child. I tell her I love like a father. She says to be a better father than the ones I had, to love like the father I want. I don’t know what to say. I am a scared child. I start by squeezing my own head between my hands. B holds my hand and pays for lunch. She gives me things I do not ask for. [I shuffle around, clutch my chest, groan in agony. I am suffering, make it a bit, like a monkey with cymbals, dancing in a jazz square. Muttering under my breath. Jester’s privilege, jester’s privilege, jester’s privilege, rrrrgghhhhhhhhhggghghghghgh.] Sometimes I forget what my whole thing is. I really do. Sometimes I just get lost in the sauce of life and I’m swimming in it, Ketchup to mustard to aioli, meeting to job to studio. A is my best friend of over a decade and she asks me what I want to do for my thirtieth fucking birthday and I almost knock my beertini over. I almost knock over my beertini full of three just-alright olives and fucking scream silently like that one German painting I can’t fucking remember the name of right now. I pause and drink my beertini full of Narragansett and brine. I think about a beertini made of all the tears repressed and constipated in my ducts. Sounds fucking gross, I would not drink that. A is beautiful. She has grown to become so beautiful, even more beautiful than she already was when we met. She is so beautiful and she makes time for me. She is so beautiful and treats me to my beertini. She gives me things I do not ask for. [Flopping like a fish trying to break free at the wet market, I am on the floor, feeling so smelly and slimy. If I lay here… If I just lay here…] My father loves me from a distance. Another father loves me with words. What he lacks in action he makes up for tenfold in sincerity, all with the understanding that I cannot ask for more than he gives. He does not give me enough and I accept this. I accept this because I know nothing else. I accept this because I am afraid. I am afraid to ask for things. Please do not leave again, please stay far away. I do not ask for things. [A dog jumps into my lap and looks at me, determined and enthusiastic. She allows me to pet, to speak with her. She reveals her belly to me.] I walk thirty minutes from the train to my apartment because fuck-it-I-don’t-know, I don’t know what to do with myself right now. It is pitch black and the Sabrina Carpenter playing through my wired headphones feels stupid for more reasons than one. I cannot stop thinking about someone jumping out from the bushes and stabbing me. I know I shouldn’t think about those things but can you imagine how terrible that would be!&nbsp; [You and I are earth.] The other day I said aloud that I’d rather die than to admit to the thing I’ve been gripping like little marbles in my hands, and B rolls her eyes. As her mouth begins to move, I say, I know I know I know, I tell her. I know. I need to change. I just don’t know how. I am afraid to ask for things. 🌾 return to “life is a garden” last edited 11/14/25 https://ayakatakao.com/about-life-is-a-garden Wed, 16 Jul 2025 20:02:37 +0000 ayaka takao https://ayakatakao.com/about-life-is-a-garden about “life is a garden” 🏡&nbsp;return home 🌾&nbsp;return to “life is a garden”3/2/2026 I feel like an overly inflated soccer ball right now, lacking much motivation to do anything else. I did, though, re-visit this article,&nbsp;My website is a shifting house next to a river of knowledge. What could yours be? by Laurel Schwulst.There is a section titled, Website as a garden:&nbsp; Fred Rogers said you can grow ideas in the garden of your mind. Sometimes, once they’re little seedlings and can stand on their own, it helps to plant them outside, in a garden, next to the others. Gardens have their own ways each season. In the winter, not much might happen, and that’s perfectly fine. You might spend the less active months journaling in your notebook: less output, more stirring around on input. You need both. Plants remind us that life is about balance. It’s nice to be outside working on your garden, just like it’s nice to quietly sit with your ideas and place them onto separate pages. I’ve more or less been in a more-input-less-output season of my life. Feeling shitty about it was baseless, and I know that now, after the reminder that, though I am a person who sometimes feels like an overly inflated soccer ball lacking motivation, I was at least able to read something that affirms my love for maintaining this site, at whatever capacity I have.&nbsp; 9/26/2025 it has now been a few months since planting the first seeds in my online garden. it is surreal to see what it has grown to be!