Li in 30.0

[ewald]

http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/messages/48/4910.gif
I'm wondering about the meaning of 30.0, and particularly the meaning of the hexagram name Li.

30.1 is about stepping into a new state (leaving a previous state)
30.3 is about losing something with time
30.4 is about something going away quickly after coming up
30.5 is about a loss (grieving over it)
30.6 is about getting rid of something

So this hexagram 30 seems on the whole to be about separating from something.

I compiled these possible translations for Li:
leave, depart, separate from, distant from, go away from, dispense with, go without, free from, go against, brightness, radiance, fire

In 30.2 Li is of a "yellow" kind and I find it hard to translate that with anything that has to do with loss or separation, so this would clearly be "radiance" or "brightness" or something.

In 30.4 Li seems indeed to be some form of separating from something: The brightness of the sun is <u>declining</u>.
In 62.6 it's also some form of separating: The flying bird <u>leaves</u> him.
As it does in 12.4: but it is a <u>different</u> [or separate] category than happiness.

So what does Li mean in 30.0?
Usually it is translated with something like "radiance" or "fire," however, the hexagram as a whole is more about separating from something, and as this character is also the hexagram name, this doesn't seem correct to me. Such a translation of Li, like in 30.2, would be an exception, and translating it with "separating from" seems more adequate to me.

In that case, 30.0 is about separating from something, and investing in something (keeping a cow) to be able to deal with the loss.


Ewald

[lightofdarkness]

From a universals perspective the generic quality is of expansive bounding - as compared to contractrive bounding represented by water.

The boundary acts to differentiate 'us' from 'them' but in the expansive nature so there is a sense of taking over, converting the unknown to the known etc - emotionally it gets into issues of acceptence (being 'in my gang' etc) - cuturally it is associated with guidance and finding a sense of direction, promoting an ideology etc and so the differentiating aspect, the cutting to distinguish A from NOT-A for the sake of moving 'forwards' - to exploint (water is more to protect)

The expansion of the boundary reflects the expansion of a fire-front - all difference is coverted to sameness in the form of ash.

The 'my gang' perspective reflects the characteristics of all fire-based hexagrams re the inner 'light' and so hiding it from the un-likeminded (36, 22) and sharing it with the likeminded (13 etc) - that 'light' can be personal charisma or a shared belief system (likemindedness of 13)

The 'separation' vibe you are picking up is the boundary focus that 'cuts'.

[lightofdarkness]

Full spectrum listing of 30 is in:

http://www.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/lofting/x101101.html

giving such characteristics as the base quality, raw architecture of 30 being described by analogy to hex 62 - a vague sense of issues with unconditional loyalties, holding a collective together etc. (so you can see where the focus on ideologies, guidance etc comes from - as 30 is the source of description of the base qualities of 62 ;-))

[bradford_h]

Ever see a male oriole perched in a tree in the wintertime?
Striking is putting it mildly.
This is figure-ground contrast itself.
Stands out like fire in the night.
To stand out is a major meaning of Li.
"Stand out" is also the etymology of our word "existence".
Conditioned arising as the Buddhists say.

[bruce]

Brad - works for me.

[bradford_h]

This one is quite a puzzle though.
There are two words Li used in the text.
Li in the hexagram name means arising, diverging, separating, leaving, evolving, etc.
But then the Li used in the Tuan Zhuan means conditioned, dependent, clinging (caring for the cow, our sources and resources).
Conditioned arising is the only notion I know of that encompasses both nearly opposite meanings.
We can't stand out without something to stand upon.

[bruce]

Brad, I know you're not particularly keen on Wilhelm, but do you agree that conditional arising is likened to fire being dependent upon fuel? Secondly, isn?t separation akin to fire consuming its fuel? So then perhaps conservation is suggested here?

[lightofdarkness]

The realm of water focuses on conservation/protection where the boundary acts to keep in/keep out.

As for fire - the development of a sense of direction and so an ideology reflects the 'clinging' aspect of fire.

The isomorphic link to the MBTI brings out the personas of map making etc and so the formal setting down of 'what is' that then serves as a source of dependence - we cling to our maps.

There is also a link through the
MBTI to strategists etc.

