dao de jing ii

the whole world knows the beautiful as the beautiful and this is only the ugly

it knows the good as the good and this is indeed the bad

something and nothing producing each other

the difficult and the easy complementing each other

the long and the short offsetting each other

the high and the low filling out each other

note and sound harmonizing with each other

before and after following each other

these are in accordance with what is constant

hence the sage dwells in the deed that consists in taking no action and practices the teaching that uses no words

it makes the myriad creatures without being their initiator

it benefits them without exacting any gratitude for this

it accomplishes its task without claiming any merit for this

it is because it lays claim to no merit that its merit never deserts it

dear twos,

as nature – now animate only as use and sentiment, raw material for stories and human aggrandizement, whether in the manufactured forests of the dead wilderness or the pedicured sexiness of the homo sapiens fleshed ecosystems: a critical aspect, as erect penises and wet vaginas in namesake pornography, in the international conglomerate of that much larger necessitated pornographic environment in which we now all breathe and participate – is remote to the point of abolition, as perhaps art is becoming, so may be dao

what dao would think of this – being given to shadowy presences, murkiness, namelessness, and root – who would assume to know? for even this commentary is a reflection of shadows of shadows and we claim at most (though we do not claim even this) an attempted transcription of the smoke of notknowing as it rises from dark and untraceable fires into the vast farnear unreliable orbits of words around infinite nonexistent centers

much is said of balance in the sacred blather of the day. but dao takes it to levels of discomfort that could, without rare mitigation, easily consume. for the people live devoting much of their predictable lives to practices of offsetting that they euphemize as balance and the bulk accepts the euphemisms as they do, for nonacceptance implies modifications who would want (other than in fact many of the myriad creatures)?

we have something and nothing. difficult and easy. before and after. high and low. and the list could go on far beyond what is listed, as lists can. and isn’t society the struggle to hoard as much easy, high, and something to oneself while offsetting as much difficult, nothing, and low to others? and this very tendency, so endemic to humans, a core stupidity? and balance in the annals of polite and commonplace discourse a virtued concept to launder what is now an acceptable pandemic? perhaps not. but why would we not include these as possibilities as viable as those others so dominant and ubiquitous? (surely little so far of conventional thought and practice is working, other than in a technical-unto-death kind of way)

but who among us could escape the elements of this offsetting in a rabidly blabbing world? and dao if anything might be remnantly here not for escape or even offsetting but as a dark technique of reorienting to these elements

in an increasingly homogenous culture that seduces even diversity into its gargantuan bed, volition and communication are at or near the apex of today’s (as always) slavebuilt pyramids. what then do we do with a text not only in a world of image but one that points to practices of nonaction and nonspeaking, not as cowardices, retreats, passivities, indolences, but as something else, a something else we can hardly name not simply because of its elusive nature in linguistic and semantic realms but as our addiction to our pornographic environment (this severing called balance) is unacknowledged

these something elses are not places to vacationally, retreatedly, yogaclassly visit but the places where the sage dwells – her home and family apart from yet in the pornography of the world. an oldnew nature. a dao

and you can think if you wish that the citizened productive family, owning home and smiles and civilities, producers and appreciators of good policies and procedures, is our societal mainstay, our regulated levee against the disorders and nights of nature, art, dao. and from a certain (pornographic) perspective, this is not untrue. but the beautiful is only the ugly and good the bad – not in that stupid way the nazis interpreted nietzsches insights, still so prosaically common when the masses encounter intelligent doubt – but in the way of dao, this way of ways, which, lost like nature, as maybe it must be, brings the empire, the myriad creatures, ruthlessness and benevolence, the family and the hermit, the tree and the hadron collider, disgrace and honour … all these irreconcilable things … into the empire of the soul, thisthat plural singularity, and there … daos them