My newsletter is named after a traditional Jewish blessing upon encountering the majesty of a large body of water: “Blessed are you, our eternal G-d, Ruler of the Universe, who made the great sea.” BTS is a free, monthly publication which shares Jewish and non-Jewish approaches to mindful, contemplative living. Some come from from spiritual teachings from the past and the present; others from my Zen practice and Jewish faith. Included here are also some of my own news as well. BTS is a conversation, and I enjoy hearing from and responding to the readers.
Fragments matter. Shards matter because shards are really painful. [With kintsugi] you can show where damage occurred. . . I make things and try to understand what these objects actually mean.
— Edmund de Waal, British ceramicist and writer
Kintsugi is a centuries-old Japanese art form of repairing broken pottery pieces by filling cracks with gold. Earlier this month, I went to an exhibit at the Japanese American Cultural Center in LA’s Little Tokyo neighborhood to see a variety of contemporary and traditional works from around the world employing kintsugi techniques.*
Seeing a kintsugi piece in person stops you in your tracks. It’s not something you can glance at and move on.
(Right: “Inner Child I” by Christen Austin.)
A restored piece becomes a rich, visual metaphor for the trauma that occurred to it.
Complementing the exhibit was a talk by Edmund de Waal, a modern British artist greatly interested in kintsugi. The piece you see at the top of the page is a Meissen porcelain plate from the collection of von Klemperers – a Jewish family, from whom it was taken, or more appropriately, stolen by the Nazis in 1938 and damaged during the Allied bombing of Dresden in 1945.
De Waal purchased the shattered fragments at an auction and asked the artist Maiko Tsutsumi to mend them with gold kintsugi to make a work of art about memory and loss.
I came to the event not because I am a great connoisseur of ceramics but because of de Waal’s enthralling memoir The Hare with Amber Eyes, which influenced me deeply when I first read it in the 2010s.
In his book, through objects and research, de Waal uncovers and restores the history of his Jewish family, split across countries and continents (much like mine), shaped by the world events, but also decimated by them. A literary form of kintsugi, I guess.
As you know from my memoir A Family, Maybe, but also my other writing, loss, memory, transformation, and identity matter to me greatly when telling a personal story.
A few notable things happened in the last few weeks related to my own writing:
Los Angeles City College’s annual glossy magazine Collegian Times dedicated the centerfold to my adoptive Dad journey, but also highlighted the connection between my immigrant past and teaching English to immigrant students.
At the event, I shared successful strategies for debut authors, drawing on my 3-year media and event promotion campaign for A Family, Maybe. We had to stay way past the allotted timeslot to answer quesions!
A couple of podcasts recorded earlier popped up on my radar:
A fulfilling conversation with Avik Chakraborty on his podcast featuring “real stories from humans who’ve walked through something and come back with something worth sharing” as well as a one-hour episode on the seasoned podcaster Ron Rapaport’s show “It’s a Wrap with Rap.”
Something else from Edmund de Waal’s talk resonated with me: “The world seems to be getting faster and faster,” he said, “but the real things I want to do seem to be getting slower and slower.”
Exactly the thought I’ve been having over the High Holidays this year. One year has irrevocably ended, and yet another one is beginning.
What am I going to with this new beginning? What will I write into it? What are the real things that I really need to engage with or accomplish?
I’ll leave you with that. May this year bring you joy, and comfort, and fresh beginnings!
–Lane
* If you are in LA, you can visit the exhibit through October 18.