[bruce]

Chris, "an ideology reflects the 'clinging' aspect of fire" - this makes sense to me, but is it limited to ideology? Second, how would you interpret line 4? In common English, please. http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/happy.gif

[bradford_h]

Hi Bruce-
I was gonna pursue that earlier, but lately my pontificating has been silencing these threads.

Li, of course is also Huo or fire. If you look at a flame in four dimensions you see, among other things, sunlight being trapped by photosynthesis, used to mix water and wind to make sugar, then cellulose, then tree limbs and trunks, then firewood. When that log gets lit that all comes back apart and the sunlight moves on again. The log, therefore, isn't just the fuel that the flame depends upon. The flame Was the log. It does not then go and light up he night - it takes over what the night used to be. Because we are limited to this moment and its appearances, we tend to forget that this process is all connected front and back. Appearances are important in grokking this text in Chinese - the words ru and ruo (seems, like, such) are used a lot in Hex 30.
Anyway, the flame that burns in our brains when we metabolize food (that cow that we cared for, or whatever the vegans want to substitute) is really no different. It isn't so much that we depend on the food for fuel as that the burning of food becomes us. Yes, conservation is suggested, because when we leave behind that which turns into us we lose our existence.

[bruce]

Brad, wow! That?s really poetic. Will cook that one on the fire awhile. Gracious!

[lightofdarkness]

Bruce - the core, generic, focus is on a boundary moving outwards. Thats it. That is the really GENERIC feeling behind all of the different, context-sensitive, expressions.

That 'push' outwards includes the notion of promoting an ideology be it of a local street gang or some formally structured political perspective - or must the making of a map.

The focus on issues of 'likemindedness' is the essential element -
Thus we have such interpretations as:

36 - hid the light since there are no likeminded around
22 - cover up the inner light by distracting attention to the outside. (and so the 22-ness of something described how it looks from the OUTSIDE - 47-ness covers more the look on the INSIDE)

We also have 63 with its focus on getting things in the right order and so correct completion - or 37 getting a formal social structure that is rigid (and so correctly ordered).

IOW the movement 'outwards' is in a correct sequence be it temporal or spacial - with that correctness comes all within sharing 'likemindedness'.

Move to the high energy end and we have 49 (unmasking, revealing what is beneath) and 13 (sharing space with others of likemind and so a form of group singlemindedness)

In the octet of fire-based hexagrams we have pairs ACROSS the octet of 36-13, 22-49 etc etc

[lightofdarkness]

ICPlus line 4 interpretation:

"Attacking the senses, One flares up too quickly, burns too brightly, dies too suddenly, and is quickly forgotten. [One needs to slow down avoid excess.]."

This applies to an ideology as well as a person.

[ewald]

Good to see that here I'm not alone separating from Wilhelm's translation.

Ewald

[bruce]

Chris -

"That 'push' outwards includes the notion of promoting an ideology" Includes ideology, yes. Thank you.

RE line 4: "[One needs to slow down avoid excess.]" Avoiding excess was the idea expressed in conservation.

[bruce]

Hi Ewald,

I'm not yet seeing or understanding separation as part of 30, and definitely not as the core meaning.

[ewald]

Bruce - So what do you see as the theme / core meaning of hexagram 30?

I think that intentional as well as unintentional separation from situations sums it up adequately (as of the dictionary meanings of Li), though I'd like to have a word expressing it clearer. I can see it as a moving boundary, as Lightofdarkness expresses it.


Ewald

[ewald]

I was thinking that "radiance" as a meaning of Li can be seen as rays/light "leaving" the light source, sort of "separating" from it, which ties in with some of the other possible translations of Li.

Ewald

[lightofdarkness]

Here is something for you Bruce,

Without going to the level of 12-line symbols (dodecagrams), if the 27-ness of 30.0 is 62.0 then there is the indication that the 27-ness of 30.4 is 62.4

In ICPlus, 62.4 reads:

Line 4 -
"No harm in this. One does not meet excesses. One is warned of the dangers of moving on. No advantage in perpetually testing times." [Excesses should at least be curbed (pruned) when met. Ignoring this is costly]

IOW, in principle, these terms describe by analogy the 'vague' architecture, the skeletal form, of 30.4 - note the overall issue here of 'excess' so there appears to be an explicit, specific link here.

