dao de jing vi

the spirit of the valley never dies

this is called the dark female

the entry into the dark female

is called the root of heaven and earth

tenuous it seems as if it were there

yet use will never exhaust it

dear sixes,

dao is not a descent and ascent or ascent and descent or ascent or descent, a season in hell, a mountaintop experience, a retreat, a place or system or status or argument, a destination or map, an i can help you or take you there, a self-denial, even a here or there, an escape or virtue, a process particularly, certainly not a product or tribe or people or religion or movement or a thing (though it too is a thing, though indistinct, a substance in crepuscular dimness). it might be a moving and a moving and movings

it acknowledges all and sides with all and simultaneously and mostly prefers valleys, darkness, roots, heaven (no christian or otherworldly heaven), not meddling, certain constructions of muliebrity, suppleness, nonharm, stillness

one of the legends of the birth of laozi relates how an old woman becomes pregnant after drinking a drop of sweet dew. she carries the baby for 80 years but only during the daytime … at night baby leaves the womb to study dao. when he is finally fully born (through his mother’s armpit some say) he already has a long white beard and is able to walk. seeing this strange old child (laozi means old master but homophonically & metaphorically suggests old child) the mother takes fright and dies. thus in this genesis of laozi – from gender neutral divine being to woman to child, there is no father

dao is not very comforting. it puts everything at risk. we pile others and things and words around ourselves and forget the world is much more threatening than we want to admit. everything is always at risk and one of dao stays still in this everything. we could say this staying still in this everything is entry into the dark female

again, so soon … it seems as if it were there. and watch for these repetitions of phrases, words, themes as they move and morph through the 81 poems, appearing and disappearing in varied contexts, even as do our varied selves and shapes in lives

she is not this or that. heaven in its compassion or earth in its barbarisms. both are present but they do not battle. in not the valley but the valley’s spirit. in not a woman but the darkness of an entry

so the sage dies, not from exhaustion. a loved body is over. an ambivalent life ends. a sage dies, as all, and the spirit of the dark valley, root and unusable, continues as it is, seeming