intimate walk with Tashi

I feel bad because I haven't been keeping up my blog entries. There are two intimae walks in the forest around PAF that haven't been documented yet and some intimate incidents in Reims and on the way back from Reims.
Today I went for an intimate walk with Tashi in Amsterdam. He is leaving to Finland tomorrow to make a piece with Anna. I'm glad we found time to go for this walk before his departure.
We started with a laughing meditation in studio 809 of our school. Then we walked through the small streets behind the school towards the waterfront. It is autumn now in Amsterdam. The colors of the leaves are starting to change. Tashi found a leaf red as blood. He kept it.
Tashi told me that the most intimate walk he ever walked with someone was with a Dutch woman four years ago in Arnhem. He was in love with her. She knew it but didn't feel the same. They walked for about two hours through the city almost without talking. When they arrived at a pond Tashi danced a bit and they talked a bit. On the way home they didn't talk much either. Tashi said talking felt too cheap.
We went up to the sunny terrrace of Nemo where we sat down in orange chairs. Tashi had a water bottle. When he drinks he doesn't touch the bottle with his lips. It's easier if you want to share the bottle with someone. In Japan people are much more particular about saliva or physical contact. Friends don't hug and don't take bites from the same apple. I drank from Tashi's water bottle respecting his tradition. But Japanese people make less of a fuss about blood compared to Westerners. We came across the subject of scatology (I think that is when people get sexual pleasure out of playing around with shit and pee). I said I wouldn't mind having somebody pee on me because pee is disinfectant. If someone I am very fond of was to pee on me, I think I could experience this as an act of intimate bonding. Why not?
Later we got to talking about death as well. Tashi's mother has breast cancer and he doesn't know how long she will live and whether he will see her before she passes away. He is in a tricky and shitty legal situation concerning his residence permit. Tashi feels that more and more people in Japan are getting cancer. It's probably true for Europe as well. I'm not sure though. We think that cancer comes mainly from poor diet. All those conservatives and chemicals in the food we eat. That's why I would prefer to only eat organic food and why I am so obsessed sometimes about healthy nutrition. Death has been quite present in my life lately. I told Tashi that I got two emails last week from two close friends informing me about two deaths. My best friend's dog Shiva passed away last week. When my dog was still alive these two dogs were best friends. Me and my best friend used to go for long walks and for horseback riding with our two dogs. This summer I went hiking in the Swiss Alps with my best friend and Shiva. And now Shiva is in dog heaven too. I hope they found each other again in dog heaven.
I'm not sure I believe in heaven. But I think I want to believe in dog heaven.
So talking about death created some kind of intimate link between me and Tashi. People often say that talking about death is quite intimate and that you have to really trust somebody or feel comfortable with somebody to be able to talk about such a heavy subject. And why is it such a heavy subject? Because we usually don't talk about it. Becasue it makes people sad and because we don't like sadness. But in Madagascar for example and I'm sure in other countries as well they have very festive and lively funerals where people get drunk and have lots of fun. I think death is less of taboo in some other countries.
We walked back to school holding hands. Tim suggested to hold hands on our intimate walk in France. We ended up not finding the time to go for a walk in the forest and instead did it in the city of Reims on the last day of our residency. Only about a minute of walking hand in hand. Tim felt quite uncomfortable. So we let go. I think it was more the fear of what the French locals in Reims would think of two men holding hands in their city that made Tim uncomfortable. I was o.k. in Reims. In the small village of St. Erme it might have been more provocative. In Amsterdam it felt totally fine. Of course it's an unusual way of walking with Tashi. Our hands got a bit sweaty. Tashi said he would feel funny if we met somebody from SNDO or DasArts now. And then Laurens from mime walked up behind us. We walked with him almost all the way to the school still holding hands. He didn't say anything about our holding hands. We talked about theater, about life after graduation, about Dutch society.
We walked all the way to the post office to post a letter. Tashi had to get the letter out of his bag and so we let go of each others' hand.