Wabi-Sabi

When I was in college, my girlfriend, Molly, told me about the Japanese concept of "wabi," as she called it. I think she learned about it in a class, but she might have learned it on her own since she had an interest in things Japanese and covered our bedroom floor in tatami mats and wanted to learn how to do the tea ceremony. In any event, what I brought away from our conversations about wabi is that it was a technique of purposefully introducing an imperfection into a work of art as a way of accentuating the beauty of the whole. I was fascinated by the thought that imperfections could be beautiful.

( It turns out that my understanding was incomplete ... )