Wabi Sabi

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.

From UTNE Reader:

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.

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Busy Weekends

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.

David and Garrett's Wedding
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weird happy

The whole week has been…. weird and sweet, and, kinda happy in that weird way that happy has happened lately. After last week, with the depression and unhappiness going on… any relief has been good. I realize that much of my unhappiness was self-wrought… I could’ve dealt with it much more matter-of-fact-ly than I did. But I’m so used to being frugal and self-denying that I went overboard, really. That was pretty stupid: I don’t really have to anymore. Old habits die hard.
I bought ‘Sex in the City” the first season, after I watched the second. It might be good to watch them in order: I’ll make sure every one else does. Dan and Doug are moving this weekend. I don’t know whether to offer to help or try to stay out of the way.
Here’s a tip, though; don’t watch two seasons of “Sex in the City” right after watching the whole first season of “Queer As Folk.” Too, too much sex to see all at one time.

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Big fat social weekend

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Big fat social weekend it was. I went to the pitch-in looking for Lori, but stayed to talk to Tonya, then went to the State Fair with Dan and Doug and Jim and Chad on Saturday, had a meal at Jim and Chad’s, then went to a party to meet Jason’s boyfriend Chip. Seems like I’ve seen Chip somewhere before.

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window air conditioner stolen

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.”

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Grandparents 60th Anniversary

I spent the weekend in Iowa at my grandparents 60th wedding anniversary. It was really wonderful (except for the sermon during church in which I was duly informed that I’m decadent and thus going to hell. It’s always exciting to hear you’re going to suffer fire and brimstone. Woo hoo!) But it was fantastic to see my grandparents, and we got to celebrate my brother Todd’s wedding as well. (Todd and Denise got married on the 14th.)

Grandma and Grandpa’s 60th Wedding Anniversary

Todd & Denise’s Wedding

So my car is down for the count… the transmission needs work and I took it to AAMCO on Friday. Stay tuned for a review of AAMCO’s customer service. Right now; not very good. They had the car Friday, did nothing too it Friday afternoon, or at all on Saturday or Monday morning. They just started tearing it apart yesterday afternoon, and the time he keeps telling me for when they’ll give me an estimate keeps getting pushed back. I keep calling for updates, and he keeps sounding pissed off that I’m calling.

I’ve been hopping the bus, which isn’t half bad. Except for yesterday morning, I hopped the *wrong* bus and ended up at the Keystone Mall rather than at work. And rather than just following my blonde instincts and shopping, I called someone to give me a ride. Other than that, though, the bus is pretty fun.

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Sexist Billboard

So when I drive down Keystone, there’s a billboard I pass every day, advertising a brand of beer, which I won’t mention. “Never interrupt a man who might buy you a beer” the billboard says, with a picture of a man and a woman in a bar. The man is holding forth on some subject, and the woman is standing with her hand on his arm, looking adoringly up at him, rapt at his very words.

Fuck that! I’d rather buy my own god damned beer and talk all I want. And I *will*, too.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who hated this billboard, because here’s an account of someone who vandalized a similar one.

Sexist Billboard

Interestingly, this is a different name of beer than the billboard I saw.

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A-Team Dreaming

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I speculated the other day that I would, now that I’m working in XML directly in the tags, start having XML dreams like I used to about HTML. But no.

The dream I had last night was about the new A-team. The team was me and a bunch of carny workers, driving around in a weird, beatup delivery truck, solving crimes. And the details that were upon later reflection truly bizarre: This wasn’t a TV show, but a real happening, and I mentally referenced the original A-Team as though it wasn’t a TV show either. Also, I had a “flashback” to “high school” (not my real high school, BTW) where I had attended class with much younger versions of the SAME carny workers, who were all friends back then, too, but not friends of mine.

“In 2001 a group of carny workers was kick out of town for being too bizarre. These people promptly escaped from the midwest to the Los Angeles underground. Today ignored by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem. If no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire: THE A-TEAM.”

And my trajectory towards burnout on XML corrections is reaching critical mass right now.

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