This a belated post of 2018 new year's resolutions. We are a little slow to the game but perhaps that will just resonate with this post.
Last year, I was mostly taking time to think about what it is exactly that we want to do with RSR, what we are interested in doing that is not already out there, who are we interested to connect and who could RSR help empower. RSR is a small place but these are big questions. I had thoughts and they change consistently as I talk to friends, co-workers and mentors. They got consolidated but they also quickly dispersed. In the late half of the year, I decided to just get this going and we will figure out as we go. Tiny steps they were, but as least we managed to open before the end of 2017.
On new year's day, the majority of us all want to be more productive (plus to use our phones less). A couple days in, we got our first snow day in New York. I sat in front of my window and watched the bomb cyclone hanging out in East Harlem for hours. We could do so much this year and I could start doing that today, I thought. But it is not just about doing more, but doing more while being more present. After meeting our artists, we carried on with our conversations through emails. But I want to visit their studios again, chat and have tea, I want to learn more on top of what I already know and I want to spend time to write my thoughts down. I turned to the shelf of Ikebana containers behind me, looked at them and was trying to remember all the arrangements I had made in each of them.
During one of my first classes, I was amazed when my teacher picked out the single stem of leaves with holes when the rest of the bunch was almost perfect. He said it will make the arrangement more relatable. I were able to sort of understand it on the spot. You know, wabi-sabi and etc. Now, I don't think wabi-sabi is related to Ikebana at all, nor is Ikebana about the re-creation of a naturalistic, thus imperfect, scene. It is a re-creation of nature, a nature that I once stood in front of. There was wind, there was a temperature, a scent and there was life around me. It was a face and it was fleeting, so was remembered.
I hope that I don't forget to arrange with what is in myself. May this year be dedicate to slow arrangements and many more remembered moments.
An
Yellowstone, 2017, taken with my half broken Olympus XA2
Lymph Lake in twilight, 2017, taken with my still unbroken Mamiya7
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