Wabi Sabi Life is a carefully curated serving of the imperfectly beautiful and unconventional from a Western Buddhist with a love of Japanese culture and aesthetics. Please consider supporting me by becoming a paid subscriber for only £1 a week. Access more in-depth content, audio meditations, and the whole archive.
Welcome to my free monthly round up of inspiration.
September always gives me that back to school feeling. It always reminds me of that cheesy old movie You’ve Got Mail starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan where the big bad Fox Books decimates all the local bookstores including Meg Ryan’s children’s bookshop, The Shop Around the Corner. Tom and Meg are having an online romance (it was early days of the internet) he messages her:
Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me want to buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.
A bouquet of newly sharpened pencils. What a great image. That sums up September. I want to sharpen my pencils and get some serious creative exploration done.
Reading
This month I’ve been reading an oldie but goodie Haruki Murakami’s Sputnik Sweetheart. It was one of the few Murakami books I hadn’t read. This is a tale of unrequited love written in Murakami’s inimitable style. I heard someone say reading Murakami is like dreaming with your eyes open. This book evokes that feeling of losing something or someone. Only three characters inhabit the landscape in this book. Each is either a victim of unrequited love or incapable of being in love.
I’ve also read Meg Rosoff’s Friends Like These hailed as ‘this summer’s read’ it is story about eighteen-year-old Beth who arrives in a baking hot summer in Manhattan for a prestigious journalism internship. She rocks up at a cockroach-infested sublet with disaffected roommates. At work she is grouped with interns preppy Oliver preppy, ambitious Dan and cool, beautiful, wild Edie. Soon, Beth and Edie are best friends. But the heat is on in more ways than one. It’s a sparse and beautiful written intoxicating novel about a summer of unforgettable firsts. I devoured this Salingeresque novel in a day.
And on the more erudite side, when I had some quiet and brain space, I read The Quantum and the Lotus a conversation between Buddhist Mattheu Richard and scientist Thuan Trinh Xuan discussing the boundaries and overlap between quantum physics and Buddhism. What I understood of it was interesting but it lost me several times. It’s for a Buddhist bookgroup so I will see how others got on in their comprehension.
Japanese inspiration
I often buy my Sashiko materials from Japan Crafts. They recently started to stock Heri, which are the decorative borders used in Tatami mats. They have many different designs the only difficulty is what to make with them?
I also came across the beautiful portable tea set from Teatsy. It all stacks away within itself. I’m wondering if I could buy one to have a small roaming Japanese tea cermony.
Hayao Miyazaki’s final film is here
The trailer for Studio Ghibli’s long-anticipated The Boy and the Heron is out, following an unusual promotional run for the film. In July, the film had an impromptu theatrical release in Japan, with no trailer, marketing material or any promo released by Studio Ghibli besides a single teaser poster. The film will premiere in the UK at BFI London Film Festival on 8 October.
Miyazaki’s themes of the intersection between worlds, of endings, rebirth and transitions are all present. The Boy and the Heron is described as a “semi-autobiographical fantasy” about Mahito, a young boy yearning for his mother who ventures into a new world where the living and dead collide. A record breaking seven years in the making and Miyazaki’s final film it is already being called a masterpiece.
The power of words
In researching for my forthcoming monthly paid column about haiku- ‘three lines one breath’ - I came across another short form poetry: the landay.
In Afghan culture a landay is an oral and often anonymous scrap of song created by Pashtun women who span the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Traditionally, landays are sung aloud, often to the beat of a hand drum, which, along with other kinds of music, was banned by the Taliban . Women get around this by singing in secret.
A landay is a two line song poem or nine and thirteen syllables often ending with the sound ‘ma ‘or ‘na’ two-line lullaby that contradicts their sharp cutting content often about war, separation grief, or love.
When sisters sit together, they always praise their brothers.
When brothers sit together, they sell their sisters to others.
End of summer
We had an end of summer heatwave here. This old song from a long time back really evokes the end of summer with a sense of melancholy and a little flourish. I’ve found myself playing it a lot this month
Sublime listening
And one more musical offering- the sublime and immense sound of Sigur Ros new album. Until next month…
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About me: I am a Western Buddhist in the Triratna tradition and have been practising since 1986. I have a love and admiration for the simplicity and beauty of Japanese culture and aesthetics which appeals to my zen minded being. I am also a mindfulness and movement teacher, writer, and creative health professional . Life - with all its beautiful imperfections and wonderful messiness - is my practice.