Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
– Leonard Cohen
“Suddenly I stopped, because I realized what my subconscious mind was doing while I was sobbing: my subconscious mind was busy working out a novel about failure.” – excerpt from A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L’Engle
Last week I told my husband about some of the comforting calls and emails I had received in response to my angst-filled post bemoaning all my good fortune. That post, about my twisted response to good news, stands as sufficient evidence as to the correctness of my husband’s rejoinder,
“Don’t they know,” he said, not at all unkindly, “that all writers are screwed up?”
We both laughed (one of us a tad more maniacally than the other).
I will allow Madeleine L’Engle to reply, “I think that all artists, regardless of degree of talent, are a painful, paradoxical combination of certainty and uncertainty, of arrogance and humility, constantly in need of reassurance, and yet with a stubborn streak of faith in their validity, no matter what.”
I have always been a fan of wabi-sabi. Not only because I love the rhythmic loveliness of that glorious word combination, but also because of the lushness of its meaning; how it holds imperfection and transience as part of what makes something beautiful.
And now I’ve discovered kintsugi or kintsukuroi – the Japanese art of mending what is broken by fusing it with a mixture of resin and gold, resulting in a scarred and deeper beauty.
I am beginning to believe the Japanese have the best words for everything.
But more than that, I fully embrace this world view of perfect imperfection in all its ephemeral beauty.
Life, in all its forms, is flawed and fleeting. Isn’t that precisely why we hold it so dear?
Madeleine L’Engle should have the final word:
“What is mental health, anyhow? If we were all what is generally thought of as mentally healthy, I have a terrible fear that we’d all be alike…I can’t think of one great human being in the arts, or in history generally, who conformed, who succeeded, as educational experts tell us children must succeed, with his peer group…If we ever, God forbid, manage to make each child succeed with his peer group, we will produce a race of bland and faceless nonentities, and all poetry and mystery will vanish from the face of the earth.”
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I totally believe in this line: “If we ever, God forbid, manage to make each child succeed with his peer group, we will produce a race of bland and faceless nonentities, and all poetry and mystery will vanish from the face of the earth.” Here’s to mystery, wrapped in enigma = Colleen
Love the imperfection of the Japanese tea bowl! Notice how the maker left his thumb print on the foot and there will be two finger prints on the other side indicating he held it for glazing (a Japanese woman would not be so bold). Also, there are pinholes in the glaze indicating an imperfect fit of glaze to clay. And yet it is beautiful to behold. Such a perfect metaphor to tell your story.
Oh yeah, Leonard Cohen rocks and so do you!
Martha, you’ve deepened my appreciation of that bowl even more. I thought it was so beautiful already, but I love knowing about the thumb prints and understanding the ‘imperfect fit of glaze to clay’.
I realize that it doesn’t matter what the subject/object of my attention is, the more I know about it, the more I’m in awe.
Thanks for this. You rock too!
I doubt if it’s your good fortune you’re bemoaning. Rather, it’s the fear and doubt of whether you can live up to what it demands of you. Will you be up for the task? Might you even miss the good old days, once anonymity is gone and the paparazzi are dogging your heels (the “you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone” syndrome).
Of course we’re all imperfect. Only dictators and other politicians, plus the few others with gargantuan egos think otherwise, so you’ll still be in familiar company. Let me be Tonto and call you Kemo Wabi Sabi as you ride off into the beautiful sunset, the perfect segue to your perfect new life.
But wait: can we imperfect beings have perfect lives? Not really. So there goes the source of your angst. You will not have a life you can’t live up to. More imperfection and duality and contradiction is on its way. Just ENJOY!!!!!!
No you wait Carol! This is the best yin-yang perfect-imperfect combo pak of wisdom I’ve seen in awhile. Love this…“You will not have a life you can’t live up to. More imperfection and duality and contradiction is on its way.”
Much appreciated from yours truly, Ms. Kemo Wabi Sabi 🙂