Discoveries: Arts and Culture

 Chabona : evokes Nature.   Remove the human hand what remains is “heart” .  Unaffected, sincere.  Utensils, environment, and relations between host and guest should reflect this.  " Ikebana reflects "Heaven" and Man, is organized and disciplined and regulated. Both derive from Buddhist practice: Light, Fragrance and Flowers . Three Styles: SHIN:  Classic.  (Formal) First Choose Flowers, then vase. Only use one stem, possibly a secondary one. Create substantial presence and verticality.   Chinese style: Bronze, Celadon, Kochi Red and Gold.  Symmetrical, Decorative ears.  Elegant.  "Crane's neck". GYO    (Semi formal) Individuality.    Flowers: Lean and quiet.  Japanese glazed ceramics, slightly irregular.   Raku wares.    Vase should support flowers but not draw attention to itself, but still be interesting.   Angle slightly and be angular....

I am blessed with seeing the most beautiful large red and dark blue dragonflies on my daily walk through the adjacent park around its little lagoon or pond where a pair of mallard ducks dip for food, and occasionally, early morning, a grey heron appears.  This poem which I had clipped from the NYT floated up from a notebook page, today: After the Dragonflies by W.S. Merwin . Dragonflies were as common as sunlight hovering in their own days backward forward and sideways as though they were memory now there are grown-ups hurring who never saw one and do not know what they  are not seeing the veins in a dragonfly's wings were made of light the veins in the leaves knew them and the flowing rivers the dragonflies came out of the color of water knowing their own way  when we appeared in their eyes we were strangers they took their light with them when they went there will be no one to remember us.  Bill Merwin is in his late 80.s as he heads into...