Looks at the heap of empty cans on the desk

Wabi-Sabi it is!

You’re confusing concepts. And yeah, I know it’s a shower thought, so it doesn’t need to be anything like that.

Wabisabi, beauty in the eye of the beholder, and the concept of “trash” beauty are related, but not the same.

Wabi sabi is more about realizing that mom matter how close to perfect you get something, there’s always the human element, so embrace those imperfections. It has the benefit that that which is broken still has beauty. This leads to the practice of visible repairs. But it’s more like how antiques are more valuable when you don’t fuck with them doing refinishing or painting, you do repairs to keep it functional, not to make it like new (and if you knew how often I’ve seen people ruin any monetary or historic value in knives, you’d want to use one on yourself).

The same kind of idea, seeing the beauty and value in things as they are can indeed be extended to things that were never crafted in the first place, like seeing a trashed room and appreciating the human element in it. But the key is that the mattress in and covered by trash isn’t the same thing as a broken vase.

And that is different from the spartan, minimalist to the point of apathy kind of single guy with no furniture arrangements. You can be minimalist and/or spartan in living without living in trash.

Now, being real, once you get things like food that is going to become a health risk, and pizza boxes can be, then that’s no longer about accepting this as they are, and becomes just being nasty (and I don’t throw that word around lightly). You can be disorganized, and still be clean. It’s harder, but completely doable.

That doesn’t take away from seeing a photo of such a vista and appreciating the beauty of the composition, and how it shines a light on the human condition, on how we are. It does not, however fall under the concept of wabi sabi as it exists in its home culture.

Wabi-sabi is about being close to perfection, but not reaching it. Basically the same concept as hand made things having small imperfections instead of being cookie cutter.

It isn’t about apathy and filth.

Another person took a deep dive explaining that, but for me a little imperfection adds value and personality to a person or a product because I can

• tell them from thousands of replicas and feel like I have an intimete knowledge of them;
• imagine some story behind it, some depth and a promise of more;
• accept it, and finally get along with my own imperfections as they are too parts of me.

I liked these photoes too, but I found it also works nice if you extrapolate it to humans, to history, to nature, to the universe. How these little weird details make us remember things and adore objects and events in some way. It’s like pre-LLM critique of generative AIs.

And vodka-pizza-mattress can feel a bit personal too because it all carries a mark of a being living there and inviting you to see this part of their life when they are vulnerable, idk.

I really like this concept and when I put an all new hardwood flooring in my living room, and I was very precise and careful, and then there’s this one little piece I had to make fit, and I cut against grain, so that the entire floor fit perfectly and the grain was traveling in the same direction except for this one little piece in the corner around a door frame, 1 by 2 in, where the grain traveled perpendicular to all the other grain in the room.

that’s how I wabi-sabi’d my living room.