wabi-sabi

Today was one of the strangest, most absurd days I have had in a long time...it was one of those days in which the universe seems to be trying to communicate. We drove almost an hour to pick up our Landcruiser (which has been in the shop for six weeks) and were informed that, despite making firm arrangements, it was not ready. Then, disappointed (and late), we rushed to an appointment (or so we thought) only to find that we were a week early. The day pretty much continued that way, from terrible service at lunch, to striking out at finding Derek's long-awaited birthday gift, to the dog greeting us with a room full of destruction when we arrived home. None of these things were catastrophic by any means, just mildly annoying; but taken all together, we began to feel like the day was cursed. We actually talked about how we had both been feeling extremely blessed lately-- beyond what either of us felt we deserved; perhaps we'd been feeling a little too good about life and needed to be taken down a notch. I decided that this would be a good time to go to to my "happy place" in paint...a little island we nicknamed "wabi-sabi island" when we were in the Boundary Waters, named after the Japanese word indicative of the perfection of imperfection. It is the belief that everything changes, and there is an elegance in the incompleteness, a melancholy in the longing for perfection. As I painted it, I realized that it was the perfect metaphor for the imperfect day...we found beauty in living it together and laughing often.