#50 Imaginary garden & calligraphy
Oh hello! It’s the 50th edition of this newsletter! How have you been?
I recently saw some sheep not too far from where I live. The small farm (or meadow?) is open to the public to do some sheep-watching. The sheep with their lambs were chewing and meh-ing in an almost human-like voice. All of them were slowly following each other. But there were a couple of them who couldn’t let go of their preferred grass patch. The tiny lambs with their pink noses followed their mothers around as they couldn’t decide which grass was better for them or if it was time to drink some water.
It has been extremely windy lately and sometimes you can barely walk but at least it has gotten warmer. I went to a “Japanese Calligraphy” workshop yesterday. They made us write the word “printemps” / “spring” and my name on the left side. You sit with your back straight, two fists away from the table. You hold your brush at 90 degrees and write the characters in single strokes, keeping in mind the pressure and the angle at which you touch the paper. The tail of my character is a bit bushy but so it goes when you’re a beginner. You have to pay attention to the white spaces and make sure the character fits within a square. Mine doesn’t really check the boxes but the stark black and red are so striking that I felt that it was worth sharing. I didn’t know much about this art form earlier but it is supposed to be a meditation and you practise it in silence. At the beginning I didn’t understand what the deal was behind the ‘technique’ and the ‘process’ of writing these characters but now I am a little bit wiser. There was an old Japanese man, probably in his mid-70s who was doing this for the first time with us. He said he used to criticise his grandkids’ calligraphy but he now realises how hard it is and felt humbled.
Tell me what’s going on with you? More later (:
Have a great Sunday!
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