Self-portrait, 1981

坎 ䷜

“In man’s world K’an represents the heart, the soul locked up within the body, the principle of light inclosed in the dark—that is, reason. The name of the hexagram … has the additional meaning, “repetition of danger.” Thus the hexagram is intended to designate an objective situation to which one must become accustomed, not a subjective attitude. For danger due to a subjective attitude means either foolhardiness or guile. Hence too a ravine is used to symbolize danger; it is a situation in which a man is in the same pass as the water in a ravine, and, like the water, he can escape if he behaves correctly.” The Abysmal (Water), Hexagram 29, I Ching*

Another birthday coming up this week has me thinking again (it’s been a lifelong problem) about mortality and the meaning of life. Have I wasted it chasing chimera?

They (the immortal “they”) say you are what you’re remembered for. Anyway, I was musing yesterday, beside the garden waterfall — a creation I’ll soon leave behind — that perhaps I’m a better gardener than photographer. I missed my calling.

I’ve been a fool on this hill for just three years, though some months seemed like eternal purgatory, with my distress leaking onto these pages. Nonetheless, I was determined to turn that trouble into opportunity.

Many of the ideas for these blog posts arise from another nearby water feature: the shower. During this morning’s ablutions I realized that I am trying, as best I can, to withdraw from complexity — within the human and technological realm (which seem on course to become one).

Between the first paragraph above, my shower, and this, I managed to destroy a website template I spent a couple of weeks creating a year or two ago, thinking (that problem again!) I might impress my audience with a fancy layout for the 5,000-year-old Confucian wisdom flowing behind this entry.

I fell into another chasm.

“Properly used, danger can have an important meaning as a protective measure. Thus heaven has its perilous height protecting it against every attempt at invasion, and earth has its mountains and bodies of water, separating countries by their dangers. Thus also rulers make use of danger to protect themselves against attacks from without and against turmoil within.”

Water makes and breaks paper. It wears down rock. Every pebble in my garden has been shaped by its action. I’ve carried rocks down from the heights of the Rockies: a small, ruddy stone from the Athabaska Glacier, a fragment of ancient seabed; a larger oblong of burnished marble pulled from the rushing waters of the Illecillewaet River, above Roger’s Pass. I carry them like religious icons from faux creek to faux creek, every time I move.

Stone
I am your slave and titan
I am emperor of day
Stone
I am flesh

Magic Stone: More Notes on the Sacred Fire, Rocky Mountain Poems

It was during those heady Rocky Mountain Days, when I often sat at peace beside a mountain stream watching the erosion of time, that I most clearly saw the Way forward. Of course, the city has a way of heaping “stones in the pathway” of the most serene practitioner. And so, I have often lived counterfeit versions of myself, in pursuit of some ambition or other.

At the risk of ruining a picture with words, the self-portrait heading this post illustrates the dualism of my nature. It was made thirty-eight years ago, just after my return from a mountaineering expedition to the civilized comforts of suburbia. If I did not inherit the jester spirit of my father, I could at least raid his costume closet.

And so, less wild and less agile in limb and mind, I’ll soon be heading to a nearby outpost of civilization, taking with me a collection of igneous memories and paper dreams.

“Water reaches its goal by flowing continually. It fills up every depression before it flows on. The superior man follows its example; he is concerned that goodness should be an established attribute of character rather than an accidental and isolated occurrence.”

*Quotes from: The I Ching or Book of Change, Bollingen Series XIX, by Hellmut Wilhelm (Editor, Preface), C. G. Jung (Foreword), Richard Wilhelm (Translator), Cary F. Baynes (Translator).