&nbsp; i recently stumbled upon this again. j.r. carpenter’s site was introduced to me while taking httpoetics at the school for poetic computation back in 2024, when i was still living in honolulu. she describes the handmade web:&nbsp; ☆ “I evoke the term 'handmade web' to refer to web pages coded by hand rather than by software; web pages made and maintained by individuals rather than by businesses or corporations; web pages which are provisional, temporary, or one-of-a-kind; web pages which challenge conventions of reading, writing, design, ownership, privacy, security, or identity.” though i am quite shit at coding, i found that the value of a website was not in the thrills and frills of complicated css or javascript, but rather, in the care and love one pours into it.&nbsp; the internet has been co-opted by commerce. because of this, maintaining a site for the sake of de-monetized pleasure, maintaining a site for the hell of it initially felt superfulous. with the server and domain fees, i roughly spend $300 a year on maintaining this site, which is kind of a lot for me. i figured there are worse things i could spend my money on. there are worse things i do spend my money on. i remember when i bought the ayakatakao.com domain for the first time. it happened right when i was about to finish undergrad, sitting in bokeum’s room during my thesis preperations. i probably had about $300 in my checking account at the time. she said it was an investment that was worth making, that i was a real artist that deserved a real website. i wasn’t 100% convinced, but i followed the small particles of myself that believed. it felt synonmous to buying a designer handbag. was this really me? do i deserve this? what business do i have, owning something like this?&nbsp; before having the ayakatakao.com domain, i’ve used cargo since high school, initially using it for posting film photos. it has evolved since. the site is an old friend who has watched me grow over the years.&nbsp; there is a decade worth of data and pages stored in the back end of this site. there are years worth of evolutions in my artistic practice, all roaming like friendly spirits in the server that holds all the data for this domain. i have loved the internet for as long as i have had access. from neopets to myspace, from club penguin to tumblr, from wikipedia surfing to my first encounter with the dark web, i have been online for as long as i remember. many friendships were made in cyberspace, maintained long distance through a virtual connection. many crushes were observed here, too. the internet is a place i have always come to find connection.&nbsp; at a workshop with toby shorin at index space for his book other internet 2018-2024, we reflected on the internet’s evolution, exploring why we use it, why we created it in the first place.&nbsp; my personal conviction is: the internet is a mirror. the internet is inhabited by humans and our aspirational selves, our shadow-y shelves, all these fragmented messy &amp; beautiful parts of our selves. the internet is a mirror of our society, a mirror that reflects back our desperate need for love.&nbsp; so, with that conviction, having this website divorced from commerce is consistent with my belief systems.&nbsp; it doesn’t have to be “optimal”. my site can often be illegible, unfriendly to the user, not on purpose; i’m still just learning. i’m enjoying the journey. this site is a practice of active failure and exploration. i am having fun.&nbsp; 7/16/2025 ☆ “The self as a puzzle: to be deciphered… the self as a project: to be built” [source unknown]. ripped from joan watson’s notes on art historical combines&nbsp; ☆ “Writing has nothing to do with signifying. It has to do with surveying, mapping, even realms that are yet to come.” Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p 25&nbsp; life is a garden to be nutured, to be conscious of. to sit in, to dig. to unearth, to weed and till. 🌿 this rhizome, like all, is layered, messy. sometimes it’s even fun! sometimes it’s boring! “life is a garden” is an active exercise of contextualizing my practice through a web of personal memory and peripheral history.&nbsp; this section of my website will be a constant work in progress, date and timestamped at the bottom whenever changes are made. sometimes it’ll be a little hard to read. that is the nature of it all: its a W.I.P.! enjoy :)&nbsp; <img width="2016" height="1512" width_o="2016" height_o="1512" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fb1dba5b406eb15e65db60651ad3c1e428457818e0f9929872499fb8ecf19940/IMG_6776.jpg" data-mid="235894706" border="0" data-scale="39" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/fb1dba5b406eb15e65db60651ad3c1e428457818e0f9929872499fb8ecf19940/IMG_6776.jpg" /> write to me!