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Part Five: Glimpse of Some
Magnitude
or Jumping into a New
Surrealistic Adventure
I shall be telling this
with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages
hence;
Two roads diverge in a
wood, and I--
I took the one less
traveled by,
And that has made all the
difference.
Robert Frost, from The
Road Not Taken
Where have we been? It is
important that I point out that we started this trip from a
sky view, not a land view. It was parallax vision, a view
from above (like a satellite eye in the blue). We could put
ourselves into the place of the companions on the boats,
resting in the shelters and feeling loss as we had to move
on toward something that we could not yet see or imagine.
Robert Frost talks of this in his poem, The Road Not Taken.
Anytime you begin a journey, like reading a poem that leaves
holes for your imagination, it is the beginning of an ABA
form: (A) “Shh, we are getting into something that we do not
fully understand.” It is like when a mother asks her child
where he or she is going. The answer comes back meekly,
“Out.” (B) “We are confident in our skills and abilities with
those around us,” we proclaim loudly to the world. The child
who goes out now plays loudly with the other children, his
or her equals, in the neighborhood. (A) “Shh, we have been
out in the world and it is a scary place.” Our mother asks
again when we return, “Where have you been?” and the answer
is meekly, “No where.” “Who did you see out there and play
with?” and again the answer comes back in a wee voice, “No
one.” It is an ABA pattern in Frost’s poem and the sounds of
the letters tell us about it. At the beginning, the poem has
words with “s” in them, “shall” “this” “sign” “somewhere”
“ages and ages” “hence” “roads”, then all at once short
Anglo-Saxon words (sounds) appear to stop our listening,
“wood” “I “ “I” “took” “one”, and finally back to s’s in the
last two lines: “less” “has” “difference.” In this Ming
Dynasty landscape hand scroll, we have visually been there
and we understand the symmetry of the composition because
our bodies and life history are made in the same form.
View from where you came form:
In the West, we live in an “or” culture where everything is
up or down, good or evil, right or wrong. What this guide
has seen in the Middle East and the Orient are “and”
cultures where something can be “up” and “down” and…, good
and evil and something in the middle and…, right and wrong
and present and past and future and…all at the same time. In
this Ming Dynasty hand scroll we have seen both cultures
represented so that we can take from this work of art the
meanings and objects that work for us. We see through the
lens of our upbringing and society until we grow to see as
purely as possible through reasoned observations.
We have traveled one ingredient and its
multiple offspring: water. Water is the vital substance
honored by most societies which helps to create or be a form
of: air, mists, lakes and solids (such as, trees, boats,
shelters, bridges, rocks and mountains. Water is a blessing
and a danger and…. The lake is a metaphor for the water of
life which we must journey.
We have learned to look for the
duality of existence, 2s, 4s, etc., standing together with
the odd maverick 3s. Which of these two are you as a
companion on this journey: even or odd?
Orientation: As your guide I
point out again that we began this trip with a view from
above, looking down at the world. We started as birds,
seeing the world below, then riding surface fish (boats),
then we became land creatures finding shelter (huts, houses,
rocks in the sun, pagodas and temples) and wondering about
our new environment, and then we grew into mysterious
creatures of the mist, finding our way in the unknown to the
unknown We were honored to know our surroundings, islands
with trees that symbolized our emotions, mountains that
moved from background to foreground (as did the framing for
what we witnessed), changing number sequences that we could
decode and patterns of dots (tien fa) that we could not
decode in the time that we had to view them and the mists
that hid objects in the new environment and lead us into new
places with new ways of seeing the world. All these have
become old friends that change position and placement but
have remained constant up to now.
