Bob Marley to the rescue, again

The smoky air out here is thick, smelly, and shows no sign of going away. It poses yet another obstacle to our desire for human companionship and makes everybody sad and anxious. We worry now about the fires devastating our neighbors to the south and east, and we all wish mightily for rain.  Not only does the COVID-19 pandemic keep us from each other, we are now obliged to stay in with all the windows shut, lest we make ourselves sick by merely breathing the sooty air.  Sigh.

But we survive nonetheless; my way is to create, always to create. Sewing these bright and colorful Respect Quilts brings loving thoughts to mind and helps keep things in perspective. This will pass. Clear skies will return some day and new growth will recommence in those scorched forests. We just have to abide the present, while waiting for better times to come.

In honor of Bob Marley, whose music does so much to help us get by, each Respect Quilt will feature three squares with little birds on them. As the lyrics to Marley’s song, “Three Little Birds” go:

Rise up this mornin’

Smiled with the risin’ sun

Three little birds

Pitch by my doorstep

Singin’ sweet songs

Of melodies pure and true

Sayin’, (“This is my message to you-ou-ou:”)

Singin’: “Don’t worry ’bout a thing

‘Cause every little thing gonna be all right.”

Singin’: “Don’t worry (don’t worry) ’bout a thing

‘Cause every little thing gonna be all right!”

Music heals. Put the music on, and forget your troubles for a while!

Lyrics courtesy of Last.fm Music | Copyright © 2020 CBS Interactive Inc. / All rights reserved.

Image of Bob Marley album cover by Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15336841

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day 77, just getting by, with Mallarmé

Hi anybody,

So much turmoil and fear everywhere. Anxiety courses through my veins and it is only 9:02 am. No wisdom to share today.  Just “same as day 73, and every day since.” If I can help you, please contact me. If not, know I’m feeling the pain too. It’s a mute solidarity of misery and fear. But we can still hope for a better tomorrow. Or even a better 9:15am!  On that note, I’m going to go for a walk.  Here is a bit of poetry from Mallarmé–an excellent companion for bleak moments–to capture the angst and desire to flee from one’s own mind:

La chair est triste, hélas ! et j’ai lu tous les livres.
Fuir ! là-bas fuir! Je sens que des oiseaux sont ivres
D’être parmi l’écume inconnue et les cieux !

— “Brise marine” by Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898)

And the gorgeous translation by my friend Henry Weinfield:

Sea Breeze

The flesh is sad, alas, and there’s nothing but words!

To take flight, far off! I sense that somewhere the birds

Are drunk to be amid strange spray and skies.

— Stéphane Mallarmé, Collected Poems, trans. by Henry Weinfield (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1994, 2011), p. 21.

Yesterday’s production of face masks:

day 68, Hey Jude take this sad day and make it better

It is so wet and forbidding outside today that my thoughts stay indoors. I tried various tactics—devoured the newspapers as usual, read through emails of (upset) friends and acquaintances, browsed a few favorite books,  but it was all pointing to disappointment, anxiety, and despair. You know enough about all that.

So, I listened to “Hey Jude,” instead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_MjCqQoLLA

“And anytime you feel the pain

Hey Jude, refrain

Don’t carry the world upon your shoulders.”

***

Here’s yesterday’s face mask production:

 

***

HEY JUDE

Hey Jude, don’t make it bad
Take a sad song and make it better
Remember to let her into your heart
Then you can start to make it better

Hey Jude, don’t be afraid
You were made to go out and get her
The minute you let her under your skin
Then you begin to make it better

And anytime you feel the pain
Hey Jude, refrain
Don’t carry the world upon your shoulders
For well you know that it’s a fool
Who plays it cool
By making his world a little colder
Na-na-na, na, na
Na-na-na, na

Hey Jude, don’t let me down
You have found her, now go and get her (let it out and let it in)
Remember to let her into your heart (hey Jude)
Then you can start to make it better

So let it out and let it in
Hey Jude, begin
You’re waiting for someone to perform with
And don’t you know that it’s just you
Hey Jude, you’ll do
The movement you need is on your shoulder
Na-na-na, na, na
Na-na-na, na, yeah

Hey Jude, don’t make it bad
Take a sad song and make it better
Remember to let her under your skin
Then you’ll begin to make it better
Better better better better better, ah!