&nbsp; ★ email: ayaka333takao@gmail.comlast edited 3/2/2026 &nbsp; https://ayakatakao.com/life-is-a-garden-library Tue, 09 Sep 2025 16:55:47 +0000 ayaka takao https://ayakatakao.com/life-is-a-garden-library life is a garden ➿ and the roots are all touching 🌾&nbsp;return to “life is a garden” disclaimer: i do not own the rights to these resources nor do i stand in absolute agreement to all statements made- these texts are an inheritance for us to make sense of through an equilibirum of what is written in balance with our own understanding of the world&nbsp; “the practice of love” the art of loving, erich fromm “the accursed share” george bataille “the technochratic paradigm” prof. willam saunders + “laudato si’” pope francis external links) (thanks keegan drummond for sharing!) “the disappearance of rituals” byung chul han (external link) “the agony of eros” byung chul han “a sculptors world” isamu noguchi (notes taken from a physical book) “the function of a studio” daniel buren 🌾 return to “life is a garden” last edited 7/16/25 https://ayakatakao.com/life-is-a-garden-agony-of-eros Wed, 24 Sep 2025 20:25:09 +0000 ayaka takao https://ayakatakao.com/life-is-a-garden-agony-of-eros life is a garden ➿ and the roots are all touching 🌾&nbsp;return to “life is a garden” excerpt from “the agony of eros”, byung chul han, chapter “being able not to be able”&nbsp; <img width="1113" height="866" width_o="1113" height_o="866" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/39bddffceb548229a713a2ee56e0c92745cf720ef033f9d06a1f1b6e10779b15/Screen-Shot-2025-09-24-at-4.23.59-PM.png" data-mid="238616892" border="0" data-scale="100" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/39bddffceb548229a713a2ee56e0c92745cf720ef033f9d06a1f1b6e10779b15/Screen-Shot-2025-09-24-at-4.23.59-PM.png" /><img width="1113" height="865" width_o="1113" height_o="865" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0e4be3de8e88b58367b0148f658443a3a4e291dcd0866efd2fdac2af343615e7/Screen-Shot-2025-09-24-at-4.24.16-PM.png" data-mid="238616896" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/0e4be3de8e88b58367b0148f658443a3a4e291dcd0866efd2fdac2af343615e7/Screen-Shot-2025-09-24-at-4.24.16-PM.png" /><img width="1113" height="867" width_o="1113" height_o="867" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4af5744aec3bd1fa8242bce8f75142225274ddaf8a02fdc4e0a8cec6feb29ddd/Screen-Shot-2025-09-24-at-4.24.28-PM.png" data-mid="238616921" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4af5744aec3bd1fa8242bce8f75142225274ddaf8a02fdc4e0a8cec6feb29ddd/Screen-Shot-2025-09-24-at-4.24.28-PM.png" /><img width="1112" height="865" width_o="1112" height_o="865" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6f9e300e0cc8d00568396f0dcfd174002114a12ac2a7b3f8fd87c32102b1f64d/Screen-Shot-2025-09-24-at-4.24.40-PM.png" data-mid="238616922" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/6f9e300e0cc8d00568396f0dcfd174002114a12ac2a7b3f8fd87c32102b1f64d/Screen-Shot-2025-09-24-at-4.24.40-PM.png" /><img width="1112" height="867" width_o="1112" height_o="867" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/835ab41934d89f1cc2a4c66b951a3559409c1ea0a029fe846457c69a2e15c918/Screen-Shot-2025-09-24-at-4.24.53-PM.png" data-mid="238616923" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/835ab41934d89f1cc2a4c66b951a3559409c1ea0a029fe846457c69a2e15c918/Screen-Shot-2025-09-24-at-4.24.53-PM.png" /> 🌾 return to “life is a garden” last edited 9/24/25 https://ayakatakao.com/life-is-a-garden-isamu-noguchi-a-sculptors-world Tue, 23 Sep 2025 23:21:55 +0000 ayaka takao https://ayakatakao.com/life-is-a-garden-isamu-noguchi-a-sculptors-world life is a garden ➿ and the roots are all touching 🌾&nbsp;return to “life is a garden” <img width="647" height="609" width_o="647" height_o="609" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/95f4742c200ba69083a1af3479ab867f20f034c1c7d76cd5808904b0cbed9e6f/Screen-Shot-2025-09-23-at-7.29.27-PM.png" data-mid="238579066" border="0" data-scale="34" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/647/i/95f4742c200ba69083a1af3479ab867f20f034c1c7d76cd5808904b0cbed9e6f/Screen-Shot-2025-09-23-at-7.29.27-PM.png" /> ✰ notes from a sculptors world, isamu noguchi, foreword by r. buckminster fuller&nbsp; “In Japan, the rocks in a garden are so planted as to suggest a proterburance from the primordial mass below. Every rock gains enourmous weight, and that is why the whole garden may be said to be a scuplture, whose roots are joined way below. We are made aware of this ‘floating world’ through consciousness of sheer invisible mass. At times I am deluded into thiniing that the meaning of sculptures may be defined. Is it not the awareness of an inner reality, such as this, of which sculpture is a reflection and a sign? The heavenly bodies floating in the firmament are all connected, by gravitational forces that link them one to the other to attract and repel. Earthbound though we are, we are free to move about its surface, like filings on a magnet.”