the rain
The wind is part of the process
The rain is part of the process
-- Ezra Pound, Canto 74
Pound, beaten by rain and wind in my bedroom balcony, I remember a bit from Kung-fu-tse, who also knew hard times. I think a lot these days about Dao, the ideogram Ezra translates as "the process," and which most people still spell old-style as Tao. More traditional renderings turn Dao into a capitalized abstraction such as "the Way" or "the Path," and anybody trying to understand them feels like their brain has just turned to oatmeal.
Ezra, the helm of the Priory of Sion for those who never understood what an elaborated hoax is, hidden from the world in St. Elisabeth mental hospital, said that the artist was the antenna of the race, and they lived in the present instead of the past, smiles at himself sadly.
Although too ignorant of Chinese to trust my own judgement, I have always preferred Ezra's rendering of Dao as "process" on the basis of Ernest Fenollosa's claim that ideograms render "noun and verb as one : things in motion, motion in things." That fits the world of modern physics, of perception psychology and of what little I think I know of Chinese.
Dao, the process, seems more tangible since my insomnia forced me to spend part of my nights alone in this balcony. The view never seems quite the same twice. Night creatures, fogs, seasons, dogs, toads, moons, planets, stars… all seem flowing, as if every kind of evolution, cosmic to biological parades before me.
More and more I lose contact with "me" and flow with all else that flows into the Dao-process.
An old proverb of the Middle Kingdom says, "The wise become Confucian in good times, Buddhist in bad times and Daoist in old age." Scary.
When pain keeps me from writing, I eat a magic muffin, sit on the balcony with a glass of milk and get totally lost in the Dao.
Si, even in the rain and wind.
