Wabi Sabi

Last week I noticed a spider had started setting up a web in the feathers that are hanging around on my windowsill. The feathers are there, I suspect, to remind me of Air and Wind, the elemental project for the year, but I wasn’t loving the spider web in the feathers so much, and after hesitating for a moment, as I do rather love spiders – catchers of other bugs and genius engineers – I decided to remove just the web and let the spider figure things out.

Meanwhile, in our ongoing mystery class, Teach told us to find a stone to hold for several exercises. I reached for the closest one in view, which happened to be a piece of obsidian, a remnant from when I was doing a lot of Sergio Magaña workshops and exercises, a very ancient Mexico scene, and I thought for a minute, Wait, why did I stop those…? And then remembered, Oh yeah, I started the British-based multi-year, elements around the wheel thing, and I didn’t want to split focus between traditions.

But obsidian is pretty strange stuff – beginning as molten rock erupting as lava, it cools so quickly it has “no crystal structure” and becomes a volcanic glass that polishes up nicely to a mirror…

Which I think was part of the appeal for the ancient MesoAmerican types, that shadowy reflection… But I wasn’t sure it felt a satisfying as a stone, like as a hunk of rock.

So I tried picking up the carving of the eagle that sits there on the windowsill, and he is made from limestone. Now this particular piece of limestone felt like a completely different sensory world, so much softer, more porous…

Limestone it seems is fundamentally born of water rather than fire. Apparently it formed primarily in shallow, warm waters, and often has bits of shell and coral fragments and marine organisms that slowly became sediments, which then slowly became rock.

Totally different vibes in the hand.

I was thinking about that elemental piece as I was out for my walk, and the day was windy, the kind you have to really lean into, and the wind pushed the water around, changing the colour, creating little waves agains the pier.

And I felt the pleasure of the wind, how it toys with the water, and it was powerful enough that I took refuge around the corner in the new garden they’ve put in, and of course it’s November so the big blooms are gone, but there are some hardy types who look like they might take their time withering into the winter.

My new favourite spot, that end of the pier.

Back in my studio I notice the spider seems to be setting up a little further down the windowsill. It doesn’t look full on web yet, but it does look like little tendril fragments that could be the beginning of a web. It is sort of the “death corner” of the sill, with the coyote skull and old leaves and a tiny bit of a what once was a wasp nest, so it seems like the right spot for him to do his thing.

Wabi-sabi 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.

~ Leonard Koren

Lens-Artists Challenge – Wabi Sabi