Mind. Blown.
I had tied a bow on my last post and decided to do some further reading on the art of kintsugi. It’s the Japanese art of repairing pottery with silver and gold. On the website of My Modern Met it tells the history of this beautiful technique. There it says:
“The practice is related to the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi, which calls for seeing beauty in the flawed or imperfect. The repair method was also born from the Japanese feeling of mottainai, which expresses regret when something is wasted, as well as mushin, the acceptance of change.”
Well that just blows me away. This is me. Not just now. Not just the broken and beautifully repaired. But this whole concept of wabi-sabi. All my life I have found the beauty of things ignored, walked by, disregarded. I have spent countless hours photographing random items I find that are intricate and mesmerizing, and yet to most they are not seen at all beyond there existence and perhaps their usefulness. There is a photo that comes to mind. Where is it? Where is it? Google photos? Darn. I can’t find it. It’s a rusty fire hydrant I found in the middle of a field. It could never be used to put out any fire. But there it was. Just taking up space. I found it remarkably interesting. It beckoned me to look at it. To see it. To admire it. And so I did.
And going back even further I remember the day that I became acutely aware that other people thought the guy I was dating (this goes back to high school) wasn’t attractive enough for me. It was bizarre. Not only because it was shoved in my face from a pack of strangers on a metro train- guys who had nothing better to do than taunt someone who was clearly out on a date. How rude!- but because I remember thinking, ‘Why are they doing that? That’s so hurtful and not even true.’ They were making overly loud comments like “Beauty and the Beast.” I was attracted to my high school sweetheart, plain and simple. I loved him. I wasn’t looking at his outside or tallying how many boxes he checked on some ridiculous scale for attractiveness and acceptability. He was a good and kind person who was smart, witty, funny, and who made me smile and treated me well.
Fast forward to more modern times and maybe that’s why my house is the way it is. It is always in some degree of “lived in”. You know what I’m talking about. Not necessarily dirty, but messy, a “life is all over” kind of messy. I don’t care. I see these things as my kids’ activities, their happiness, my cooking, their academics, their art, their passion- and so it is for me too. It’s life and it’s messy and it’s cracked and flawed and altogether fucking beautiful.
Wabi-sabi. I think I just found Me.
And then mushin comes over to play………….