Na, na, na, na-na-na na (yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
Na-na-na na, hey Jude
Na, na, na, na-na-na na
Na-na-na na, hey Jude
Na, na, na, na-na-na na
Na-na-na na, hey Jude
Na, na, na, na-na-na na
Na-na-na na, hey Jude (Jude Jude, Judy Judy Judy Judy, ow wow!)
Na, na, na, na-na-na na (my, my, my)
Na-na-na na, hey Jude (Jude, Jude, Jude, Jude, Jude)
Na, na, na, na-na-na na (yeah, yeah, yeah)
Na-na-na na, hey Jude (yeah, you know you can make it, Jude, Jude, you’re not gonna break it)
Na, na, na, na-na-na na (don’t make it bad, Jude, take a sad song and make it better)
Na-na-na na, hey Jude (oh Jude, Jude, hey Jude, wa!)
Na, na, na, na-na-na na (oh Jude)
Na-na-na na, hey Jude (hey, hey, hey, hey)
Na, na, na, na-na-na na (hey, hey)
Na-na-na na, hey Jude (now, Jude, Jude, Jude, Jude, Jude)
Na, na, na, na-na-na na (Jude, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
Na-na-na na, hey Jude
Na, na, na, na-na-na na
Na-na-na na, hey Jude (na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na)
Na, na, na, na-na-na na
Na-na-na na, hey Jude
Na, na, na, na-na-na na
Na-na-na na, hey Jude
Na, na, na, na-na-na na (yeah, make it, Jude)
Na-na-na na, hey Jude (yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!)
Na, na, na, na-na-na na (yeah, yeah yeah, yeah! Yeah! Yeah!)
Na-na-na na, hey Jude
Na, na, na, na-na-na na
Na-na-na na, hey Jude
Na, na, na, na-na-na na
Na-na-na na, hey Jude
Na, na, na, na-na-na na
Na-na-na na, hey Jude

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: John Lennon / Paul McCartney

Hey Jude lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

day 46: local stuff

I’ve been carrying around an article ripped out of last week’s Seattle Times in my bathrobe for a few days now, and since it’s been useful to me, I’ll share the advice with you too.

It is a query from a young person wondering how to go on, in this time when perils loom large all around (environmental crisis, public health disaster, financial ruin, dashed hopes of professional work). “Be local” is the advice.
Being local, what does that mean?
The usual stuff you’d expect—volunteering, donating time and energy, connecting with neighbors. But when we’re sort of afraid of being around other people, and the officials tell us to stay inside, it is hard to muster the motivation to do all that.

So today, I just treated myself to the best that my local situation has to offer: a nice brisk solitary walk up and down a couple steep hills to get the heart pumping, some sunshine, and a visit to my favorite rock. I cleaned it off and put some new flowers on. It feels like a secret, though it’s in plain enough sight if people really looked.
Feeling strong and healthy, having a secret that I put out for others to discover, that’s enough to get me smiling again.
Before I get back to work, here’s yesterday’s mask production, for Kelly, and her bag awaiting at the Honey Girl face mask “store” in the early morning light.

Hang in there, until tomorrow at least. Maybe things will be better. One thing’s for sure, they will be just a little different from today…

day two: time for a talking goldfish, and more viral humor!

First, here’s the viral humor (we need it), brought to us from a friend in cyberspace.  (Thanks, Tom!)

Second, a good message from one of the books I love, as promised yesterday, to help us cope with this weird health crisis. The story below tells of an encounter between a typical bureaucrat and a magical, yet very anxious goldfish.

“One day, when I was walking along a road, I suddenly heard someone calling me. I looked around, but saw nobody. When I looked down, it turned out to be a carp calling me from a dried rut. I went over to it, and asked, ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’ The carp, gasping, replied, ‘I am a minister of the God of the East Sea. I was swept here by a rainstorm, and now I cannot get back. I will soon die, unless you bring me a pail of water and put me in it.’ I said, ‘Of course, I can do that. But you must wait until I persuade the sovereigns of the states of Wu and Yue to allow me to use water from the Xijang River.’ Hearing this, the carp said, ‘Distant water cannot quench present thirst. You’ll find me in the dried fish market tomorrow!'”*

This cryptic fable was written some 2,200 years ago, by a writer unknown by most of us  (Zhuang Zi, c. 369 B.C. — 286 B.C.) who is very famous in China as a chief representative of the Taoist School.