As such, going the other way, 30.4 describes the skeletal form 62.4.

All of this comes from the fact that the recursion links all hexagrams together. That said, a full review of current line comments would be required to move past my current focus on XORing hexagrams in toto (X.0 forms rather than particular line forms, and so 27-ness of 30.0 only, not 30.1 ... 30.6) and I have not done that yet to check if the original line comments reflect the entanglement of the hexagrams with each other at that level.

A rough focus would be the 27-ness of 01.1 would be described by analogy to 28.1

1.1 reads in ICPlus:

"Although having potential, one must must lie low (hidden) for now."

28.1 reads in ICPlus:

"The first step in any form of regeneration requires modesty. One makes a simple but sincere offering. No harm in this." - IOW 28.1 is read as describing the SKELETAL form of 1.1, the clay from which the formal comment for 1.1 is derived.

THis is also in reverse, so 1.1 reflects the skeletal form of 28.1

Implicit here, if this line linkage is correct, is that the line comments are nothing to do with changing lines, they are just comments on the finer distinctions in using line representations - IOW 60.4 is nothing about the CHANGING line, it is about the line. To indicate a line reference rather than whole hexagram reference a method was used to 'mark' the line, to draw attention to it. There is the indication that only ONE line was valid at a time when we focus on a rigid stepping 'up' the hexagram. (and some divinations processes focus only on this perspective) - IOW divination methods followed on from core work on hexagram analysis and their lines, not their changing lines.

The spectrum material at the moment deals with hexagram-to-hexagram mappings. Next we will have to look at the 6 lines of comments and see if they link up as well (note that their writing and the original hexagrams are far apart historically)

.. and that then leads us into the 64 possible line patterns derivable for each hexagram and so THEIR comments etc.

Chris.

[bruce]

Ewald, I like Brad's idea of conditional arising. Starting and maintaining a fire depends upon certain conditions. Wood (or other fuel) must be dry and compatible with the conditions of combustion. There also must be enough ventilation. So there are conditions to be met before light and heat can be generated. If fire ?separates? from its fuel it can no longer shine or burn. If too much fuel is available at one time, it can burn out of control. So it seems to me that 30 has much to do with balancing elements in order to bring about the desired effect of illumination and warmth.

Chris, I see your connections. Interesting.

[ewald]

Bruce - I'm a bit suspicious of theories that explain what hexagram lines are about, like line theory and the trigram indications like Fire, Water etc. I'd like to look at the actual line texts and see what's there - and there's no mention of fire in hexagram 30, except that it might be intuited from line 2.

Theories may have merit - but I'd like to check them out after I'm confident about my translation, so that I can be somewhat certain that it's not the theories that the translation was conformed to.

I'm having difficulty relating your explanation as a model of hexagram 30 to the meanings of the line texts, like those I summed up in my first post in this thread.

I'm not aware of the term "conditioned arising" (or "conditional arising") and it's not self-explanatory to me. Perhaps someone could explain? It's Buddhist?

Ewald

[bruce]

Ewald, is fire over fire too far of a reach, theoretically?

[ewald]

I'm aware of that, Bruce, and I decided to not use that information for translating and deciding on meanings of line texts.

While translating I found myself going further and further from Wilhelm's, noticing how so many other translations actually keep close to his. Remarks by Hilary that some line translations of his were according to line theory, but not faithful to the Chinese, made me even more suspicious of the line theory I already was keeping at some distance.

Trigram theory is not a part of the Zhouyi, so I'm keeping that at a distance too, for the time being.

Ewald

[bruce]

Cool. Curious what you come up with. I always thought of seperating as 23, though.

[ewald]

I have 23 as Removal, currently.

Ewald

[lindsay]

Hi Ewald -

For another dimension, recall that the Mawangdui text - the oldest surviving text - calls Hex 30 (MWD 49) by the name Luo instead of Li. Luo (Mathews 4099) means "net" or "netting". It can also refer to fine silk gauze. Shaughnessy translates the hexagram tag as "The Net". It is possible the received text was altered in this case to conform to trigram theory.

Lindsay

[hilary]

With as many of my scattered brain cells as I've retrieved since yesterday, I'm enjoying this. (Wish you people could have been there.)

