fullfeeling

My new friend @sencha wrote a post that really got me thinking. I took a note or two, and then that became a whole post of its own. If you don't know what Wabi-Sabi is, go read her excellent post here, or nothing in this article will make much sense. Also, just go read her post anyway because it's great. Even if you already know about this concept like I did, you're almost certain to learn something, like I did.

Anyway, she got me thinking about what constitutes modern wabi-sabi in a way that’s philosophically consistent with the understanding of traditional Japanese aesthetics?

It’s easy to say things like old advertising murals on pre-war brick walls, or beat up metal lunchboxes, or warehouse “loft” interiors, all which have gained widespread acceptance. Some of these things have become so overexposed that they’re hard to see as anything other than sentimentalized nostalgia. Others have had enough cycles of popularity that they’re accepted as ironic.

No, we have to look not at what you’d find in a country antique store or cool downtown cafe, but what actually gets looked past because it’s truly humble, yet endures. Much of our modern material world struggles to inspire real feeling because it’s nature is artificial and cheap: it starts out too soulless to strike a sympathetic chord, or simply isn't durable enough. By the time a plastic watering can is old enough to have anything we might appreciate as patina it’s almost certainly broken or crumbling from UV exposure. And not in a beautiful way that can be read as signifying much, or repaired with the golden veins of kintsugi. Other items can’t evoke that feeling honestly because they start off trying too hard to invoke it intentionally. A pair of contemporary jeans that comes pre-faded and slashed is just too damn thirsty to ever really become Boro.

I think we can find it, though, this wistful sense of transitory beauty in the simple and the splintered. Even though our world is too mass-manufactured to see the thumbprints of its creators.

Lichen and moss grow as well on weathered cinderblock as they do on stone or ceramic; and paint flakes off it, too, to create patterns more subtle than any stylist could accomplish. It’s also in the spot on the diner counter by the cashier where the passage of countless changes made has worn away the formica's clear top layer, past the printed pattern already faded by sun and Spick and Span, to show the bare brown honesty of the thermoset resin that’s let it last long enough to wear so well.

I love the potato peeler that my mom handed down when I set up my first apartment. The same one my grandmother had given her and her sister when they set up their own first apartment together, and probably used for years before. It’s one of those old jobbies with the blade swiveling on a pin that extends through a looped handle of stamped steel. After 60 years or more, that blade’s a bit rusty and kind of dull, but it can still take the skin off a potato and put its eyes out. Last Christmas my girlfriend, who’s a better cook than I will ever care to become, got me a nice new one.

While I know she was trying to make my life better, in the moment it felt a bit passive aggressive. The new OXO does do a much better job. It’s fat black plastic handle is more comfortable to grip, and long strips practically jump off carrots with hardly any pressure from it’s sharp shiny blade. But the old one is still in the drawer, and it’s not going anywhere.

We can still find Wabi-Sabi that’s native to our modern world because the concept itself isn’t Japanese, it’s just they who recognized and named it, articulated it into an art of its own. What that art recognizes has always been with all people, and always will be until things no longer longer wear out or break.

(Caption: A retaining wall I built on my property that I built from from concrete blocks. Not to code, but it works well, and is weathering wonderfully, I think.)