36

If you want to shrink something,
you must first allow it to expand.
If you want to get rid of something,
you must first allow it to flourish.
If you want to take something,
you must first allow it to be given.
This is called the subtle perception
of the way things are.

The soft overcomes the hard.
The slow overcomes the fast.
Let your workings remain a mystery.
Just show people the results.

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu, trans. by Stephen Mitchell

Sunday is cloud covered and quite cool for late August. Weather is not simple. The word notes our bodily response to atmospheric change, experience is the constant reciprocating movement of energy. How is the weather today?

“Energy” is yet another level of description. My grasped coffee cup is noticeably cooler now. Soon I will be ready for another fill, fresh and “hot,” by contrast to the lukewarm portion that remains. Hot to cold. This is the way of things according to Lao Tsu. From order to disorder. Heat equals definition, order, and flavor…

By what reason should I oppose this natural way of things, my force of will insisting upon an order which naturally passes away? Alternatively does not reason advise standing on the sideline, to recognize the shift, to register the discharge of force (described as you will) knowing that all “runs its course.”

History is simply after-the-fact story that we tell ourselves. The razor’s edge of action is a scrum of chaos, of energy dissipation. Actors are dragged on stage by their fear and ambition, raw reaction, a tool-marionette of sorts, he/she cannot help themselves but do what they do. Thus a leading edge of the wave is spent, collapsing in upon itself, inchoate absorbed again into a deserved anonymity.

Time is form and color, a process to manifest the monster and the angel inherent in each of us.

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Chaos was the first of the old Greek gods.  From this void of pure potential three primary entities emerged: Gaia (Earth), Tartarus (the abyss beneath the Earth), and Eros (desire and procreation).

Will we, not only America, but all of humanity, step back from our Tartarus-abyss?