&nbsp; pg. 40 🌾 return to “life is a garden” last edited 7/16/25 https://ayakatakao.com/life-is-a-garden-on-my-lonely Mon, 06 Oct 2025 14:51:00 +0000 ayaka takao https://ayakatakao.com/life-is-a-garden-on-my-lonely life is a garden ➿ and the roots are all touching 🌾&nbsp;return to “life is a garden” oct 6, 2025on my lonely! last week i was asked if growth felt lonely. i thought about it. the question was so direct it threw me off.&nbsp; 1) i realized growth was sometimes really lonely!2) i was shocked by the realization!3) i felt relieved to place the looming melancholy i felt into a definition-container of loneliness! 4) i felt at a loss about what to do!&nbsp; 5) i realized i couldn’t do anything about it, that the only way was through!&nbsp;i started wondering if maybe lonely wasn’t the right word. isolated? forlorn? i couldn’t figure it out. i understand art and music best when i can’t find the right words. people are pushed to make things when we can’t quite find the language.&nbsp; every fall i always return to duster’s stratosphere album in full and a playlist of the same five sad songs:&nbsp; 1.&nbsp; 2. 3.&nbsp; 4.&nbsp; 5.&nbsp; “lonely” is a sentiment familiar, often felt as i sat in my various childhood bedrooms, holding feelings of wanting-to-be-somewhere-but-not-knowing-where-to-go. i didn’t even know where i could go; that was yearing. i know the word for that now. an over-emphasis on identity discourse in the 2010’s led me to believe that this loneliness came from migration trauma, that immigration and it’s effects were central to my narrative. though migration is a part of my story, an undeniably foundational event in the formation of my psyche, i never felt it captured my feelings in full. i knew a ton of kids that had also come from japan to hawai’i. i felt distance from their stories, their lives. i didn’t even feel the same as them, really. things i considered as contributions to my “loneliness”:&nbsp; &nbsp;frequent moving, placelessness &nbsp;&nbsp;absent fathers:&nbsp;did it matter if i was in their lives or not? &nbsp;migration, multiculturalism &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;queerness, not orienting to exclusively girlhood or boyhood&nbsp;&nbsp;listening to emo music in the tropics &nbsp;just generally being fifteen years old&nbsp;&nbsp;wanting to wear Big Pant when everyone was still wearing Skinny Pant&nbsp;&nbsp;other important and dumb shit&nbsp; and as much as these things are probably true, i think as more time goes on... i find that the “loneliness” comes when...★ i feel distance between a truth i am exploring and the built enviornment around me&nbsp;★ i feel the resistance from what i seek + dream to build with the systems already in place&nbsp;i think it is okay to feel lonely sometimes, as long as you remember you aren’t alone in these feelings. i don’t feel as overwhelmingly lonely in petty ways as i once did. i’ve stopped equating being alone to loneliness a decade ago. i turned my view outwards, outside of my self, and that did wonders! as i express often, i feel connected to things: i feel connected to humanity and the natural world. i reach out instead of wallowing, i make and move when i feel stuck. i live best in a flow. though, sometimes, i just can’t help but to feel it.&nbsp; i feel lonely when i am exploring new ways of being. i feel lonely when i want to show love to someone who is overly cautious. i feel lonely when i am being overly cautious. i feel lonely when i leave desires unfulfilled. i feel lonely when i am growing into a new self. i feel lonely when i trust myself in a decision i’ve never made before. lonely happens when i want to make sense of something that can only be defined retrospectively. everything needs time.&nbsp;dokusho, dokushiwe are born alone, die alone&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; do bugs get lonely? i used to often wonder as a child. i’d see an ant walking alone, a distance unfathomable to my large-in-comparision bipedal body. i’d wonder where it’s family was and if they knew how to get back.&nbsp; i put my stuffed animals together in groups and pairs because i didn’t want any of them to feel lonely. i now understand this as a projection of my own loneliness. i didn’t want anyone or anything, alive or not, to feel the way i did. &nbsp;i support the dreams of others because i know how lonely it can be to have one. i know how isolating it can be to have an artistic practice that you have to be accountable for. you move through the world in a way that makes little sense to most: you have to say no to things, be disciplined, say yes to things that feel questionable to others, and ultimately, trust your gut in a world that wants to delude you in a belief that there is a Right Way To Do Things. &nbsp; realizing your dreams can bring up feelings of loss. growing into the person you want to be can mean growing apart from friends you’ve always known, growing apart from a version of you that others have come to love. this can bring up feelings of betrayal from others who cannot metabolize your growth. walking on a new path means departing from an old one, mourning the future you had built up in your head; maybe it wasn’t as good as the one you’re building now, but that doesn’t make it any less disorienting.