LIVING
Daily Life
Knowing the old ways of making,
then choosing again in a shape that fits now.
Home›Daily Life
Take the bath.
A life where you can bathe at home every day
is actually still new.
A great deal of what we take for granted became ordinary only in the last few decades. This is not to say it is bad.
It is that once you see it that way, you can choose.
Detergent, dishes, cloth, cooking tools, what you put against your body, how you clean, how you put things away for the season.
You can carry on as you are, or you can change it.
Either way, knowing that another way exists comes first.
01 ／ WEAR, EAT, LIVE IN
All three are built on the same question
Tools
Choose things that last, and you buy less often.
Look at what it is made of.
Think about why you are choosing it. Know the reason.
Cloth
Wash it, mend it, use it again.
What fibre it is made of changes how you handle it. It changes the mood too.
It changes the body.
It changes how you feel.
It changes what is comfortable.
Keeping
Put it where you can see it, and you use it.
How things keep is tied to the shape of the home. The calendar, the season, how you are feeling, the surroundings ── what is around you, what you like. Find the way that is easiest for you, at that time.
Tracing
Looking for where a method came from, in old books and in what people tell you.
So that is where it came from. Why the new thing appeared. What the thing in front of me is, what the thing I use is. Knowing.
Choosing without knowing, and choosing knowing, are different ── even when the choice is the same.
02 ／ THE SEASON DECIDES
The calendar moves first
You put down plums when the plums arrive, and dry persimmons when the persimmons ripen.
Not when it suits you. The season has already decided.
So the work by hand comes back at the same time each year.
Some years you are a little better at it than last year. Some years it fails.
It does not feel like returning to the same place, but like returning one turn deeper.
In a year you cannot do it, you cannot. That is all right.
Not something to do every day, but something that comes round again every year.
SOIL
What you eat and what you put on your skin
come from the same place
03 ／ IT STARTS FROM SOIL
The outermost layer
Soybeans, rice, loquat leaves, cotton ── all of it comes out of soil.
Saying that food, skin and daily life are connected is not a figure of speech.
It means that if you trace them back, they arrive at the same place.
What is it that does not return to the soil?
Knowing that matters.
You do not have to grow all of it yourself. Most people cannot.
Only ── when you know where it came from, the choosing changes.
04 ／ ONE THING TODAY
Read the back of the detergent
you always use
What is in it.
What each thing is in there for.
If there is a name you do not know, look up just one.
Look it up, and if you think it is fine as it is, then it is fine.
Changing it is not the point. Looking, and being able to decide ── that is the point.
