dao de jing viii

that which is most good is like water

it is because water is not only good at benefiting the myriad creatures but also vies to dwell in the place detested by the multitude that it comes close to the way

in a dwelling it is the site that is valued

in quality of mind it is depth that is valued

in giving it is being like heaven that is valued

in speech it is good faith that is valued

in government it is order that is valued

in affairs it is ability that is valued

in action it is timeliness that is valued

it is because it does not contend that it is never at fault

dear eights,

the most good is not power or beauty or pleasure or comfort or virtue but a kind of slipperiness, an out-of-the-wayness, a struggling not for the common aspirations of the human, a thing that doesn’t present itself as most or good

water, sometimes solid, often evaporating, accepting all manner of things within its very being including more of itself, disturbs our hierarchical preferences for the superiority of solidities

look at the table of elements. is zinc better than bromine? gallium than argon? barium than flerovium? and yet it is the way of the human to prefer solid things. perhaps as a significant majority of elements are solid, so humans, and as things prefer themselves, so solidity reigns. but a world without flow, without diffusion, without plasmatic resonance and quirkiness would not be a world

solidity is good for solidity but when it extends its reaches to what it is not and attempts to impose its own constituent qualities on what it is not the world degrades. and this is what we are seeing

depth of mind is hardly important in a home’s construction. order is not necessarily desirable in giving. the site of talking is less important than its integrity. and so good government – if it could exist – would take what things are for what they are and not presume with an evangelistic dogmatism that the codes of some – even if a majority, even if with force – should dominate

what kind of leader could effect such style? water. flow and vastness and flexibility and no need to do much but fit into the forms that present themselves

water may occasionally kill. it may sometimes carry disease. it is indifferent and often cold. water is not the way for nothing is the way but the way and even the way is not the way. water is not the only tangible thing that comes close to the way – so too the baby, the shadow, the valley, confused wandering, silence, …

i see the images of humans pass through me like a grammar of incomprehensible dreams. i do not fight my decay, my enemy, my humiliation. they are only the gurgle of the charismatic stillness of my forgetting what shape i am meant to be