&nbsp; loss is complicated and i’ve had a lot of it. i intellectually understand it’s weight and the grief. i know we are losing things we don’t even realize on the daily. it is different when you tangibily see it; i have become acutely aware of this loss in recent weeks. this weight brings discomfort, like rocks in my chest.&nbsp; i am standing on a road i’ve been walking for a while now, one that i have been walking without really looking back. i realize my legs are tired, that i need to rest, so i take a seat. i am sat and looking at the distance i’ve come. the road is the same but the town unrecognizable. even the air feels different from all that i’ve known. i am seated and noticing things for the first time, noticing how long my hair has gotten, my nails. a new freckle appears on my arm. i notice the soles of my shoes worn, fades in my jeans that weren’t there before. i am seated and am far from where i started. i cannot see the old town i came from, and thank god, because if i could see it, i might have walked back.&nbsp; as always, email me with thoughts:&nbsp; ayaka333takao@gmail.com 🌾 return to “life is a garden” last edited 10/6/25 https://ayakatakao.com/life-is-a-garden-art-of-loving Tue, 09 Sep 2025 16:51:06 +0000 ayaka takao https://ayakatakao.com/life-is-a-garden-art-of-loving life is a garden ➿ and the roots are all touching 🌾&nbsp;return to “life is a garden” excerpt from the art of loving, erich fromm<img width="1142" height="1696" width_o="1142" height_o="1696" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3ee61319ba913c9f163a912c9f2dca965ff30f03d47b39aa90618390990e50ab/Screen-Shot-2025-09-09-at-12.43.58-PM.png" data-mid="237993201" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/3ee61319ba913c9f163a912c9f2dca965ff30f03d47b39aa90618390990e50ab/Screen-Shot-2025-09-09-at-12.43.58-PM.png" /><img width="1166" height="1726" width_o="1166" height_o="1726" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/20622113f345997bee558f82eb679fdba0eeec89a36728edc54e55cb05ee4d82/Screen-Shot-2025-09-09-at-12.46.05-PM.png" data-mid="237993203" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/20622113f345997bee558f82eb679fdba0eeec89a36728edc54e55cb05ee4d82/Screen-Shot-2025-09-09-at-12.46.05-PM.png" /><img width="1164" height="1736" width_o="1164" height_o="1736" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b336b11dd0db6dce72f5b1dd34b97253aa144789ee74045a60a63fcb3f545a6c/Screen-Shot-2025-09-09-at-12.46.33-PM.png" data-mid="237993204" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/b336b11dd0db6dce72f5b1dd34b97253aa144789ee74045a60a63fcb3f545a6c/Screen-Shot-2025-09-09-at-12.46.33-PM.png" /><img width="1202" height="1666" width_o="1202" height_o="1666" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/bc0e0e15221404295fe6b4221c2a5b51df7c7ac1a70f1db22ab74e37f4a83abd/Screen-Shot-2025-09-09-at-12.47.17-PM.png" data-mid="237993205" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/bc0e0e15221404295fe6b4221c2a5b51df7c7ac1a70f1db22ab74e37f4a83abd/Screen-Shot-2025-09-09-at-12.47.17-PM.png" /><img width="1158" height="1686" width_o="1158" height_o="1686" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6edceb8d420606d563e28b925d9e3e3539a735ad12de3301d4822c6e826899af/Screen-Shot-2025-09-09-at-12.47.59-PM.png" data-mid="237993206" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/6edceb8d420606d563e28b925d9e3e3539a735ad12de3301d4822c6e826899af/Screen-Shot-2025-09-09-at-12.47.59-PM.png" /><img width="1168" height="1748" width_o="1168" height_o="1748" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fcc4fae6f164780b5f0f754f1515eff4947dfe265325200547458bb8f043f5dc/Screen-Shot-2025-09-09-at-12.49.15-PM.png" data-mid="237993207" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/fcc4fae6f164780b5f0f754f1515eff4947dfe265325200547458bb8f043f5dc/Screen-Shot-2025-09-09-at-12.49.15-PM.png" /><img width="1220" height="1680" width_o="1220" height_o="1680" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e1fdd22188b76d19ce6d0167a6a33fed19349e2dda4c0894a48301aadfadafb4/Screen-Shot-2025-09-09-at-12.49.46-PM.png" data-mid="237993208" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/e1fdd22188b76d19ce6d0167a6a33fed19349e2dda4c0894a48301aadfadafb4/Screen-Shot-2025-09-09-at-12.49.46-PM.png" /><img width="1202" height="1654" width_o="1202" height_o="1654" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/91cd72b2989baeca1033231f4cc7d356b620c23dc3ff5ae674933c0b5c465c31/Screen-Shot-2025-09-09-at-12.50.26-PM.png" data-mid="237993209" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/91cd72b2989baeca1033231f4cc7d356b620c23dc3ff5ae674933c0b5c465c31/Screen-Shot-2025-09-09-at-12.50.26-PM.png" /><img