All praise for the sharp kitchen knife, but please, don’t forget the chopping board. A flat, rectangular piece of wood, an altar for the earth’s harvest.
Continuation of day 6.
A few days ago, we paused at an inconspicuous dandelion, which, after a few cold winter months, had found its way back up through a crack between the tiles of the courtyard. A symbol of return, but which one? Because return comes in many shapes and sizes. That of the prodigal son, the return to normality? To the origin, or to the homeland, the freedom of yesteryear? Or a dreaded return to the dark Middle Ages, or rather to noble wildness, or to our childhood?
The dice rolls and it’s a one.
The bottom, the first line, changes from yang to yin.
Six broken lines. Earth below, Earth above. Returning changes into Response. The latter is the title of one of the two opening chapters of the book. A response following an initiation. An echo to a sound. And if creation did indeed begin with a single word, then chapter 2 describes the subsequent answer.
Chapters 1 and 2 must be read simultaneously. Over the past year, I wrote about this prelude to the I Ching three times and posted them as An Infinite Film, The Navel of the World and Lines and Arrows. I remember being quite satisfied with their content, but after rereading them recently, I quietly deleted them. Not good enough as a sparkling overture. The ability to delete sentences, even entire chapters, from a digital publication after the fact offers a way out. If these texts had been printed on paper and sent out into the world, there would have been no turning back, and I would have been stuck with mediocre sentences forever.
Once the three pieces have been polished up a bit, they will reappear under the same titles, or perhaps different ones. More on that later. For now: Response.
The Response hexagram consists of two identical building blocks, two Earth trigrams. Two instances of a field, a farmland, a support surface, a foundation, a tabletop, a tray, a cutting board.
In the kitchen, the chopping board is the representative of the earth. A small, four-sided, flat field. The use of the chopping board, its ability to bear weight, lies on the upper side. Just like that of a cracker or toast.
It is written: the Heaven is round, the Earth is square.
The Heaven around the Earth. The Japanese coin depicts this cosmological truth well. In the Netherlands, we express this differently, but here too there is a play between round and square.
Whatever you want, round or square, but definitely sweet.
Tian is the Chinese character for 'field', a chequered landscape.
During my tour of the house and grounds, I come across the checkered pattern of the tiled courtyard. (On the side, you can just see the returned dandelion.)
A similar earthy pattern in the bathroom and in the brick exterior wall.
From clay-formed bricks, it is only a small step to square ceramic oven tray
And from there, a further step towards pleasant, earthy roundness.
Or perhaps, once more back to angular? Because let's face it, the square shape is very practical.
Knife and board, flat, round and square.
To be continued tomorrow / it could be continued tomorrow …