You gotta love a talking goldfish, of course! How even cooler is it that this goldfish is shrewd and critical. For our purposes, the fable provides moral urgency and a sober punchline. “Distant water cannot quench present thirst.” Take it to mean anything you need: if you’re angry about the government’s actions, it works for you. If you’re in despair over getting access to a mask or test, it works for you.

However, it could be a more uplifting lesson too. If you, like me, are staying home to “shelter in place” and allow the coronavirus time to sweep through your region without adding to the casualties, give yourself credit. You are, in effect, giving water to present thirst. You’re feeding the quotient of healthy people so that we can resist the invisible enemy.

Thank you for helping, in any way you can!  And hang in there; we’re in it for the long duration, I think.  I’ll be back tomorrow with another good thought (and more humor, I hope).

*Zhang Fuxin, The Story of Zhuang Zi, trans. Zhang Tingquan (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 2003), pp. 183-184.

daily message, if not daily joy .. today we need Roethke

Hi out there,

Here in Seattle (Ground Zero USA), it feels like months have already gone by since we’ve gone into health-scare hibernation. It is a strange time. We’re in here, poring over the awful statistics and fascinatingly grim reportage from the New York Times, (Yikes! latest headline is: “New Yorkers Told to Stay Indoors and Shutter Most Businesses”), our stomachs flip in anxious sympathy, our backs stiffen and shoulders tighten as we wonder and worry. Meanwhile just outside our windows, we’ve had-all week!–glorious spring weather, fragrant breezes through the pink and white flowering trees, and a gazillion birds chirping, zooming by, and squabbling in the trees around our yard. (Advice: Get and install a hummingbird feeder! Super fun.)

Apart from my husband and son, I have not been in close contact with any human since Monday. (Today’s Friday.) Ooof!  It feels much longer than five days. Luckily, I have three things that guarantee well-being and you can have too: 1) a passion for some manual art or activity, 2) a nearby dog to love (it doesn’t have to be your own dog), and 3) lots of books and stuff to read. With those three things, you can do OK in times high and low.

My manual art passion is sewing (see HGBG website; quilts are it!). My dog is Honey Girl, who helps in every way she can to make me happy, which is apparently what dogs love and live to do (if the adorable books of W. Bruce Cameron can be believed).  See Honey Girl here, in a quiet moment with her squeaky pig.

The books are for my head: that annoying voice of critique and complaint that talks too much unless given something else to do. You know what I mean. I work on my head, regularly, as if it were a pony, a plant, or a high-powered engine that harms itself if left to its own devices.  (I now practice Qigong and T’ai chi at home too; they care of the body-mind.) Many, many writers are close at hand, to remind me how to live and why it’s worth the bother. (I read a paragraph or two from the Stoic philosophers, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, on a daily basis and I enjoy others such as Jane Austen, W. Bruce Cameron, and Lori Gottlieb, just for fun and relaxation.)

My conclusion? It is time to act, to share the wealth.  People are reading more on-line these days. Maybe my bookish discoveries could be distilled into small bits on this blog, where people like you will read them, and maybe you’ll pass on the good thoughts through the internet, and we as a species will benefit.  Maybe we’ll remember why it is worth the bother to go on living. We might even learn something important. Is it beyond hope that we might evolve for the better? Must gun sales soar? (One friend writes that people are buying guns to protect their toilet paper stash, haha; virus humor.) Maybe we’ll become more thoughtful, introspective, and grateful for the present-day and careful with each other and our living planet. However, we’ll be poorer in pocket, though… and there’s a whole lot of misery going around.

I can’t do much, apart from offering quilts and good thoughts. But at least I can do that. So from now on, I vow to post a good thought from one of my books every day for the duration of this virus crisis, here on this blog. If you like it, pass it on.

Today, I think we need Roethke, “I wake to sleep”:

 

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

I learn by going where I have to go.

 

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

 

Of those so close beside me, which are you?

God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,

And learn by going where I have to go.

