A Hell Of A Life, Pausing On My Way

Here are two poems which seem to be talking about keeping still from different attitudes. These poems were written with 47 hours between them. What happened in between? Thanksgiving day happened in between. Giving thanks happened in between.

So the earlier poem is not as serene as the second poem. This poem may well have the Tarot's Hanged Man in its background. But perhaps it is the pair of gym shoes that is hanging from an overhead wire at the next intersection east of my house that is the model. These shoes were already there in 2001 when I moved in and noticed them.

A Hell Of A Life

I'm all hung up,
Thrown high up over a wire,
The butt of a prank.
I am upside down,
Hanging head down and dangling
And I can't get down.
Come back years from now.
I'll still be here, just grayer,
A hell of a life.

***********************************

That's an awkward and sad vision of keeping still. Here is another way of keeping still.

Pausing On My Way

I release like this,
Go all loose, all rubbery,
Then begin to float.
All I need is fire.
I would inflate and then rise,
A heart full of grace.

I take all that, and hold it
In loose arms outstretched, rounded.

I forget my feet,
My knees, myself, forget you
And all my true hopes.
I simply stand here.
I wait, breathing in and out
Pulsing as I breathe.

****

Keeping Still is one translation of the title of the 52nd hexagram of the I Ching. Keeping Still is the Wilhelm/Baynes translation, but Stephen Karcher translated it Bound, or Stilling.

As one might surmise, this hexagram is speaking of the use of meditation, staking the claim of meditation and similar activities or states as one of 64 primary phases of human circumstance on the planet. Attached to these phases of life circumstance are predictions of a sort and each of these circumstances can lead to other circumstances in various combinations of six constituent elements or lines of power. Each of these six lines are expansive or contractive powers, placed in six positions which are also expansive or contractive, and thus enhance the power or tend to neutralize it. As you can see, this system of interaction of 64 primary phases of human circumstance is complex enough for a long and systematic study if you are motivated. What would it mean to pass from this phase to this other phase? How does that change them both? And so on.

That book, I Ching, is one of the five traditional classic books of learning that formed the literate foundation of an educated person in ancient China. In it's basic beginning form it is over five thousand years old. In it's more or less final form it is over two thousand years old. Everyone educated knew these works intimately as well as others. There were schools of thought that grew up around the book, mainly but not only Confucian, Buddhist and intensively Taoist/alchemical, and yet others. Go to the right sort of bookshop and you will find dozens of modern commentaries which have all appeared since the 60's. When I started looking at I Ching there were three for me to look at, Wilhelm/Baynes, Legge, and Blofeld. In my estimation, Ritsema, Karcher, Whincup, Schklovskii, Cleary and the younger Wilhelm are the best of the European moderns, not in any particular order.