This week has been a roller coaster, that’s for certain. It sucks that the week I started to looking for a house to buy (what, I didn’t mention that before?) all of this happened, so I’ve gone from feelings about the WTC (anger, grief, passion) to feelings about taking such a big personal leap (nausea, fear, elation, daydreaming).
This is the first house I looked at – on September 11th, 2001.
And this is a house I looked at on the 18th and 19th of September.
Japanese Aesthetic principle: Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is the beauty of things modest and humble. It is the beauty of things unconventional. Material characteristics of wabi-sabi: suggestion of natural process, irregular, intimate, unpretentious, earthy,simple.
According to Japanese legend, in the sixteenth century Sen no Rikyu sought to learn the Way of Tea. He went to tea-master Takeeno Joo, who tested the younger man by asking him to tend to his garden. Rikyu cleaned up debris and raked the ground until it was perfect, then scrutinized the immaculate garden. Before presenting his work to the master, he shook a cherry tree, causing a few flowers to spill randomly onto the ground.
Later, when he had become one of Japan’s most revered tea-masters, Rikyu served under Toyotomi Hikeyoshi, a warrior known for his ostentatious taste. One day the ruler went to visit Rikyu’s famed morning glory garden and was shocked to find it in shambles, all the flowers uprooted. He entered Rikyu’s humble teahouse to find the master sitting in front of an alcove, where he had placed one perfect morning glory in a clay pot.
To this day, the Japanese revere Rikyu as one who understood to his very core an elusive cultural thread known as wabi-sabi. Emerging in the fifteenth-century as a reaction to the prevailing aesthetic of lavishness, ornamentation, and rich materials, wabi-sabi is the art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in earthiness, of revering authenticity above all. In Japan, the concept is now so deeply ingrained that it’s difficult to explain to Westerners; no direct translation exists.
Broadly, wabi-sabi is everything that today’s sleek, mass-produced, technology saturated culture isn’t. It’s flea markets, not department stores; aged wood, not Pergo; rice paper, not glass; one single morning glory, not a dozen red roses. Wabi-sabi understands the tender, raw beauty of a Decembral landscape devoid of color and life, the aching elegance of an abandoned hut on a wintry shore. It celebrates cracks and crevices and rot and all the other marks that time and weather and use leave behind. To discover wabi-sabi is to spend time finding the singular beauty in something that may present itself as decrepit and ugly.
Wabi-sabi reminds us that we are all but transient beings on this planet–that our bodies, as well as the material world around us, are in the process of returning to the dust from which we came. Nature’s cycles of growth, decay, and erosion are embodied in liver spots, rust, frayed edges. Through wabi-sabi, we learn to embrace both the glory and the impersonal sadness of these blemishes, and the march of time they represent.
I like busy weekends where I don’t have to much stuff I’m obligated to do, but lots of stuff I can do. I went out to see Crackhead Patty Friday night at Utopia. Probably an experience I won’t repeat. Then Saturday I stained my end table, went shopping with Dan and Doug, and went to David and Garrett’s wedding. Sunday I stained my end table again, then went to Dan and Doug’s house to help move (but I was probably in the way more than I was helpful). I’m so excited that they are going to live right near me. Cool. They’re officially living in the house now. Then I went to the Le Tigre concert at Festivilla. There were lots of cute women there. Lots. Cute.
So, yes, my window air conditioner really was stolen, although thankfully, nothing else was. I’ve had many interactions with the police over the last few days.
Also, I found out that the guy who owns my house moved out because he had two burglaries. Which doesn’t make me want to move out. It makes me want to sit a home with a shotgun saying “c’mon, mother fuckers. I dare you to steal my stuff.”
The Road to Springfield: [link deprecated] Vote on your favorite supporting character in NCAA playoff-style matches. To be eligible, the character must have appeared in at least two episodes. Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie are ineligible.
This weekend was laid-back but pretty busy: I went to the lesbian picnic on Friday night. Saturday, we did a brief run through the Talbott Street art fair, peered in the windows of Dan and Doug’s new house (they’re closing Wednesday) and ate lunch at Bazbeaux. On Saturday night, I went to R. Bistro (Massachusetts Ave.) with Dan, Doug, Garrett, Amy, Jeremy, Jennifer, Barb, Michelle, and Ralph. David’s the manager, there; it’s a new restaurant. Nice place; definitely go.
I spend Sunday working on the lawn and “verandah”. I finished putting up hooks for hanging plants, then planted the Snow-in-Summer seeds and Black Eyed Susans, then I went and bought a hanging plant and a bunch of small plants for the front flower bed.
On March 15th, I bought a new iMac Special Edition, and an Artec scanner. On March 31, I bought a CD Burner. So I have been very busy. Unfortunately, not working on my webpage. Mostly, I’ve been getting everything set up, scanning in artwork, and making CDs. I’ve started scanning in chapters of my favorite book, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages.
This is so cool.