 

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

 

Great Nature has another thing to do

To you and me, so take the lively air,

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

 

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

What falls away is always. And is near.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I learn by going where I have to go.

 

– Theodore Roethke (American, 1908-1963). I never had the honor of meeting him, but he looks like such a nice person.  Love this photo. Looks like your favorite teacher, doesn’t he?

Lo

presence + patience = connection

Hello!

Isn’t it funny how we dread the things that can actually bring clarity and joy? Two weeks ago, I spent much of my time in dread and anxiety. I worried that Grammy’s death would pitch my husband into a bottomless depression. I feared leaving my new home for the trip to New Jersey, and suspending “Write YOUR Story” for two weeks, thinking that Honey Girl would grow gaunt and nervous by being caged in a kennel or that the writing workshop kids would find better things to do with their time, or that the new people I’ve met would delete me from their lives… What I found upon my return, however, is the opposite!

 

 

The frank expression of joy I saw on the faces of my fellow T’ai chi students last night upon entering the Seattle Kung Fu Club made my heart sing! The cozy complicity with the “Write YOUR Story” kids at the library on Wednesday evening also filled me with happiness. Instead of indifference, their major concern was, “Where were you?” and “Why were you late?” The way the entire staff of the Washington Beauty School perked up when I walked in the door for a hair appointment (“Our favorite client!”), and the photo that arrived in my in-box of a client’s grandchild looking pleased with her HGBG “Frankenstein Patchwork Pillow”: all of these small incidents drove home the feeling of belonging here, and being appreciated. Oh, and Honey Girl had so much fun with the dogs at the in-home “kennel” where she stayed, that she seems even happier than before! (She’s also grown a bit plump in the haunches, actually. Hardly a case of post-traumatic kennel stress.)

This transition has been a bumpy ride and I’ll admit that in late October I reversed my view on pharmaceuticals a bit, and got back on that tiny (10 mg) dose of the anti-depressant that helped me survive my parents’ death and the last years of work at Notre Dame. But that has been a reality-check too, and I do not regret it. Sometimes nerves need a helping hand to stay on a more even keel, for a while…

My message is this:  it is possible to re-invent yourself and be happy again in a completely different context, if you follow this formula:  presence + patience = connection.  And from connection comes that deep-seated feeling of happiness, of belonging, of being home.

It’s as simple as that. We are social beings. We need to be around people; our presence helps each other. We cannot make happiness arise without being there. We cannot predict how they will help us, we have to believe, and see what happens later….

For a deeper understanding of these lessons, here are some good quotes from writers over the ages:

1. On presence

a) From Epictetus (circa 55–135 CE): “What is really your own? The use you make of the ideas, resources, and opportunities that come your way. Do you have books? Read them. Learn from them. Apply their wisdom. … Do you have a good idea? Follow up and follow through on it. Make the most of what you’ve got, what is actually yours.”  (The Art of Living, 12-13).

b) From Eckhart Tolle (1948–): “Try this for a couple of weeks and see how it changes your reality: Whatever you think people are withholding from you–praise, appreciation, assistance, loving care, and so on–give it to them. … Then, soon after you start giving, you will start receiving. You cannot receive what you don’t give. …  Ask yourself often: ‘What can I give here; how can I be of service to this person, this situation?'” (A New Earth, 191-192).

2. On patience

a) From Epictetus: “There is a great relief in being morally consistent: The soul relaxes, and we can thus efficiently move forward in our endeavors. […] The secret is not to get stuck there dithering or wringing your hands, but to move forward by resolving to heal yourself. Philosophy asks us to move into courage.”  (The Art of Living, 82-83)

b) From Eckhart Tolle: “When you yield internally, when you surrender, a new dimension of consciousness opens up. If action is possible or necessary, your action will be in alignment with the whole and supported by creative intelligence, the unconditioned consciousness which in a state of inner openness you become one with. Circumstances and people then become helpful, cooperative. Coincidences happen. If no action is possible, you rest in the peace and inner stillness that come with surrender.”  (Tolle, A New Earth, 58).

3. On connection

From E.M. Forster (1879-1970): “Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect.”  (Howard’s End, chap. 22)

P.s.

