No.9

Butner, North Carolina

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Can you coax your mind from its wandering
and keep to the original oneness?

Can you let your body become
supple as a newborn child’s?

Can you cleanse your inner vision

until you see nothing but the light?

Can you love people and lead them

without imposing your will?

Can you deal with the most vital matters

by letting events take their course?

Can you step back from your own mind

and thus understand all things?

Giving birth and nourishing,

having without possessing,

acting with no expectations,

leading and not trying to control:

this is the supreme virtue.

- from the Tao Te Ching 

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Once upon a time a traveller was journeying across the desert when he met two strange men. As they were all going roughly in the same direction, they chatted as they walked.
The men told the traveller that their names were Fear and Plague and they were going to a big city where they intended to kill 20,000 of the inhabitants. Shocked, the man asked Plague if he would do all the work. Plague shook his head, “No, I’ll kill only a few hundred. My friend Fear will do the rest.”

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A Thought in Two Moods
By Thomas Hardy

I saw it - pink and white - revealed
Upon the white and green;
The white and green was a daisied field,
The pink and white Ethleen.

And as I looked it seemed in kind
That difference they had none;
The two fair bodiments combined
As varied miens of one.

A sense that, in some mouldering year,
As one they both would lie,
Made me move quickly on to her
To pass the pale thought by.

She laughed and said: "Out there, to me,
You looked so weather-browned,
And brown in clothes, you seemed to be
Made of the dusty ground!"

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"Can we try a tango next?"

Next post - New Year's Day

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