Now this post may be about many things, but it also is about few, simple things. If you have music to cue, please cue a nice version of ‘Simple Gifts’ – if I can find one that’s kosher to link I will, but for the time being we’ll leave that as an optional part of the exercise.
You can see that these are blocks of wood. That’s pretty simple. There is a section of the Tao Te Ching – I think it’s section 15 – that was always one of my favorites.
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Fifteen
The ancient masters were subtle, mysterious, profound, responsive.
The depth of their knowledge is unfathomable.
Because it is unfathomable,
All we can do is describe their appearance.
Watchful, like men crossing a winter stream.
Alert, like men aware of danger.
Courteous, like visiting guests.
Yielding like ice about to melt.
Simple, like uncarved blocks of wood.
Hollow, like caves.
Opaque, like muddy pools.
Who can wait quietly while the mud settles?
Who can remain still until the moment of action?
Observers of the Tao do not seek fulfillment.
Not seeking fulfillment, they are not swayed by desire for change.
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Now what is being said there may or may not be simple, but it seems to think that uncarved blocks of wood are simple. These four blocks have been sitting unobtrusively on my desk for the last half year and until today they were rough cut – six cuts each – to make them blocks. Today I am not sure what came over me but I decided that they wanted to be sanded and have a light coat of tung oil applied – I think my rationale was that I did not want them readily picking up coffee stains or any of the other staining things that sometimes visit my desk. They’ve been very useful, I stand things like the phone or my token-generating fob upon them, I bring things to the right height for a given purpose. I array them aesthetically at times while contemplating larger matters. When the mice accept their poison evasion medals these are the pedestals upon which they stand.
Before considering the question of whether uncarved blocks of wood are simple I think there is some duty to examine each one a bit.
First the one that, at least the wood of which, I’ve had the longest. It’s a red gum Eucalyptus from California. I cut this from a much larger slab. It’s very dense.
The second is a wood I highly favor, the orange osage, maclura pomifera, hedge apple, also very dense. Bright yellow when cut, slowly darkens to a honey brown.
Getting on now to an unknown wood – it’s either cherry or redwood and a more experienced soul or scientist could surely tell, but not I – I’d be inclined to guess redwood if I had to because it just does not seem as dense and the many pieces of cherry I have known, but again. I have five pictures here, two prior to the tung oil showing really fascinating grain and then three afterward. Flames, as they call them, came out on the less figured sides after the oil but the figured sides darkened a bit more than was advantageous to showing the grain.
and lastly there was a sickly wild cherry in our yard that seemed an ideal subject to teach my younger daughter how to use a chain saw. This is a core sample, if you will. There were a lot of growths and infestations that had the tree really struggling. You can see some of those battles in the three pictures below.
Now before we get to simple, we’ll have to ask if these qualify as uncarved. I’d say they do inasmuch as it’s still just the six cuts. Anything less and it’s barely a block so much as a chunk. Is this our meditation for simplicity then?
Quietly listen as the stains of the music waft along –
… when true simplicity is gained to bow and to bend we shall not be ashamed
now I am not sure that the simplicity spoken of in the song and the simplicity in the Tao are the same, so we can turn the song down now if it’s causing cognitive dissonance. The Shaker sense of simplicity seems a lot about humility, which is a high virtue but perhaps not at the core of what simplicity is.
Simple, like uncarved blocks of wood. All that describes though is the appearance of the ancient masters. Simple, like uncarved blocks of wood. Sorry to put yo through all this – it just gnaws on my mind now and then. I see beauty and great stories of origin and experience, of becoming – expressions of potential realized through changing conditions.
Anyway, I have these four blocks of wood on my desk and they don’t do too much except be blocks of wood on my desk – simplest thing ever.