The book cover you see above (The Rockin’ Radiated Rocks!) is the latest production of “Write YOUR Story”: a free writing workshop for kids age 8-12, that is now enrolling for Winter/Spring 2019!

The “Frankenstein Patchwork Pillow” is Model 3, “Happy, happy creature!”: available now via Honey Girl Books and Gifts.

 

strange smoky weather brings back childhood memories

 

 

We rejoiced over our arrival here in Seattle in early July, when we discovered our amazing view of downtown across Elliott Bay. But look at it now.

The weather report is weird:  “77 degrees, Smoke.”

Honey Girl and I went for our walk as usual this evening and my eyes have been burning ever since. It is a very strange sensation to live in smoke. The neighbors I talked to on my walk all seemed kind of rattled by this too. “Where there’s smoke there’s fire,” we think anxiously, but it does not make any sense. We’re surrounded by water on three sides!

(map of West Seattle)

One of my favorite children’s books has a harrowing forest fire scene that I’ve never forgotten. It’s not Bambi, it’s Smokey the Bear. 

I so love this book. As you see, when the fire engulfs the little bear cub, separating him from his mother, Smokey follows his mom’s advice: “When danger threatens, climb a tree.”

But still, it is a traumatic experience!  The text reads: “So up a pine tree Bear Cub went. Around him the forest fire roared and crackled. Flames licked at Bear Cub’s shaggy fur and singed his tender paws. But he closed his eyes and just hung on. When he opened his eyes again after a while, he could scarcely believe what he saw. Instead of the cool, green, shady woods, all around him stood hundreds of ugly blackened sticks with trails of smoke still curling from them.”

The scene where the forest ranger’s daughter gets to play with Smokey was always my favorite. What a dream come true to play with a living Teddy bear!

However, the shrewd critic might point out a few flaws in this tragi-comedy. Where is Smokey’s mother, for example? And what about Bambi and Dumbo? Why do writers of children’s literature dispense with mothers so often?

Maybe because the kids secretly wish for that…

Then there’s the little problem of watching Smokey grow into a grown-up man-cub. Like the female creature dreamed up, then destroyed, in Shelley’s Frankenstein, the grown-up Smokey of reality might not be quite so nice…

Wish it would rain.

 

June 21 Solstice arrival: So many thoughts on the Night pillow… and the move!

I’ve been so enjoying the exciting build-up to our move; I’ve been looking forward to this event for almost three years! It does however deliver a very intense impact to the nerves when many things suddenly come to a head: in the last six months, I’ve retired early from a career I rocked at, sold and packed up a house I adore, abandoned tons and tons of books and notes from that job, and made plans to create a new life in a city I haven’t lived in for 34 years. Oh, and I launched a new business too. Phew.

It makes the stillness and silence of this house feel quite precious. Doing T’ai chi in Nick’s old room is now very flowing. Readers of The Tao of Painting will not be surprised by that. Mai Mai Sze explains that “Silence and emptiness of space possess vast powers of suggestion, stimulating the imagination and sharpening perception. And only through exercise of these highest faculties can the Tao be apprehended and expressed.”*

The emptiness and silence of the house when I’m sewing is filled with my happy thoughts and wonders about the life to come. I’ve barely even been in that Seattle house, apart from one day at closing and a one-day walkthrough each summer. In creating, one can only focus on present thoughts, so I’m channeling all that wonder and joy as a feeling into my new Night designs for Tranquility Pillows.** Sewing extremely detailed work like this is a profoundly engrossing activity: perfect for training the “wild horses” of your mind and keeping them in harness.

There’s another reason why I’ve been feeling immensely creative and inspired lately: Because I don’t have much more time! It’s an old habit of being a student for so long—we always procrastinate. We think we work better under pressure. And actually, we often do.

It is interesting to realize that even when we retire from a job, as an entrepreneur we can still create that same thrill of discovery. You can force yourself to jump forward conceptually under pressure. Only now I’m doing it for my own fun (and potential profit), in hastening to create prototypes for two new pillows: the Baudelaire “Giantess” pillow and the Tranquility Night pillow (with the new “Freak Out” Star for suicide prevention). I’m working with my hands in satin, cotton, and flannel, instead of working only with my Mind. This new life is thus a genre-change as well as a new way to relate to people through literature, and an effort to forge an art of my own making. Oh, and there’s that moving over 2,000 miles. That’s all.

