dao de jing xi

thirty spokes share one hub

make the nothing therein appropriate

and you will have the use of the cart

knead clay in order to make a vessel

make the nothing therein appropriate

and you will have the use of the clay vessel

cut out doors and windows in order to make a room

make the nothing therein appropriate

and you will have the use of the room

thus we gain by making it something

but we have the use by making it nothing

dear elevens,

here’s a life goal for the dispossessed and innovative: describe the procedures and policies of making nothing appropriate. write a manual. develop curricula. institute degrees and esteemed places of higher learning. compose a society, careers, aesthetic and mystical subversions, religions and laws, the corollary outcast and imprisoned and abused and unacceptably alternative. write a novel describing it. form a political party promoting it. die defending it

a little bit extreme though, isn’t it, for any relations between something and nothing – which, after all, are just everything and are here, existing, in my aubergine and spectacles