And then11

A Change
of Profession

Obi-Wan Moments

Rinpoche in sunglasses, crossing his wrists before a prison entrance in a black-and-white photograph.
The hands are ready.

A New Trade

The clippers are in his hand. Rinpoche leans forward, steadying the seated person’s head with his other hand. Short hair lies close to the scalp; the clippers move slowly along one side. His eyes follow the place where he is working.

He looks intent on the task. The young person before him lowers their eyes, their head tilting a little under his hand. Even this small amount of hair requires care from both hand and eye.

For this new employment, he has just three words: “Change of profession”.

In December 2017, Rinpoche thus makes a brief professional announcement. There is no shop sign; only the clippers in his hand continue their work.

The remark is light; the hand cannot afford to be careless. He steadies the head and changes the clippers’ direction. The joke has landed, but the haircut still needs finishing.

Tools of the new trade.

Caught

Sometimes the setting needs no preparation. Outside the women’s prison in Taoyuan, the steps, entrance and sign are already in place. Rinpoche stands in front of them, crosses his wrists and holds them out.

He keeps his sunglasses on. No one is holding him; the pose does all the acting.

His caption supplies the incriminating evidence: caught in the act. In English, the pause stretches through an ellipsis: “Prison ...at last caught red handed”.

The official entrance remains perfectly official. His outstretched hands have simply given it a small part in a performance.

Company at Night

A photograph with a celebrity need not be as difficult as it sounds. Rinpoche announces a selfie with Yamaguchi Momoe—and in the middle of the night, too. One burst of exclamation marks follows another, as though this were quite an encounter.

Momoe’s face takes up much of the frame, her hair neatly arranged, her expression smiling. Rinpoche appears at the side. They are indeed in one photograph; she happens to be printed on the picture he is holding.

Rinpoche’s face appearing beside a printed portrait of Yamaguchi Momoe.
The matter of a selfie.

This midnight meeting has required no one else to get up. Holding the picture and including himself has been enough.

Beside the picture, he solemnly shares some good news that asks not to be taken too solemnly.

His Clock

For someone absorbed in a phone, Rinpoche supplies a clock. A pale chair, a red phone, two hands holding it, eyes lowered to the screen.

He supplies the clock.

Eight, nine, ten. He assigns these times, in sequence, to short glimpses of her and the phone. At the last, even the minutes become suddenly precise: eleven forty-two.

The first three hours march in tidy order; the ending insists on an extra forty-two minutes. In the morning he has arranged, the clock is busier than the chair.

The red phone stays in her hands, her fingers moving over it. Rinpoche does not announce its contents on her behalf; he supplies one time after another.

At eleven forty-two on his clock, the person in the chair still has business of her own.