What about light and perception? I find 30 is easiest to interpret with the theme of perception central. 'Getting it'; catching the bright bird. Not seeing in the sense we maybe carry around from half-forgotten school biology, the eye as a camera mechanism passively taking in light and delivering pictures to the brain. But the kind of seeing that actually makes an omen (or synchronicity, as we call them nowadays): outer light meets inner.

'Light' is also a good enough translation in lines 2 and 3, isn't it? Yellow light; light of the setting sun? (Which is clearly not just a wavelength, but a human interpretation of its meaning.)

And the inner capacity for understanding itself needs caring for and building up, like the cattle.

[ewald]

Hi Lindsay - That's interesting. I see that that character is not anywhere in the commonly used Zhouyi text (it's not Wang as in 34.3).

Is there an electronic version of the Mawangdui text available online somewhere?

Ewald

[hilary]

See LiSe's site! (Always, always see LiSe's site...) The Mawangdui and received versions have in common the idea of catching a bird in a net. Which for me segues into the idea of 'getting the message'.

[ewald]

Hi Hilary - I wish I could have been there too yesterday, but my mother was visiting (made me miss Startrek Voyager too!).

(Seems I didn't see Li meaning brightness or light in 30.3 in my initial post.)

I checked LiSe's site, it's indeed interesting that she has the hexagram names from the Mawangdui text.

I do find the step from radiance to seeing a bit large, especially as there are several characters in the Zhouyi that are more specifically about seeing and looking.

Ewald

[bruce]

I mean no disrespect to the Zhouyi or Mawangdui, or those who study them. But the idea that because something is older makes it necessarily truer seems rather like a scared cow when taken too literally. It?s as though the original is cast in stone and everything following leads away from completion rather than toward it. In this respect I have to lean closer toward Chris? ideas, in that he isn?t relying solely upon artifact to express value and meaning to a legitimate I Ching rendering. Too much starch makes the shirt unwearable.

[ewald]

I agree that something older isn't necessarily truer. But the older Chinese texts do seem closer to the original intentions of those authors and diviners. So when I'm confident about having captured those intentions to the best of my abilities (and there are definitely limits to that), I may go check what newer developments can do.

Also, newer isn't necessarily truer. A different approach, building on previous accomplishments may certainly constitute progress. But there may be a price, a loss to that.

Ewald

[bruce]

"God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars." Martin Luther

laughing at myself

sorry, I'll behave now

wait.. no I won't

[bruce]

Ewald, I certainly agree with that.

http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/zen2.gif

[hilary]

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

(made me miss Startrek Voyager too!)<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>No!! You poor soul. Parents - Kazon, the lot of 'em.

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

I do find the step from radiance to seeing a bit large, especially as there are several characters in the Zhouyi that are more specifically about seeing and looking.<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>
I see your point. That is to say, I understand your point. Seeing-understanding is a different concept from seeing-awareness in hexagram 20, for instance.

There is still a leap, but maybe less so if you think that light is something people can have, not just something that bounces off the retina.

Can anyone - like say Brad or Lindsay - recommend good reading on the early Chinese idea of people being 'radiant'? I'd like to have a clearer idea of it.

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

rather like a scared cow<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>Bruce, if that's a Freudian slip, it's an inspired one.

I start off thinking that the text meant something before these later discoveries, like trigram systems or line theory or whatever else. That 'something' will most likely be very simple and straightforward, like 'horses are beautiful' or 'carts move stuff', or in this case maybe 'cows have calves'. (That, and 'we need cows to make our economy work well enough that we have time to understand our world.')

If I can get an inkling of the simpler meaning, then I have something like warp threads, and the more elaborate conceptual frameworks can weave into that. Trigrams make more sense to me when they're part of all this, than when they're an abstract diagram on a page.

Looking at my email I see the last couple of posts have arrived while I've been writing this. Posting quick before I get any more behind. http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/happy.gif

[bruce]

"Bruce, if that's a Freudian slip, it's an inspired one."

No, Hilary, just a synchronistic pun. It's pre-Freudian. http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/wink.gif

FWIW, to me, your way incorporates a wonderful balance of knowledge and personal insight. You catch the bird whether it?s coming or going.

