Flower Sacrifice

My favourite passage in The Book of Tea by Okakura Kakuzo is an anecdote about the appreciation of flowers.

Flower stories are endless. We shall recount but one more. In the sixteenth-century the morning-glory was as yet a rare plant with us. Rikiu had an entire garden planted with it, which he cultivated with assiduous care. The fame of his convolvuli reached the ear of the Taiko, and he expressed a desire to see them, in consequence of which Rikiu invited him to a morning tea at his house. On the appointed day the Taiko walked through the garden, but nowhere could he see any vestige of the convulvus. The ground had been leveled and strewn with fine pebbles and sand. With sullen anger the despot entered the tea-room, but a sight waited him there which completely restored his humour. On the tokonoma, in a rare bronze of Sung workmanship, lay a single morning-glory — the queen of the whole garden!

I have fondly traded in paraphrases of this excellent story. However, it is only upon copying it out here that I realized that the generic "flower" of my tellings is actually species-specific. It adds a note of poignancy to realize that the morning-glory does not flourish as a cut flower. As Okakura continues: "In such instances we see the full significance of the Flower Sacrifice."

And so for day 1886
11.02.2012

Beasts and the Nature of Prayer

Robert Bringhurst

A typographic mind is just as alert to the invisible as to the visible. It is a mind with at least four feet: one in the visual, one in the manual, one in the lingual and one in the logical. Each of these feet has several toes: abstract, tactile, aural. Crickets, as you may know, have taste buds in their toes and ears in their front kneecaps. Typographers are equally bizarre. Their ears are in their eyes; their tongues are in their hands. It is their fingers more than their lips that constantly threaten to move as they read.

[...]

In simple terms, what drives the typographer is the existence of something to say. Or of something that speaks, if you like to put it that way. Typography is the sound of one hand speaking, vivid in the mind's eye, vivid in the mind's ear, and silent as a prayer.

The Typographic Mind issued as The Devil's Whim No. 16 by Gaspereau Press in 2006.

A typographer's prayer is of course addressed to the reader. And a pamphlet is an old form for a new idea — the hybrid sensory-swapping mind. What is here at play in world of typography reminds me of architectural renewals such at the Gladstone Hotel which has produced a nice postcard quoting Jane Jacobs (beautiful but marred by an unmodest claim of "Only at the Gladstone"): Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.

Consider silent prayer as idea-building as four-footed as the beasts of the typographic imagination.

And so for day 1198
25.03.2010

Shinkichi Takahashi

Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto chose to conclude The Penguin Book of Zen Poetry with selections from the poetry of Shinkichi Takahashi. The concluding poem is jaunty in tone.

ABSENCE

Just say, 'He's out' —

back in

five billion years!

This ending poem reminds me of the beginning of an other, "SEA OF OBLIVION".

Future, past, the sea

of oblivion,

with present capsized

The representation of time present as a shipwreck resonates nicely with eons long cycles.

And so for day 629
02.09.2008