Taomeow

Richelieu and his cats, by Charles Édouard Delort, 1885

No doubt about the significance of the double spiral, but single spirals too are all over the body -- bones, skeletal muscles, the continuous spiral line of the fascial band connecting the whole body (from the side of the skull crisscrossing around down to the feet) and even the heart, whose helical structure was known for 500 years but only very recently "untangled." A most intricate spiral, the cochlea, sits inside the inner ear, and our thinking runs via spiral-shaped axons that act as transmission lines.

Who knows, might just be an artistic twist. Though it reminds me of a lot of spiral patterns in nature and in taoist arts (e.g. taiji). The heaven-earth connection is also something that in reality happens in a spiral, not in a straight line...

My guess is, among fruits of the same species, more intense color is associated with better nutritional profile. It signifies ripeness, among other things, a dark colored fruit has come into its full power, so to speak. But I doubt it holds true when comparing fruits of different species. They simply have different nutrients, but the ones in the pale species are not necessarily inferior, just different.

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One day Laozi was walking in the rain without an umbrella or a raincoat and met his student walking under a large umbrella. --Teacher, why are you walking in the rain without an umbrella? -- the student asked. --When it rains,-- Laozi replied,-- the Tao is to get wet. The student immediately gained enlightenment, threw away the umbrella and left, smiling in the rain. “What a fool,” Laozi muttered, picking up his umbrella.

I also agree. Though I find that surrendering behavior is best balanced with self-discipline, a seldom discussed taoist "virtue." People with poor impulse control surrender to the impulse to act all the time, regardless of whether it's appropriate or useful. Whereas people who are generally passive may surrender to continuously eschewing responsibility and sheer elbow grease ("someone else will do it.") I still don't know how to resolve this conflict in a civilized setting. The umbrella was the first human invention, and remains the only one that is, by and large, entirely harmless (barring some special cases where this or that secondary use is found for it.) Away from civilization, you use it if you want to stay dry, or don't use it if you don't mind getting wet, and in every case you surrender to the temporary, ever-changing agreement between your true nature and the true nature of the moment. For this, discipline is not required. But to learn a singing and dancing performance in the rain like a trained circus animal takes you to Hollywood stardom. Hmm...

Methinks posts about compassion are a lot more inspiring when they exhibit a sort of semantic onomatopoeia (to borrow a term from linguistics that is usually applied to morphology rather than semantics) -- i.e. they mean what they sound like. A morphological onomatopoeia example would be "meow" or "oink" or "snap crackle pop." A semantic example would be a post about compassion that is, at the very least, not mean in its intent and/or execution. Better yet, genuinely compassionate. ("Genuinely" as in, before expressing it one has to feel it rather than preach it -- and barring that feeling, better leave the subject of compassion well alone.) @Cobie I don't mean yours was mean! -- though I did find its dramatic execution in huge red letters, more appropriate IMO in response to a much more serious uncompassionate transgression than a joke you didn't like, somewhat facepalm worthy. But we've seen better communication and I'm hoping will see it again. At one point, long ago, I argued here that 99.9% of all humor is based on someone getting hurt in some way (if you don't believe me, try to think of a funny joke at no one's expense... they are very hard to find!) That's because the very function of humor, in humans, is to lighten the mood with a certain ambiguity which is inherent in some traumas, particularly when they are not all that terribly traumatic. The origin of laughter is exactly this -- a baby learning to laugh starts out unsure whether to laugh or to cry (and exactly the same muscles execute both actions, believe it or not.)

Orange in some languages too, e.g. Apfelsine in German -- "apple from China" or "Chinese apple." In Russian and Ukrainian -- apel'sin.

Really enjoyed your interpretations, @silent thunder , @liminal_luke. (And @centertime -- that was apt, didn't occur to me, even though I knew that fable since kindergarten! ) Here's another one -- jumped at me from a clipboard, don't remember when or where I wrote this but perchance it's a quote from something I already posted here, my apologies: Chinese proverb: If you throw a stick to the dog, the dog will look at the stick. If you throw a stick to the lion, the lion will look at who threw the stick. I find it to be one of the most practical, pragmatically sound and philosophically sane teachings to internalize. Don't just react to whatever is thrown your way. Don't spend your life chasing sticks. Look for the source. Look like a lion (or lioness) does. Don't sniff the stick, don't fetch the stick, don't chew on the stick before you find out who threw it. Examine and determine their intent, their motives for throwing it at you, what they stand to gain or lose from throwing it, what you stand to gain or lose if you chase the stick. Are they playing with you? Luring you into an ambush? Trying to distract you with the stick while aiming a gun at you? Do they mistake you for a dog and expect you to fetch? And if you oblige and fetch, will they beat you with that stick? Who threw the stick? Who are they? Once you know, you the lion(ess) might run as fast as you can from the one throwing the stick. Or toward them. Fight for your life. Or for your dinner. Or ignore as inconsequential. Meanwhile, the dog is still looking at the stick, mesmerized, excited. Wow! Bow wow! A stick! A stick for me! Bow wow wow!