width="1246" height="1732" width_o="1246" height_o="1732" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/8ea2c3036c491fc78ab093446dc35461f28f54dbc9ab23a891f79178955655a3/Screen-Shot-2025-09-09-at-12.50.55-PM.png" data-mid="237993202" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/8ea2c3036c491fc78ab093446dc35461f28f54dbc9ab23a891f79178955655a3/Screen-Shot-2025-09-09-at-12.50.55-PM.png" /> 🌾 return to “life is a garden” last edited 9/9/25 https://ayakatakao.com/life-is-a-garden-return2longform Tue, 30 Sep 2025 21:23:08 +0000 ayaka takao https://ayakatakao.com/life-is-a-garden-return2longform life is a garden ➿ and the roots are all touching 🌾&nbsp;return to “life is a garden” 10/01/2025 i’ve been getting pretty pissed off lately each time i look at content like i actually don’t fucking care about matcha fuckin’ lattes or people making jokes about performatively drinking said matcha latte or how long you stood in line to buy a fucking labubu or whatever and my friend says labubus are spiritually israeli in which i fucking agree and i don’t blame the individual for this predicament like i don’t hate people who have labubus but i hate what they stand for which is fucking nothing this shit is so fucking bleak sometimes like what the fuck do people even like anymore what do people even value anymore like there are genocides happening on the same planet we are spending money on stupid shit that we get tired of in a few months and it ends up in landfill and then what we are in the rubble of unloved objects that were empty signifiers of status we never even had in the first place like how truly humiliating and why do we do the same with people? why are we drinking ceremonial matcha every day and why are there so many music festivals like is nothing fucking sacred anymore and what are we even celebrating? i don’t wanna sound like a jackass but people are so divorced from ritual and cycles and meaningful things that are actually tangible so what is the fucking point if we’re swimming in a void, a soup of emptiness, a sludge goop fuckin’ slop of useless shit ★ So, here is my return to longform. My beautiful wife and life partner, Longform. I once was distracted, in the throes of passion with shortform, holding onto more than I could ever digest in a lifetime. I am wiser now from the grief of all I’ve lost. I am tired of empty promises, of quick sugar highs. Give me deep, sustained attention. Give me pause, time for silence. Give me tease and build. Let things linger, Longform. Shortform: temporarily alluring, sweet. Ultimately, she leaves me with empty calories unnourishing. I am famished.&nbsp; Guide me to a sustaining nectar and I’ll journey towards it, for as long as it takes. Life is about dancing to our destinations. It is my god given right to shake ass towards becoming.&nbsp; Longform, an aperitivo that trails into dinner, an afternoon that leads us into the dark of night. The sun goes down, the candles are lit. Faces in amber light, barely visible and entirely lovable. We have an amaro, an espresso for a nightcap, we can’t help but to squeeze out each moment of togetherness this evening. Eyes soften and we begrudgingly call it: walking down the hall with the last of the wine in hand, passing the bottle back and forth until our arrival to rest. We do not need to speak of the future, of pros and cons. We are just here, now, flesh pressed on flesh. A candle still burns for us somewhere. Eros is holding on to dear life. Everyone knows exactly how to look sexy, and somehow, no one is erotic. No one is having sex anyway, in the truest sense. Everything is porn. Everyone knows the right thing to say, how to act, and it all means nothing. We are actors playing a role we don’t believe in. I literally don’t understand the point in most things. War? Killing people for resources that we just hoard? Denying others their right to water, food, land, and their humanity, just so you can get a hair transplant and drive a fugly car, to get a hot wife you don’t even know how to talk to? Going to a party just to be seen, but not engaging in a single conversation that actually fills your cup? I don’t get it. Walk with me to Cringe Mountain. Let us climb it. Let me simmer. Give me something real. Give me something uncomfortable. Give me something I have to sit in, parse through. Give me something worth working out, and don’t give me an out. Who needs an escape room when life is full of puzzles? I know I sound dramatic but we are in a true decline of humanity. No one is living. I walk through the streets and feel an urgent panic about the way we are. Have we forgotten the finality of our lives, that your shit could get rocked at any time? ★ I have been challenging myself to not look at my phone