The fire of oak logs The fire of oak logs which burned day and night for six months became the focal point of our family life. ...It is inevitable that the English word "home" cannot be translated directly into French. The nearest equivalent in French is the word foyer, the hearth. Lawrence Wylie, Village in the Vaucluse Thermal Delight in Architecture homefirefamilylanguage
The Abode of the Unsymmetrical The decoration of our classical interiors was decidedly regular in its arrangement. The Taoist and Zen conception of perfection, however, was different. The dynamic nature of their philosophy laid more stress upon the process through which perfection was sought than upon perfection itself. True beauty could be discovered only by one who mentally completed the incomplete. The virility of life and art lay in its possibilities for growth. In the tea room it is left for each guest in imagination to complete the total effect in relation to himself. Since Zennism has become the prevailing mode of thought, the art of the extreme Orient has purposely avoided the symmetrical as expressing not only completion, but repetition. Okakura Kakuzō, The Book of Tea Beauty and compression perfectionbeauty