Farmgirl Wabi-Sabi

• By: MountainFarmgirl
• On: 09/29/2013 05:21:21
• In: Mountain Bounty, Mountain Blessings
• Comments: 0

I love to get into things … cubic yards of compost, for example. Mulch. Piles of autumn leaves. My daily plunge in the river behind my inn, until I can no longer stand the shock of the liquid snow or feel my feet. According to my husband, I’m plenty good at ‘getting into’ trouble, too, but none of that is what I’m referring to here. I’m talking about getting into something with such an unabandoned passion that it temporarily consumes me and it’s all I can think of. I love to leap whole frog into the thick of an idea and try it on for size. I eat it, drink it and sleep it until I understand what it’s all about, and then I take away the parts I find personally useful and meaningful, and incorporate them into my everyday life. Wabi-sabi pearls … that’s what I’m after today!

Wabi Sabi is that “I-can’t-quite-put-my-finger-on-it but-I know-it-when-I-see-and- feel-it” sort of thing. As a concept and a style it is a lot like some of those other obsessions I’ve had in the past that have me  head-over-heels lovin’ it. Of course true wabi-sabi is all about balance, so maybe I’m missing the point … but in my defense, I’m still in the honeymoon phase with it. I think that somehow makes it okay!

Let me start by telling you that my Wabi-sabi obsession started this summer when I was away for the week taking a bookbinding class on the coast of Maine. While I was gone, a woman named Joan Belcher checked in as a guest at our inn, and since her last name is the same as ours, my husband immediately started talking genealogy with her.  It turns out they are distantly related, as most New England Belchers are. As they were talking, it also came out that she is the owner of a Bed and Breakfast in Wiscasset, Maine called Wabi Sabi Cottage. My husband emailed me the link to her website and I was intrigued by the pages which talked about the concept of Wabi Sabi. Needless to say, I’ve been hooked on the concept ever since, although it turns out that I’ve been drawn to wabi-sabiness practically forever, and just didn’t know it!

From my love of tiny, handmade things (as opposed to store-bought), to the desire to ‘Simplify, simplify, simplify’ as Thoreau suggests; and my love for eclectic, re-purposed items whose long use has rendered them unique and full of character, (not to mention my passion for tea) … Lo and behold, it turns out that I have been a member of the wabi-sabi-appreciation-club since I was a teenager.
I’d heard the term before, but I would have been hard pressed to define it for you. And this is par for the course with ‘Wabi Sabi’ because it’s a pretty elusive and abstruse thing to pin down. But that’s okay because even most Japanese feel that it can’t be defined, many also saying  that those who CAN define it really don’t know what it’s all about and are missing the point!

But what the heck … I’ll take a stab at it based on some of the books I have been collecting, because if we’re going to be talking wabi-sabi here, we might as well all be on the same page.  Here are some hints to head you in the right direction: it has to do with the impermanence, imperfection, simplicity and humility of things, and with the appreciation of age, character and patina.  A little vague? How about this from “Wabi Sabi: The Art of Everyday Life”:
        “Wabi is a state of mind, like the feeling of the evening sky in autumn. Sabi    is when the mood is quiet and solitary”.  If that didn’t exactly turn on any light bulbs or ring any bells for you, it’s okay … just let it sink in as a foundation, and we’ll understand more as we go along.

Wabi sabi is actually an ancient aesthetic philosophy rooted in Zen Buddhism, particularly in the tea ceremony, which is a ritual of purity and simplicity. The prized bowls in which tea was ritualistically served were handmade and irregularly shaped intentionally, with uneven glazes, cracks, and a strange beauty in their deliberate imperfection. The Japanese philosophy celebrates the beauty in what's natural, flaws and all, and the antique tea bowls, for example, are prized because of (not in spite of) them.

As a style in our modern farmgirl world, it comes off a little like shabby chic, but it isn’t a “look” (like French Country or flea market style) so much as it is ‘a way, or a path toward home’.  A love of the wabi-sabi in life would cast an eye toward old, worn pieces with lots of patina and character, whose flaws can be attributed to age, use and the passage of time. These things add a lot of charm and most farmgirls can relate to decorating in a similar vein; I know I can! I see a lot of wabi-sabi in the stunning photos of the Ranch Farmgirl Shery Jespersen, where rusty pieces of barbed wire or a well-worn washtub snuggle up with some fine antique lace and weathered barn-board in a still life that feels and looks ‘so right’! Deb, our Beach Farmgirl sister ‘gets it’, too, as you probably noticed in her last post of the Vintage Bazaar. All the farmgirls do! But as I said, although there is a look to things that can be considered wabi-sabi, there is more of a subtle spiritual philosophy pointing to a place devoid of clutter, ostentation, or the attainment of perfection. In fact, it celebrates quite the opposite of ‘perfect’… wabi-sabi perfection being the absence of perfection!

 
Here’s something that helped me; it’s a partial list of what wabi-sabi is and isn’t, from “Simply Imperfect: Re-Visiting the Wabi Sabi House” by Robyn Griggs Lawrence:

Wabi Sabi IS …..                                Wabi Sabi ISN’T …
Dry leaves                                         Cherry blossoms
Bare branches                                    Floral arrangements
Wildflowers                                        Roses
Hand-made items                               machine-made things
Weathered wood                                Plastic laminate
Vintage finds                                      Designer products
Natural light                                       Flourescents

In wabi-sabi conversations, the word ‘authentic’ pops up a lot. It’s all about ‘real’ as opposed to synthetic; things that feel right without pretense or compromise, as you can deduce from the list above. This is the Farmgirl Way! The ‘Wabi’ part is so very subtle that if you’re not careful you almost miss it. It has been described as “the helpless feeling you have when waiting for your lover.” Think of it as a state of mind rather than a physical object. It’s a serene, transcendent state of being when things are in their simplest, most austere and natural, raw state.
“Sabi” on the other hand is the beauty that treasures the passage of time, and the lonely sense of impermanence it evokes in physical things.  It has been defined as the patina that age bestows, and points to the inevitable natural cycle of birth and death.