Maybe all these crazy-making details are why I’m so drawn to the spare, evocative simplicity of Chinese aesthetics and the abstract thinking of Zen. I love Chinese Calligraphy and the way Chiang Yee describes his work:

“One of my incentives in writing this book is to help such people [ie Westerners] to an enjoyment of our calligraphy without putting them to the labour of learning the language. If the student can understand the literal meaning of the words, so much the better: for an aesthetic appreciation it is not essential. You will understand my meaning if you think of a landscape painting in which the familiar forms of scenery of your native land touch a chord of memory. You have a different and more pleasurable sensation from such a picture than from a painting of an unfamiliar scene. But I do feel that, without this sense of recognition, it is possible, provided one has a sense of line-movement […] to appreciate the beauty of lines.”***

The beauty of lines and the sense of line-movement: so obvious yet overlooked!

My own thinking led to the question of how to create the right shape of star for my new Tranquility Pillow Night design. There are so many star styles to choose from, but after a bit of reflection, it was obvious: Le Petit prince. Le Petit prince has the best stars: being handmade and imperfect, they project a winsome air. (See last blog post for a few cute examples)

So I got a pic of that up on my screen. Then I went hunting around for a piece of cardboard to write on. Since we’re moving in one week, everything’s a mess and there are no tablets to be found. Finally I looked in a wastebasket and found a file folder from the Hesburgh Library reserves department from years ago, for a photocopied chapter of Mlle de Scudéry’s Clélie, a long slog of a novel from 1654. (I know I know! I was crazy to inflict such torture on my students, for which I apologize.)

At the sight of the stamp “2hrs. Library Use Only” under my name, I felt a surge of tenderness. For those nameless, long-ago students and for all students. As I drew my version of Saint-Exupéry’s star, I tried to make the line-movement convey a sense of hopeful yearning, a reaching forward.

Lesson of the day:

it is amazing what you can do with a simple shape, if you focus on intention.

Question: but can you use intention to make a prickly situation less prickly?

Short answer: I am trying to do so.

Long answer: you may be wondering how or if I’m going to keep up the rigorous morning routine during the five days it will take us to drive across the country. La chance ça se prépare (Luck is planned). I’ve already announced to my dearly beloved that we will not hit the road until 10am each morning. He will sigh, and grumble, and pace around impatiently, but he is a man of his word. That gives me time to get up punctually, have my coffee and fruit, and then find a quiet spot somewhere in the motel or outside to bring my laptop and do T’ai chi along with the video of Master Peng, like I do every day. I may draw some strange looks!

It is crucial to continue this routine when spending the other 12+ hours of each day alone (apart from Honey Girl) in a car with the same person you’ve been married to for 32 years, whose lack of self-trust and aggressive ways frequently grate on your nerves, although he means well. Honey Girl and me will keep him calm somehow, or block him out. 🙂

*Mai-Mai Sze, The Tao of Painting, 96.

**Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, 220.

***Chiang Yee, Chinese Calligraphy, 3.

The new styles coming to life!

Zen message of the Night pillow: “Even when we enter disturbed waters, we can still align with the moon, until such time when we can see it directly.”

1. Tranquility Pillow-Night design no. 1, shows the satin moon’s reflection on a sea of navy flannel.
2. Tranquility Pillow Night design no. 2, features lines of grey, black, and white satin and navy rayon, on a navy flannel sea below a white satin moon.

The incredible lightness of inefficiency!

The Happiness of the Fish by Chiang Yee

While emptying an attic closet yesterday—the same one where we found our dead cat Iris back in March—I discovered another box of books on Chinese philosophy, culture, and art that my husband acquired over the years. He has drifted away from the study, but I now find such stuff mesmerizing! It helps explain the pull, influence, and joy I’ve discovered in T’ai chi and good health.

Now that there are only 26 more days until we leave, life seems very peaceful. You may think we are working round the clock to get ready. Wrong! We do whatever we want.

