Category: Uncategorized

or rather, it’s zen …when it comes to Marie Kondo method:

She proposes a similarly agreeable technique for hanging clothing. Hang up anything that looks happier hung up, and arrange like with like, working from left to right, with dark, heavy clothing on the left: “Clothes, like people, can relax more freely when in the company of others who are very similar in type, and therefore organizing them by category helps them feel more comfortable and secure.”

Such anthropomorphism and nondualism, so familiar in Japanese culture, as Leonard Koren, a design theorist who has written extensively on Japanese aesthetics, told me recently, was an epiphany to this Westerner. In Japan, a hyper-awareness, even reverence, for objects is a rational response to geography, said Mr. Koren, who spent 10 years there and is the author of “Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers.”

“Think of the kimono, and the tradition of folding,” he said. “There is also the furoshiki, which is basically a square of flat cloth used daily to wrap packages. Folding is deep and pervasive in Japanese culture. Folding is a key strategy of modular systems that have evolved because of limited living space.”

He added:

“More spiritually, the idea of non-dualism is a relationship to reality that proposes that everything is inextricably connected and alive, even inanimate objects. If we are compassionate and respectful to everything that exists, then we would have to be compassionate about the socks in the drawer that aren’t folded properly.”

No wonder I love restorative yoga – folding the blankets! (but not socks!!) And Judith is definitely quite a “crazy fanatic” about that with all her “how-to’s” – it resonates …

Rather amazing … it merges right into my homework assignment I am struggling with – “Application of one of the Mahavakyas in yoga therapy” as I ponder on The Upanishads.

For all hoarders … it’s a festival time!
I need Marie – “crazy tidying fanatic” – home to give me a lesson:)
Better yet, wish she just move in and rid of things and organize while
I take care of her baby<3 Really wonder how this baby will grow up, having a self- proclaimed "tidying freak" as a mother. Thank you Judith for a great book for our reading list. "Life changing Magic of Tidying Up" by Marie Kondo. Here's her recent talk given at Google from UTUBE - searched on ... google:) Click Here:)
or
Here’s Wall Street Journal article that summarizes well even though you have to sit through an ad.

“. . . her voice . . . is by turns stern and enchanted,
like a fairy godmother for socks.”

— The Wall Street Journal

“[It is] enough to salute Kondo for her recognition of something quietly profound: that mess is often about unhappiness,
and that the right kind of tidying can be a kind of psychotherapy for the home as well as for the people in it . . .
Its strength is its simplicity.”

— The London Times

& guess what – Sighing is GOOD FOR YOU:) Who would have thought?

ONE HUNDRED LOVE SONNETS: XVII

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as one loves certain obscure things,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries
the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,
and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose
from the earth lives dimly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you directly without problems or pride:
I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,
except in this form in which I am not nor are you,
so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,
so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

– Pablo Neruda,

“One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII” from The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems
TRANSLATED BY MARK EISNER

Just read somewhere – Valentines Day is not just for lovers but for all who love – and that’s ALL of us. In that respect, everyday is a Valentines Day.
It’s Everyday since
Love, like religion requires faith and …practice:)
Rose named “Precious Moment” grown in Miyagi prefecture, Japan.