While on a ten day silent retreat, I kept a journal, hoping preserve my revelatory thoughts. When I reread these journal entries, I’m struck by the transition in my own handwriting. Each day the thoughts become more spacious, the handwriting less hurried and more precise. Some entries read like directives, advice to my future, less-centered, self. One such directive was take one picture a day. I was struck by the vividness of tastes and colors, the attention to which I hoped to carry back into my everyday life. This attention to the intricacy of sensation has been far more difficult than I anticipated.
Today, a year and a half later, I took a picture, more than one actually, possibly defeating the purpose of the contemplative minimalism of a single one. I was prompted by my notice of a few strands of weathered red leather and some rusty jungle bells sitting at the threshold of my back door. These bits originally made up a shiny bough of bells, not unlike a bunch of grapes, strung together by my grandmother, Marie. At some point I had hung them on the back doorknob as a way for my cat, Ivy, to let me know she’d like to come in. She used her doorbell until the weather undid it.
A stunning soon-to-be fall day drew me and a cup of tea to the back door, leading onto the deck. I will assume that my first thoughts on seeing the bells were fairly deep in my consciousness, flickers of firings not large enough to register consciously. After all, I had stepped over them countless times, their presence barely noticed. Next, I thought, would anyone else just abandon these mementos from grandma, day in and day out? Yes, but only a certain kind of person, one who, like me, is not so attuned to the chopping wood and carrying water activities of keeping house.
Despite the tinge of guilt, I was struck by the beauty of their present state. Mixed with the grey and tan leaves of last fall,they had been made even more colorful by rust. This is a beauty born of process, molecular changes created by sun and rain, by the batting of cat paws. The Japanese call this wabi sabi… the beauty of use and decay, the physical manifestation of processes. Appreciating the aesthetics of things that are falling apart seems to be a pragmatic skill. Everything falls apart eventually. Appreciating the lines on my own face, the big stripes of grey showing up in my hair, these things are challenging but doable. Not only that, they bring the ease that so often accompanies the ends of arguments with reality.
