The Great American Blog 2.0.

Welcome to Thirty Spokes Pt. II — another attempt at my blog, which petered out in May 2007 after sputtering along for several months. I’ve been feeling the urge to start it up again as of late, so here we go, on WordPress instead of Blogger.

What can you expect? Writing about libraries and library culture, punk rock, parenthood, natural history, photography, hiking in the Rocky Mountains, jazz, electronic music, vegetarian cuisine, Buddhist meditation, and whatever other scattered topics I can manage to yammer on about.

The name of the blog comes from a verse of the Tao Te Ching, a roughly 2500-year-old Chinese philosophical treatise by Lao Tzu. I referenced it in my first post, back in January 2006; here’s an updated version.

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In void, utility.

Behold the turmoil, the inner/outer/secret lives of slow household objects.

Joyous ghosts in clean machines. They whisper with great enthusiasm!

The careful examination of minutiae. Footnotes. The careless emptying of diaper pails.

Sentence fragments and long summer days of bee-buzz emptiness. Sober transcendence.

Meditations on quiet teakettle moments, aided by uphill hikes and slow-falling snow.

The thirty spokes converge at the hub. Form follows function, but function is born of emptiness. Purpose: found in big-sky contemplation of breadcrumbs and bedsheets.

The sign awaits the seeker. The sign fortifies the thinker.

In this spirit, a fine translation of the Tao Te Ching’s 11th chapter by Alan Taplow, circa 1982. You can read more here.

THE EMPTY

While thirty spokes are the substance
of the cartwheel,
The empty space within the hub and between
the spokes permits the wheel to be useful.

While clay is the substance of the vessel,
The empty space within permits the vessel
to be useful.

While doors and windows are cut
as the substance of the wall,
The empty space within these enclosures
permits them to be useful.

Thus:
Form is generated by what IS.
Usefulness lies in what IS NOT.

~ by ShawnEcono on May 13, 2008.