during my subway commute. Sometimes I even go to extremes and prohibit myself from listening to music. Music is okay if I am in deep attention with it, same with books. Otherwise, I push myself to sit, to hear the world around me, to feel the things people around me are feeling. This shit can be uncomfortable. I become acutely aware of how many people are surrounding me at any given moment. I scan to see who is having a good day, a bad day. Try to guess how long each person has lived in this city. I am confronted with their realness. This is scary. This is beautiful. Shortform manufactures zombies. My roommate tells me about a guy she saw on the subway, tablet and phone in hand. On one screen there is a TV show, and on the other, Tetris. He frantically goes back and forth between the two screens. He was practically licking them. I don’t know if this manufactured urgency is even necessary. We worked so hard to evolve into a species that could ponder, and now, we’re back to digging our noses and asses at the same time, on some monkey shit. I see people like this on the subway all the time, infinitely scrolling through social media or playing their mobile games with screens barely a foot away from their face. What do we lose in reality when we engross ourselves in the digital? Why do we seek nourishment in empty calories?&nbsp; I forgot who said it, but I once heard that the ruling class will increasingly have the means and education to value things like time in nature, slowness, to know how to put the damn phone down. On the other end, working class people will have their attention robbed by “free” media through social networking sites. What you exchange in this “free” exchange is, well, your attention and data. Which is actually a fucking lot. This creates an even larger disparity in wealth, not only in financial capital, but on all fronts: wealth of social wellbeing and attention are being compromised in ways damaging for generations to come. I see this damage directly in our relationships. It’s the damn phones. The discourse is trite so I’ll only touch upon it briefly: the Friend AI ads circulating on the MTA are pissing me off. Loneliness is humanity’s built in signal to reach out to others. This is an evolutionary necessity. To retreat to the self and artificiality is devastating. AI should be a vehicle to give us time for the things that really matter, like spending time with one another. The machine should do my admin work so I can make my aperitivo date with friends, so that I can have a long and nourishing dinner with them. To think an imperfectly beautiful flesh and blood person could be replaced by a machine is moronic. We are attracted to AI friendships because you don’t have to work for them. You can remain a dopamine-addicted self who has no regard for others. The machine will give you attention. It is easy! You don’t have to address the mess of life! How fucking boring! Contemporary culture prioritizes safety and comfort over the confrontation of self. This is how Eros dies in a horribly morbid, rotten decay. My best moments emerge from times I leaped into abysses too deep to see their shape. Trust fall into life. You know yourself better than you think. It's all the other bullshit that makes you feel like you don’t. Don’t listen to the opinions of people that don’t care about you. Who fucking cares. Self care this, self care that. What happened to the total annihilation of the self in order to cross the bridge towards sincerity, towards actualization? I know it is humiliating to reach out to people, but you just gotta do it. Eventually, it gets easier. It is a muscle we have to exercise. Practice by being a good friend, by embodying the kind of person you’d like to spend time with. Be yourself, but also remember: the self has room to grow. This is a note to self.&nbsp; Dominic Pettman states that “the self is a collaboration with others”. We are all the sum of each other. We become reified through the reflections of ourselves through those we love. We should live with this understanding burned, branded onto ourselves. I am me because you are you. I am me because we live amongst each other. I make rules for myself that I break all the time. You kind of have to. It’d be weird if you always stayed the same. You have never been you-er than the you that is you now. The you of the future relies on you that trusts the present. I fuck up all the time. I make a ton of mistakes. I wrong others, and in this same life, I have loved with a warmth of a thousand suns. I have multiplied the blessings bestowed on me. Everyone says it, but it's true: we contain multitudes. We have to be gracious towards each other in being imperfect. We cannot build a future using only the systems we know. Have courage to dream. I felt so sad last night. I let myself be. I fell asleep feeling so pitiful and