Spine Swimmer

I spent two years in Ecuador doing river ecology research — water systems, the Oriente, the jungle lowlands where the Amazon begins. I’d grown up watching koi in my grandmother’s garden in Kyoto, slow and ornamental, and then I spent those two years watching Amazonian fish that had no interest in being watched. They moved upstream like they had already decided. When I came back to Tokyo I missed that feeling more than I expected — the sense of swimming toward something on purpose. I found Jess through a friend in Madrid and flew to meet her. I told her I wanted fish on my spine because the spine is the river of the body. She listened and then she asked: where does the river start, and where does it end? The passionflower at the base is Ecuador — where I began that part of my life. The orchid at the top is Japan — where I returned. The fish are everything in between. I cannot see it without a mirror but I feel it when I stand up straight, and that is exactly where it belongs.

Yuki — Tokyo, Japan