One of the sweetest feelings one can experience is coming across something surprisingly beautiful that was completely unexpected. Maybe walking through the woods and coming upon a wild red fox walking unsuspectingly across your path or looking through a nursery for bonsai material and finding something that stops you in your path as exhibiting potential for a beautiful creation.
About 6 or 7 years ago, Kunio Kobayashi was giving a talk at a California bonsai convention and spoke of a Japanese concept called ‘Kai Kou’. It refers to an ‘unexpected encounter’ or ‘crossing paths’. I have adopted this term as my bonsai philosophy (and use it on my bonsai card kai kou bonsai). At its best, bonsai opens my eyes to the beauty of nature and is an avenue to ‘cross paths’ with beautiful trees and wonderful people in bonsai. If you’ve studied philosophy at all, you know of Martin Buber’s ‘I and Thou’ philosophy in which he describes the nature of our relationship with the world as ‘subject to subject’ and not ‘subject to object’. Basically we are not separate from others or the natural world but are connected to each other. To extend this thinking further, we need to respect and be open to those around us (and the natural world) – to learn new things, experience beauty and wonder, etc. When our eyes are open to the many ‘surprises’ around us (eg. as exhibited in a bonsai), we will have many wonderful unexpected encounters of beauty and hopefully create many beautiful bonsai for others to enjoy.
October 9, 2007
Kai Kou
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Good Day John,
Thanks again for a couple of fine events of inspired conversation. Saturday at NBG with Bill was wonderful and the white pines were beautiful. Last night at the Cape Cod Bonsai Club meeting was once again enjoyable listening to you and your experiences with Shimpaku and Black Pine. Your self-enlightenment regarding the pursuit of mastering one species has seriously struck a chord with regards to my own collection and interests. I look forward to many more conversations about this.
Charles
Comment by Charles Orr — May 13, 2008 @ 12:14 pm
This bonsai growing season has been one of my best in many years of managing my collection. With an abundance of rain early the trees were well watered even when I wasn’t on top of it. I’ve tried propogating from seed two new spieces for me; Wisteria and Black Pine. I found that keeping them in straight potting soil and not tranplanting them in bonsai soil this summer has proven to be more successful. I will transplant them in the spring. I started the black pines late when I found a new seed source at the Dallas Bonsai website. Most of the seeds were viable but less than half made it to seedlings. I’m looking forward to getting a full year of growth next year on both of these sets of trees.
Comment by Charles Orr — September 6, 2008 @ 8:20 pm