Wabi sabi is an ancient Japanese aesthetic that values the imperfect, the handmade and the simple. By living the wabi sabi life, Westerners would be seeking to find peace and truth through nature, harmony and the little things. Readers can explore all aspects of this wondrous way of life:- Wabi sabi working - doing what one loves and not overdoing it; Wabi sabi eating - valuing the humble and familiar and savouring the exotic; Wabi sabi socializing - gleaning the lessons of the ancient tea ceremony; Wabi sabi creativity - enriching one's life by; valuing individual moments. The author serves as a highly eloquent guide on the reader's journey to a simpler, more fulfilling life.
David McFadden introduced me to the Japanese poetic tradition in my first creative writing course in 1983. Basho, Issa, and other itinerant poets footing it across a rugged landscape appealed to my youthful imagination. The wandering mendicants reminded me of my own rambles down Kootenay back roads visiting with rural artists and potters. I belonged to those mountain towns, pastoral valleys, and overgrown orchards, and I exposed rolls of film to capture the qualities I loved there. Years later a description of wabi sabi in the book Washi: World of Japanese Paper by Sukey Hughes finally provided words for those qualities.
When I wrote Wabi Sabi Simple the only dedicated book on the market at the time was Leonard Koren's Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers which is still a standard on the subject today. My research continued for my second book, Wabi Sabi for Writers, which is a deeper exploration of the relationship between wabi sabi, poetry, and a quality of writing that Basho arrived at late in his life.
Karumi, as he called it, is the result of following "the way of elegance," a literary path towards lightness, acceptance, and beauty. I'm following the "way of elegance" now as I continue to write from my home on Vancouver Island. I hope you will visit stillinthestream.com for more information and updates on my latest projects.
