Duke Huan sat in his hall reading a book. The wheelwright Bian was making a wheel in the courtyard below the hall. Putting down his hammer and chisel, Bian went up the steps and said, “I venture to ask your Grace what words are you reading.”

“The words of the sages,” replied the duke.

“Are those sages alive?”

“They are long dead.”

“Then what you my Ruler, are reading are only the dregs and sediments of those old men.”

“How should you, a wheelwright, have anything to say about the book I am reading? If you can explain yourself, very well; if not, you shall die!”

The wheelwright replied, “Your servant will look at it from the point of view of his own work. In making a wheel, if I proceed lightly, it is pleasant, but the work is not sturdy. If I proceed vigorously, it is exhausting and the joints do not fit. If the movements of my hand are neither too light nor too vigorous, the idea in my mind is realized. I cannot tell you how to do this in words: there is an art in it. I cannot teach this to my son, nor can my son learn it from me. So I am in my seventieth year and am still making wheels in my old age. But the ancients and what was not possible for them to convey are dead and have dispersed. Therefore what you, my Ruler, are reading is but their dregs and sediments!”

Zhuangzi by Zhuang Zhou, trans. Hyun Höchsmann and Yang Guorong, The Way of Heaven

Today the air temperature here in Batavia was forty seven degrees. It is unusual in late December to have such warm days. I heard a story about fishing by the Fox river dam for Walleye. I photographed a cloud of mist rising from the millpond which parallels the Fox. Warm air, colliding with air cooled by frigid ice on the pond results in fog. The statue of a tall fisherman wearing a giant catfish-hat adds to the ethereal scene. Beauty is all about when you look for it.

~*~

A marker of time is when you start to take notice when members of your generation, your cohort die. Dying is the final exit. No one takes another curtain call. David Bowie is among the first whose departure I felt. More than a few have followed. This morning I learned Bridget Bardot passed. She was a film actress, a vocalist, a model, a person widely known because of her serious work to show that sexuality is appropriately pleasurable, and that guilt need not contaminate sexual expression. 

Last night we remembered Rob Reiner a much loved film director and humanitarian, by viewing again his masterpiece Standby Me. Reiner and his wife Michele were murdered December 14, by their son Nick. The tragedy to family and friends, and the loss to all of us is beyond words.

~*~

The story featured in the quotation from Book 13 of the Zhuangzi is a variation on the saying “an offer that you cannot refuse”. A commoner who decides to question his sovereign is ordered to give account of his observation of his lordship’s selection of reading material. An answer sufficiently reasonable to the overlord meant the wheelwright is allowed to continue to live. Failure would mean, summary execution. 

The wheelwright answered the ruler of the land as he would’ve answered anyone. From reflection upon his personal experience, he extended his observations that things and ideas of substance, of any complexity are unsuited for teaching by any means except that of practice under the tutelage of a master. The printed page alone is insufficient to convey the lesson. There is art, complex judgments which words alone do not encompass.

With more consideration I doubt a youtube demo-clip is comparable to apprenticeship either… Experience and only experience teaches well. 

I’d be willing to bet that the wheelwright Bian walked away, alive.

What do you think?

This well loved tune seems right for this post. Stand By Me by Ben E. King.