Day 4459: Zen Garden's Meditative Patterns & a Hmmm

"Time to ...": junk collage & acrylic

  

Want music?

    

Click:  Rose Royce,  Car Wash

  

 

2GN2S

Zen Gardens & Meditative Patterns

In this crazy world, the patterned zen gardens composed by Yuki Kawae are an antidote to today’s seemingly endless anxieties.The Bay Area designer records meditative footage of wide-toothed prongs and dense rakes that scrape across beds of white sand, creating intersecting loops, fractals, and other organic shapes. Each clip is evidence of Kawae’s steady hand a penchant for precision as he carefully plows the otherwise smooth grains to form clean lines.

His practice dates back to 2019 when gardening served as an 

escape from life pressures and the anxiety-provoking nature of social media. “I was quite overwhelmed with day-to-day tasks and what are the ‘expected’ next steps in life…One day, I realized all of those thoughts were completely gone when I was gardening, pruning, watering, and re-potting the soil. That process let me be clear-minded somehow, and it was very calming and refreshing,” he writes.  Because he didn’t have space for a larger outdoor plot, he shifted to a coffee-table-sized zen garden, an initial design provided a similar reprieve when it pops into the feeds of Kawae’s huge followings onYouTube  and Instagram.

Although Kawae’s works have been limited to digital platforms so far, he envisions a large-scale botanical space with greenery, zen gardens, and his abstract paintings, some of which form the backdrop for his videos. He also has a background in woodworking and shares detailed instructions for creating your own sand space, from building the enclosure to choosing rakes. 

 A 23 minute video, here. 

a "Hmmm"?

Every year, throngs of monarch butterflies arrive in Mexico in glimmering clouds of orange wings. Their migration occurs at the same time as the Dia de Los Muertos celebration in early November and inspires the ancient belief that the butterflies are souls of dead ancestors returning for an earthly visit. If you’re like me, you may at first be tempted to separate the belief from the reality; that in modern times we now understand that the butterflies are following their usual path of winter migration from northern parts of North America. But how is the reality any less magical, or meaningful, than the belief? Think about it: Billions of butterflies, every year, take the same journey across the sky, following by intuition an invisible path whose course was etched ages ago by earthly conditions we can barely comprehend. This pattern is so regular that it has influenced human culture, forging a link between this world and something more. What word is there for that, other than magic? Science, maybe, but why can’t it be both? Something spiritual, maybe — why can’t it be all three? 

A.J. Willingham

 

  

 

A 4+ minute video, Bowerbird Performance,  here

 

 

 

  

 

Just because ...

 

white-winged dove

 

 

Sunday's Smiles ...