Today is the first day I started feeling a little homesick. I think this is a trick I’ve used whenever I’ve reached close to the halfway mark of something. I want to re-adjust to the finale before the finale arrives and also prepare for the transition ahead. More to the point, I’ve realized that I don’t spend enough time with other artists (since San Francisco has almost entirely pushed them out) and, I also haven’t spent this much time with such a diverse group of nationalities. It’s refreshing and has allowed me to understand myself from a perspective I don’t normally have access to.
Before I could go down the rabbit hole of thinking too much about the future, I pulled myself back into the present moment — at the Chateau de Grillemont. We started this day by reading a few poems, including The Bridge Builder, some by Tao Te Ching, On Trees, and later dissected The Portable Phonograph.
The poetry by the Tao Te Ching really resonated with me. I started reading some of the Taoist philosophies about a year ago and in particular the ones that have been explained by the late Wayne Dyer. In this particular passage about the Tao, I particularly liked a passage that spoke of the beauty in things that are left unspoken. By labeling something, or chasing or acquiring it, it loses its value. And in order to understand something fully and allow it to reveal and express itself from a source of truth, it requires us to sit back and watch it with complete non-attachment. The next article “On Trees” reminded me how nature, and particularly trees provide lessons without expression, and they provide lessons by simply being, rather than doing. They are perfect and infinite exactly as they are.