Day 21,677 - 2010 1208

Day 21,677 - 2010 1208
Belov-ED Days - 4,588
Thursday
James Oliver Smith, Jr.
http://josjr.com/

I Ching images

Fu Hsi 19: Beauty, Fire, Intelligence, Brightness, Caressing
01 -------- Fire (Hearth, Campfire, Sun, Heat, Energy, Forest Fire)
02 --- --- Eye
04 --------x The Clinging, The Clarity, The Warmth, The Divination, The Vision

08 --------x Fire (Sun, Campfire, hearth, Heat, Energy, Forest Fire, Eagle)
16 --- --- Eye
32 --------x The Clinging, The Clarity, The Divination, The Vision

changing towards

Fu Hsi 63: Splitting, Peeling Off, Deteriorating, Flaying
01 -------- Mountain (Fog, Mist, Rain, Sleet, Clouds)
02 --- --- Ear
04 --- --- The Abyss, The Danger, The Mystery, The Nourishment

08 --- --- Earth (Ground, Valley, Canyon, Plains, Desert, Cavern)
16 --- --- Belly, Solar Plexus
32 --- --- The Embracing, The Creation, The Yielding, The Centering

Day 26,677 - Images from the I Ching: Fire [The Clinging] over Fire [The Clingign] (Hexagram 19 - Beauty) --> changing towards [line 1,3,4] --> Mountain [The Unmoving] over Earth [The Embracing] (Hexagram 63 - Peeling) ... Beyond all else, we are a visual species ... We _see_ solutions ... We _see_ to our "business" ... We _see_ each other ... We _see_ the future, the present, the past ... We dress to be _seen_ ... We _watch_ for danger ... We _watch_ over each other ... We give the "evil" eye ... We stare, glare, gaze and penetrate with our eyes ... Our visual vocabulary is simply extraordinary ... We can hardly write a paragraph or speak a half dozen phrases without some allusion to vision, visualization or _imag_ination ... So much of how we communicate who we are, how we feel and what we are thinking is expressed through our eyes ...

it is no wonder that we try to invent ways to communicate visually in email through colored text, emoticons, icons, thumbnail images and font types ... Without vision we are "flying blind", "leaping into the dark", "kept in the dark", "going through dark times" and "lost in the dark". The I Ching image of Fire is "The Clinging", because Fire clings to that which fuels it, like an image "clings" to our "eyes", which (in turn) burn the image into our brains ... We "just can't get that image our of our minds" ... To prove something we "show" the evidence ... "Seeing is believing" ... And the opposite is (unfortunately) all too true: not seeing is not "believing" ... All to often we have to concede that "out of sight is out of mind" is the operative mode in which we relate to the world ...

In the "body" of the I Ching, Fire is the "eye" and it is tightly connected to "clarity", the polar opposite of Water (Fog, Mist, Rain, Steam) which is bound to obscurity, confusion and misunderstanding ... From Fire we get light and warmth, as with the Sun, which gives us _day_ ... Through the reflection of light we see the world, and we see it from a distance ... Our first experience with something (and often the _only_ experience) is through our eyes ... Things we are attracted to are considered beautiful and things we are repulsed by are considered ugly ... So we tend to judge everything from a distance first ... Through our eyes we see things at distances of micrometers to trillions of meters (stars) ... The other senses follow (potentially) long after the initial "sighting": smell, sound, taste and touch ... If we are repulsed visually, we will generally not get close enough to experience the odors, sounds, tastes and textures of the people, other life forms and objects in the Universe ...

As I struggle with my vision I think about these things with greater intensity because I am becoming more aware of not only how differently I relate to the world, but also how differently other sighted life forms relate to me ... I've started to think about what will be my last "image" of something, or someone ... When I was walking the streets of Rome, the "Eternal City" («la città eterna») a couple of years ago I was filled with the overwhelming sense of grief that I may not be able to see La Fontana Trevi, La Piazza Navona or il fiume Tevere (The Tiber river) mai più (ever again) ... I realized that I needed to start collecting these images and organize them in my brain deeply, firmly and _clearly_ for retrieval in the event that the gates of light will shut permanently ... Each face, each person on Franklin avenue, each tree, leaf and blade of grass needs to be lined up, categorized and tagged for use during the dark times that may very well become my new reality ...

This is what the "clinging" "clarity" of Fire means to me now ... As I take note of the three changing/dying lines within this doubly brilliant Fire/Sun and lock-in the image of the resulting Mountain over Earth, I am reminded of the the seemlingly timeless, eternal Mountain melting, splitting, flaking itself down upon the receptive, embracing mother Earth which will, eventually, give birth to a new Mountain ... Whatever happens in that darkness of blindness or death will be burned into the patterns of molecules and atoms of the new Mountain, the new città eterna, the new reality that I have had the priviledge to occupy ... Il matto ...

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