Saturday 19th December

Kitsugi or repairing with gold

 An  object is broken, but rather than throw it away we mend it with love and gold, but why? There is of course an underlying philosophy......

Not only is there no attempt to hide the damage, but the repair is literally illuminated... a kind of physical expression of the spirit of mushin....Mushin is often literally translated as "no mind," but carries connotations of fully existing within the moment, of non-attachment, of equanimity amid changing conditions. ...The vicissitudes of existence over time, to which all humans are susceptible, could not be clearer than in the breaks, the knocks, and the shattering to which ceramic ware too is subject. This poignancy or aesthetic of existence has been known in Japan as mono no aware, a compassionate sensitivity, or perhaps identification with, [things] outside oneself.

— Christy Bartlett, Flickwerk: The Aesthetics of Mended Japanese Ceramics

A bit like wabi-sabi, a deeper spiritual meaning, we take pleasure in simplicity, when we hold the repaired bowl we hold its history as one, the breakage, the whole form and also the moment in time when we are there.  Now contrast our Western attitude, beautifully acted out in the Repair Shop, when people bring treasures to be repaired and mended, and only, very occasionally, is the damage allowed to exist.  The repairers strive for perfection to take it back to its original form.

It is a metaphor for our society at the moment, we are broken by an event, the event will pass eventually but we must take steps to mend our society.  Mark Carney in the Reith lectures called it a 'social reset'. How do we do it?  It is already starting to happen as we turn away from our governance and listen to people like Carney, to the mayors and elders of our cities who directly experience the traumas that are happening. And of course to the public who question the actions of what is happening around us.  We question why there are homeless on the streets, why do food banks exist.  Surely simplicity itself says that everyone should be housed, warm and fed but it is not so.  We live in a very unequal society and it has to be adjusted.  I would argue not through the mechanism of our present government, whose leaders seem to fall on either side of a class system which is way out of date.  But I suspect when old economic truths begin to look like lies we will adjust and that caring feeling so often expressed individually and together will slowly make the change.  We will end up like the cracked bowl but stronger.

nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect

Here is the purple of the heather on the North Yorkshire moors, but  also it can get very windy  and of course impassable in winter when it snows.  But a most delicate flower can be found on these high grounds, the pale blue of the harebell in summer, its bells shaking furiously in the wind but undaunted.