Four degrees tonight and the world is suspended by ice crystals and nearly unbreathable air. No stars, no sun for days, no warmth anywhere and certainly not on this riverbank. The brittle grey sky right above me fades to brutal black at the horizon. Some deep ancestral part of me is searching for firewood in the underbrush.
Imagine the mighty ox, he only has one job to do – pull stuff across the earth – and no other beast can do it the way he can. He’s either pulling a plow through the long fallowed field, or delivering the fruits of that field in a wagon that has been hitched to his steady star.
I count coup on my locust tree, then head home, no qigong animal frolics tonight. I don’t think there is a form for the ox, if there was you certainly wouldn’t call it a frolic.
There is no slow walking when it’s four degrees. It’s best to move across the earth with purpose and a fierce longing for whatever lies on the other side of night. If we cross the river, what changes besides perception? If we remain here, turning the earth into furrows, whether the ground is frozen or not, will our destiny still be the same? Will we have to trade our fortune of ice for a pittance of seed?
I see the future, and it is very cold.