Well then,
may I consider heaven and earth
as great
and the tip of a hair
as small?

                  “No,”
replied the Ruo of the North Sea.

“The capacities of things cannot be defined,
time never stops,
all is in constant flux,
and the ends and the beginnings of things
are never the same.

Men of great wisdom
regard things far off or near
without judging them
to be insignificant for being small
nor great for being large,
knowing that the capacities of things
cannot be defined.

They penetrate the past and present
unhampered by the remoteness of the past
or straining to take possession of the present,
for they know time never stops.

They discern fullness and want
and are not moved by success or failure,
knowing that all things
are in flux.

They follow
the simple and quiet path.
And are not elated to live
nor despondent to die,
knowing that
the end and the beginning of things
are never the same.

Zhuangzi, trans. by Hyun Höchsmann and Yang Guorong, Book 17

This segment is of an imaginary exchange taking place on occasion of the autumn floods. Innumerable streams flow into the swollen Yellow River. The flooding river increases in width so that a person standing upon one bank could not distinguish ox from a horse on the opposite bank. At the mouth of the Yellow River emptying into the North Sea, the sea appears boundless, from horizon to horizon. The conversation between the Lord of the Yellow River and the Ruo of the North Sea takes the question and response form. A river god questions the spirit of the sea!

~*~

Reports have arrived from the Davos World Economic Forum. I felt relief upon reading that the President, as of Davos, backed away from an expressed intention to take Greenland by military force. Context matters. I can imagine at Davos, surrounded in the room by European leaders unanimous to stand against a bullying United States, the President “tap-danced” away from his earlier unhinged proposition, that if Greenland were not given by Denmark to us, then it would be taken by force. What reason endorses at a distance, does not feel so feasible when time and circumstance puts you in the same room as those you have just threatened.

Our former allies ought not to forget, how often this man “changes his mind”, to dismiss what he has just said. 

All (space/time) is in constant flux.