We have plenty of time, so let us rest
again. Let your guide share with you a Letter to Anne
from Taiwan, 1966, a trip on Sun Moon Lake outside of
Taipei:
7/14/66
We went to a Japanese style
house and looked at Ming and Ch’ing painting in the
collection of Mr. Wa. He is a young, young-looking
man who probably looks twenty but is forty. Some of
the things that he had in his collection were
exquisite. Mr. Lawton has been testing us orally
about style and period and artist in the last week-
after each session, in conversation and from
collections. I am now someone who is asked their
opinion because it is easy for me to see whether
something is T’ang, Han, Sung, Yuan, Ming or Ch’ing
and, most of the time, in the style of whom. The
other day Mr. Lawton (I now call him Tom - we get
close on a small island) said that Mr. Liu, the head
of the Fulbright Foundation here and Mr. Wa came up
to him and asked, “Who is the bearded man who knows
all the paintings?” After last summer, and now
seeing the work at the Palace Museum, I can see the
differences in styles. Now, my problem is to put the
names to the images in my mind. That is my next
project. I like Chinese painting enough that I want
to be conversant in it.
7/22/66
Let me tell you about the trip
up to Sun-Moon Lake. We began through the flat, but
terraced rice fields of the Sung plains. It was like
a Southern Sung painting, stretching out into a
mist, a few peasants leveling the watery-mud with a
sled pulled by a water buffalo. In another field,
women with straw hats and clothe over the hat picked
and cut the rice stalks. A man furrowed a field with
a crude plow, again pulled by a water buffalo. In a
few fields, the plow is a mechanized machine about
the shape of a lawn mower, but this is exceptional.
We climbed through the patterned fields, through a
town, the streets wide enough for only one car at a
time (of course, bicycles and motorcycles are the
norm). We passed a cement mixer for road
construction and had to wait on a side street. Some
of the roads were dusty so we (a few of us) used
masks to keep out the dirt. Finally, we climbed and
climbed. Now it was the Northern Sung mountains, the
hanging, towering, jagged peaks of Fan Kuan, the
twisting, primordial forms of Hsi Kao Hsia. Each new
height is a wonder and always something higher while
below is a deep descent into the valley, a gorge. In
two places, the rain had taken or weakened part of
the road; in one place, we drove through a waterfall
that was an integral part of the highway. No, not
highway- again, on the whole, it was wide enough for
one bus, but paved- a highway? At the side, a herd
of water buffalo was being tended by four small
children. Further on, some women worked with the men
clearing the area of falling, rain-loosened
boulders. It was heavy work, but that is Taiwan.
More rice fields, climbing the mountain. How can
they work up there? On story, not all true, says
that they dig with one hand and hold onto the side
of the cliff with the other. But this is just a
story?
Higher still, the mist rolls
on, through, over the vistas which appear and
disappear in the soft distance. Young girls walk
beside the road, an umbrella shielding them from the
sun. All over Taiwan, you will see the young girls
and older women with umbrellas against the sun. We
must be nearly there- the hostess on the bus gives
us a cold towel to wipe our face and refresh. It is
a civilized custom which you will find everywhere-
trains, buses, private homes, a painting,
everywhere. And then the green lake. Our hotel faces
the lake- each room is a painting- a handscroll that
unfolds in reality. It unwinds clearly, then fading,
reappearing and disappearing. Three stately trees
stand guard like Ni Tsan’s images at the base of the
cliff below and the edge of the yellow water. We
need this touch of relaxation with the pace that
these first four weeks have moved. It has been too
fast- for me, though, not fast enough. I want to
get, soak in all that is important, everything,
contacts and laying the groundwork for future
study.
Those we love are always with us. We
take friends along from our memories and our imagination to
share in the pleasure of the voyage. “Wish you were here” is
more than an ending to a letter. On a peaceful journey, we
should step back and ask, “Why are we feeling so peaceful
and content?” Or we do not ask this and just enjoy the trip?
Either way, we move on. As your guide, I know that peace
comes from what we discussed earlier: centering and
distance. We know when we began this journey that we were
not upon the earth but above it so distance was not a
problem. Centering was a harder place to find. We found it,
maybe, in the mists that made up the air and water. The
mists are what the adventurer loves because it holds the
secrets of the UNKNOWN.
In this additional interlude, we can
thin slice (again) what we see and what we know about what
we see.
As your guide, I remind you of the
mountain on the right, the willows and bulrushes that tell
of the sadness of leaving our island, the misty mountains,
barely visible, above boats and dark, green lines of trees.
