Thanks very much again to Paul for this next instalment of his wonderful guest post series.
You can find all of the 'Filohax' posts here. There is an index of all the previous filohax posts here.
The perfection of imperfection
A member posted recently about protecting their card dividers by laminating them and this got me thinking about the Japanese art of 'Wabi-Sabi' - the acceptance of transience and imperfection.
I think I can call myself a student of Wabi-Sabi as the favourite Filofax from my collection is the one in the most advanced stage of disrepair - a really lived in and beaten black Winchester Ostrich.
On the other end of the condition spectrum, there is currently a pristine condition black Winchester Ostrich for sale for a thousand pounds on an online auction site , but personally I would be horrified to own it, for fear of accidentally landing the inaugural blow that deflowered it!
And why wouldn't we want to actually use a binder in real life anyway? Their very existence is to shield the paper contents and the information within from 'wear and tear'. To keep them locked away in a drawer or sitting idle on a shelf is to deny them their reason to exist...
Anyway, is not the word 'imperfection' a lot less stressy than 'perfection', with all of the attendant impossible standards to keep up with!?
Or is it 'change' that we really fear when we see our binders (and card dividers/ inserts!) becoming degraded?
When you start from the only logical position that exists - that the whole Universe is in a state of flux - then the pressure lifts and the focus moves to the contents of the binder/inserts, the ideas, opinions, art that the physical object aims to contain and protect.
And then you find something magical happens - one day you see the scuffed leather with the scratches and indentations, the dog eared and worn round corners of inserts carried lovingly over months and years - made by not only your own life but maybe even previous owners lives, and instead of imperfection you see the perfection...
