Tag Archives: beauty

July 22, 2018 · 4:30 pm

Celebrating the Incomplete

Esthete -Word of the Day

Also spelt as Aesthete

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Image: thatcreativefeeling.com

Desiring to study the Way of Tea, Sen no Rikyu went to the tea-master Takeeno Joo who set Rikyu the task of tending the garden as a test. Rikyu cleaned to perfection, but before presenting his work to Joo, he shook a cherry tree, causing some blossom to fall to the ground. A little imperfection being the perfect ground. Thus began his journey into returning the tea ceremony and everything associated to its former simplicity.

It is said that the Japanese revere Rikyu as one who understood the aesthetic known as wabi-sabi. Wabi-sabi emerged in the 15th century as a reaction to the aesthetic of very formal and ornate and extravagant art and design of that time. Wabi-sabi is “focussed on the acceptance of impermanence or transcience.” It speaks of “a readiness to accept things as they are.” Or, finding the beauty within imperfections.

Wabi symbolises rustic beauty and quietness, simplicity and quietness. It can also refer to flaws, quirks and abnormalities that occur during production, e.g. pottery, or, as in the case of Rikyu, the blossom disrupting the otherwise perfect garden.

Sabi refers to things whose beauty can only come with age, like weathered timber, green copper, rusted tin. Sabi is said to evoke a sombre feeling very much like autumn.

Wabi-sabi is said to be honest, authentic, organic, modest, incomplete, and where nature, even nature’s corosive power, is celebrated.

Ref: britannica.com, dt.pepperdine.edu (Richard Martin).

How refreshing! I really warm to this aesthetic, and how much we need to embrace it today. Wabi-sabi simplicity could be the antidote to our materialistic, throw-away, plasticised way of living. An acceptance of life as it is. More than cloth bags and organic soap (important as these things are) we/all living things need a modern aesthetic equivalent to wabi-sabi. More imperfection and less sculptured fruit and veg. More authenticity and less keeping up with the Jones’. More incomplete, and evoking a sense of the real. Celebrating nature by engaging nature’s needs. Being organic in every way from relationships, to lifestyle, to purchasing. Accepting things as they are from people to the cosmos. Living with our flaws (shadow aware). How refreshing. I yearn for a bit of Rikyu in all of us.

 

I Love the Flaw in You

Dead center,
on the mantlepiece,
my truest work
as yet.

Soft clay now hard as nails,
its beauty is its cleft.
Its radiance not celadon,
a muddy glaze its skin.

She sits proudly among the celebrated,
offended by their pretence –
perfect, slick, and mass produced,
with images of empire now dead.

As I contemplate my minimum,
I know she goes with me.
The others to the Op-Shop,
or some other recycle path.

This ugly piece of earth,
this imperfect lustred pot,
speaks, shouts, to me of real life,
and how to cope with love.

©Paul Cannon

 

Paul,

pvcann.com

 

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July 5, 2018 · 1:57 pm

Morning Love

Evanescent – Word of the Day

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Post dawn, winter morn, looking east across the Blackwood. Dawns come and go, I’m asuming there’ll be one tomorrow, and even when I’m gone, they will continue. But this one faded into day, as they all do. Dawn has a fleeting beauty, which accentuates its attraction. For me whatever the day holds, it cannot beat the beauty of that dawn moment, it is something very special.

 

Morning Love 

Just as yesterday,
we agreed to see each other again.
The promise of one more time.
To catch even a glimpse of you,
my heart beats.
And, you came along.
though I never really doubted.
No, really, I didn’t.
And there you were,
beautiful,
Suddenly revealing all of you.
Your warmth and beauty wholly divine,
embracing my fragile longing,
an ancient ache,
to hold on to you,
momentarily assauged.
And yet,
no sooner have you arrived than you are leaving,
fading into the crowded day,
Neaera folding into Helios.
Though my eyes have telegraphed my heart,
and your beauty is captive,
a tenuous hold,
but at least a memory.
Till tomorrow then,
As again you will awaken my soul.

©Paul Cannon

Paul,

pvcann.com

 

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June 23, 2018 · 4:07 pm

Inside Job

Possibility – Word of the Day

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I know the owner of this beautifully restored Morris “Woody.” When he bought it he could see what it would look like fully restored. He did much of the work himself, but outsourced to a friend the work he wasn’t skilled at doing. It was old and tired when he bought it, and once the old faded paint was stripped off, the upholstery, timber frame, wiring and more, were all refurbished, it looked as good as new. Michael could see the possibility of beauty and life, where few could.

Some of us have been around a while, a little over thirty. I’m not a great advocate of exterior renovation, but if that’s your thing, then go for it. I’m more for the interior renovation. I see possibilities in myself for change, for challenge, for renewal. And in my experience, when I actually engage with these interior processes, difficult as some may well be, the outcome is not only that I am different because I have grown, or moved in some way or direction, my view of others and of the world has shifted too. And what I do for myself affects those around me. Not only that, but if we persist and achieve some interior change, others may be encouraged, not just becase we have changed, because they can se ehope for their own journey.

