Wabi Sabi

in a "Shambala Sun" article on Wabi Sabi, Elizabeth Farley focuses on "imperfect beauty," from the Japanese notion "the beauty lies in what is flawed." In a world that prizes cheap goods, machine made and mass produced, she has dealt with examples as wide ranging as the "Wall-E" robot in the movie of the same name (eco-fable) to neighborhoods of Venice, Italy, where tourists are invited to see the aging, deteriorating canal walls and structures as fragile beauty.

In a recent radio program a man described finding a precious, small, wooden box, which he purchased (thinking it might be an antique?). And then found to be mass replica, (probably made in China or Indonesia). At first he was a little miffed, but then decided that the box had its' own authenticity, that it needn't have the approval of the "Antique Roadshow" on PBS to have a "time worn" authenticity. Can its replication be said to have the imperfect beauty described by Farley? I guess, but it would probably not appeal to the originator of wabi sabi, Murata Shuko, a fifteenth century Zen monk and tea master from Nara.

Getting by

One of my Father's sayings was "getting by is not enough." I heard it first in the late thirties, at a time when we were on the edge of the Second World War. We were still in the depression, of course, although his skill and business as an automotive mechanic was doing fairly well. But what he saw was people just trying to get by, and he equated that with some kind of laziness, as I recall, sometimes called "bad habits." As a person who was used to 12 to 18 hr. work days, he looked around and saw neighbors, customers and friends who were indeed lucky to get by ... and he was not always understanding about that.

Norman was a tough teacher, a man who was blunt about quality control. If you didn't learn to complete tasks, to be demanding of yourself, then you would be playing into the traps of trying to "get by" with less effort and intelligence. I can well remember a few times when I tried to move along before that was practical. No, no, forget it. & now I have not only those old lessons riding with me, but I am still tempted to share them with others.

The saying has stayed with me, obviously; and I am, in a sense stuck with it. It comes up when I see people who seem perfectly OK with just "getting by," and it seems that there will be more and more of them as things get tougher, worse. "The Long Emergency" will be with us a long, long time, and with it will come a continued sense of helplessness which in turn will produce a sense of rationalizations which may bring with them a kind of shrug and turn. Norman's character was formed by lessons which came from an earlier century, and mine is as well.