The trees come in three lines: a long pronged line that
mirrors the horizontal, another above tilting upward and a
dark green line to the left. In the middle of the two upper
lines of trees is another void, a space in time and place
where again we can reflect upon that which we cannot see and
do not know yet.
With the dark line of trees at the
bottom containing our attention, the soft images of
mountains in the distance at the top, a mist that rolls in
and directs us to the past and the future (right and left),
the suggestion of shelters are barely visible at the end of
a bridge with someone just stepping upon it, and the rhythm
of masts, sails and passengers on the boats are silhouetted
against the expanse of the lake.
Let’s explore the numbers: On
the first boat to the right, we see one mast and one (1 to
1) passenger, next there is zero at one end, two sails in
the middle and one passenger at the other end (0 to 2+to 1),
next is one passenger, two sails and then another passenger
(1 to 2+ to 1), next comes one boat with a passenger, a
sail, another passenger and then another sail (2 to 2,
alternating in 1s), and above this docked are five boats
(the addition of 2 + 3 or the opposite) with five masts (5
to 5). You may ask: “Why all these numbers? Do you really
think that they have a meaning?” My answer is a resounding:
“Yes. I have been a guide on this trip for over 300 times
and I know how it ends. Twos and threes are the most
important numbers. Twos are human numbers and threes are
divine. The number “One” is harder to find. We ponder if the
other numbers are just to keep our interest as we try to
figure out the importance of two to three.” At least, even
after going on this trip so many times, I still have not
figured out what the other numbers symbolize. It might be so
simple that I am missing it. If any of you, my companions
can figure out the Ming Code, please share it with your
fellow companions. Send me an answer!
Do any of you practice Tai Chi early in
the morning, moving slowly in this dance of an earlier
marshal art? I have practiced it, not well, but often and
fluid enough to feel the ch’i tingling in my fingertips as I
thrust, move back, hold the world between my hands, reverse
those hands, step to the side, while breathing through my
nose with my tongue at the roof of my mouth. I do not think
when I do this. I move and listen to the music slowly
setting my mind and heart to an unrushed pace. It is a
similar feeling that I have with this scroll and these
scenes each time I come upon them. I cannot tell you why
this specific scene slows me down and yet draws me into the
“nothingness” which seems to mean something. I am like the
children who fall through the wardrobe into Narnia. It is a
magical place. Maybe that is why, when I am not a guide on
these visual, mind tours, a professor teaching art history
and appreciation and a professional artist creating works
from parallax vision and collage-thinking, I love to go into
elementary schools and work with the kids in First and
Second Grade. Up until the Fourth Grade these children still
believe in magic. Artists, my wife tells me, do not grow up;
they just mature somewhat. She may be right. Picasso said at
his 80th birthday, “I am a child who is in an
ancient body.” Picasso understood the creative dynamism of
someone who is “ancient” and yet at the same time “new." It
is a combination that makes for art that has a life of its
own. The ancient part is filled with information and
education and the art part sets that store of combustible
material ablaze. We can all see through Prometheus’ fiery
eyes.
John Keats talks of the unknown as
being “the darkening chamber of maiden thought” (putting the
dark mists of the mind at work with virgin insights). He
says that we enter something which is first light and then
it slowly begins to darken while doors open to more dark
chambers which in turn lighten and eventually, again,
darken. This section of the hand scroll is my darkening
chamber. I get lost in thought and meditation when the scene
opens to the gray of mist and lake water. And no where do we
find a place to rest, no where do we see a clear view of a
shelter. For the moment, we are the ancient mariner when he
says those classic lines, “Water, water everywhere, but not
a drop to drink.” When there is so much to see and
experience, at one point in time we turn the information
coming into our system to the “Off” switch. After that, we
float with the tide of the lake but do not drink from what
is around us. Having a void in the center of two diagonal
arms of trees that pulls us in like a black hole in this
hand scroll is important to the process of cleaning out our
minds so that new ideas and images can rush in. If the next
experience is totally different in character than what we
have been drifting with, then we need a mental and visual
cleansing.
