> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.8ismeerdan1000.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# IMMENSELY SMALL
- URL: https://www.8ismeerdan1000.com/immensely-small/
- Published: 2026-10-02T09:59:35.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-02T09:59:35.000Z
- Description: chapter 3. BEGIN
- Author: ACHT IS MEER DAN DUIZEND
- Tags: The Sketchbook of Changes, #lightbox, 3

for Janna

**In the northern darkness there is a fish and his name is* Kun**. The* Kun *is so huge I don't know how many thousand li he measures.*  
Zhuangzi *\- translated by Burton Watson*

This is how the *Zhuang Zi*, the oldest surviving Taoist text, named after its author, opens. Do not expect the first chapter, which describes the origins of it all, to have a solemn or classical title such as ‘Genesis’ or ‘Overture’. It is entitled ‘*Free and Easy Wandering*.'

There is no mention of a creator. What is named, however, are the circumstances and the location: ‘darkness’ and ‘the north.' Can you picture the whole scenery? An Arctic winter, the freezing waters of the polar sea, turbulence, oxygen, and an abundance of fish—lots and lots of fish.

![](https://www.8ismeerdan1000.com/content/images/2026/09/noord.jpg)

Read as well [***NORTH**](https://www.8ismeerdan1000.com/north/)

Hold on to that image. Just swap the overwhelming number of fish for a single, monstrously large specimen. Namely, the fish *Kun* 鯤. How big is that one fish? *I don't know how many thousand li he measures*’. And how else would you imagine this giant? Like the way early European cartographers depicted sea monsters on their nautical charts?

![](https://www.8ismeerdan1000.com/content/images/2026/09/IMG_2345.jpg)

Detail from the **Carta Marina* by Olaus Magnus (1539)

![](https://www.8ismeerdan1000.com/content/images/2026/09/IMG_2356.jpeg)

 Detail from the **Iceland map*, part of the **Theatrum Orbis Terrarum* by the cartographer Abraham Ortelius, 1585.

Or perhaps something more recognisable, something more stylised? Like his silhouette, incorporated into the paving in Nazaré?

![](https://www.8ismeerdan1000.com/content/images/2026/09/2026-08-23-10-53-02-1.png)

**Kun* in the cobbled streets of Nazaré.

You aren’t very impressed by its size, are you? We only realise how things really are when they’re put into the right perspective. Below is a comparison of *Kun* with the Eiffel Tower.

![](https://www.8ismeerdan1000.com/content/images/2026/09/groot-2.jpg)

By the way, here’s something important to know: strangely enough, in Chinese, *Kun* also means ‘fish egg' or ‘roe’. So, the very biggest is also the very smallest!

If you compare *Kun*, in this latter appearance, to the size of your hand, you get a completely different picture of his size.

![](https://www.8ismeerdan1000.com/content/images/2026/09/hand-5-4.png)

If you place the two extremes right next to each other, you immediately find yourself wondering: is the *Fish Egg Kun* really that small, or is my hand actually that big?

![](https://www.8ismeerdan1000.com/content/images/2026/09/klein.png)

It brings to mind a single, tiny sequoia seed. Knowing what a giant it came from. And what a colossus will grow from it once it has sprouted. 

![](https://www.8ismeerdan1000.com/content/images/2026/09/IMG_2282.webp)

Sequoia seeds.

Back to the *Zhuangzi* for the next two sentences.

**He changes and becomes a bird whose name is Peng. The back of the* Peng **measures I don't know how many thousand li across ...*

*Kun* becomes *Peng*. The giant fish transforms into an equally colossal bird.

![](https://www.8ismeerdan1000.com/content/images/2026/09/lucht-water-2.jpg)

 Detail of **Lucht en water 2* \- MC Escher, 1938.

*Like a fish in water.* Even the enormous *Kun* can let itself be carried along by it and move so effortlessly.

As soon as a fish leaves the water, gravity takes over. Land animals cannot find a way round this and find themselves in a struggle that is ultimately impossible to win.

But isn’t it said, '*as free as a bird’*? Just like that fish, birds can float and let themselves be carried along, drawing on a lightness that is unique to them. And using their wings and thermic winds. *Peng*’s wings must be enormous. 

**... and, when he rises up and flies off, his wings are like clouds all over the sky. When the sea begins to move, this bird sets off for the southern darkness, which is the Lake of Heaven.*

![](https://www.8ismeerdan1000.com/content/images/2026/09/IMG_2283.jpg)

**A wing of the bird* **Peng* \- from the **Kyōka Hyaku Monogatari* (Japan, 1853).

The transformation from fish to bird is a transition from a state of effortlessness and naturalness—from a mind unbound by the constraints of a body—to a life full of resistances, a life lived in a physical body.

