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
