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Part One: The Beginning of
the Journey, Thin Slicing What We See
I open the scroll and again tell you, “I could afford this
eventually in 1973 because it has no writing at the
beginning. The Chinese love the beauty of writing: how it is
done and what it says in its imaginative descriptions. There
is nothing there so we will have to supply our own stories;
we have to put ourselves in this work to understand its
meaning. And even then, there may be no meaning, so the
journey could be the pleasure of the journey, not a
destination and, of course, the company.”
Rule One: Sipping, telling stories and admiring. At
any time in this process, you are expected to supply a story
about a journey you took with friends, what you saw, and how
it changed your direction in life. The journey may be the
destination.
 Thin
Slicing: What do we see at first glance:
A View from Above: A Physical Distance from the
Scene.
A landscape of mountains or hills, water and
nature.
Mankind and his habitats, almost hidden in nature.
Soft and green.
Islands of rest and experience (the experience of what
came before).
Kinds of things: dots, types of trees, masts, placements,
etc.
ABA, classical (in the Greek and Chinese sense)
composition and proportion (therefore HUMAN).
Numbers: especially 2s and 3s.
Thin Slicing the Thin Slicing: No, to be honest, that
was not what I first saw here. What I first saw in the
simplest thin slice was: 1) ABA (something on one side and a
similar thing on the other with something in the middle, 2)
spots of green, and 3) a gentle, wavy line of hills and
distant mountains.
“What did these three
things do?”
ABA is balance: from the pyramids of Egypt, to the
classical compositions by Mozart, to the structure of our
bodies, and much more in all cultures.
The composition of ABA reminded us that we are human:
something on one side balanced by something on the other
side and something in the middle. This was a journey that
humans can take. As we looked deeper, we see the golden
section of “the shorter distance is to the longer
distance as the longer is to the whole.” This realization
forces us to examine our own proportions on our arms, legs,
body, hands and feet. We become all mankind in that
instance. Every culture teaches us this. Most of us know
Goldie Locks and the Three Bears. It is essential democracy
in our eyesight: not far right, not far left but just off
middle (it is never too hot, too cold, but just right). As
an adult, we might call it “Golden Section with the Three
Choices.” Those of us who love mathematics know the golden
section in the hypotenuse of the 3-4-5 triangle, where when
you take a 45-degree line it cuts the hypotenuse into 2 and
3, or a “golden section.” Those who love cartoons knows that
it is not the arm of Olive Oyl, or the massive arm of Bluto,
but the “just right” arm of Popeye. On the Parthenon in
Athens, it is the front distance to the side distance as the
side is to both added together. In this scroll, we see this
golden section in the way that the center of the middle
island is just off center on its imaginary vertical line.
Once you see it one place, you see it all through the
scroll.
There are two friends near a small hut with three kinds of
trees behind them. There are two friends in boats with three
masts and three friends with two masts. And to keep us
honest and guessing, there are boats with no masts.
A journey is taken with friends or at least one friend. They
both stand before the small temple on the first land mass,
again in a hut on the middle island, and on the balcony of a
dwelling overlooking the lake (at the end of this first
unwrapping). We know that this is not a real journey on the
lake because if we take our magnifying glass, we see that in
the distance there are four boats tied to a dock but we see
five masts.
Some Greens Stand for Eternal: Some Do Not! As I
said, this is a journey to take with friends. The green is
the evergreens and trees with leaves, symbols in Chinese art
of steadfastness of friendship. Beside the green evergreens
are colored blossoms on trees and we know: “If friends go
away, they will bloom again in the future just as bright and
vital as they were before.” Away from these three, at the
edge of the lake, is the “weeping willow” tree, a symbol of
sadness in many cultures (the concept of departure and
loss).
We Must have a Frame. And above it all, holding our
attention to the thin slicing of the lake journey is the
curved line of the hills and mountains, holding the sky
outside the scroll and holding us, our fellow travelers and
the lake inside.
If we look even closer at this first view of the scroll, we
see a “dragon spine” of the mountain in the lower right hand
corner and on this we find dots, “ti-en fa.” It will take us
too long to find a pattern of numbers in these dots on this
first voyage but it is there. If we sip our wine long
enough, look and count the dots long enough, record our
findings long enough, admire the details long enough, we
might find an internal pattern to the chaos or WE MIGHT NOT.
Still, even if a pattern is not found, the wine, the stories
of other journeys and the fellowship of hunting will be
enough to keep us looking. We can always unwind the hand
scroll again.
   
Time to Rest and Reflect! Like our travelers we pause
here and ask that our friends on the journey (YOU) tell us a
story or two…about your experiences with these elements:
friendship, travel, fellowship, places to stop and reflect
on what went before, our humanity in many forms, symbols and
their importance, water/earth/human/sky, and
patterns/compositions/proportions, and any other
events/ideas that the peace of the journey suggests.
Send
us your contributions, stories and comments.
Review where we have been:
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