“Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.” Lao Tzu
For Those About to Rot
Tag: Wabi-Sabi
Thinking outside the Box
“It is not possible to think outside the box. If I am thinking, I am always and only inside the box. The mind itself is the box.” Red Hawk, Self Observation
The Blacksmith’s Boy
Norman Rockwell’s oil painting: Blacksmith’s Boy-Heel and Toe was painted as an illustration for Edward W. O’Brien’s story by the same name in the 1940 issue of The Saturday Evening Post magazine
In 2003, local artist Wayne Fettro painted a partial reproduction on the side of this building in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It can use a little touching up but I like it just the way it is.
Wabi-Sabi
Wabi-sabi represents Japanese aesthetics and a Japanese world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.
It is a concept derived from the Buddhist teaching of the three marks of existence, specifically impermanence, suffering and emptiness or absence of self-nature.
In this case, it’s a broken piano that was left outside the old Weavertown one room schoolhouse for over a year. I felt it was beautiful, imperfect and incomplete. As for it being impermanent, the schoolhouse is now an antique store and the piano is no longer there. Time marches on.
