Wabi-sabi and the beauty of imperfection

Every year at least once I remember the lines of this poem. Usually it's during Autumn in the dazzling russets of dying leaves. This year it was while walking in Mount Congreve during Magnolia time. Magnolias were flowering on dark branches and there are some ancient specimens there, but it was the dying petals strewn underfoot that brought the poem to mind again. 

I wish I understood the beauty 

in leaves falling.

To whom are we beautiful 

as we go? 

~David Ignatow

If there is such a thing as a Wabi-sabi poem, maybe this is it. Wabi-sabi is a Japanese way of seeing which honours the beauty of transience, imperfection and the incomplete. Think about your favourite old chair, a cracked cup you have stuck back together, an old silk scarf? I saw it in my elderly Grandmother, the most beautiful wrinkly woman, oozing love and elegance. I find it now in ragged hedgerows and vilified dandelions, and here in trampled petals. 

How freeing it can be to strive for imperfection! Being 60 now I hope it includes ageing gracefully, fading softly, avoiding at all costs the lethal stuff on offer from the botox pushers and their like? Do you have a place in your heart for Wabi-sabi? 

Here are some other reflections on this poem

To whom are we beautiful?

In the beginning there is a thick mist. 

Somewhere the dawn is breaking but on the lane this morning it happens slowly. A tractor engine is idling. He's warming the engine while he empties the dregs of a pot of tea down on top of two slices of brown bread and marmalade. 

The warm September light filters through, dappled spotlights along the way. By evening time the freezer will be crammed with blackberries, plums and an assortment of currants and apples. Sweetness to be added to morning oatmeal and yoghurt on a winter's day. 

For now it's time to harvest all the good memories of summer as we get ready for the big hibernation. And walking back I repeat again these favourite lines....

I wish I understood the beauty 
in leaves falling.
To whom are we beautiful 
as we go? 


~David Ignatow

Windswept, freckly and fairly wrinkly

While I am standing beneath this Sycamore, besotted with its golden glow, leaves are passing away in front of my eyes. A little death is taking place as each one turns, decays and falls. Autumn and it's peaceful slowing brings the inevitable truth to mind. 

The wrinkling up of my smily eyes like a crisping leaf, curling and fraying at the edge. The retreat to creative solitude as each hour of daylight becomes more precious. The overwhelming urge to dawdle and dander on my walks. While the Sycamore is going through a gradual decline with each season, I suppose in some ways so am I.

Without any sense of panic or great turbulence the natural world is going to sleep, is letting autumn happen. All the so called imperfections of these ageing leaves, dark spots, crow's feet, crumples, puckers, creases and fraying at the corners, once caught in the eye of my lens, are surprisingly beautiful!

I'm not there yet, still only dabbling, but when the time comes the best possible decline would have to be a similar windswept, freckly and fairly wrinkly one.  I doubt that this will never be written on the back of a jar of moisturiser............ 




This time last year I wrote a similar post called "To whom are we beautiful" inspired by the lines of David Ignatow

To whom are we beautiful when we go?

"I wish I knew the beauty of leaves falling. To whom are we beautiful when we go?" David Ingnato

Someone very close to me is on their way. It has been a slow process. I am at the point where it is really very challenging to try to see any beauty in it. I suppose that increasing vulnerability is hard to accept from one so big and so strong. And yet, the unexpected softness, the holding onto the small pleasures, the very rare moments of laughter, these are precious still, although rare enough these days.

Wanting to run away from this parting I find that the deepening autumn is my soulmate on the road . Glimpses of the world around me going to sleep, absolutely lacking in any sense of panic, can be re-assuring. Ever so slowly today I am letting winter happen! The almost bare branches are going to be strewn with bird feeders by the end of this day, and I look forward to filling the larder of the robin family over the next few weeks.......