One of the
most refined, thoughtful and poetic societies, Japan, has gone through
unfathomable disasters in recent history, such as the profound earthquake,
tsunami and nuclear catastrophe at Fukushima. Nevertheless, the Japanese people
continue to push forward in quiet strength, dedicated to and motivated by their
culture, history, sense of humility and connection with one another.
Wabi-sabi is
a philosophy based in Japan that embraces
a sense of flawed beauty, the profundity in nature, and of things impermanent, humble, primitive, transient and incomplete. It celebrates the modest,
rustic and unconventional. It is the
organic versus synthetic, the rough-hewn and uneven over the measured and
laser-edged. Loosely explained, wabi means a philosophy of imperfect, natural
beauty and sabi means the artistic expression of what’s asymmetrical, aged or
unpretentious.
Daisetz Suzuki, one of the first scholars to interpret
Japanese culture for Westerners, considered wabi-sabi “an active aesthetical
appreciation of poverty.” Rather than a poverty of pain and a sense of
desperation, it instead gives the relief of removing the weight of material
concerns from our lives.
Wabi-sabi suggests the notions that nothing lasts,
nothing is finished, nothing is perfect. The Persians are known for a proverb
about the true beauty of rugs, a wabi-sabi attitude reflected in a different
culture, “A Persian rug is perfectly imperfect, and precisely imprecise.”
Remarkably, wabi-sabi has everything to do with the
spirit of the frugal poet. We exist. We go with the flow. We focus on the
beautiful. We have strength in light of hardship or snags in our lives. And our
poems reflect this attitude. The concept of wabi-sabi reminds me of the lyrics
in Leonard Cohen’s song “Anthem,” “Ring the bells that still can ring/Forget
your perfect offering/There’s a crack in everything/That’s how the light gets
in.” It is the poets and those with a frugal poet’s spirit who can see both
implicit meaning and opportunity in any situation, and can find voice, or at
least search for it, to express compassion and humanity even amid injustice or
when in mourning.
I had signed up for a multi-evening workshop in the
craft of handmade bookbinding at Chicago’s Hull House. Our upper floor studio
itself was a wabi-sabi space of lovingly worn benches, nicked but well-used
work surfaces and natural lighting pouring in from screenless windows. We used
hand-crafted papers, linen thread, monster-sized needles, scads of glue, bone
folders, thick pieces of cardboard and
stiff oilcloth in an array of colors. There, I crafted and sewed a number of
hardcover blank books, Japanese side-stitched bindings and cloth-covered boxes.
I admired a fellow student’s finished handmade book, even though the pages were
uneven and had a naturalistic waviness to them. “The only thing perfect is God.
I try to remember that in everything I do,” she said. “I am imperfect and every
act of creation carries human imperfect along with it.” But therein lay the
beauty of her handmade book!
Flawed fictional characters, for example, are more
interesting, textured, memorable and beautiful than perfect, static ones. What
would Cyrano de Bergerac be without his big nose, The Little Match Girl without
her poverty, or even Star Trek’s Mr. Spock without his lack of emotions?
I tried to pin down concrete examples of what
wabi-sabi is and what wabi-sabi is not. You might also try the same exercise as
I attempted below and see where your concepts surrounding wabi-sabi take you.
Scribbled
musings as to what wabi-sabi can stand for:
·
The haunted
mansion versus the McMansion.
·
The vase off to
one side instead of the center of the table.
·
A piece of
driftwood carved by water instead of a diamond faceted by human hands.
·
A simple one-pot
meal versus a block-long Las Vegas buffet.
·
A weekend in
solitude versus a month of whirlwind travel with a dozen destinations.
·
The hand-polished
wood floor, simple screen and rolled-up futon versus a football-field-sized
bedroom with wall-to-wall carpeting, big screen TV and thick brocade drapes.
·
Browns, greens,
greys and off-whites of nature versus neon, day-glow brights.
·
Rock, leather,
wood, candles and copper instead of steel, LED lights, vinyl, mirrors and
glass.
·
A coffee-stained,
hand-illustrated journal of random thoughts instead of the word-perfect,
crisply printed scholarly treatise.
·
A random
scattering of fallen leaves on a neatly raked Zen garden.
·
The changing
nature of paper and cloth as they fade, fray and tear.
·
Floors cleanly
swept, folded laundry and made bed without regard to the type of flooring,
price of clothing and thread count of bed sheets.
·
A few hand-picked
flowers in a bud vase versus a formal English garden.
·
The patina versus
the polish.
·
The flea market
versus the big box store.
·
The used and
cared for versus the new and garish.
Living happily in simplicity instead of living sadly in luxury.
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What is wabi-sabi? How is it continually and intimately expressed in the life of a frugal poet?
