The Journey of Seams
It was when I was talking about "wabi-sabi".I was taught the word "Kintsugi" by someone from overseas.
KintsugiI was taught the word.
The aesthetics of "wabi-sabi"developed within the tea ceremony culture of the Muromachi period, and it is a uniquely Japanese worldview that breathes in finding beauty in imperfection, callingchips and cracks "scenery".
Kintsugiis an ancient Japanese restoration technique in which broken or chipped ceramics are bonded with lacquer, and the seams are beautifully decorated with gold or silver powder.
Rather than hiding the broken parts, it highlights them as
"new scenery".
Such a way of thinking,
breathes with an aesthetic sense typical of Japanese people.
As I was reading the explanation,
golden joinery
the English translation, for some reason,
golden journey
I misread it as.
Rather than misreading it,
it might just be that my presbyopia has started 🤣
joinery and journey.
Just a few letters.
However, those few lost letters,
opened the door to a new BLUE World
once again 🚪
I see🧐
The cracks in a vessel don't look unlike the journey of life.
No, rather, aren't these winding cracks that deviate from the expected harmony the very paths that people have walked?
──Come to think of it, in life too,
memories of taking detours remain more strongly
than memories of moving straight ahead.
The people I met.
The books I read.
The experiences where I failed.
The events that didn't go as planned.
Things whose meaning I didn't understand at the time,
mysteriously connect into a single line later on.
Just as if carefully connecting the fragments of a broken vessel one by one.
──The story deviates a little.
Generally speaking,
kintsugi = golden joinery
is correct.
On the other hand,
kintsugi = golden journey
is clearly a misreading.
However,
the fact that "it looked that way to me"
is also a truth for me.
Truth is not
always made up of just facts.
People do not see the world as it is, but rather
through the lens of their own interpretation.
I think serendipity
often hides within such misperceptions.
If I had read it correctly,
this essay would never have been born 🤣
Well, while thinking about such things,
I remembered a man.
Captain Harlock.
When I was a child, I had a small surgical scar on my stomach.
Looking at that scar,
"It's cool, just like Harlock's, isn't it?"
I thought to myself, impressed.
Though,
it wasn't exactly a place I could show other people 🤣
Thinking back, I was a simple child.
But,
that feeling might not have been wrong after all.
Harlock's scar is
not just a scar.
It is proof of his resolve,
proof of how he lived, and
a symbol of his will to move forward while carrying what he has lost.
That is why we admired him.
Not because he was perfect.
But because he carried his wounds.
I think kintsugi is the same.
It does not praise the vessel that never broke.
It praises the vessel that continues to exist even after being broken.
Therein lies "wabi-sabi."
The beauty of accepting imperfection.
Therein lies resilience.
The strength to live while carrying the experience of being broken.
And transformation 🦋 exists.
It is the power to not let a wound end as just a wound,
but to transform it into new value.
Come to think of it,
perhaps humans and vessels are the same.
If you live, you get wounded.
You make mistakes.
Sometimes you break.
However, what is truly valuable
is not a life without wounds,
but the story of how you lived with those wounds.
As a child,
while admiring Harlock,
perhaps I intuitively knew that.
That a man's way of life is the scar on his belly. 🤣
It feels a bit embarrassing to say that.
But I feel like I can say it now.
The value of life
is not determined by not breaking,
but by what kind of seams you leave behind after you break.
A drop of BLUE 💧
I was supposed to be learning about Kintsugi,
but in the end, I went on another journey of imagination.
And the trigger for that
was just a misreading of a few characters.
But perhaps serendipity
is unexpectedly like this.
While searching for the right answer,
you accidentally encounter a different question.
And for some reason,
that question stays in your heart.
So today, once again,
I will travel the seams of words.
Because surely,
there is a landscape spreading there that is not in any dictionary.
p.s.
I saw Kintsugi in a video on how to make simple hot sandwiches⁉️
Am I the only one who sees a Kintsugi vessel in a hot sandwich where the bread is quartered and held together with beaten egg? 🤣
《A Drop Remains.💧》
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