Kintsugi

Kintsugi (gold joining) is a Japanese repair technique that takes ceramic destruction and makes a broken object into a new entity. It leaves clear, bold, visible lines with the appearance of solid gold. Using fine lacquer and gold to mark the scars, it never hides the story of the object’s damage … it is an intimate metaphoric narrative of loss and recovery, breakage and restoration, tragedy and the ability to overcome it.  A kintsugi repair speaks of individuality and uniqueness, fortitude and resilience, and the beauty to be found in survival.

From Bonnie Kemske, Kintsugi. The Poetic Mend (London, 2021)

Recluse’s day …

Up at dawn … practice in the first few hours of the morning (or late at night) … personal study for the rest of the morning … social lunch … recreation in the afternoon, out of doors if possible: gardening, walking about; indoors in poor weather: painting, calligraphy, reading literature, writing poems … summer excursions further afield: to picnic at beauty spots, go swimming, look for special sunrises, sunsets and views of the moon ….

After John Blofeld, Taoism. The Quest for Immortality (London, 1979)

... have a crack at it ...

 

Jung tells me that patients often ask him how they should ‘solve’ this or that problem. Jung tells them that they shouldn’t be seeking to solve it, but rather just to have a crack at it, to grapple and struggle with it. Problems aren’t there to be ‘solved’; they are pairs of opposites that between them produce a tension that is called life.

Hermann Hesse in his  ‘Zürich notebook’, 29 June 1921

Life, and life only

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine
But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only

From Bob Dylan It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) (1965)

Just takes me a while ...

Well, my heart’s like a river, a river that sings
Just takes me a while to realize things ...

From Bob Dylan I’ve Made up my Mind to Give Myself to You (2020)

Poet for an age of crisis

                                                    Hermann Hesse 1877-1962

Lying in the grass

Is all this now ... illusory flowers,
Fuzzy colours of the bright summer meadow,
Soft blue stretches of heaven, some bee song,
Is all this now really a god’s
Groaning dreaming,
Some unconscious power’s crying for release?
The far-off line of mountains,
Fine and bold resting in the blue,
Is that too just a cramp,
Just a mad tension in seething nature,
Just grief, just pain, just a pointless testing,
Never resting, never in joyful movement?
Oh, no! Release me now, you monstrous dream
Of the world’s strain!
A midges’ dance in evening light rocks you,
And a bird’s cry rocks you,
A breath of wind cools my forehead
With affection.
Release me now, you primal human grief!
Let all be pain,
Yes, let all be strain and shadows -
But not this one sweet hour of life in the sunshine,
And not the scent of red clover,
And not the soft feeling of well-being
Deep within my soul.

Hermann Hesse, 1913 (translated by Scholar by the River)