Tag Archives: Wabi Sabi

What I Learned In 2010: Everyday Magic, Day 168

Posted on January 2, 2011 | Comments Off

2010 is toast. Here’s what it taught me in a nutshell:

  • With a cheap, plastic sewing machine under hand, I can still sew…..and to my surprise, I can sew wabi sabi quilts.
  • I love to play a video game (who knew?) — Typer Shark — although Ken says my typing all those sharks to death could have environmental repercussions.
  • It wasn’t devastating to have my daughter leave home. And between texting, facebook-messaging, phone-calling and skype, it’s kind of like she didn’t leave.
  • It’s very cool to have sons taller than me, and in the case of Forest, much taller than me.
  • I’m blown away by the compassion and community I saw gather around one friend who lost her son, another who lost her wife, and a group of us who lost mutual friends. Death is hard (understatement), but being here for each other is what makes the unbearable bearable.
  • I can sleep easily with a purring cat on my chest for hours.
  • If need be, I can lift our 80-pound lab-mation and get her into the car and onto the table at the vet’s.
  • True but a little sad: I am MUCH healthier without wheat, dairy or sugar in my diet.
  • True and delightful: I’m most in love with the world and alive — even when not feeling my best — when doing yoga everyday.
  • “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World” is a great movie, and I’m glad to have seen it twice.
  • There only seems to be one television show at a time that I like/love, and this time, it’s “Bones.”
  • Sky Islands are singular mountains dotted throughout the Sonoran Desert (and beyond) where the altitude changes creates complete changes in climate.
  • All estimates for most climate changes I know of were vastly understated, and although my family rolls my eyes when I say this, I don’t think much of the coasts will survive beyond my lifetime (and maybe not more than a decade or two).
  • Bluebirds in winter, Indigo Bunting in summer, and all of life is good.
  • I actually like brussel sprouts when chopped finely into stir-fry.
  • I’m better than I thought at wasting time.
  • French farce in theater, when done well, is wickedly funny.
  • Mopping can be magical.
  • Warmed up enough, I can touch my toes without bending my knees, but I still can’t meditate worth a damn.
  • Whimsy rules.
  • Cats are the ones who taught humans all about lying (as in, “No one has fed me for days” ten minutes after they got fed).
  • Minneapolis and St. Paul blur so seamlessly into each other that it’s easy to lost in the Twin Cities vortex.
  • There’s nothing that can’t be made better by playing some Laura Nyro, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, Kelley Hunt, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Joni Mitchell, Greg Greenway or Louis Armstrong.
  • I seriously don’t want to know what or how much my kids drink at college or all manner of other things that happen late at night.
  • Without pressure, and with family I love, I actually kind of don’t always dislike Christmas so much.
  • Macaroons: the wonder food. All manner of squash too.
  • It’s always this question: “How to live?” and it’s always this answer, “With kindness.”

Best wishes to all for 2011!

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Becoming the Art We Are: Everyday Magic, Day 146

Posted on December 11, 2010 | Comments Off

For three days, I’ve had the joy of hanging out with my pal, Yvette, who stopped in Kansas to kick off a five-city business tripping extravaganza, and to work on her marvelous and inspiring book on women, leadership and narrative. At the Merc yesterday, I was delighted to notice how Yvette blended with the art, in fact, seemed to emerging from it. Later, walking downtown, we stopped in front of Wild Territory, and since part of Yvette’s style and calling has everything to do with patterns of zebra stripes, we stopped again for a photo (too bad she wasn’t carrying her zebra bag and zebra suitcase).

Writing, talking, planning writing, talking more and aiming ourselves toward artfully-prepared meals and rich bouts of coffee has made me think about how art is not something separate that parallel-plays with us, but something meshed with moments, then documented or revealed in word or image of sound or motion. Making art can simply be opening a window or turning around, although it’s more like this art makes us and makes us aware. The art of the cat sleeping in a circle on one particular square of the green quilt. The wind dance in all its winter-haunting dramatics. The nudge of the furnace coming on, in concert with that wind and dog loudly eating the sleeping cat’s food. Wabi sabi art of course, but the art that we can walk right out of or into at just about any moment, whether they are splashes and color or zebra stripes, or just quiet moments to think about it all.

