Thoughts on letting go
1. From Ross Gay’s poem ‘to the mistake’, which is in his collection catalog of unabashed gratitude. “I am lecturing on the miracle of the mistake in a poem that hiccup or weird gift that spirals or jettisons what’s dull and land-locked into as yet untraversed i.e. cosmic” This made me think of wabi sabi. “Wabi sabi embodies the Zen nihilist cosmic view and seeks beauty in the imperfections found as all things, in a constant state of flux, evolve from nothing and devolve back to nothing.” (Andrew Juniper in his book Wabi Sabi: The Japanese Art of Impermanence.) I crafted a neat little poem for my second book while thinking of wabi sabi. It was too neat, it talks about letting things go, and making it rough and all that, but it’s precisely laid out with every little word in place. I put it at the beginning of the book because I hope the ones that follow it will do something else, something more. 2. Living between places is antithetical to hoarding. I’m a collector of spices, yarn, books, vintage jars and bottles. I have spices I will never use. I will not finish my stash of yarn before I leave. An