[bradford_h]

The word radiate comes from Latin Radix, root.
But it applies to branches too because it's really about the dendritic shape that roots have, one into many. So it also means to branch out, diversify, evolve, become (apparently) more separate or distinct. Light does this when it proceeds outward from its source.

[bruce]

Yes! Hadn't thought of separate in context of rays or beams.

[lightofdarkness]

In the MBTI categories the same qualities for Fire (expansive bounding) are reflected in personas that make maps - and so guides, like a flashlight in the dark. (also gets into commanders, stratagists and so the overall sense of guidance doubled - direction setting and ideologies etc)

As for the ICPlus perspective, it looks at what is common between all members of the species regardless of WHEN and WHERE - and so 10BC elements still shared today, and those are in the neurology and so general method used to categorise.

Thus the general, univeral, feeling is expansive bounding and so all that falls within that is associatable with the trigram of fire and hex 30. - those associations being LOCAL (and light does that 'expansive bounding' be it as a circular form of expanding in all directions or as a 'beam' or 'ray' - there is still the distinction of a boundary and expansion - countless metaphors are possible but the underlying generic, univeral, vibe is constant)

I suppose the issue is re attempts to grasp the mindset of the local developers of the traditional IC or to grasp what is BEHIND those local, ad-hoc, associations, the set of universal feelings derived from the method we use as a species to derive meaning.

IOW - given the latter, the IC, or something like it was inevitable.

Chris.

[heylise]

I understand what you are doing. I did the same thing when I made my own Yi. Used the text, and the images of the hexagrams, nothing more. Now I often look at the trigrams too, but not back then.
The 'images of the hexagrams' meaning only the picture of those 6 lines, one on top of the other. I thought it had to have a meaning if a line was at the bottom or halfway or at the top. But even that idea not restricting to any fixed idea of what it meant. A succession in time, aspects of a situation, different aspects of the human mind, or of society. Any or all of these.

I did not even translate the text in a way Chinese 'should' be translated, reckoning with grammar and such, as far as there is any in Chinese.. I simply took one character after the other, as stand-alones, and searched for their meaning. For ALL their meanings, because I knew from the beginning that that was the most important aspect.
So I figured out how they looked in Oracle Bone script, what they were supposed to be. A bird? A man? A foot and a road?
And I searched for characters in which they were one of the constituent parts, because when the meaning of the character itself changes, the old meaning is often still preserved in other characters, or in words or expressions.


This is what I made for the SanShan program
<center>http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/messages/48/4927.gif</center>

Picture at top: LI2, the ancient character and its parts.
LI2: At left the original character: a bird and a net. LI2: to catch or having caught (birds, later all game), grasp. Later, an additional bird ZHUI1 is added. Nowadays the net-part means: a bogey, bright, elegant, to oppose.
LI2: name of a bird, Oriole. Loan for leave, depart from, abandon, to be dispersed, separate, distinguish, analyze, distinguish oneself, explain, distribute, arrange, vis ? vis, paired, meet with, fall into, get caught, fasten, attach, pass through, droop, hang down, light, to shine, brilliance, bird-net, hedge, frontier, cut apart, divide (territory).

Li can also be pronounced as Li4, with different meanings.
LI4: to be separated from, differ from, to defy, to go against, avoid (a mistake), to associate, partner.
Exch. with CHI1: a bogey, a kind of yellow dragon, the Oriole (its song attracts the silkworms).
In the MaWangDui YiJing the name of this hexagram is Luo (the little character nr.1): a snare, a net, to catch.
It might be a bird being caught, or escaping the net, or it can mean trying to catch it.

The characters at left: words or compounds with LI2
1 Mawangdui: (net-fiber) net for catching birds (OB character at top right: picture 3)
2 (jade-separate) glass.
3 (this-separate) birds.
4 (differ not separate) almost; about; not bad,
5 (wine-separate) dregs.
6 (separate pattern) go beyond what is proper; be out of place.
7 (separate earth) rise from ground, above ground.
8 (bamboo-separate) fence or hedge.

Between brackets are the parts of the characters, connected by dashes - or words/sentences, which I did not connect that way. I chose 'separate' to represent Li, which is rather arbitrary, but I wanted everywhere the same word for the same character.

