What is wabi-sabi? How might it define the life of a frugal poet?

First in a series
Smiley-face note: Wabi-sabi is not to be confused with wasabi, a hot green horseradish paste commonly served next to Japanese sushi.

Japan, one of the most refined, thoughtful and poetic societies of the world has gone through unfathomable disasters in modern history. More recently is 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 Persian rug is perfectly imperfect, and precisely imprecise.” Although spoken from a culture different than Japan’s, such a sentiment is truly a wabi-sabi one.

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. Such is wabi-sabi.

One summer, I 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 environment of lovingly worn benches, nicked but well-used work surfaces and natural lighting pouring in from screenless windows. We used handcrafted papers, linen thread, monster-sized needles, scads of glue, bone folders, thick slices 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. The best part, we all helped one another try to get the techniques down as well as share our ideas.

I openly admired one fellow student’s finished handmade book, even though the pages were a bit uneven and wavy. “The only thing perfect is God,” she said, and matter of factly continued her work. I often remember her words in the midst of struggles. I am imperfect and every act of creation carries human imperfection along with it. In the bookbinder’s imperfection 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?

Below, I attempt to pin down concrete examples of what wabi-sabi may be and what wabi-sabi may not be. You may disagree with some of the entries. You might like to try the same exercise and see where your own concepts surrounding wabi-sabi may lie.

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, home-cooked meal versus a block-long Las Vegas table buffet.

·      ~ A weekend of solitude versus a month of whirlwind travel with a dozen destinations.

·      ~ The hand-polished wood floor, simple room-divider 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, grays and off-whites of nature versus neon, day-glow bright pinks and electric blues.

·      ~ Rock, leather, wood, candles and copper instead of steel, LED lights, vinyl, mirrors and glass.

·      ~ A coffee-stained, hand-illustrated journal filled with random thoughts instead of the word-perfect, crisply printed scholarly treatise.

·      ~ A wind-blown scattering of fall leaves on a neatly raked Zen garden.

·      ~ The changing nature of paper and cloth as they fade, fray and tear.

·      ~ Floors cleanly swept, laundry folded and beds made without regard to the type of flooring, price of clothing and thread count of bed sheets.

·      ~ A few handpicked flowers in a bud vase versus a formal English garden.

·      ~ The patina versus the polish.

·      ~ The flea market filled with surprises versus the big box store of generic goods.

·      ~ The used and cared for versus the new, flimsy and garish.

·      ~ Living happily in simplicity instead of sadly in luxury.

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The above is an excerpt from my reference, memoir and creativity guide Frugal Poets' Guide to Life: How to Live a Poetic Life, Even If You Aren't a Poet.

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What is wabi-sabi? How might it define the life of a frugal poet?

Theater games at Chicago's St. Nicholas Theater Company

In addition to poetry, I have a fascination with the stage and theater, at least from a writer’s perspective. At the urging of friend Terry Soto, who also was an avid playgoer, I volunteered evenings (circa 1975?) at the small St. Nicholas Theater Company in Chicago on Halsted Street, north of Diversey. The theater space occupied what was once an auto repair shop. 

William H. Macy (right) in "American Buffalo"

It was founded by the then little known Chicago-based playwright David Mamet and actor William H. Macy. Many of Mamet’s early plays were launched at this little Chicago theater, such as “The Water Engine” and “American Buffalo,” in which Macy appeared. As a volunteer, I answered the phone, helped with the mailings, sat in rehearsals and attended as many performances as I wanted.

People who worked in the theater kept asking me what I was doing there, what I wanted to get out of volunteering. Did I want to become an actress? I wasn’t sure at that stage of my life if I wanted to write plays. I did love the plays of Arthur Miller and Eugene O’Neill, which oozed with poetry as well as edge-of-your-seat drama. At that moment, I merely reveled in just being around a theater and seeing what evolved to bring a play to life. I had no personal goals beyond enjoying my experiences there.

At St. Nicholas, I met lots of actors, took voice lessons (mainly with the goal of improving the way I read my poetry aloud) and knew if I wanted to, I might likely meet someone to go out with. No one, however, particularly attracted me.

As an equity actor, William H. Macy had to take on a longer and more formal name to distinguish him from Bill Macy, who played the husband to Bea Arthur of “Maude,” a popular show on TV at the time. Today, nobody remembers Bill Macy but everyone knows William H. Macy. Back at St. Nicholas Theater, I took one look at Macy and thought, not very charitably, “That little shrimp isn’t going anywhere.” How totally and utterly wrong I was!

