There is human time and there is wild time…….
Clarissa Linkola Estes
This morning it’s wild time. A slow motion sunrise, where nature’s spinners have draped everything in layers of lace.
Barely present. Fragile and momentary.
Later when the day fully arrives, dew drops are blow dried from the faces of leaves. Webs disappear into the foliage and this sleepy photographer is re-absorbed into the human world.
Back in human time I’m reading Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers by Leonard Koren.
“Wabi-sabi (a Japanese philosophy) is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional.”
I remember when I started this blog my tagline was “celebrating the ordinary and the everyday in a place where nothing much happens.” I must be a wabi-sabi photographer (of an Irish rural variety maybe?) as every page of this carefully crafted book feels like a comfortable old pair of slippers…….
So I am re-inspired to sink into the elusive and the mysterious. To believe again that beauty can be coaxed out of ugliness. That in the wild time and the human time there is always space for perfect imperfection.
just finished a book in which the Japanese garden was a vital character.
Having raked up all the autumn leaves, the gardener retrieved a handful
and scattered them as if windblown across the lawn.
Now, it's perfect.
Aha! You really made me smile Diana! What a wonderful example of what wabi-sabi is!!!
I just watched this little film about one mans search for Wabi Sabi…quite interesting! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2P8z7kYJW0
Thank you so much Kerry! I'm going to enjoy that…..
And Kerry I watched it all and loved it!! What an interesting journey through Japan….in the end we each define wabi-sabi in our own way…..thank you!
I know! I loved how there was not one definitive answer for the term!
Totally agree Catherine! That book is a must for the photography library…definitely a part of what I love to photograph as well…so much beauty in the ugly!
I have to admit I am so jealous of your urban wabi-sabi possibilities!!! But I guess the whole philosophy is to be where you are and reduce and focus on the important small things…..it's just that NYC v Foxglove Lane takes an extra bit of mindfulness for me to accept at times!!! LOL
Beautiful! So many people miss out on beauty all around them because they don't slow down (or maybe get up early enough!) to notice.
Hi Mary Anne, I'm all for getting up early enough!! It'a another world out there before the sun rises fully. Dewey and misty here and in your case icy……. which must be so beautiful…..
Ah, I've been waiting for the captures of the spider webs at this time of year! Aren't they everywhere? I have to walk with care all around my house and among the roses especially. They are so tall now and the webs stretch like wings among the branches. I love wabi-sabi mind. Diana's example is perfect. I have a rug dyed and woven by a Navajo woman that I purchased from her in Santa Fe, New Mexico. On the rug, she created one long imperfect strand of color with an open edge so her soul could leave the rug when she was finished with it. She made sure we knew that was why it was there.
That rug is a wonderful example. There's something about a handmade thing, you can really feel the difference? The soul? The digital world has somehow separated us from touching and feeling…..my current challenge is how to reclaim that as a blogger????
I wish I knew why my avatar won't show on your blog. Any idea? The exclamation mark always takes me back for an instant….wabi sabi??
I'm not sure except that if you sign into your google+ account and comment from there I think you will appear? Would love to see your silvery head and sparkling smile here !!! :~))
Oh yes you are wabi-sabi…and I love your photos for their wabi-sabi beauty!
Isn't the concept just wonderful! I think you are wabi-sabi yourself Donna, always finding the small and the precious amongst the bigger brasher plants…….