“Everyone knows the achievement that crowns the age, but no one sees the sweating horses of antiquity.” - Zen saying
(“Changing Horses at the Station of Ishiyakushi” Hiroshige)
The mechanistically fixated are always in a hurry.
They expect you to have an answer
right away,
but not an answer,
their answer
because things run on their time.
But the answer they expect is a mechanical answer
because they are not equipped for nuance,
for intuition,
for the time that happens when rain-water seeps in
and the plants grow,
so they get impatient, reactionary, vehemently angry
because the machine must run on their time.
For there to be a machine and for them to be
mechanically aligned with the machine,
that’s what they identify with,
so they become machine-like,
it gives them mindless comfort—
but here’s the catch:
the machine itself was built from sweat
and from the materials from the Mother Earth who
is not fixatedly mechanical,
so the machine impatience is a cover-up,
out of sync with the flow of steady living.
Can you stop the machine?
How much can you live in the non-machine time, the timeless,
when the machine requires that you pay your dues?
After a long day’s work,
who will wipe the sweat from your brow
when there is no one with a dry sleeve?
with a bow, and Thx, Peter! And the poem prompted by reminding myself that work requires effort and time and is ongoing, not just something to do then tune out, as for example, the sun, trees... always 'working', sometimes 'sweating' or sapping : )
Thanks, Steven. Not the kinda thing i expected, but i see the connection. It's like the parallel universes are happening now, but in different forms than the phrase intended.