art

the quatrain of seven steps

abstract-1web

People burn the beanstalk to boil beans,
filtering them to extract juice.
The beanstalks were burnt under the cauldron,
and the beans in the cauldron wailed:
“We were originally grown from the same root;
Why should we hound each other to death with such impatience?

~Cao Zhi

I was introduced to the Quatrain of Seven Steps while watching, The Advisors Alliance, a 2017 Chinese two-part television series based on the life of Sima Yi, a government official and military general who lived in the late Eastern Han dynasty and Three Kingdoms period of China.

The poem itself is written in the traditional ”five-character quatrain” style and is an extended metaphor that describes the relationship of two brothers and the ill-conceived notion of one harming the other over petty squabbling.

we never just ‘see’…

reflections-4web

Spring Creek…Nikon D750    f/4.5   1/2,000    85mm   100 ISO

“…we never just ‘see’ something in the sense that a photographic plate receives rays of light.  In the real world we bring a lot of our selves to the party. And that means gaze alters what it finds.”

cited: Iain McGilchrist, The Master and his Emissary

a sundowner

reflectionsweb

Nikon D750   f/4.5   1/3,200   48mm   100 ISO

“About twelve years ago, I met a homeless woman who identified herself as a sundowner.   She described how each evening’s sun invited her to settle down along the side of her life’s path so that her journey could begin afresh in the morning sun.  She eloquently described an undercurrent of yearning that ebbed and flowed throughout her soul and how, in her past days, she found herself at the mercy of private memories, thoughts, and imaginations and had encountered, time and time again, various degree of discontent despite the seemingly fulfilling qualities of her life.

As I hear the suffering within women who story their lives through the multi-colored threads of substance use, I find myself acknowledging a similarity within each of these unique stories with my own metaphysical search for someone, something, or some place that remains beyond the forever next horizon.  Each of our unique narratives reveal an unending wandering with satchels of discontent that tell of a spiritual emptiness and an emotional intimacy with a homesickness for a place one knows cannot be.”

~B Catherine Koeford (A Meditative Journey with Saldage)