WESTERN SPRINGBEAUTY or INDIAN POTATO (Claytonia lanceolata)

THE GENERATIVE MATRIX
OF NATURAL LIMITS

The great danger of mechanical power is its tendency
to ignore the possibilities and imperatives of the generative
matrix of natural limits. Because mechanical power is
supported by external energy inputs, it can force its way
to any short-term solution. Thus, mechanical power not only
tends not to see when it has become contradictory, but
also not to see latent creative potential.

The hard carved maple of the violin's back gives it the
strength to tense its strings; the soft spruce of its front
plate gives it the resonance to let the sound sing.
The horse-hair bow draws out the harmonics, and tones,
and chords we hear, filling an entire concert hall with
their presence.

How different, this plug-in mechanical power of turning
up the knob of amplified sound. (How much longer will
it be until this form of unnatural sound is used as a
weapon?)

Natural movement and freedom of movement:—both
are essentially the same, for only in freedom can
intelligence manifest. But this is not freedom in the
contemporary sense of smply doing anything one wants.
It is the much more wise and balanced species of
freedom that takes natural limit as its point of departure.

Out of nowhere, a butterfly lands on a book you're
reading. A cloud passes, and it closes its wings. With
the return of the sun, it opens them. You hold your
breath for a moment in joy, and it is gone.

BEGGING BOWL

Just as Science as we now know it has both a bright
and a dark side, one which uses technical mastery
for force and destruction, and the other which
resonates closely with the source of intellignence
and creativity itself, so too the Arts have both their
bright and dark sides. But here, the Faustian bargin
is not made so much with the Captains of Empire,
but with those of Commerce and Entertainment.

Everywhere, corruption breaks the selfless, spiritual
connection with the whole. No wonder that monks still
walk the world, refusing to touch money, and filling
their begging bowls each day anew.

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