As I briefly mentioned in my previous post in September 2023 this low key littoral zone project, with its grounding in Japanese aesthetics, went into a hiatus in 2023. The basic understanding that I had been working with up to that point was that a central tenet of Japanese aesthetics is the transience or impermanence of life with its sorrow for the loss of transient things. The relevant concept is mono no aware.
The close-up or macro picture of seaweed is from the 2022 archives. It was made before we got Maya, our standard poodle pup, who arrived in February, 2023.
After Maya came the hiatus in the littoral zone project took the form of the project grounding to a halt. I only walked along the coastal rocks between Petrel Cove and Kings Beach infrequently for most of 2023. What I lost in this period was the ritual of daily walking the path across the rocks with its mediative processes that focuses on the presence of things, the moment of now.
There were multiple reasons for staying away from the rocks along the coast. It was probably a mixture of reasons --- such as Maya when she was a puppy, the rugged weather conditions (the frequent rain and strong coastal winds), and my concentrating on seascapes. I realized that I wasn't open to what was around me when I was walking -- I wasn't aware of of the light of the sun and the forms and patterns of the shadows that soften everything --- as I was too busy keeping an eye on Maya I missed the nuances of perception in the shadows which are not permanent.
