BLACK & WHITE

The Tao gives birth to One.
One gives birth to Two.
Two gives birth to Three.
Three gives birth to all things.
All things have their backs to the female
and stand facing the male.
When male and female combine
all things achieve harmony.
Ordinary men hate solitude.
But the Master makes use of it,
embracing his aloneness,
realizing he is one with the whole Universe.

-Lao Tzu-

(Tao Te Ching, chapter 42)

CROCODILE

Cancer is the crocodile

in the Nile of your familiar body

green and long and pale

slim with death thought

hungrier than the river

that is you

You who once ate

langoustines and cracked crab

Moroccan oranges and black chocolate

after white wine of the Loire

and wished only for cool sheets

and deep sure sleep after the Nubian

tiptoed off the pebbled shore

dazzling your skin with

moonkiss and nightshade

                                   Sleep river

the crocodile yawns in your easy flow

sleep the sleep of old Nile

the gods of death are dead

Pharaoh and his scribes are cased in glass

the pyramids have no meaning beyond

their immensity

You are an old river

you are the Nile and the crocodile

cancer is in your blood

slow and heavy as green opium

it grows like a river in flood

it grows

a sphinx face

You are an old woman

with death in your bones

you are the Nile

you are green and long and pale

slim with death thought

you are the crocodile

RESPONSE

 The dragon as symbol has meant a great deal to many cultures. Check out the only reason to watch Game of Thrones. In the Garden of Eden it was a dragon that tempted Eve. (albeit a fairly small dragon). Chen Rong an ancient Chinese master painted nine dragons in the thirteenth century to represent an approach and understanding of  the Tao which is my main path in this fleeting life. When Confucius visited Lao Tzu he saw him as a master of dragons.The Dragon represents the mastery and embodying of the chaotic forces of Nature into the Serenity and Stillness of Mind. My dragons are strange mutations of the original... my response to a vision from the past. I hope they fly with wings of fire & thoughts of water.

TAO -- NINE DRAGONS (1) Chrysalis.... Birth of Chaos

The riddle presents itself as paradox. The old "yes.... but". To hold two contradictory thoughts in the mind at once. Chaos & Order. Good & Evil. Male & Female. Duality & the One.  The Named & the Nameless. The Known & the Unknown. I could go on. When I try to explain it evaporates like mist in the sun on a northern lake.  I gather my thoughts like clouds on a windy day. I distill my awakening to a single drop of dew. Nothing for it.... it is a mystery...I accept the mystery... I live in the mystery.

A SINGLE POINT

 How to use the darkness as my point of contemplation. The neural webwork of my brain filters the avalanche of possibilities.. the barrage... the hailstorm of stimuli that floods in from all dimensions... My brain reduces the smorgasbord down to one single fact of awareness at any given time...The path to embodying the light involves opening up... expanding awareness...  I cannot take it all in at once.. I cannot contain it all.  The movement moves from the large & inclusive to the focussed & exclusive... I concentrate... bring the attention down to a single band... then down to the single point. I tether my awareness... A process of concentration. A single pixel on the screen. I go back to the moment of the Big Bang. All of reality contained in a single point.

A SINGLE BAND OF UNWAVERING LIGHT

My oldest friend Anastasios practises the Buddhism of the Dalai Lama. When he was twenty four he went to a monastery in northern New York state. There a sixty five year old Lama from Tibet had been living a simple life devoted to prayer & contemplation. The monk sat at the front of the gathered group & lead the meditation. He said the whole & exclusive point of his life was to maintain a single band of unwavering light in his mind for all humanity & all sentient beings. Day after day he entered the Hall… entered the silence …. and with the gathered monks & nuns & mendicants….  focussed his mind on that clear line of certainty. Thirty years later, after a whole lot of living, my friend went back to the monastery. The same Lama, now ninety five years old, was leading the same devotion. For all those years, day after day, he had been maintaining that single band of unwavering light.

TWO RAVENS TUMBLING

Intelligence, for me, is not measured in the ability to solve math problems but in the ability to play. Ravens are consummate masters of the art of Joy. They fly like flying is an aerobatic improvisation invented as momentary impulse. Two Ravens riff out a babble of caterwaul  & catcall... stop at the apex of a parabola & then free fall for three seconds in a tandem tumble catching themselves when the wind ruffles their feathers. They remind me to deepen my breath & then to just embrace the possibility of possibility. There are no fixed rules in the unfolding of mirth just the allowing of free form to unfold like a flower in time lapse when time stands still.