Wet and Wild Weather

The past week in Hawaii has had everyone recalling the last serious monsoon we endured, in 2006. "Was that 40 days of rain or 42?"  We liked the Biblical proportion, but 42 is a good number too, but I hope we aren't repeating the past.  I can do without mudslides, flash floods, hail (we had some this week), severe alert warnings on my TV and iPad, and less severe manifestations of too much water: the passenger-side door of TAO 61 filled up with water this week and made a mysterious sloshing sound when I would start and stop.  It seems to have abated.

And there was water all over my kitchen floor one morning, although this had nothing to do with wet weather.  It was difficult to determine whence it flowed. The water line to the fridge?  The dishwasher? The new bottled water cooler?  (The most likely culprit.) After doing what the bottled water company suggested ("We call this 'troubleshooting'," the customer service rep said), I tracked it to the water cooler, but still not sure if it is the bottle or the device.  The troubleshooting involved removing the big bottle from the cooler--how to do this?--so I just drained off the excess into teakettle, large jug and a curious bit of swag I had in the cupboard: a Camelbak bottle, a pricey thing I'd never used. (I'm not one of those people who go nowhere without a bottle of water.)

It took some tinkering and a web search to figure out the point of the technological Camelbak, which is like a leakproof automatic straw delivery system.  I showed it to the Wizard. "Look, you just bite here and suck lightly and the water just flows into your mouth."  It's a lot like a breast really, a nipple.

"Gross," he said, "besides, I hate the taste of plain water." That's an ongoing source of amusement; he always sends back the water in restaurants with a little rant: water's not good for you, while ordering an aperitif of Strega.

Of course, water is essential to you, and this universal spiritual metaphor not only sustains us but teaches.

The normally placid, stagnant even, stream past our apartment complex was raging this week.  Where frogs usually peep and croak, and ducks occasionally visit, this week was raging like the Yellow River for an imperial ceremony.  This "streaming video" was taken from the 10th floor of my building:



Through the storm, it is best just to be calm, hang on and wait for the turbulence to pass.  It surely will. These bulbuls, outside my office, were very strong and patient:



Water-however it reaches us, in a raging stream, pelting from the heavens, or from a water bottle-- keeps us alive, shapes the earth and cleanses.  I thought of this while being shampooed after an overdue haircut yesterday.  My hairdresser, an intense and enthusiastic Filipina who loves the shape of my head and is willing to do a very close crop, commented, "You hair grew so fast.  When were you here last?"

"Maybe two moons ago," I said, recalling that the storm had somehow overshadowed the full moon earlier this week. (No wonder my head was itchy.  I tend to time my haircuts--not completely on purpose, maybe instinctually--to the phases of the moon.)  I was thinking how much I sounded like a Navajo from an old Western horse opera, when she said, "So Chinese. That's why you like China!"  Then it occurred to me that there are lunar cultures and solar ones.

I asked the Wizard, my in-house walking wikipedia, if the Mayan calendar was a lunar one or a solar one, thinking that the attributes of a culture may have something to do with the calendar they use.

On the wall of my lanai; not exactly a taiji.

"It's solar," he said, "but probably the greatest cultures use both."  I want to think some more about this, to make an informed observation.  Does the calendar of a culture affect its "personality"?  Are there yin cultures and yang cultures?  Do two calendars balance the culture?

Whatever, there is still the rain.  And sometimes you must be patient by yourself under an umbrella or a palm frond.

Shui

The plastic jug I was using to water my lanai plants chose an inopportune moment to biodegrade, that is to say, burst, and the less-than-a-gallon of water dripped down on my neighbor's lanai, staining their screens with...water. I endured a loud Russian curse, (I don't know what they do when it actually rains with a westerly wind) and, I apologized in a way BP didn't for a similar, if more consequential spill.

I wrote a note of apology, envelope personally decorated with some quick bamboo shui-mo art, and stuck it in their door. What can I say, really? Sorry, sorry.

I've been practicing bamboo today , the fundamental Chinese painting equivalent of the martial arts horse stance (mabu), looks so simple, but is so hard. My envelope of apology was kind of pretty, really, but I doubt it will be appreciated. I do this motif, and some people say, "so nice," but I know I have not achieved the grace and effortlessness associated with the design.

