I love this photo...he seems to be enjoying the winter and the cold. I wonder if animals ever complain about the weather like us humans seem to do - and too much at that. Living in Utah I am always reading weather complaints on facebook.
This what I posted on Lorienoriginal.com earlier today:
“The Japanese view of life embraced a simple aesthetic that grew stronger as inessentials were eliminated and trimmed away.” ~ architect Tadao AndoWhen people told me that spending time in Japan would change my life I didn’t discount it completely, but I pretty much gave it a shelf to sit on.
Well, they were right. Absolutely right.
I spent about three weeks in Kyoto/Tokyo/Osaka in the spring of 2010 and had such an impacting experience that I went back for another 3 weeks in the fall of that same year. It’s a never ending wealth of learning and experiencing in Japan, especially in Kyoto.
I was just starting out on my fall journey exactly one year ago today…my how I wish I could go back for just a few days to catch the colors and immerse myself in the garden language they speak so astoundingly there.
One thing that you learn about while studying Japanese gardens or culture is Wabi-Sabi. I hesitate to even write a post about this for fear that I won’t do it justice. But here’s a few excerpts of what other people have written about it:
Wabi-sabi is the quintessential Japanese aesthetic. It is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional…A few years back a gentleman that I knew from the green industry had switched careers and was now making a ridiculous amount of money selling a product to keep your skin tout and “locked-in” to a young age…never ending twenties…
It is also two separate words, with related but different meanings. “Wabi” is the kind of perfect beauty that is seemingly-paradoxically caused by just the right kind of imperfection, such as an asymmetry in a ceramic bowl which reflects the handmade craftsmanship, as opposed to another bowl which is perfect, but soul-less and machine-made.
“Sabi” is the kind of beauty that can come only with age, such as the patina on a very old bronze statue.
It is the cracks in the bark of trees that lets us know it is a mature and healthy tree, harboring an ecosystem while protecting itself from many of the denizens of the ecosystem. It is the lines in a persons face that lets us know how much they have laughed, considered carefully, grimaced in their lifetime. Krishnamurti speaks of our souls each being of the same paper but that which makes us unique is the creases left in the paper from all the folding and unfolding of experience.
He had seen me give design presentations in front of large crowds and thought I would be just the right kind of person for the job. He saw my passion for what I do as a designer and thought I would be able to translate that into helping people stay looking young. After careful consideration (I always do carefully consider offers) I told him I couldn’t be passionate about his product and that I loved what I was doing, even if the money was much better on his side. “I like my wrinkles,” I told him. He wasn’t sure how to respond. He just didn’t get it – he didn’t get me. (Besides, never ending twenties?? No thanks!)
Wabi-Sabi to me just isn’t an aesthetic to be talked about or read about – but it’s a way of living and being, it’s a quality of character. And with my landscape design work I aim to embody that way of being, and infuse it into each of my designs through materials used both hard and soft, through the way I cluster aspen on a hillside, or how I arrange the water passing over a rock.
The result of designing a landscape with Wabi-Sabi as a driving element is an authentic and soulful space to be in. And you feel it. I want my clients and others who pass time visiting to feel something that improves their quality of being, enhances their daily routine, and maybe even changes their lives a little.
And that what keeps me going.