sorry for myself. Wah wah wah. Sad-ass notes app reflections. I woke up with gratitude that the sun came up. I was glad to have slept on it, that I simmered. There is no right or wrong way to be. I cannot demonize negative emotion. I just follow my heart. I will probably feel sad again tonight, and that is okay. I will let myself be, because there will eventually come a day where I can let this particular thing go. I will not rush the process. More than anything, I want to emphasize that life is gross and imperfect. It should be this way. I firmly believe in all the things you learn while fumbling through with an earnest heart. Capitalism has failed you. There is no linear path. I am sorry if you are finding out this way. If there is a conviction in your soul that you have silenced through work or relationships, you are actively killing yourself. Failing in capitalism is not failing at life. Succeeding on other people’s terms are surrogates for the desires we have within ourselves. I don’t have any specific empirical evidence to back it, but I have a strong conviction: within each person lies a desire and mission unshakable, embedded into our psyche, and everything we do against it causes deep pain and suffering. You become aware of this mission early on, and we have our whole lives for these dreams to take shape. I know girls who should be painting all day, but instead, date chronically and use all their passionate energy intended for the studio on problems they have (frankly) made for themselves. Men do this just as often. At times, I too can microdose this behavior. I distract myself with bullshit when I should be making something with my hands, when I should be sitting on a rock, when I’d benefit from watching a river. That is why my ass is back in the studio. I am married to the game. I must walk my path with energetic intentionality. A big hop and skip in my own direction, if you will. My big disclaimer is that I don’t think romance is inherently a distraction, but I do believe that people treat romance as a surrogate for passion that should be felt through other means. We can’t help but want to be moved by something, and what is more moving than love? Yet, who could we be if we were moved by things outside of ourselves, that we did not have to be a subject in the beautiful thing we are observing? What if the time spent stressing about a guy not texting you back was spent dreaming and collaborating with your closest friends and coconspirators instead? What if we built that sculpture like we said we wanted to? What is holding us back, and why do you look at your phone instead when compelled towards acting on these desires? What does all of this have to do with longform vs. shortform? Why do I hate Labubus? Why am I always talking about Eros? What does capitalism and AI have to do with all of this? What the hell am I trying to say? Rather, why should anyone care what I have to say at all? There are a ton of grifers out there, trying to extract money and time from you to get what they want. I don’t necessarily think that anyone should even listen to what I have to say. I am just stating my convictions and what I am working towards. I share this because I deeply care about humanity, about repairing our broken fuckin’ brains. My website doesn’t have a paywall for a reason. I (mostly) left substack because it felt so noisy. I also didn’t like asking you for money. I don’t want anything from you, aside from you living a life in alignment. Life is long form, like, literally. Life is a commitment to a long term practice. Things don’t manifest overnight. The family you’d like, the friends you want, the skills you are interested in, these are all commitments to make. I am good at drawing because I have been doing it consistently since I had the motor skills for, which is roughly three years old: drawing has literally been a lifelong practice. I’ve been doing ceramics consistently since I was twelve, as with many other art things. I have been in active practices of thinking and reflection for most of my life. A lot of shit I’ve made sucks, and I am still writing terribly. Regardless, I do it, because I know that mastery takes time. This all didn’t happen in a vacuum. Nothing does. Commit to Longform.&nbsp; Like the title of this larger project, life is a garden. Life is a garden and the roots are touching. Life is a garden that you must nurture, care for. A tree does not grow to be big and strong overnight. It takes decades, centuries even. Why are we rushing? I want my life to feel like a lovingly prepared candlelit dinner, amongst all the possibilities of fastness and convenience. I want to be the spiritual antithesis to whatever a Labubu represents. I want to commit with passion to my lifelong lover, my forever companion, my dearest Longform. 🌾 return to “life is a garden” last edited 10/4/25