There are thousands of people within a mile of me, celebrating.
Celebrating in different ways and for different reasons a day whose apparent importance is generations old.
Uniting everyone is that, within the last 100 years, when this day already had an established meaning, each and every person here, was curled up, nameless, in a womb. And in one hundred years, when this day has come and gone again and again, each and every person here will be gone.
That any one here has pride in this day passing, pride in themselves for being who they are, or contrastingly, a feeling of unworth, when all were dead before, and will be again after, is testimony indeed to the very disillusionment that has people fight over borders or ideas.
Proud are we? What a strange sense, this pride. Is pride a quality? I think it should be seen by all that pride is indeed a flaw, not a quality. Where was the lack first born that drew towards it the render of pride to fill the cracks?
Hi, i spotted your blog and hope you are ok with me following... i found the i ching years ago, and liked the carol anthony version (she wasnt so patriarchal) whether its Taoism i am not sure... i had a little mum born on a farm in a village in the uk no electricity, no water plumbed in, no gas and she although c-of-e was essentially in essence taoist as she would rather have lived on bread than see animals suffer, but didnt to stay like the neighbours...she played music like a dream, didnt logic very often if she could help it....anyway the point is she made it to 90, and then died...two years ago today...in the village where she lived everyone she knew as a child had gone and as the youngest it was expected...the way they got round it was to muddle up the generations...the same stories were told time after time with exactly the same words...only each generation pretended to be the other...so now i say the same stories to myself sometimes about the people she knew...and i say them as her, and i say them to my daughter, in the middle of the story you mix up the generations... so i tell a story about a family in the village, i say that i went dancing, that my nana mum went dancing that they went dancing, its quite strange, you become the person for a while...they called it the breath of life...it wasnt ok to belive that there was an end...it was the way of lives.
ReplyDeleteThe I Ching is absolutely Taoist; I don't know this version but am interested to check it out.
ReplyDeleteHey, Ta-wan ... not until I saw something on FB did I have any idea what celebration you were talking about. Australia Day?
ReplyDeleteit was, but any day or event would do for my point.
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