Rock garden at the Japanese Friendship Gardes, San Diego. Felt Tip on paper. March 22, 2011.
Ink on paper. March 22, 2011.
Felt tip on paper. March 22, 2011.
Yesterday I stopped at one of my favorite places in this gorgeous if somewhat superficial town of ours: The Japanese Friendship Garden within Balboa Park.
I always find serenity among the bonsai trees, looking at the way the light hits the vegetation around the koi pond.
This is a place for thinking, for letting go. A graceful ensemble of rocks, the shocking simplicity and beauty of it all, envelops the visitor/pilgrim.
I went with a thankful heart, I left with a sense of tender quiet. A prayer to the Japanese people, creators of so much beauty, minimal living, essential design.
First you are bent on acquiring, then the work becomes about reducing to the essential and letting go.
I saw this beautiful book and decided I wanted to take it home with me.
Japanese Garden Design by Marc P. Keane.
From the foreword by Preston L. Houser:
‘Tourists are insatiable creatures. There are basically two kinds, pilgrims and shoppers, and, in their mobile element, they assiduosly seek and devour.
Literally thousands of tourists visit Kyoto every day from different parts of Japan as well as from the far corners of the globe, and they mostly visit temples
and gardens- sacred places. The pilgrims come to gain a sense of artistic heritage which will expand and enrich their cultural identities. They temporarily
occupy spaces that artisans, aristocrats, and Zen masters of prior ages have occupied as if, by sharing the same “view”, a more enlightened perspective of the soul
and the world will be achieved. For the shoppers, on the other hand, petraveling is a kind of consumption, called “doing”, such as doing New York, or doing the Louvre, as if cultures can be done as one would do an amusement park or shopping mall–profane places. The shoppers seem to revel in the hollowness of such misadventure, and their proclamation of experience invariably betrays an exaggerated sense of mal de siecle: “Been there, done that.”
Most tourists who come to Kyoto, however, are pilgrims. For them, the rewards of travel are more profound than simply being there and doing that-or so they would prefer to think.
In the spirit of a geography of the soul (peoples as places), how do we treat the people we encounter? Are we shoppers of people, or pilgrims of people?
Votive. Japanese Friendship Garden in Balboa Park, San Diego. March 22, 2011.
Bonsai. Japanese Friendship Garden in Balboa Park, San Diego. March 22, 2011.
Pathway. Japanese Friendship Garden in Balboa Park, San Diego. March 22, 2011.
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Beautiful piece, Miti, and very true!
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Suz…thankyou!!
I didn’t know you started blogging!! love the title and will follow…architecture and aural experiences….fantastic. I do want to incorporate music in my history of arch class!!
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