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
