A fine edge, a jag

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The maids are long gone who dusted the porcelain and fluffed the down. Bone-white pressed linens on pillows and perpetual shine on mahogany are visions of the past. A few of my grandmother’s things are here on windowsills and in corners, some broken—the Staffordshire cow and calf with a horn missing, a gap in a piece of trim on the Hepplewhite, the lip of the Baccarat decanter chipped, a threadbare velvet ribbon streaming down like a wilted vine from the needlepoint stool where a fine 19th century bustled lady picks flowers in accumulated dust. It is no longer fashionable to be counted among the 1%, though courting fashion has little to do with why we live here on this piece of land, with no hired help, and time-worn buildings.

Here they are, lovely whatsits transported from a fine house, yet belonging in this old farmhouse with us, though I do not love them well enough. In my way, I kiss them all—the crystal arcs on the hip of the decanter, rising like a tide in waves along the sand, one by one. Such a fine edge on each scallop—perfect ellipses, lip upon lip, then the smooth neck, and finally the jag where someone (maybe a servant) banged it on the mouth with the stopper or a glass, and perhaps cognac bled to the floor. I love her, that maidservant, and the lady who yelled at her too.

Somebody loves us all, Elizabeth Bishop said. What a privilege. See how someone planted the trees—to stand, long-necked, perpetually being, shading—and simply and dotingly witnessed.

 Mr. Baccarat decanter with a broken lip seems to watch

the maple sap buckets on the trees

and wonder how much of that elixir has accumulated overnight 

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travel, transience, transition

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I have been thinking that we are now living in an age of change, so rapid that it is hard to keep up, and that this is sort of new. Change is so prevalent, we're wired for it. Before the latest iPhone is released, we're anticipating the next version. But the truth is, everything is transitory. It always has been.

There is a way of living that is called wabi-sabi and looks at the transitory nature of things. My friend George has been talking about the wabi-sabi way. His excellent posts are here and here. I also wrote about it back in April 2008. It's hard to sum up wabi-sabi, as George says -- a world view that has been around thousands of years, but this is what I'm focusing on in this post: it emphasizes the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.

My friend Tracy is moving soon, transitioning, traveling from her temporary home in Australia, back to Texas. She sent me a poem she'd heard the other day, which made her think of me, because it's about Michigan. I told her I'd posted it back in 2008, accompanied by this temporary map collage of Michigan I laid out with some significant Michigan symbols. (See that post for good comments about them.)

The map of Michigan existed for an hour or so in June 2008, then I put everything away. But the photo is still here for us to see. Think of photographs, and how they last and last, making us feel that things are permanent. They make us think we can hold on to something. As Susan Sontag said, on top of the already overwhelming happenings in the world, we also have photographs of them, adding to the weight of what we "know." Somehow by seeing those images, we think we understand, or think we should understand.

So. Things change, evolve, wear out. Funnily enough, I have a preference for material things that do change. Patinas that evolve. Not chrome. Not plastic. I love organic things. Wood. Leather. Paper. Natural fibers. Have you noticed that for the most part, organic materials age gracefully, but man made materials do not? A wool carpet is better after decades of foot falls. A wooden door frame gets polished with oil from hands. The marble floor of a cathedral begins to lie less perfectly flat after centuries of scuffling feet, in beautiful subtle waves. But a chrome fender is less attractive after a few decades of spreading rust. Plastic just looks dirty over time, with embedded grime in those artificial textures that factory molds create. Do you think it's an accident that my laptop made of steel and plastic is called Apple. And I named mine Apple Blossom?

It's time for another temporary collage -- this time, of me. Ruth. Featherhead. I have already been dismantled and elements put away. What is doesn't stay is for long.

But guess what. Sometimes things stay constant too. A little synchronicity I just found, post script: the tiny striped feather slipping down off the Upper Peninsula in the Michigan map collage is the same feather in the me collage below, in the middle of my forehead. Post post script: 2 more items in both collages, I just noticed -- two petals of the orange flower in Michigan became my lips, and the shell near Lake Michigan became my nose. EEEEEE.

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wabi . . sabi

Do you know about wabi-sabi

It's a Japanese concept, and like Feng Shui it can't be understood or acquired quickly or easily. It can take a lifetime to start to grasp its meaning.







I'm reading The Wabi-Sabi House: the Japanese art of imperfect beauty, by Robyn Griggs Lawrence.





Wabi is appreciating the aesthetic of "poverty" -
not indigence, but simple, humble, spare, minimalist
living.





Sabi is growing old with grace, having the patina of age, being weathered, rusty.







Together wabi-sabi is about slowing down.

It's about the beauty of things as they are, now, and as they age, valuing imperfection and transience.

It's about honoring material things.

It is uncluttering your space.

It is clean.

It's about authenticity.

It's "removing the huge weight of material concerns
from our lives."

It's doing more with less.

It's in tune with Nature.




Mostly it's about respect.

It's about being considerate of others.

"If you are always thinking of other persons,
you can understand the real wabi-sabi."