Discipline - The Body

"I wanted more than anything," says Sayuri in the novel  Memoirs of a Geisha, "to see the smooth skin of his face once more with its broad brow, and the eyelids like sheaths of marble over his gentle eyes...  I did finally let my eyes flick upward, though I blushed and looked away so quickly that he may never have known I met his gaze.  But how can I describe what I saw in that instant?  He was looking at me as a musician might look at his instrument just before he begins to play, with understanding and mastery.  I felt that he could see into me as though I were a part of him.  How I would have loved to be the instrument he played!"   This quotation is among my very favorites in the book.  It speaks in but a few lines what it takes me pages and pages of this blog to articulate.  It speaks from "my" point of view, the way that I see You (when You come to me, finally, wherever and whoever You are).
I enclose a picture here of some of my preferred musical instruments in Second Life: a lute created by Grey Kurka among the best crafted builds I've yet come across.  There is only one song ("Greensleeves") -- and when I say "only" I say it with the due reverence and awe that there is any music at all emerging from the collection of prims that performs its artistic beauty -- but it's nicely done.  There are other lutes with still more collections of songs in the world, but none that look like this.  And the two hanging shamizen built by Kahiro Watanabe are just a sample of what this music-maker has created in the world of Japanese instruments.  Kahiro's talent is extreme and perfect.  The music soothes exactly the ache that the soul requires when it craves music.

The technical perfection required of an instrument -- nevermind the player of the instrument -- is an expectation that goes without saying.  When I put a flute to my lips, the wind-pipe must be perfect.  The sound that results will be the perfect result of my mastery of the instrument.  My perfect mastery of the flute will not yield pleasing music if the flute, itself, is badly flawed.  Conversely, if the flute is perfectly-crafted and maintained, the sound will be off if the mastery of the instrument is incomplete.  So it is with my body and Your mastering, when You come.  In the novel Memoirs of a Geisha, Sayuri makes a point of saying that the Japanese value imperfection insofar as a hand-thrown cup is of more value (emotionally, meaningfully) than a store-bought, mass-manufactured cup:  there will be slight imperfections to the hand-thrown cup, and those imperfections contain the character of the vessel.  (Imperfections are not flaws: a badly-flawed cup that cannot perform the duties of a cup is of no value.  But a cup whose perfection dips and ripples in interesting ways... that is character.)  Sometimes if the chip or crack is significant enough, it will be filled and healed with gold.  This is how I, too, have been trained to find beauty.
My picture of my Japanese house; stepping stones that I created; water ripples at each post and cherry blossom trees in the distance; lamps suspended from the roof and resting on the platforms.  All the straight lines in the making of this house --  all the perfect straightness -- where does such straight wood come from? The tree that becomes the straight-line beams is curved, rounded, knotted and imperfect.  The man who makes the straight beam is a wood-master.  A carpenter.  An artist.  The mastery of the body, the making of the straight beam, doesn't erase the lines and rings and character of the wood: there will always be the ripple that softens and balances.