Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Refocus

Nature is wabi-sabi and for me wabi-sabi is the most beautiful of all. From wiki:


Wabi-sabi (?) represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete".[2] It is a concept derived from the Buddhist teaching of the three marks of existence (三法印 sanbōin?), specifically impermanence (無常 mujō?), the other two being suffering ( ku?) andemptiness or absence of self-nature ( ?).
Characteristics of the wabi-sabi aesthetic include asymmetryasperity (roughness or irregularity), simplicity, economy, austerity, modesty, intimacy, and appreciation of the ingenuous integrity of natural objects and processes
When I am falling in love with someone, I usually find their “imperfections” to be the most charming of all. My high school boyfriend had a wide gap in his front teeth and I found it amazing. I adored it. When I meet new people, I tend to look at them and the thing that society would call “off” or strange is often the thing that catches my eye.
In nature it is similar but everything is wabi-sabi so it is hard to choose. I can look at a group of mushrooms and each one has it's own wabi-sabi element but as a whole they can have this element in the context off all the things around them.
So I am changing the focus of this blog to the natural world which is art to me but is also in need of intent and focus. Lately, its all I can think about. I spent yesterday upset for hours over the state of the environment. I reached out to a close friend who told me to focus on the solutions not the enormity of the problem. We have gotten here so quickly, really only since the Industrial Revolution. So I am going to focus on the solutions and teach myself to teach other to see things the way I see them: beauty in imperfection and the innerconnectedness of everything.