So for the past couple of months, off and on, I’ve been editing a mini-documentary about painting. Almost every session in my old studio, I shot a scene or two and now all the footage is edited and neatly placed on the timeline in Final Cut Pro. The background music is on the audio track and the stuff I want to say has been spellchecked.

For some reason, I’ve been feeling a little angst about publishing this five-minute film. It might be that I want to savor the experience a little more. Perhaps I’m feeling anxious about what the next project will be. Not that I don’t have umpteen other projects in the queue…

Maybe it’s just simply that since this particular project sums up my transition to, or, return of expressing myself creatively through painting, I’m being unusually sensitive about how it will be perceived. Is there no end to this engulfing self-consciousness?

I may or may not have mentioned my infatuation with Tokyo’s Kappabashi Street or “Kitchen Town” here before. I probably have. Anyway, it’s called “Kitchen Town” because on both sides of an 800 meter short street called Kappabashi, you’ll find just about everything and anything related to restaurant equipment and food preparation, including two of this neighborhood’s main attractions: serious chef knives and hyperrealistic fake food. However, the vast majority of the close to 200 shops on the street mostly sell kitchenware, cookware and tableware.

Kappabashi is located near the Asakusa (浅草) district in Taitō Tokyo. Among most tourists, the area’s draw is the famous Sensoji, a very popular Buddhist temple.

I’ve spent several hours wandering up and down Kappabashi during my two visits to the Japanese capital and when I return one day, I’m sure I’ll once again dedicate some time there.

What Kappabashi means is somewhat disputed. It could be a derivative of the Portuguese word “capa”, which in turn is Latin for “cape”, as in what Darth Vader and Batman wear. But “kappa” could apparently also be an ancient word for a mythological, amphibious humanoid that lives by Japan’s rivers.

So infatuated with Kappabashi was I that I decided to create the above 50 x 60 cm acrylic painting.  

Accept, embrace, own, and move on. That’s my new mantra and approach to this sixth decade. I’m going to focus on the important creative stuff and navigate away from shallow distractions of which there have been far too many.

I am going to paint, write and travel more with the overriding goal of cranking up real-time life experiences. And instead of incessantly and superfluously sharing what I photograph, I intend to integrate the aggregate of what all my senses record into the flow of my creative output. Whatever the fuck that means.

Well, I made it. It’s life after 60 from here on. I’m going to own it and then forget about it. It’s just a number (my new mantra). Here are a few questionably interesting milestones that I’ve apparently passed from the moment I was born at 5:55 pm on July 22, 1963, at Saint John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, CA.

• Years: 60
• Months: 720
• Weeks: 3,130
• Days: 21,915
• Hours: 525,960
• Minutes: 31,557,600
• Seconds: 1,893,456,000
• Heartbeats: ≈ 2,000,000
• Breaths taken: ≈ 505,000,000
• Dog Years: 253 🎉

Yesterday, I surfed the waves at the classic Fistral Beach, south of Newquay here in Cornwall. What became immediately clear to me was that I raised the average age among the surfers around me by at least 3.5 decades. Which was totally fine since it turned out that I still caught the most waves with my 9ft longboard. At the doorstep of 60, anything shorter and it would probably not have been nearly as fun yesterday.

After a few intense hours in the Atlantic, knee and arm exhaustion inevitably set in. A bit hard of hearing from all the water in my ears, but euphorically happy, I finally gave up and staggered up the beach with the board firmly clutched under my right arm. After maneuvering through what seemed like hundreds of English holiday-making families with their colorful tents, fluttering windbreakers, and shrieking kids, I finally reached the surf shop. At that point, I was so physically depleted, that it felt like I needed a defibrillator. I settled for an ice-cold beer instead.

Like a Houdini, I eventually wriggled out of the waterlogged wetsuit and promised myself that after this trip, I’ll only surf in warmer latitudes. Today, I’ll head for the waves at Watergate Bay.

Today would have been Brother Tyko’s 56th birthday. I’ve created a memorial page for him here.

The idea of turning 60 on Saturday is slowly settling in. After all, it’s just a friggin’ number, right? And numbers are petty much just made up to keep track of stuff like days, months and years.

The other day, I got an email from a 103-year-old friend of the family in L.A. That kinda put my six-decade short life into a more palatable perspective. And the other day, Esther, my 90-year-old great aunt and cherished pen pal (we communicate mostly via iMessage/SMS) told me not to worry as 60 is now the new 30.

Photo: Charlotte Raboff

After a mostly smooth train ride through an absolutely gorgeous English countryside, we arrived late yesterday afternoon in the picturesque village of Newquay, Cornwall.

Creating a book is both hard work and a lot of fun. I’m putting the final touches and adding a few last-minute tweaks to my 22nd book today.

And even after so many book projects, there still is a great deal of angst involved in my process. Just like with all the other stuff I create, there are thousands of small, medium, and large decisions that have to be made. At some point, it’s inevitable that I experience “decision fatigue”.

Of the book projects I’ve worked on for clients and our own little “publishing house”, this new book feels like it’s unusually close to heart. Finishing the Re:Surfaced project with a book feels so apt.

I have a bunch of other book projects in the works and hope to spend my time this fall creating a few more before the year’s end.

Enjoyed a nice meal at Konstrast, our local Indian restaurant, last night with Michael and Thomas, two buddies from the neighborhood. After 10-12 visits, I can say with some authority that this is by far the best Indian restaurant I’ve been to outside of Asia.

Unfortunately, I don’t eat curry frequently enough to not have a volcanic reaction the next day. Interestingly, whenever I’m in India or anywhere else in Asia, I rarely have any digestive issues after eaten spicy food.