2020
I was mesmerized by this book set in my home town of Pittsburgh, PA-- even though I do not like think of women getting raped here. What I liked best was the author's message. Sometimes you don't perhaps get the full justice you deserve but sometimes you get enough to fill in the cracks.
pg. 267-8 “… three Chinese vases in the university’s Fitzwilliam museum were shattered…the vases have since been reassembled and I made a point of trying to find the thin lines where the pieces had been glued back together. The restorers had done a wonderful job of linking those hundred of shards back into their original forms, and [I} had to squint and put [my] face right up to the vases to find any traces of the breaks at all.
This reminds me of what a friend has advised me. She asked how often I used to think about 1992 before last years' arrest. I answered with a manageable and far-less distracting frequency that has been for this prosecution year. She then said: That’s where we need to help you get back to. It’s a kind thought, and probably a wise one…but I bristled. I don’t think I am doing anything wrong to be thinking a lot about what’s happened.
Ten days after my return from Pittsburgh, I find a more comfortable goal, through a chat with a stranger… This man is is a restorer, specializing in kintsugi, a Japanese method of fixing broken ceramics. Unlike the restorers at the Fitzwilliam, who smoothly hid the lines where the shards were joined, practitioners of this method highlight the repair lines with gold, admitting to the object’s experience as part of its presentation, and of its changing, growing, aging beauty.”
This is not the first time I have stumbled upon the Japanese practice of repairing broken pottery with a mixture of gold and glue known as Kintsugi. It was included in the storyline of Behind Every Lie by Christina McDonald. Read my full length review that book here.
I naturally wanted to know more and to see examples so I took to Wikipedia and this is what I discovered.
Kintsugi is the art of embracing damage, it treats breakage as part of an object’s history and not as something to disguise. In Japan it is both a practice and a philosophy, a way of thinking.
Kintsugi is itself a meld of several philosophies such as Wabi Sabi, Mushin, and Zen—all practices that embrace flaws, imperfections, equanimity, and the beauty of broken things.
Over the course of a human existence one inevitably encounters bad breaks, broken hearts, broken promises, and broken dreams an allegory that could not be seen more clearly than in the shattering breaks that ceramic ware often experiences during its existence.
Kintsugi— to my mind is a perfect way to express this concept as it applies to the human psyche.
In Behind Every Lie--through Eva, Ms. McDonald tells us that Kat had a favorite saying:
We can be strong and brave and broken and whole all at the same time.
A person can continue to look back making the choice to remain shattered or a person can look forward and create a beautiful future— something whole out of the broken pieces.
Comments powered by CComment