In Japanese aesthetics, the phrase “mono no aware” means “the poignancy of things.” The photograph (of part of our garden) represents this sentiment. Nothing is contrived, set, posed, overstated, exaggerated, or intrusive–nature found as it is. The creatures hold their beauty naturally: Monarch butterfly and echinacea flower, two of nature’s most beautiful creatures. At that moment of apprehending beauty we also realize vulnerability, which is intrinsic to the reality of the creatures. This vulnerability is itself their evanescence (not yet realized).
And this is the poignancy of the fortuitous moment of the photograph. The poignancy of things is the beauty, the vulnerability, and the evanescence. The next day, the flower dessicates, its petals fall, the stalk bends, and the butterfly does not return to the garden.
We can further understand aesthetic components: wabi, sabi, and yugen. Wabi is the starkness of the moment’s reality. Striking, exciting, breathtaking, surprise at being present. Wabi is the solitude character of the moment, nothing intruding, enhancing or contriving a more companionable or acceptable projection of awareness. A moment that needs nothing, no articulation, no description. Sabi reflecting the simplicity of elements, the natural appearance of butterfly and flower, the shape, color, light, none of it contrived, all trembling in a convergence brought into being, before our sight, as if just for oneself. Yet the present is laden with our realization that the moment cannot last, even before us, that it cannot last, that we must or will move on. Finally, yugen is the fact (“facticity”) of this total convergence of nature and reality, a moment to be not simply apprehended, comprehended, taken in, awed by, but from which we can learn the very heart of things.
Late Summer moment
