Cracks of Gold: Spring Renewal and the Power of Wabi Sabi
Standing in the Eye of the Spiral: Navigating Life's Twists with GT
Cracks of Gold: Spring Renewal and the Power of Wabi Sabi
WARM UP. Good greetings to all readers, here comes a special entry into my blogosphere! I am going to attribute this entry to the official start of spring, perhaps even the real New Year, the Spring Equinox. Long days, shorter nights, a dance, a duality. This reminds me of a conversation with one of my patients today about their individual duality. It was great hearing another critical thinker share their ideas, their thinking around a given subject in a cohesive manner. I often struggle with my own duality internally, so having someone expose their own is refreshing to be around. Listening, it was held as a nice reminder that you ( I am) not alone. I do belong to a weekly men’s group where other guys are welcomed to share feelings. It isn’t quite the same as if we were to sit around and discuss ‘philosophy’ or ‘critical thinking.’ Which have the potential to take you to levels of depth in conversations that you (I) rarely find. There are a handful of my mentors that I really enjoy being around for depth of conversation. There are levels of wisdom and depth to these types of conversations that aren‘t the typical, superficial, mundane type. My patient is a tattoo artist so naturally the conversation steered toward the topic of art.
The reason I started writing again was for this to be a way for me to express myself creatively. Growing up I recall really enjoying writing poetry. I would even go as far to write poetry for girls at school. Quite a few times it was embarrassing. Imagine you have written down all these X’s and O’s and your best friends read it out loud in front of everybody in the school cafeteria. I’m not saying that’s exactly how I experienced it, it 's what it felt like inside to me. Perhaps my favorite thing about poetry is the ability to mean so many things, in so many different ways, with abstract or clear usage of language. Since I’m from the U.S. I speak English as my first language, unfortunately I was only about to apply myself to a 6th grade worth of a “D” grade in Spanish class learning. That would have been handy quite a few times in my life, including presently in southern florida. That would open myself to an entirely expanded demographic. So, experiencing poetry in the English language has amazed me how much fun it was to be able to combine different phrases and words to convey ‘art.’ Some of my favorite artists of all time have been great linguists. Going back to my previous blog, Alan Watts and Joseph Campbell were great linguists. My favorite comedian is George Carlin and what language! It just blows my mind the level of research he must have been able to do into the language to create his art. I have had some ideas saved for a very long time that are once again being asked to be worked on. I wouldn’t mind telling a story, in some medium. It’s obvious it starts right here! Typing along on a page.
Last week's blog almost did not get published. I got to the end and wasn’t sure that what I had written was what I really wanted to write about. It was a slight moment of crisis inside me. I had highlighted at least ¾ of the piece after completing it, ready to delete, before I stopped myself and decided to “let it fly.” This is a creative outlet for me. I must accept that part of the outlet will sometimes not be well formatted, or even a topic that people find interesting. I was reminded of a Japanese term “wabi sabi” which basically is a philosophical concept that finds beauty in the imperfection, impermanence and incompleteness. A little more common term of this type of philosophy applied to art is called Kintsugi. It’s the broken pottery that highlights the cracks and repairs with gold, silver or platinum. Parts of my own artistic process are often stifled due to the fear of perfection. It’s a style of analysis paralysis. Perhaps I will eventually create and accept more wabi sabi into my own art, almost allowing it to be purposeful, rather than intentional. There’s a duality for you to untangle. Could you imagine the pressure you could be under as a perfectionist and attempting to be a tattoo artist? Forever art, perhaps everything is forever art in some capacity. All it takes is one other person to experience your art and it’s forever art in my book.
COOLDOWN. This new spring awareness might be a great time to not only look after your own wabi sabi, take the time to experience others. There are often hidden gems of humanity in other people’s cracked pottery. A flash picture of a brain just entered my mental space. The human brain seems to be an appropriate depiction of others “cracked pottery.”
Enjoy the rest of your week and I’ll be publishing another blog Sunday.
Take Care,
G$