Story: The Importance of Forgetting,
in Tbilisi, Georgia:
Being far away from your home country,
in a land where the language is strange even in this world
of loved languages (Georgian is one of the fourteen base
world languages but it is only used in Georgia), you shut
language out, think and read a lot (in English). Recently on
reading again a 1976 publication by Edward T. Hall, called
Beyond Culture, I was reminded of the artist’s, the
creator’s need to forget. Children learn it as they play.
You purposely forget so that you can see the world with
fresh eyes. Hall says, “The failure to understand the
significance of play in maturing human beings has had
incalculable consequences, because play is not only crucial
to learning but (unlike other drives) is its own reward.”
To an artist, forgetting is critical to
any pursuit. I have the kind of mind that can remember
brushstrokes as I walk through a museum exhibition. It gets
in the way when I pick up a brush for a new painting.
Therefore the first hour or so of painting is to forget all
those other painters’ solutions in my mind’s eye. This
allows me, or any creative person, to come to the material
with “fresh eyes." The poet, dancer, writer, musician,
inventor or learner can find individual and new solutions to
“stuff” that others have only seen through established
patterns or forms. The Russian scientist Luria in the mid 20th
century established the importance of forgetting in his book
The Mind of a Mnemonist, the life story of a man who could
not forget anything and remembered everything that was
placed before him. On first sight this would seem a blessing
but on closer look, the man was a mental cripple. If you
gave this man a problem to solve, as a visualizer he could
solve it. But he could not understand what he solved. He had
too much “stuff” filling his storage unit, his brain. He
could not tell others what he knew or saw.
I remember in school where the teachers
would reward the students who could memorize the best. I
could not. It took me years to find ways to keep things in
my mind. I was always seeing the world with “fresh eyes” and
drawing/painting it with those visions. This has practical
implications. At one point in my life I built houses from
the ground up. I did five over the years, for the
architectural plan to the last nail or the trawl of
concrete. After the first house, I found that I had to
forget all the bad things that happened, all the aching
muscles and long hours, all the feelings of disappointment
when something did not come out as I planned before I could
start a new project. Since I am a visualizer who remembers
pictures of things placed in front of me, I had to learn to
forget them so they did not get in the way of creating a new
vision. I keep them in notebooks and computers for future
reference and use.
I found that it helps to know how the
brain works and that there are ways to help you forget.
Monks in China and Japan repeat a phrase until the words are
lost and only the sound resonates in the soul of the priest.
As Hall says, “The reason man does not experience his true
cultural self is that until he experiences another self as
valid, he has little basis for validating his own self.” At
points in my life I travel to find my other self, to forget
the Western man that could only see with linear eyes
(straight-line thinking). In the West, we place logic and
irrationality at two opposing poles. Recent mind studies
find that they are positioned in the same place in the
brain. Irrationality is a way to start the process toward
logic and visa versa. In the front of the brain are the
faculties for perception, body movement, performance of
planned action, memorizing, and problem solving. It you
dance, it helps with problem solving or your performance of
a planned action. You can sometimes awaken one direction of
the mind by going in the opposite direction.
One historical fact about America is
our ability to forget. We sell everything “new and
improved." What has made America great is its ability to
forget (see the new) and remember (experience history) at
the same time. John Robinson, the great football coach of
the University of Southern California, once told his team,
“Today we play our cross town rivals, UCLA, for the national
championship. It is the most important game in your life, in
your football career. Nothing can change that at this moment
but there is one thing I want you to remember when you run
out on the field, ‘There are 1.6 billion Chinese who just
don’t give a damn.’” Through shock and changing the
reference for their football game, he helped them forget and
remember simultaneously.
Rule
Eight: Eventually, we all must move on and see what is next.
Centering yourself cannot last a lifetime. Our process is
forget and remember.
Time
to thin slice again:
Trees are still arrows that shoot to
the stars.
There are three clusters of dark,
green trees.
All has become soft and gentle.
The emphasis is still on green with
patches of pink.
The mountains rise and seem to have
a life of their own.
