A kintsugi-repaired artifact is what it is because of -- not in spite of -- its fissures. And it is this that takes the art beyond the technicalities of ceramic repair, lending it the metaphorical power to describe the human condition. We have all been broken at some point. And the essence of who we are is not located in some flawless image we might present, but along the fault-lines of our biographies.
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Strange Stones by Peter Hessler
THE CHINESE LANGUAGE has a way of transforming the familiar into the off-kilter. A location like Wyoming, for example, mutates into Wai Er Ming. The line between the uncommon and the mundane is easily breached when languages, cultures, and peoples collide. And it is these transgressions that tie together the wide-ranging chapters of Strange Stones:…
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