Everything Girl

As a recovered sales and marketing executive I prefer to call my life-long avocation in antiques turned profession - saving the destiny of a trash pile. Although I never really felt comfortable driving around on trash days (okay, yes, I have done this); I prefer auction bargain hunting and often would wait until the end of the auction after the more desirable items sell.

The auctioneer was invariably is running late and this is when he would begin to pile many items together. I was well rewarded. The cliché that “one man’s trash is another’s treasure” is true – I filled my barn, outbuildings and house, and eventually led to what I discovered was a wabi sabi way of life.
Architect Tadao Ando says that wabi sabi “celebrates cracks and crevices and all the other marks that time, weather, and loving use leave behind.” For me, wabi sabi is finding beauty in the light and shadows cast upon weathered and worn objects. It is a mood I get when I touch the warm patina of a surface’s age because it reminds me of a place full of life, beauty, and tranquility, such as an old 1920’s bushel basket that I found.
The bail handle is of sturdy iron and has a wooden turned grip that is well worn by being carried in someone’s hands. The sage green paint is washed into the weaving. Someone cut strips of printed newspaper tin used by roller presses and overlapped the exterior of the basket to cover the holes. The metal stories tell of life in the southern town of Winston-Salem, North Carolina during the 1960’s. This is the perfect example of a wabi sabi item; there is a new use for the basket because it is now a work of art, at least in my professional opinion.

I love the sound of the words wabi sabi as they roll off my tongue almost as much as I love what they refer to — something that is imperfect, has outlived its initial intended life and subsequently has been transformed for a new use. This is why I am a wabi sabi person because I can’t bear the thought of throwing away anything (except for the piles of trash in my daughters’ rooms and my pets’ litter remains).

The saying that nothing lasts forever is true, and I am close to an age when I may have outlived many of the purposes I once set my mind on doing. Belly dancing and marathon running are dreams of the past. However, my life is in a constant state of flux and I often veer from the course how any given day may have begun. Subsequently, I surround myself with constant reminders that though I may be impermanent in this world, I can change an object’s fate. For instance, I have a favorite dress that is made of worn denim of unknown origin and dress material from the mid 1800’s.

The dress isn’t really a dress because the denim was redesigned into a bib overall top and attached to a long skirt. I had it made when I traded my designer business suits for more casual attire. The suits have finally been removed from the back of my closet and are now lying in state in cedar and mothball-strewn containers. It’s not that these outfits have any meaning for me or that I am saving them for any purpose; the suits are just the last remainders of a lifestyle I have no wish to return to. I keep them because someday I may find their style appealing, or remake them into a new look.

Something I am contemplating doing with the next me, when my face begins to show the cracks and crevices of time. Well, maybe my face already does, it’s just as the crevices get deeper I have begun to realize that they are medals of my youth and I should wear them proudly. I earned them, I learned them, and they are reminders of the flux that my life has woven. I accept that I am imperfect and still processing through a natural progression of life. But most of all, I am loved because my family says so — therefore I am Wabi Sabi.

Bev Hamel is a recovered corporate executive and now owns and operates an antique shop in the tiny Historic and National Landmark town of Bethania, North Carolina. She lives above the shop with her husband, two girls, three cats, a Scottish Terrier, and Yorkie Puppy in training. The shop is actually a front for her writing and teaching endeavors. She is a freelance writer and has published short stories, creative nonfiction, essays, poetry, local newspaper articles and was editor for an area women’s magazine. Bev has just completed her MFA at Goddard College and her first fiction novel Daughter of the Seven Fires and is busily working on 2nd, 3rd, and 4th.

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