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Wabi Sabi Gratitude: Write Where You Are: November

Posted on November 10, 2010 | 1 Comment

Wabi Sabi is the Japanese term that points to the perfection of imperfection, and the beauty in what’s aging and changing. It literally comes from the beauty of old tea houses, falling apart, overcome by vines and fallen leaves, but still stunningly and vividly alive.  It’s a great term to wrap our arms around as we get older and hopefully even wiser.

Instead of applauding the sparkling new Broadway play with all its bells, whistles and curtain calls, wabi sabi holds out his long arm and gestures toward the bare branch in a tree that had most of its leaves yesterday. Wabi sabi lifts its eyes to the pale gray-blue clouds swimming in the cold front behind the tenderly-moving ponderosa pine. Wabi sabi says, “Look, the world is made of beauty and time pouring right past our vision all the time. Listen, look, taste, smell and touch. All you want and need is right here.” Then wabi sabi serves tea in an cup and saucer from our great aunt, and for once, we really savor the warm and flavor of the tea.

When it comes to counting our blessings, it’s easy to name what’s new and shiny: the first grandchild, the new used car, the big soup of just-made chili. Yet when we look at what sustains us through our life changes, we often see the wabi sabi world: the home where we live which, no matter how big or small, probably needs some small or big repairs; our bodies gathering new wrinkles and extra skin in all the wrong places; our weather-worn friendships and relationships.

For this month’s writing exercise, make a list of your wabi sabi gratitudes. You needn’t go anywhere for this. Just look around, and start typing or writing. From my perch at the back table in the cafe of the Community Mercantile right now, here’s what I see:

Old American flag rushed by the wind in front of the Phillips 66 station.

Last dark rust of the wavering oak trees.

Dull shimmer of three white, one blue and one red car in the parking lot.

The slow twirl of one chandeleir while the others hold stillness.

The quiet hum of two men, one old and one young, talking.

A mother and her son reading their books on high stools in front of the windows.

A gleaming photograph of radishes, reddening at their tops.

My 51-one-year-old fingers on the keyboard, writing themselves home.

Try your own wabi sabi list of observations, and you can also write about other wabi sabi moments in your life when the simple surroundings of your days and nights renewed your wonder and illuminated your vision.

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The Autumn & Woman That Won’t Let Go (So Far): Everyday Magic, Day 114

Posted on November 9, 2010 | Comments Off

It’s well into November, and many of the trees around here still are holding tight to their leaves although those leaves are often dark brown paper bags of their former selves. Similarly, I’m having a hard time letting go of various things in my life, which lead to that kind of leaf-gripping worry that disrupts my day, aims me toward watching youtube videos when I should be working, and keeps me up at night.

Walking is the only thing that makes sense at times like this, and lucky for me, I got a long walk along the river and through part of the river trail with Danny mid-day and then through the tree-lined fields near Haskell Indian Nations University Kris near sunset. All around, I saw that the wild trees — the native ones — had a much easier time disrobing, standing bare-ish in the too-warm-for-this-time-of-year day while the domestic trees, the one brought here from there, still had a death grip on their lives, mostly rust, dark yellow, or the kind of green about to die.

I think there’s something to that: what’s wild and rooted here can go with the flow much more. What’s trying to make a life here while having evolved in other weather, other climate, has a harder time trusting the change in the season. Meanwhile, the birds flow overhead, heading south. The trees continue to rain down. The wind lifts and falls. What are you afraid of, and what good does it do to hold onto whatever is changing? the world sang to me. Let go. Besides, winter is coming, and it’s okay.