Story: My son, who was adopted
from Korea, is tall, slim and fast of foot. He runs the
relay and 200 meter dash in the Special Olympics. I went to
every meet and cheered him to victory. Recently, he had come
in second in two consecutive races and I thought that it was
time for his father, who ran track in high school and played
varsity football in college, to sit down and advise him. I
told him, “Son, you are faster than most of these kids that
you run against. What you need is someone standing on the
side of the track near the finish line, yelling, “Run
faster. Chris. Run. Win, Chris, win.” He smiled as if he
understood and shook his head affirmatively. On the day of
the track meet, qualifying for the State Special Olympics
grand festival of events, I was there at the side of the
track. He was running in lane three in his specialty, the
200 meter dash. He took off and those long legs of his gave
him a ten meter advantage coming around the bend and down
the home stretch. I yell, “Run faster, Chris. Win, Chris,
win.” I was doing what my father had taught me, what my
coaches had drilled into my subconscious, what my American
society had emphasized in terms of how to deal with the
world around me. “Win, Chris, win!” Confidently I knew that
he would. He was ahead of runners who he had beaten in the
past. They were friends from other meets. About ten yards
from the finish line, Chris slowed down, stopped, waited for
his friends who were running second, third and fourth this
day, took their hands and ran through the orange tape at the
line, together. It was an important lesson for me that day.
Chris already had learned it.. I thought that I knew
everything about sports. It had gotten me into an Ivy League
college (along with good grades and other activities). I was
a winner. Now, I was faced with another truth, “My son was a
winner of a higher order by changing the American rules of
winning.” He won in a win-win world.
Maybe that is what peace is all about.
All around winning is everything or as Vince Lombardi, the
football coach for the Green Bay Packers, told his players,
“Winning isn’t everything; it is the only thing.” I know now
that is not true everywhere. My son, who is an individual
with mental retardation, changed the rules for the
betterment of his friends, the betterment of all. In a sport
where winning is the rule, he has expanded the concept of
winning with an idea that comes close to resembling inner
peace.
I told this story about my son to my
fellow travelers as we viewed this scene, figuratively
taking their hands and visually walking them into the void,
the space between two lines of trees, leading to a finish
line that seemed to hold no object, just seemingly empty air
filled with mist.
"By the time it came to the edge of the
Forest the stream has grown up, so that it was almost a
river, and, being grown-up,
it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used to do
when it was younger, but moved slowly. For it knew now where
it was going; and it said to itself, "There is no hurry. We
shall get there some day." But all the little streams higher
up in the
Forest went this way and that, quickly, eagerly, having so
much to find out before it was too late."
A.A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner.
Finally, after this long, slow,
drifting voyage across this Southern Sung lake, in the
company of others, where we thought “This will never end”,
we see willows of sadness at the beginning of something new,
something strange for a lake adventure.
We get our first glimpse of a possible
ending destination, or at least a change of scene. If this
was only a Southern Sung trip on a lake, a change would not
happen. “We can’t,” as Dorothy of the Wizard of Oz says, “be
in Kansas anymore.”
To our far left, some cliffs appear.
All the boats are moored to the shore as we see seven masts.
Above is an overhang of rock which should not be there and
on it, giving us a continuity with what we saw in Part One,
is a grouping of an ABA of trees, two green clumps around a
cluster of pink blossoms and leaves.
Our
hearts pound a little faster, we now go on foot or on the
backs of domestic beasts. We have come upon a new scene, a
new adventure. We are almost there, wherever “there” might
be. This is solid ground. This may be something that will
lead us to the “known” in life. This is real. I can feel
this under my feet. Mankind may be leaving the water.
Our
peaceful journey may be over or not!
What
do you think will come next? Will the void, the unknown,
become the known? Do we have stories that will help us
understand this voyage of discovery?
Before moving to the last scene, let us thin slice where we
have been, let’s review our voyage to this point. Let us
stop and play Proust as he pens Remembrance of Things Past.
For us, it has been: ABA, green, pink,
trees, boats, passengers, mountains, water, lake, shelters,
bridges, mists, voids, dragon spines, tien fa (dots),
numbers, imagination, observation, thin slicing, stories,
rules, history and peace.
"The best craftsmanship always leaves
holes and gaps in the works... so that something that is not
in the poem can creep, crawl, flash, or thunder in."
Dylan Thomas, Creative Manifesto, Winter, 1961
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