**The Universal Harmony records various wonders, and it says: 'When the Peng journeys to the southern darkness, the waters are roiled for three thousand li. He beats the whirlwind and rises ninety thousand li, setting off on the sixth-month gale.'*

Just imagine: an aeroplane so heavy and clumsy that it needs a runway three thousand miles long just to get off the ground! A swan flaps its wings and runs about thirty meters across the water, and in doing so outwits gravity. Can you picture *Peng* doing the same? For three thousand miles?

**Wavering heat, bits of dust, living things blown about by the wind - the sky looks very blue. Is that its real colour, or is it because it is so far away and has no end? When the bird looks down, all he sees is blue too*.

The blue of the sky, the yellow of a flower, a round or angular shape, near or far. Everything we think we perceive objectively is, in essence, entirely relative. Blue, as perceived by someone else, may well be red for us. To the bird that we see disappearing as a tiny speck, it is we who are slipping out of sight.

'*When the bird looks down, all he sees is blue too. 'Doesn't* that mean that this whole description of *Kun* and *Peng* is about us? About our consciousness? About our potential. About our perspective.

From the perspective of *Peng,* the astronaut looks down on his earthly existence. Before setting off, there was the promise of being able to gaze further into space. But once he arrived at the space station, he couldn't resist turning his eyes towards Earth, at every spare moment. Watch *The Overview Effect*.

From the central position of the space station, ‘far away’ and ‘close by’ are reflected in each other. A galaxy—unimaginably far away—in a tiny snail shell—in your back garden.

![](https://www.8ismeerdan1000.com/content/images/2026/09/IMG_2180.jpeg)

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy Messier 77, also known as the Squid Galaxy.ESA/Hubble & NASA, L. C. Ho, D. Thilkerf

![](https://www.8ismeerdan1000.com/content/images/2026/09/P1040102--1-.jpg)

A snail on the wall of our flat

A spiral unites the infinitely small—after all, a spiral begins with the drawing of a simple dot, followed by a comma—with the infinitely large. The state of being of a fish egg with that of the monster fish *Kun.* 

![](https://www.8ismeerdan1000.com/content/images/2026/09/2026-09-28-12-56-07.png)

One thing turns into another. The small becomes large. The large becomes small.

 A starting point, a comma, a spiral ...

![](https://www.8ismeerdan1000.com/content/images/2026/09/ezgif.com-speed-2.gif)

A spiral as a quest …

![](https://www.8ismeerdan1000.com/content/images/2026/09/chartres3.png)

A spiral as a game …

![](https://www.8ismeerdan1000.com/content/images/2026/09/2026-09-30-16-38-18.jpeg)

A spiral in the weather forecast …

0:00 

/0:16 

1× 

A spiral, two commas …

![](https://www.8ismeerdan1000.com/content/images/2026/09/2026-09-28-13-47-04-2.gif)

*Kun* and *Peng* …

![](https://www.8ismeerdan1000.com/content/images/2026/09/vis-vogel.png)

**In the northern darkness there is a fish and his name is* Kun**. The Kun is so huge I don't know how many thousand li he measures. He changes and becomes a bird whose name is* Peng**. The back of the* Peng *measures I don't know how many thousand li across* …

![](https://www.8ismeerdan1000.com/content/images/2026/09/2026-09-28-07-51-25.jpg)

De ‘old taiji tu’. Day and night, word and reply, Kun and Peng, which create one another and follow one another.

---

![](https://www.8ismeerdan1000.com/content/images/2026/09/03.-1-1.png)

3\. BEGINNING

**THE IMAGE**: *Water* above *Thunder*. Deep within the dark waters of the north, something is about to happen. An abrupt transformation from fish to bird. Moisture and electricity – an ideal starting point. A heavy thunderstorm. Beginning.

---

Thank you for reading!  
****'Eight is More Than a Thousand'** is built using Ghost, an open-source writing platform. All contributions go directly to the writer. Some of the articles on 8ismeerdan1000 are freely accessible. Another section is available only to paying subscribers. By taking out a paid subscription – which can be for a month or a year – you help to support the progress of the ****Eight is More Than a Thousand project**! For those who would like to read all the posts but cannot currently afford to do so, a brief message is all it takes to gain access.

[SUBSCRIBE](#/portal/signup)

[![](https://achtismeerdanduizend.mymagic.page/content/images/2026/08/ko-fi-9.png)](https://ko-fi.com/8ismeerdan1000?ref=8ismeerdan1000.com)

for one-off contributions