So, water with ink, a controlled but surprising, random, manifestation on paper. In proper study and practice, I try to copy the images in my books, some pressed on me by my teacher, others acquired here and there. She really didn't approve of my interest in Qi Baishi, the Picasso of China. "He makes a lot of mistakes." I bought a big reference portfolio of his works in China Books in Wanfujing in Beijing last May. But only a master can make such grand "mistakes." Can we learn something from copying the mistakes of the masters?

Painting By the Book

Inspiration

All Systems Reset

The actual
Is only actual
In one place
And one time.
Today's reading from Deng Ming Dao's 365 Tao was, as is so often, perfectly synchronous with my experience of the moment, like an I Ching hexagram.

Having reset all my various timepieces and electronic devices to Honolulu time, my body slightly lagging still, I was struck by Deng's comment that "When one listens to a barking dog...actually there is nothing there--just sound from a long and deep corridor, channeled out of nothingness and fading into nothingness again. ... Like that dog, we may all strive, but there is truly nothing to be done.  If we look deeply into our lives, there is only a thin veneer of self-generated meaning over an immense ocean of nothingness."

My philosophic mentor of the Tao, right, in Wudangshan would agree, I think; his interpretations of the magic show of life, the mysteries of time and space, were a little surprising to some of my traveling companions (e.g., the butterfly and Chuang Tzu are BOTH dreaming), but they have always echoed my own dog-like attitude toward life (despite my triple fire-pig nature). On my first trip to Wudang, someone remarked that I WAS like a dog...head out the car window, ears flapping in the breeze, eating whatever someone put in my bowl, gamely following the leader on whatever stairs we were climbing, patiently waiting for the schedule to unfold. I was actually flattered. This is a good attitude to cultivate for traveling, especially in a place so challenging to ordinary Western sensibilities as China. And the attitude gives perspective to that "thin veneer of self-generated meaning," otherwise known as this blog.

One of two Western passengers on the touri$t-packed 747 (the IBM Selectric of the air) returning me home from Narita, I was  amused by JAL's offering of a small bottle of Hawaii ALOHA Harmony, 100% Pure Deep Sea Water from Kona, a clever idea to make money out of an immense ocean of nothingness. What can be more universally harmonic than water?

Bottled water is a mainstay in China, a country where even the natives boil the water.  In the mountains, a big sturdy classic Chinese thermos was welcome in the room, keeping water steaming for over 24 hours, ready for tea and toothbrushing. Regrettably, it was replaced after Day 2 with an electric kettle, one of many works-of-improvement in progress in the transforming renovation of the Wudang Kung Fu Ranch and Lychee Nut Farm (where the Wizard told people I was ensconced).  I personally preferred the thermos, filled from a central boiling station, to the annoyance of having to tend a small kettle when I wanted to replenish my green tea jar.

I once again did not hesitate to enjoy a cup of cool natural spring water from the "Thunder God Hole," a little cave up high where Guan Yin presides over the water, supposedly drunk by Lao Tze or Zhang San Feng (Wudangshan's legendary creator of tai chi chuan).

Otherwise in China, I always had a bottle of water attached to my person with a clever carabiner clip, which I highly recommend for such excursions.

One excursion was embarrassing.  When visiting the popular Bee Taoist "hermit," not so hard to find and not so eremitic really, our little group gathered to hear his wisdom translated, which can largely be summed up as "meditate always" and "maintain a loving heart" (ai xin).  As he was patiently responding to some metaphysical question from the group, I had a sinking feeling--literally--the little stool he brought out of his cave for me to sit on collapsed, transforming itself, with the assistance of my big Western butt, into firewood.

Ai Xin

Meditate Always

"Mei wenti (no problem)," he replied merrily to my apologies.  How terrible to break the hermit's chair! Like a flustered Tao-dog, I shook myself and refocused my attention on his wisdom, delivered with a calendar and an old clock in the background.  Later I again informally apologized as we left, "Bu hao yi si." I made some bows at his little altar, and he gave me a warm hug, assuring me once more, "mei wenti."

Mei Wenti

I have a feeling he may have appreciated the wu wei appearance of a bit of kindling to boil his own Thunder God water.