LiSe

[heylise]

1 Mawangdui: (net-fiber-bird)

[heylise]

Posted it twice, cannot remove this, only erase, tried put in a bird instead. But in editing that seems not to work..
oh well

[ewald]

Thanks for posting the characters, LiSe :-)

Ewald

[freemanc]

What a nice thread.

The oriole is, or is often, a "Bird of Filial Return" in Zhou era poetry. This was a poetic convention, a bird that heralded acts of filial piety or rememberance of one's parents.

This is relevent to the Zhou Conquest narrative and a source is cited in The Chameleon Book. (I'll dig it out if anyone asks.) Harmen would probably know this theme well.

But more abstractly, I think it's a lovely theme and datapoint for the Zhouyistically inclined diviner to file away...

Too muzzyheaded to weave a correlation into the current line of though, so I'll just ask:

Does the "Bird of Filial Return" ring a bell to anyone? LiSe?

fondly,
FC

[val]

Freeman...

It's my understanding that 30 is about the Golden Oriole which is a bird of omen. I wouldn't be surprised if filial return was the subject of one or more of the omens. So I went searching on the net, and I found the following:

<blockquote>11. It is said in the Book of Poetry (IV, iii, 3),

'A thousand l? extends the king's domain,
And there the people to repose are fain.'

And in another place (II, viii, i),

'Twitters fast the oriole
Where yonder bends the mound,
The happy little creature
Its resting-place has found.'

The Master said, 'Yes, it rests; it knows where
[1. A fact not elsewhere noted. But such inscriptions are still common in China.
2. The repeated use of 'new,' 'renovated,' in this paragraph, is thought to justify the change of 'loving the people,' in paragraph 1, to 'renovating the people;' but the object of the renovating here is not the people.]
to rest. Can one be a man, and yet not equal (in this respect) to this bird?'

12. It is said in the Book of Poetry (III, i, 1, 4),

'Deep were Wan's thoughts, sustained his ways;
And reverent in each resting-place.'
As a ruler, he rested in benevolence; as a minister, he rested in respect; as a son, he rested in filial piety; as a father, he rested in kindness; in intercourse with his subjects, he rested in good faith.</blockquote>http://www.100jia.net/texte/liji/liki2/liki239.htm

I'd love to know the source where you learned about the golden oriole's connection to filial piety.

Thanks!

Love,

Val

[freemanc]

Hi Val!!!

Sure. Here tis:

C.H. Wang, The Bell and the Drum: Shih Ching as formulaic poetry in an oral tradition. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1974. p 118. (I was right; it is cited in TCB in the footnote for Hex 30.)

Yes, that poem does seem relevant to Hexagram 30! Oh my gosh!

When life gives me a little more wiggle room for literary projects again I'm going to try to read the Shijing really well. It looks like it would be really worth it at several levels.

fondly,
FC

[val]

Hi Freeman...

Yes... I'm learning a lot about the customs and beliefs of the people who wrote the Zhouyi through the Shijing. I'm also really enjoying your book and comparing it with other translators who prefer to adhere to the ancient meanings (or possible meanings). Besides the fact there are some real loud bells going off for me with a lot of your interpretations of the lines, the entertainment value is great! It's a 'spirited' read.

The oriole does come up a lot in the ShiJing, and there apparently was a great deal of respect for the bird. There's still much for me to learn about it, so thank you so much for the source information. I'm off to library site now to put a hold on it... *hearing the theme from Lone Ranger* Ciao for now.

Love,

Val

[freemanc]

Oh, Val, how cool is that!

It is ripping, epic material, isn't it.

Your faithful companion will be tracking your adventures with great attentiveness. Let me know what you hear of the oriole.

Harmen mentioned a couple of sources that I haven't read yet but sound superb:

Sanctioned Violence in Early China by Mark Edward Lewis. Also by Lewis, Writing and Authority in Early China.

And Hilary, the figure of using the Zhouyist viewpoint as the warp thread on which to embroider a new story about this moment was quite lovely and quite to the point.

There are more and other reasons to know the Zhou well, and I've weaved and unweaved paragraph after paragraph trying to put across these feelings concisely.

My feelings on this matter are deep and apparently inchoate. My distant native American ancestors perhaps are trying to speak as well.

Suffice it to say It ain't just anthropology to me.

More another time perhaps.


FC