IN THE PRESENCE OF THINGS GREATER

In the first year in the time of Chih-ho the fifth moon on the day of Chi-ch’ou a Guest Star appeared southeast of Tien-Kuan. It could be seen in the day like Venus with rays pointing in the twenty-three directions and remained for twenty-three days. On the day of Hsin-wei in the third month of the year of Chia-yu the Guest Star was no longer to be seen; this was interpreted as an omen that the harmattan wind had blown.

If you had witnessed that Guest in your year of one thousand fifty-four, clouds reflecting the tourmaline sea seeming like white rain in the snow, would you have realized you had seen the feathers of Grandfather Fire and thereafter needed no more?

So why think you of abstruse postscripts that condense moment into theory immensity into filaments chaos and color into clouds which in time become points which in time become the spin of extinction which becomes chaos which becomes color which becomes immensity which becomes filaments which become the axles of kalpa turning and the laws of fences facing. That night in the Year of the Guest the wind siffling about your robes, the bamboo chrysantheming your side, you would have needed no words to know what the star advised: Seek always the water stilled not the hour on the waves.