But the question is, do we see impossibilities or possibilities in ourselves? Do we see beauty and life?

“They did not know it was impossible, so they did it.” Mark Twain

“When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this, you haven’t.” Thomas Eddison

my heart yearns to change
a storm is raging in me
the pond is still

©Paul Cannon

Paul,

pvcann.com

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May 16, 2018 · 1:37 pm

The Thin Place

via Daily Prompt: Thin

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Photo: My thin places are the bush: A walk trail near Bridgetown.

The ancient Celts believed that there were places one could go where people and the spirit world could touch. The Celtic influence on Christianity was such that this belief carried over, that the veil between heaven and earth was thin or transparent. The barrier between human and the divine were almost non-existent. For the ancient Celts these places were mostly forrest groves, but in other cultures they are rivers, billabongs, monoliths, mountain-tops, caves and more.

Not the same, but related in some aspects, the Australian Indigenous peoples created songlines, which trace the creation of the land, the fauna and lore, by ancestral spirits. Indigenous Australians used the songlines as navigation paths, for social connection, cultural knowledge – especially coming to know the flora and fauna, the availability of water, the types of seasons, and how it all came to be. Songlines are places to touch the past and the present.

My thin places are in the bush, these are liminal, threshold places, where the mind transcends the ordinary, where the soul is restored, where the heart is lifted, and the eyes are filled.

Thin places might be Angkor Wat, Machu Picchu, Uluru, Chartres Cathedral, the Pyramids, the Himalayas, the stars, meditation, music, art, and more, places or experiences of place that awaken the soul to something more, something outside the self, something veiled but near. Whether or not this is a spiritual experience or a transcendence of some other kind, thin places are restorative, they are places of contemplation, places of beauty, awe, play, rest, and renewal. We all need thin places, we will know them differently, but we will know them. They are treasures to fill the soul.

John O’Donohue wrote: “When you begin to sense that your imagination is the place where you are most divine, you feel called to clean out of your mind all the worn and shabby furniture of thought. You wish to refurbish yourself with living thought so that you can begin to see.”

Paul,

pvcann.com

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March 4, 2018 · 1:20 pm

Daily Prompt: Fabric

via Daily Prompt: Fabric

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I have some beautiful pieces of hand woven fabric that have been given to me over time by friends who are masters of their craft. But nature has its own varieties of fabric, like the spider web in the photo, found at the base of a small tree trunk, quite common in the northern interior of West Australia. They are deceptive, they have a funnel like appearance yet they are not formed by one of our deadly spiders. They are sheer and well placed to trap prey, the ultimate in gourmet food collection. The trees in this section were coverd in them, and it was eye catching, the gossamer shining in the sun, natures Gucci, Channel, or [insert fashion house name here]. The photo doesn’t do it justice, but to the naked eye it was sheer beauty. And not a synthetic in sight. And also noting that nature works on exchange, nothing is over produced or wasted, all is offered as needed, so no mass produced lines here. There is nothing here about consumption. Which is a metaphor for the web or fabric of life, nature is a complexity of interdependent fabrics on which we too are a part and on which too we depend, and it always relies on a balance of those relationships.

Paul,

pvcann.com

 

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February 28, 2018 · 2:55 pm

Nothing Can Dim Your Light

via Daily Prompt: Dim

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As the sun starts to go down the light dims inside and the stained glass is accentuated, allowing the colours to shine and wash over the reveals, and framed by the darkness, they look fabulous.

It only takes one candle to light a whole room, a sliver of light to reduce the darkness, the sun refracts and lights the night. The dimming of light is not an end, it is a change, a moment to focus the light. Light in the dusk, in the night, before dawn, is appreciated, more precise, much more beautiful. The colour of sunsets could not be unless the light dark contrast occurred. Without some dimming, we’d never see the stars as we do at night.

Sometimes we might feel a bit dim, as if the light has diminished somehow because the struggles of life lay us low, and perhaps we don’t feel that we shine. But it is the struggle that enables us to shine in our own way. I think of the many people I have encountered in life so far and the brokenness many of them have experienced, and yet the hope, the love, the spark of life was still there at the core, just needing nurture, a response, a friend, a touch … just like the stained glass window, as the light shines through into the darkness, the colour washes through, the light shines in, and there is beauty, warmth, energy … Sometimes, without ever realising it, we are that window.

Maya Angelou’s words speak to this: “Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.”

Paul,

pvcann.com

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July 15, 2017 · 1:35 pm

Moxie

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/moxie/ 

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It was a beautiful walk up and around Kings Canyon (Kings Canyon Rim Walk). Kings Canyon is in the Watarrka National Park (Northern Territory). It certainly needed more than a bit of moxie for me to get near the edge. The previous year, sadly,  a young woman had fallen to her death off this very ledge, so it is a risk. Nerve wracking ledge, fantastic view. Amazing how fear and amazement, death and beauty sometimes pair off.

pvcann.com

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