wabi-sabi

shadows of squares -9

wabi-sabi … the beauty within the transition of summer’s fading light to autumn’s slumbering shadows

“We crossed it in a boat, and it is the Province of Sagami. The mountain range called Nishitomi is like folding screens with good pictures. On the left hand we saw a very beautiful beach with long-drawn curves of white waves. There was a place there called Moro-koshi-ga-Hara (Chinese Field) where sands are wonderfully white. Two or three days we journeyed along that shore. A man said: ‘In Summer pale and deep Japanese pinks bloom there and make the field like brocade. As it is Autumn now we cannot see them.’ But I saw some pinks scattered about blooming pitiably. They said: ‘It is funny that Japanese pinks are blooming in the Chinese field.'” *

*Trans: AS Omori and K Doi. The Sarashina Diary, AD 1009-1059 Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan

Visit The Life of B to join November’s Shadows of Squares

lens-artist photo challenge: you pick it!

After autumn winds have blown away the colors of fall, the wilting landscape left behind is a sleeping yellowish-brown hue that remains until spring winds travel across glaciered lands. Between the snowfalls of winter, it is wabi-sabi that greets me throughout each day. 

Words of old--
whispered today by wind
in the reeds. ~Shōhaku (cited: Trans: S Carter, Haiku before Haiku)
Nikon D750 f/5 1/1000s 48mm 100 ISO
From bare brush
along a mountain path--
the sound of frost ~Shinkei (cited: Trans: S Carter, Haiku before Haiku)
Nikon D750 f/5 1/250s 100 ISO
Fallen to the ground
like those words of old--
glowing leaves ~Inko (cited: Trans: S Carter, Haiku before Haiku)
Nikon D750 f/8 1/125s 250mm 100 ISO

Travels and Trifles invites photographers to share what they find interesting about a chosen subject. This post represents current work with double exposure as an avenue to open myself to the beauty of the imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete qualities of late autumn.

Riverbend ponds natural area II

Riverbend Pond… Nikon D750 f/4.5 1/125s 85mm 100 ISO

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…

Koren, Leonard, Wabi-Sabi for artists, designers, poets, & philosophers. Stone Bridge Press, Berkeley, CA

weekly photo challenge: the world through your eyes

With one who does not speak his every thought

I spent a pleasant evening. ~ Hyakuchi*

worldthroughmyeyes2

Things wabi-sabi have a vague, blurry, or attenuated quality—as things do as they approach nothingness (or come out of it).  One-hard edges take on a soft pale glow. Once-substantial materiality appears almost sponge-like. Once-bright saturated colors fade into muddy earth tones or the smoky hues of dawn and dust.  Wabi-sabi comes in an infinite spectrum of grays…**

This week’s  WordPress.com Weekly Photo Challenge submission:  a barn in southeastern Wyoming

sources:

*The Moon in the Pines

Trans:  Jonathan Clements

**Wabi-Sabi  for Artist, designers, Poets, & Philosophers

Leonard Koren

window of understanding

window

The remarkable thing about deja vu, or other vivid experiences of recollection,

is that they are vested with significances that we cannot put into words.

At an earlier time, whatever happened might have seemed important, or might not.

But the recollection is charged with relevance, and tears flow for no reason.

Robert Aitken, A Zen Wave