The original language of the bible was Hebrew (with some of the scriptures written in Aramaic). How the apple got into later translations is anyone's guess, because in the original it's just "fruit," unspecified. Maybe the evidence in favor of pomegranate was circumstantial rather than linguistic, I don't remember exactly how that hypothesis was argumented by some bible scholars.

@Cobie Do you happen to have a Laozi quote where he might be objecting to jokes, or maybe equating a sense of humor to a lack of compassion for all purposes and in all contexts, or admonishing against "using his name in vain" like the Christian god, or warning that tongue-in-cheek statements go against the dao?.. I might not be DDJ's most meticulous scholar (in fact I'm sure I'm not) so if I missed it somewhere, I'm all ears.

Some linguists assert that "apple" in the bible is a mistranslation and that the fruit of the original was a pomegranate. I think the story might be true (don't remember the linguistic proof, read it a long time ago) because the inner structure of the pomegranate seems to visually tell the story of the structure of the universe more obviously -- at least to me it does. As for why it would confer the knowledge of good and evil, I think the plot thickens... Each little juicy thingie inside (google tells me it's called an "aril"), sweet and pretty, contains a hard little pit, on the bitter side. Yang within yin, in a different tradition. If you were to grow the seed, that yang would burst out and turn into a tree that would bear fruit that would again contain yang skin on the surface ("yang embracing yin" in our tradition), yin arils with yang centers inside, and so on. There's a new pomegranate tree in every yin-yang aril. Also, each is more or less structured like the womb, watery medium with a fetus inside. Why this kind of knowledge would tantamount to the knowledge of good and evil in the eyes of the old testament god, and why its revelation to Adam and Eve would anger him -- I guess one would have to ask him, I can only hypothesize.

Pineapple guava (feijoa): I like it by itself too -- the flavor is reminiscent of a mix of pineapple and strawberries -- the skin is a bit "piney" but you don't need to eat that if you don't like it, you can scoop out the inner part (got to be very ripe) -- but it positively shines as a preserve (if you don't mind such a thing), which can be made raw, without cooking, and doesn't spoil in the fridge for many months due to a high content of iodine. In some parts the preserves are used to treat sore throats, thyroid disease, and even radiation exposure. Has anyone mentioned pomegranates yet? When they're good, they're very, very good.

Wuwei.

Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject. --- John Stuart Mill, 1867

Ah... you can give them a try but I don't know how useful it's going to be -- none of them speak English, and part of the attraction for me is their sense of humor, often quite idiosyncratic and not yielding to English subtitles. But here's the current top three (from time to time it changes, used to be mostly East Asian cooks... but Japanese food, my favorite, is hard to replicate due to the scarcity of the key ingredients in our parts, ditto Taiwanese food; Chinese I'm not a huge fan of outside of a few basics I already know and use; and Korean is on hiatus to be revisited later.) Zurab, a Georgian living in Europe, teaching mostly authentic Georgian cuisine: https://www.youtube.com/@ZURABCHIK Vivien, a Frenchman from Gascony living in Normandy and teaching authentic French cuisine (in a funny but Gascon musketeer style fearless Russian, which he learned via marriage): https://www.youtube.com/@chefvivien Ilya, mostly everything I'm very familiar with to begin with (old country fares) but with nuances, tips, tricks, ideas and methods new to me or forgotten, or things he as a pro might know better than even my grandmother did: https://www.youtube.com/@zonalazerson

I think we may have misunderstood each other's grammar. I only have natural children and am not adopting any additional children is what I meant.

Correct. And keep cultivating the latter skill -- 80% of what I watch on youtube is cooking channels by my favorite cooks, whose dishes I then try to replicate or improvise around and whose kitchen knives techniques I aspire to master. But I'm not adopting any more kids, sorry (in case that's what it was about.)

Tiger, by Itō Jakuchū, 1755

Every single message should be met with these 3 questions: 1) what do they want me to feel; 2) what do they want me to do; 3) who gains from me feeling this or doing this.

Remi LaBarre, Blues in the Night Contemporary

I've had this experience with the I Ching many times. You always get an accurate answer -- but sometimes you get the answer to the deeper question you should have asked at the moment instead of the one you asked. In hindsight it becomes clear what it was that the oracle told you that you didn't understand until it came to pass. An example comes to mind. In 2010 when there was a lot of speculation about the Mayan calendar prophecy for 2012 I asked the I Ching if I should take it seriously. The answer was, basically, "for ten years, don't bother your lil' brain with TEOTWAWKI, focus on your own private affairs. In ten years' time, ask me again." Who would remember come 2020?.. But I did.

In case anyone thought surrealism was invented in the 20th century... Giuseppe Arcimboldo, The Librarian, 1566