My morning routine is sacred, of course, then I spend a few hours packing, then a few hours sewing, an hour with Honey Girl in our evening walk, a couple hours watching a  favorite series (right now it’s Babylon Berlin, after we watched all of the wonderful How to Get Away with Murder).  Later at night, I enjoy reading the poetry of Yuan Chi, philosophy by Gaston Bachelard and Joseph Campbell, Gish Jen’s Girl at the Baggage Claim, and Subhadramati’s Not About Being Good, among other books. Piles of books line the rooms. That does not bother us a bit. They’re like friends, ready to offer an encouraging thought or insight, as we navigate this time of change.

Late at night, sometimes I just sit in the sunroom with a window ajar, listening to the night and gazing upon the tree-fringed dark sky. Terribly inefficient! Or terribly wise?

Yesterday was June first! So exciting to turn the page on our last month before the move! Yet instead of launching into a frenzy of work or anxiety about moving, I spent hours poring over Chinese Calligraphy by Chiang Yee (1938) and Change by Hellmut Wilhelm (1960). I love how Chinese philosophy makes no sense, at first, until it does…

Try this mental exercise. First consider the concepts of liveliness, constancy and change, in the quotes below (and the gorgeous image above). Then read the description of how energy manifests itself in T’ai chi practice at the bottom. If you are able to resist the urge to do T’ai chi after all that, I’d be surprised!  Is not T’ai chi an incredible gift to humankind?

 On Liveliness

In Chinese calligraphy, says Mr. Chiang, the main principle of composition is in every case a balance and poise similar to that of a figure standing, walking, dancing, or executing some other lively movement. [Lively movement as seen in The Happiness of the Fish, above, Plate XXI of Chinese Calligraphy.]

‘The beauty of Chinese calligraphy is essentially the beauty of plastic movement, not of designed and motionless shape.’

How such ‘lively movement’ is conveyed by a written character, or by a painting or a piece of sculpture or pottery, is a mystery that we cannot analyse—it is an instinctive coordination of the artist’s mental image and the muscular stroke with which he ‘expresses’ or ‘projects’ that image. It is, at any rate, a very personal faculty, achieved by continuous practice and meditation, by a discipline that is spiritual rather than physical.

-“Foreword” by Sir Herbert Read, in Chiang Yee, Chinese Calligraphy, viii.

On Constancy and Change

Change: that is the unchangeable.

The opposite of change is regression, not cessation of movement.  Change, then, is not simply movement as such, for its opposite is also movement. Change is natural movement rather, development that can only reverse itself by going against nature.

To recognize that man moves and acts, that he grows and develops, this is not deep insight, but to know that this movement and development … are governed by the law of change, from which there is no escape, this has fostered in early Chinese philosophy its gratifying integrity and lucidity.

Change is at work in the great as well as in the small … it can be read in cosmic happenings as well as in the hearts of men. The individual who is conscious of responsibility is on a par with the cosmic forces of heaven and earth.

Since every seed attains development in change, it must also be possible to introduce into its flow a seed planted by man. And since knowledge of the laws of change teaches the right way of planting such a seed, a highly effective influence becomes possible. … the closer to the time of planting, the stronger the influence. To recognize the moment of its germination is to become the master of the fate of the seed.

The Creative knows through the easy.

The Receptive can do things through the simple.

The stability of change is the counterpart of the human virtue of reliability. One can grasp it, hold on to it, count upon it.

To become aware of what is constant in the flux of nature and life is the first step in abstract thinking.  … Similarly the conception of constancy in change provides the first guarantee of meaningful action.

-Hellmut Wilhelm, Change, 17-23.

On T’ai chi, our daily way to feel calm in the face of death and change

Internal energy is much more powerful than muscle power. Muscle tension impedes the flow of internal energy. While a certain minimum of tension must be used in movement and in holding up the body, any further tension interferes with the greater power of chi.

When faced with a conflict, you know not to meet it head on. Never interfere with your partner’s momentum (whether physical or emotional); let it flow by you or rechannel it. The world you perceive is a reflection of your inner state.

The T’ai chi student begins to understand the role of cycles in nature. The biological feelings of your connection to the environment become stronger than your feeling of isolation. … By identifying with biological life, you become immortal.  … Death is no longer a threat; its force has been neutralized. As part of life, you will never die—only change.

-Bob Klein, Movements of Magic, 53-56.