Dream Coming True: Living Like A Japanese Tea House

"Life is an expression, our unconscious actions the constant betrayal of our innermost thoughts"

                                                                                                     `Okakura Kakuzo

Dreams Come True Parasols   by myself

There is something extraordinary about the process of dreaming. It means different things to different people and cultures...and yet there is an ethereal quality of a sense of possibility omnipresent within all the fluctuations of the dreaming process, I think.

Recently, in an earlier entry, I took back my girlhood dream of how I was going to live my life with a vision for a future that is long since already in the past; it was a dream that never came into fruition, though I was once on its threshold, perhaps.

Looking For Something by Julian Cocnran, circa 1903

Though I sat with the vacancy for some weeks, curiously that particular void allowed for the imagination to wander. This is something I have since learned is part of who I am and what I desire - making room for imagination that is.

So. I want to build an old fashioned, Japanese Tea House in the Eastern tradition. The early houses were modeled after Zen Monasteries, where monks would drink tea from a shared bowl, the tea working as an elixir to keep the monks from falling asleep during meditation. The tea house was simply yet beautifully constructed, representing an environment of contemplation and quiet, of reflection and of "being", a place of poetic beauty, with a touch of melancholy and yet balanced through the acceptance and appreciation of imperfection.

This recent dream of mine, the building of this teahouse, is metaphoric. I want to personally reflect the principles upon which the tea house came to be. I want my life to be clean, and yet offering space for the wind to blow in the pine needles that can stay upon the floor for a time. I can remind myself with their presence of the passing of time in anticipation of the oncoming winter, for example, that being the aging process.

Wouldn't a tea house be splendid in a Pine Forest? ~ by myself

I am, therefore, re-inventing my concept of home, which is an ephemeral and in my case, mercurial existence resembling more a river winding and bending, traveling some distance without any real purpose of place, though aesthetics of that place, where ever it is, has always been of paramount importance to me. It must incorporate a sense of beauty. Okakura Kakuzo, quoted in the opening of this entry, wrote in his exquisite treatise, The Book of Tea, that the kettle in a tea house would sit upon a brazier, boiling water. It contained some little scraps of iron inside so that the water would make a strange, eerie sound, referencing the sound of wind, or running water. This somewhat resembles myself, I thought with some delight, embracing my own futile existence for once.

One of my Favorite Books

It has taken a long road to reach this apex of ease in giving away a lifetime's acquisitions, mental as well as material. Once I was free of the original dream it was suddenly quite simple, yet the process was a complex one. I had to slowly find the courage to pull away layers of thoughtless consumption as well as an assumption about what life was supposed to be. Shedding slowly, as I have been ready, and with patience at times and impatience at others until an almost nothingness appeared in my mental horizon. It was a place uncluttered, yet filled with light and breeze. 

Geisha by Kasakabe Kimbei, circa 1880's

Something inexplicable has been pulling me towards a very different approach to living for nearly three decades. It feels like this: when I am in a connected place with the forces of what I call life, I can clearly see the futility of fighting against it. And fight I did, for a very long time, trying to will my life to be different to what it was. It all began when I was a young, single mother living like many other single mothers: in intolerable circumtances of interminable threat and fear. But then, in letting go the struggle and disbelief that this was truly my plight, and accepting this really was it, the struggle ended. As one lets fall layers upon layers of weight that one carries voluntarily and yet feels involuntarily, there is a passing moment of clarity and one can feel the smallness of oneself, a coagulation of particles in a vast expanse. That small moment is worth all the effort, as one settles briefly in newly created mental space. I think perhaps it is getting a bird's eye perspective of one's own existence. One can ride the wave for a fleeting moment, for one is that very wave, something that is gone in the fraction of a second, dissolved once again into the sea itself.

 Girl in Heavy Storm by Kasakabe Kimbei, circa 1880's



Fin

&

beau•ty |ˈbyoōtē| noun ( pl. -ties)

1 a combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses, esp. the sight : I was struck by her beauty | an area of outstanding natural beauty.

• a combination of qualities that pleases the intellect or moral sense.

• [as adj. ] denoting something intended to make a woman more attractive : beauty products | beauty treatment.

2 a beautiful or pleasing thing or person, in particular

• a beautiful woman.

• an excellent specimen or example of something : the fish was a beauty, around 14 pounds.

