It is sailing on the sea with a map, covered by sails of designs with color that brightens an overcast sky. These are lamps of strange forms, never appearing to be able to sail on the seas, yet they travel far. It’s as if one sees a tall cone-shaped object on the ocean, white with a slight inner amber glow, or a multitude of cylinders resembling a floating city or sphere of various colors glowing on the waves; there are possibly fantastic jellyfish forms that are beyond natures reach. In this world, any possible shape sails the oceans.

There are incredibly high tower lanterns traveling on the seas, never landing at a port almost forever on the seas, people live in them as apartments, and their food comes from the sea, and what is not obtained there is grown in the tower. Every apartment window has its shape and design, and the lights and glass have various hues—a fantastic nighttime sight. As the floating tower lamps start assembling at a particular meeting place on the ocean, it transforms into a city on the sea’s surface.

Thousand of large shells floating on the oscillating waves beyond land; imagine the shapes, each displaying an interior glow. The nights become less lonely for the sea, the ferries that swim and fly around these floating lanterns. Floating towns of light glowing like New York on the sea where there are certain parts of the seasons when the nights are longer than the day, these cities only appear at night, never seen during the day.

Lantern buildings float above the waters. Some take the form of origami cranes or other paper-folded forms each year; they arrange themselves into cities similar to a gathering. After dispersing as lone or small groups, they continue on their way to hover a short distance above the waves.

Ships in the form of lanterns existed; there were no inhabitants and crew members on the boat, so why were they there? The ships are living beings that sail the oceans. Life forms of nature attach themselves to these ships, becoming a welcome part of them. The attached barnacles, sea anemones, seaweed, coral, etc., grow as the ship lanterns travel the oceans for years. Gradually they become so encrusted with the things of the sea that they begin to resemble an island.

In this created fantasy world, lanterns of all forms live on their own there are so many fantasy worlds to develop, but they are all different from one another.

Robert J. Matsunaga