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The Wabi Sabi Guide to Transition: Everyday Magic, Day 42

Posted on August 25, 2010 | 2 Comments

Last night my Wabi Sabi group met to talk about transition. “Wabi Sabi?” you ask. It’s the Japanese term, originated from the beauty of decaying, ancient tea houses, that connotes the perfection of imperfection or the beauty of passing memory. So what better topic than transition because, at its heart, Wabi Sabi is all about transition: dwelling in the mysterious change and unfolding that’s always happening despite our human desire to have some sense of control. I called together this group several years ago so that kindred souls could share insights with me about how to live.

What did we learn and share about transition? Here’s what I’m remembering this morning:

  • Each moment has its message, and all we need to get through it until we arrive at the next moment.
  • The older we get, the more skilled we get at navigating transitions without excess stress (I mean, the transition itself could be stressful, but we don’t have to pile on it fears of how we’ll get through it as much because we know we can get through it).
  • As our bodies change and seem more limited in some physical ways, they also can lead us to other kinds of grace in stillness and motion.
  • Sometimes when you least expect it, you can look up from your computer and see a coyote out the window.
  • In moments of great pain when there’s nothing we can do to stop the pain, we can breathe into and through it, and make peace with whatever is happening until the pain changes into something else.
  • Grandchildren are wonderful, but the love and bond isn’t automatic. Even this lovely transition takes time and presence.
  • Being in the flow is what calls to us as we get older much more than accomplishing goals or crossing things off a list.
  • Most of us love arriving at moments and times in our lives when we will have no plans.
  • When embarking on a transition, it’s good to simply let yourself not know how you’ll feel, and then ride the waves.
  • Our bodies are marvelous amusement parks.
  • The permission fairy lives in all of us, and gives us full permission to live our most true life, something necessary for meaningful transitions.

Thank you, Wabi Sabis, for your wisdom! May everyone find their own Wabi Sabi guidance in transition. (Picture is a Japanese tea house in the Wabi Sabi aesthetic.)

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My Wabi Sabi Life

Posted on June 8, 2008 | 1 Comment

When I found the term “Wabi Sabi” several years ago, I was thrilled to discover there were actually some words to easily describe that sense of everything always in flux, always falling apart and sometimes coming together in new ways. Wabi Sabi, a Japanese term, means the beauty in the impermanence of everything, or as my mind shorthands it, the perfection of imperfection.

Since that time, I try to look at piles of laundry, dirty dishes on the counter, and the occasional pile of credit card applications to shred in the dimming light of the late afternoon as examples of Wabi Sabi. Stepping outside, the examples — particularly the ones I’m responsible for — abound, such as exhibit A: our yard (or that portion of the big field we consider our yard). You can see from the picture what happens when, due to a broken mower and too much else to do, we skip doing the first spring mowing until early summer. Wabi Sabi: the tall, overgrown grasses spinning against each other in the fierce winds of our stormed-over land lately juxtaposed with the somewhat neat rows of the freshly sheared grass. It’s all in flux, and there’s beauty on both sides of the mower.

Recently, and simultaneously as Ken was doing this mowing, I was outside on the deck with a digital camera in hand, a nightgown on, and because I wanted to look better than bedtime, a pair of earrings, too. I needed to send a photo of myself to a reading festival where I’m sharing some poetry next fall, and all my other head shots were of a head with very short hair (having kept my hair for over a decade as close to the ground as many lawns). After who-knows-how-many photos I vetoed, I realized the silliness of judging each shot as not-yet-fit-for-consumption. The more I can see myself as Wabi Sabi, the more sense aging makes, particularly given the alternative of wasting what’s left of life fretting over wrinkles, extra fat, and changes in the weather of the body.

Speaking of which, the weather is obviously and especially in Kansas always Wabi Sabi. So much beauty, and so much changing, just like the Zen Buddhist notion that everything is passing memory, all of life is just a dream as we row these boats. I think of a poem I found:

Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,
a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.
If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life.

– Wu Men (1183-1260), translated by Stephen Mitchell

I love this tiny poem that reminds me how, in each season, at each moment, there’s immense beauty in the simplicity of what’s right here, Wabi Sabi, in front of our eyes.

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