In my last post I began with a quote from Laozi in the Tao Te Ching,
Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore benefit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there.”
On this same thinking, I found this crumbly porridge bowl and continued my pondering about the space in a vessel.
This 5,000-year-old ceramic vessel contains burnt food remnants that are helping scientists develop a more comprehensive understanding of food preparation in the region. Sara Jagiolla / Kiel University.
There’s also a Zen koan that says, it’s the space between the bars that hold the tiger.
Deepak Chopra says that Zen koans “don’t necessarily have one correct interpretation. They are meant to force the mind out of linear conventional thinking into transcendent insight.”
Anyone who knows me well knows I love nothing more than a steamy bowl of porridge. I find porridge transcendent when it comes with brown sugar and cream, a sprinkle of cinnamon, and fresh nutmeg.
A porridge bowl is the essence of usefulness and beauty in my humble opinion. (The most spiritual porridge experience I had was in a monastery in Nepal. Never have I again, had such light porridge). The space in-between each spoonful, so loaded.
I was delighted to stumble on this porridge bowl relic as I was pondering Laozi’s words and this idea of space, space in-between; these things reminded me of one of my all time favourite quotes from the Swedish film, Together.
Göran : You could say that we are like porridge. First we're like small oat flakes - small, dry, fragile, alone. But then we're cooked with the other oat flakes and become soft. We join so that one flake can't be told apart from another. We're almost dissolved.
Together we become a big porridge that's warm, tasty, and nutritious and yes, quite beautiful, too. So we are no longer small and isolated but we have become warm, soft, and joined together. Part of something bigger than ourselves. Sometimes life feels like an enormous porridge, don't you think?
Sorry, I'm standing around dreaming.
When you ‘lose’ your person, when they die, when we die - is it like being one of Zoran’s oat flakes and becoming a big porridge again?
When we die do we merge into a universal breath? Or the space between heart beats, between a stone touching the water as it skims? Do we meet in the bubbles of foam on the inhalation and exhalation of the tides? Do our loved ones become the space between the notes, the breath between our children’s words; could that be a place we now commune with our person who passed from us?
Our loves may have left the proverbial building, but are they not still in the pockets of coats, in returning spring bulbs, in the favourite cup; in the space of bows as small humans tie shoe laces.
Poet, David Whyte says we listen unconsciously to another’s breathing and the way that breath moves through their speech.
Those who’ve passed from us, could they now reside in the universal space or in small contained spaces. Can we, do we, still breathe them?
Could these spaces offer us a kind of communion? Does a pause, a breath or empty vessel contain unseen threads, invisible bonds, that enable us to relearn how to love beyond the physical? Beyond all the ways we knew how to love someone, does our love still exist in the spaces in-between?
As we grieve and long for closeness, for intimacy, in the ways that are familiar, this is a new and strange kind of intimacy - it’s so vast. Could it be possible, to learn how to meet love here?
Untitled.
Debussy’s space between notes.
Laozi’s spacious clay vessel,
The space between bars keeping the beast caged…. the
space between speaking
and listening,
the space between our proximate bodies, is now
the space between souls.
The ancients
The old, old salty water
Heaving itself ashore
Is that how you breathe now?
Let me breathe our last spaces, between the-words-pushed-off-your-tongue,
the space now, is
so vast
Beamer
can I still breathe you if I cannot hear you?
I move a spotty-dotty shell
to my ear
the breathing
tide tumbles inside.
R-e-a-c-h-i-n-g
Ebbing
My small body of water s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g, tearing
to catch-a-taste-of-you
between
your last breath.
Last words.
Last.