for Janna

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.

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?

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

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.

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?

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.

Back to the Zhuangzi for the next two sentences.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

A spiral as a quest …

A spiral as a game …

A spiral in the weather forecast …

A spiral, two commas …

Kun and Peng …

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.