November 23, 2009
UTNE READER

Living wabi-sabi

September/October 2001
By Marcia Tyson Kolb, Dragonfly Cottage Community for Lesbians (www.dragonflycottage.com) 
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WABI-SABI SECTION
Wabi-whuh?
-Jon Spayde

Wabi-Sabi: The Art of Imperfection (print only)
-Robyn Griggs Lawrence

Living wabi-sabi (print only)
-Marcia Tyson Kolb

Exquisite decay (print only)
-Leonard Koren

Too much of a good thing?
-Karen Olson
Discuss Wabi-Sabi at the Globe forum in Café Utne's: cafe.utne.com

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Simply put, I am lopsided. In 1995 I was stricken with the worst case of Bell’s palsy that three different doctors had ever seen. I had medical care, holistic care, massage, and acupuncture; took a motherload of supplements; and changed my diet. I did it all, but for several months I looked and felt like the Phantom of the Opera. I got up every morning and looked in the mirror and cried.I was cattywompus, peculiar, unseemly. My once-lovely smile was gone for good. I recovered gradually over a year until I looked like I look now. My left eye still droops, I have trouble chewing, I only smile on one side. In other words, I am wabi-sabi.During my recovery I began to learn what wabi-sabi truly means, and to live and study it in earnest. Later I found myself running a shelter for a hundred disabled parrots. They were all lopsided like I was, but they were so sweet and I saw such tender beauty in them that I began to have compassion for myself. Then I looked around at the world and saw the same thing all around me. The lopsided of the world, those who are not "normal," those who have been hurt, dis-abled in the world’s terms, scarred by life, are some of the sweetest, kindest, deepest, tenderest human beings I have had the privilege to know. Perhaps this is why I have always felt most comfortable among artists—painters, actors, musicians. They usually don’t fit in. They know wabi-sabi.
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