• ( the beauties of) the pleasing or attractive features of something : the beauties of the Pennsylvania mountains.

• [in sing. ] the best feature or advantage of something : the beauty of keeping cats is that they don't tie you down.

PHRASES

beauty is in the eye of the beholder proverb beauty cannot be judged objectively, for what one person finds beautiful or admirable may not appeal to another.

beauty is only skin-deep proverb a pleasing appearance is not a guide to character.

ORIGIN Middle English : from Old French beaute, based on Latin bellus ‘beautiful, fine.’

                                                                                                                                      `Computer dictionary

The Anomaly of Memory

A book I love

Memory is so seductive, elusive, uncanny, frustrating, useful, amazing, deceptive, unreliable (and yet essential. We can't live without it). And then it haunts us when we sleep, so it is cautionary, foreboding, forthcoming and forecasting, suspicious, unavoidable, insistent, maddening, manipulative, imaginative, frightening and soothing, provocative, satisfying and so much more.

As a P
      T
       S
        D sufferer, (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), I can safely say I have a love hate relationship with my own memory. When PTSD kicks in its hard to tame not only the trigger memory but everything else of a challenging nature, a kind of tail spin mind racing at 100 mph. The flip side is that I am mostly extremely sensitive to others, a kind of hyper awareness that is generally helpful (and not always).

In a more general day to day existence, I've come to the conclusion that open-mindedness to my own error factor is useful. I think I have remembered something correctly but I haven't. Like... Here's a hypothetical example of something I am perfectly capable of: I left my keys on the table. They are no where to be found. I might have blamed someone I love for moving them (sorry Melissa). In the end, I discover I left them under a pile of laundry on an armchair. Some people have a very hard time accepting that memory has tricked them and they are wrong about facts they thought were correct. I used to be one of those people. But I've learned my lessons. I'm often wrong (and that's OK), though more often than wrong I am right (I think). I am toying with the idea of joining the tattoo circuit. Really its a fantasy. I want a wristwatch tattooed on my left wrist, so that I always know exactly what time it is.

My clock is always right

For a really comprehensive, fascinating exploration into the study of memory, The Art of Memory (photo at the top of this entry), is the book to read. It's nothing less than extraordinary. Frances Yates (1899-1981), spent her life researching esoteric history, teaching at the Warburg Institute in London. I discovered her through researching the life of the Renaissance philosopher, astrologer, mathematician and Dominican friar, Giordano Bruno and his incredible memory boxes. This is a fantastic book that will lead you on a never ending journey of discovery. Her equally brilliant sister was responsible for The Globe Theatre's eventual reconstruction.

Fin

&

a•nom•a•ly |əˈnäməlē|

noun ( pl. -lies)

1 something that deviates from what is standard, normal, or expected : there are a number of anomalies in the present system | a legal anomaly | [with clause ] the apparent anomaly that those who produced the wealth were the poorest | the position abounds in anomaly.

2 Astronomy the angular distance of a planet or satellite from its last perihelion or perigee.

ORIGIN late 16th cent.: via Latin from Greek anōmalia, from anōmalos (see anomalous ).

mem•or•y |ˈmem(ə)rē|

noun ( pl. -ries)

1 a person's power to remember things : I've a great memory for faces | my grandmother is losing her memory.

• the power of the mind to remember things : the brain regions responsible for memory.

• the mind regarded as a store of things remembered : he searched his memory frantically for an answer.

• the capacity of a substance to return to a previous state or condition after having been altered or deformed. See also shape memory .

2 something remembered from the past; a recollection : one of my earliest memories is of sitting on his knee | the mind can bury all memory of traumatic abuse.

• the remembering or recollection of a dead person, esp. one who was popular or respected : clubs devoted to the memory of Sherlock Holmes.

• the length of time over which people continue to remember a person or event : the worst slump in recent memory.

3 the part of a computer in which data or program instructions can be stored for retrieval.

• capacity for storing information in this way : the module provides 16Mb of memory.

PHRASES

from memory without reading or referring to notes : each child was required to recite a verse from memory.

in memory of intended to remind people of, esp. to honor a dead person.

take a trip (or walk) down memory lane deliberately recall pleasant or sentimental memories.

ORIGIN Middle English : from Old French memorie, from Latin memoria, from memor ‘mindful, remembering.’