life

Wabi-sabi castes a familiar womb-like shadow into the emptiness of creative possibility. We know wabi-sabi by what is left in the muted abundance of emptiness. As I sweep the deck with a straw broom, I hear its brush against the floor’s surface – first the wood then the jute rug. I hear my breath. I hear the pair of Canada geese honk as they land in the pond below, followed shortly by a jet gaining altitude overhead. I stop my sweeping. My hand slides over the back of the bamboo chair on my walk toward the railing. I sniff the night’s rain soaking into the ground, feeding the fir trees as they bask in the morning sun.

Winter is coming to an end. Wabi-sabi then, is spiritual in its practice of simplicity.

Read more about this topic on my post about wabi.

Read about this topic more on my post about sabi.

Sprout Question: Does wabi and sabi meet in any part of your creativity?

Primary reference: The Wabi-Sabi house: the Japanese Art of Imperfect Beauty (2004) by Robyn Griggs Lawrence.

p.s. I am away today and will reply to sprout responses tomorrow.

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Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

My work, my oeuvre: in the peripheral shadows, too remote for distress, yet relentlessly haunting me. I remember small children wrapped in warmth and tucked away from the soft sounds of a mop I swished across the floor. I knew that I should sleep. The thought of a pristine surface for their bare feet to scuttle across was too hard to resist. My paid work day is done, yet I continued feverishly while my limbs ached with fatigue. These days too are like that. I wrestle each minute of each hour to give me more than it has to offer. I grab between care-giving and caring and wolf down the seconds with a phone call to a colleague, a note of thank you for a review of my book, and draft a response to a request for an article. With blessings duly given, I write a paragraph. A paragraph that is like slipping on an evening gown without undergarments, standing on bare toes, and swirling the hem once in front of the long mirror. Then hastily letting it drop around my ankles, stepping out, and hanging it with care before starting another load of laundry.

I am not begrudging or complaining or martyring my efforts. Rather, it is a battle of sorts – a war with the second-hand as it sashays around the clock’s surface, indifferent to the multiplicity of my love. I can’t stand the second-hand’s smugness. I nimbly waltz past as it releases one of its never-ending ticks. I turn on it. My piercing stare slices each second in three. Yes three. Then I coax my shadowy work-self out of the remote corners where she marauds beyond the reach of the second-hand. She needs to know that those she loves are cared for – out of danger, thriving. Then she will come on stage and dance until sweat glistens and streams in rivulets, more salt-laden and plentiful than tears. With quick, sure steps she does not wait for the music – every tired muscle, scar and softness of skin giving to you in her presence.

Sprout Question: What keeps your fingers to the keyboard, on the shutter button or picking up the paint brush?

Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.