What is Wabi Sabi?

It's Friday night, maybe Saturday morning now, and I've just been playing Guitar Hero in my upstairs den -- by myself. I've moved to level "Hard", but I can't seem to get 5 stars on anything. I've played "The Seeker" about 138 times and sure enough, 4 stars again.

This afternoon, I was in yoga class. Cammie, the yoga teacher, reminded us again that yoga is a practice. Something gradual and meant to progress. There is no ultimate goal, really, unless you count Samadhi, which you easily could. It's hard to discount, and maybe even ignorant.

Either way, Guitar Hero and yoga aren't so different for me. I am, by nature, a very non-competitive person, and both of these activities produce an intense concentration, almost meditative, in me. I suppose I'm dramatizing a video guitar game a little too much, but studies remind us it's healthy to play.

I've never minded playing alone, and in many ways, it's a perfect way to play. Maybe that's why I've never been competitive. A few weeks ago, however, my friend Jay Kalk came to town to visit just me. He is a musician and producer and lives in Hawaii, but I met him as an undergrad in '93. He was one of my best friends the year I read Kerouac for the first time. Jay had a car and a willingness for mindless adventure, so he and I spent a lot of time in his VW Golf, in coffee shops, in our dorm rooms staying up until morning, wandering Moorhead, house party to house party. He was with me the first time I avoided getting busted by the cops at a party, and he helped us find a way to sneak out some convoluted back-route. When I was stranded at some far-off, off-campus house at 4AM, he left the house of a girl he had a crush on to pick me up. In short, he was a good friend to me when I needed a good friend. And he's still my friend, though we hardly ever see one another anymore. We write the occasional email, but until he visited a few weeks ago, it had been at least 7 years since I'd had the chance to sit with him, drink a Guiness, and examine the places we've come. While he was here, we played Guitar Hero in my upstairs den, late on Friday night, maybe Saturday morning.

Yes, we were playing Guitar Hero, and yes, we were playing Rage Against the Machine. Yes, I had the surround sound on loud. Yes, we'd had a few drinks. But more than anything, we were playing, playing hard. Jay kicked his leg in the air like David Lee Roth and screamed, "We're gonna rock this, Crout!" (he calls me Crout -- some variation and abbreviation for my maiden name, "Grotberg"). He threw me the horns, and I threw them back. We hollored out some bad vocals for effect, sang syllables during the drum fills. When we wrapped up the last song, we sat on the couch and wiped our collective brow. I made him a bed on the couch with three quilts and in the morning, I dropped him off in Alexandria.

In case you're not familiar, Wabi Sabi is a japanese aesthetic, which celebrates imperfection. A potter might create wabi sabi art. For example, she could shape a cup unevenly, on purpose. Wabi Sabi might be reflected in the scratch your friend made in your brand new table the first time you threw a dinner party. The scratch is not something that has harmed the table or made it less valuable. The scratch enriches the table, as it now contains the memory of the time you spent with your friend.

When I was playing Guitar Hero tonight, I felt a kind of scratch in the air of the upstairs den. I guess I hadn't been in the room since the last game Jay and I had played. Two empty beer bottles still sat on the table. I wished he were still there, but more than that, I was happy to just remember.