Romance may not always be in the air during your extracurricular activities, but you are never wasting time if you are doing something you enjoy and stimulates you.  Getting involved in the theater showed me how the element of poetry woven in seamlessly within truly expert dramatic dialogue could be applied to my own poetry.
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The previous piece appears in my nonfiction memoir, reference and creativity guide Frugal Poets' Guide to Life: How to Live a Poetic Life, Even If You Aren't a Poet. ◦

Theater games at Chicago's St. Nicholas Theater Company

Frugal poet’s pre-natal & pre-conception memories

Some may call it poetic license. I call it memories before birth and even before conception. More and more people have publicly claimed similar memories. And now I suppose, so do I.

As a child, I often told my mother I remember being in her womb, and also when I was first born. She told me I was only imagining it. But it goes back farther. I had outlined in a previous post what I believe to be my immediate previous life to this as a little girl who had died in a European avalanche. Perhaps after that death, this is where my story begins.

I was in a heavenly place among many “friends.” Day-after-day we coalesced almost as one. The spirit of God was all around us. It was bright and puffy cloud-like and pillar-like, just as in the Olympian stories. We sang in a high-tone sing/speech as if part of a Greek chorus.

Finally, the time arrived for me to go on my next mission. I was sad to leave them all, and they were all around to bid me farewell. At that moment, I felt I was a feminine spirit. I said something like, “Well, you know where I’m going. I may not be back.” I spoke this in both a humorous tone but also with a deep seriousness. They answered in Greek chorus fashion all at the same time in a sing-speak, “Oh, you’ll be back. You’ll be back.”

The next thing I knew, I was hovering above electrical wires at the main intersection of my new neighborhood in Chicago. It was night. The street lights were on. An electrical power station lie kiddy-corner from the intersection halfway down the street. I felt my entire body float horizontal in one of my incarnations previous to the little girl avalanche victim incarnation. It was one as a full-grown male scientist who had lived in Germany.  It was as if the little girl incarnation had been a short and sweet interlude between lives. And now, I felt as if I were about to experience my first incarnation in the United States.

In the distance I could see my new house a few blocks away on a residential street. In the bedroom were my future mother and father. I swooped down and, in a flash of light, I was conceived.

As the months within my mother’s womb transpired, I recall the bliss of floating in the warm amniotic fluid and waiting. My favorite time was when my mother disrobed and a glowing peach-colored light filled the womb. This beautiful light brought me such joy. When my mother covered up again and all went dark, I was a little disappointed.

My mother had a difficult labor with me, and doctors were afraid that either she or I would die at the hospital. I was born with my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck, but first around my shoulders. Fortunately, because of that, my air was not cut off.  I do not remember my birth per se, but remember lying next to my mother in brilliant white sheets. The doctor came in some time after the delivery and I remember him talking with my mother and smiling down at me. 

I knew where I had just come from, but didn’t know where I was now. It was all so new and unfamiliar. Nonetheless, I was quite happy. 

The following is a poem I wrote about my previous incarnation as a German scientist, which appeared in my book of Chicago poems Swimmer’sPrayer:

The Immigrant

They found someone to replace me

at the laboratory, or was it the drafting table,

it’s hard now to remember

exactly where I sat pouring over

cryptic notes for thirty years.

My wife prayed every night

the first six months after it happened,

and a gray angel let me know

that all was well, life continued for her and my children.

The wire-rimmed young man with a stutter

who seemed confounded by what I left

under the shop’s dangling lamps

eventually surpassed me.

In this half earth, half death,

I hover at Harlem and Higgins

over electrical and telephone lines

which even one-up what he accomplished,

and what we all struggled for back then

in cold-connected rooms that smelled

of vinegar and burnt hair.

I always wanted to come to America,

and who knows how long it would

have taken the conventional method,

the conversations in telephone wires

just inches below me are comforting,

And electrical charges from nearby lines,

destined to brighten a party

at a house a few blocks away

from where I float, do warm me,

but what I really want

is not what man has wrought,

so I wait, in the chill, for the right moment.

After the party, in the dark, a woman loves a man.

I draw closer, and find I miss these earthly passions,

off and on and uneven as rocky ledges.

I draw closer, and fall in love with both of them,

and in turn, unknowing in their delirium,

they invite me to carry on the work they started,

and from this woman’s womb,

I barely begin to understand a new century, a new city.

                        ~ Cynthia Gallaher

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Frugal poet’s pre-natal & pre-conception memories