Old Black Joe (gedicht)

Of ze nu uit wind

of ochtendvocht gestold –

van mij mogen deze botten nu

worden,

mij hier belijven

tot lijkens nog toe –

lijf dat mijn hart al

zwijgend omhekt,

strak in de wind

als de staart van een vlieger,

stomp van een vlier

die de zon van de lente

overgaande overliet –

nu laat aan mij.

--Lloyd Haft

Twee Afferdense verzen

Twee Afferdense verzen

voor Geurt en Marijke

(1)   Staande voor mijn huis voel ik mij er al niet meer thuis door het ‘te koop’-bord dat de makelaar langs de inrit heeft geplaatst

Haal,

trek nu uit de grond,

ruk nu uit de wind deze

kraaienverlokker –

schild zonder schittering,

ruit zonder zicht.

Zeg de vlier niet aan,

lees de lucht niet in

dat wie hier woonde weg,

hier zich weg moet weten

waar de wind als vroeger strijkt,

streelt boven de vijver,

snaren achterna

die wie hier woonde hoorde,

wie hier woonde wist,

altijd hier zal weten ook

ná deze wind.

(2) Mijn keramieken uit de tuin alvast binnenhalend voor de verhuizing, aarzel ik of ik in de tuin het enige beeld zal laten staan waar ik een mensengezicht in maakte

Beeld, enige

waar ogen in kwamen,

hoe moet ik je laten, enige

met niet te maken mensenmond,

lippen die eenmaal open altijd

hier zijn gebleven:

onder het lover,

boven de klei,

bíj de boom die blijft.

--Lloyd Haft

Why Is Mad So Specially Bad?

(Scraps from a Sinological Scrapbook 漢齋閒情異誌, fragment 20)

One of the things that surprise many Western students coming to tai chi, qigong, or related disciplines for the first time is that in the theoretical framework of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), it is axiomatic that ‘excessive emotion’ is bad for your health. This applies even to what we normally think of as uplifting or ‘positive’ emotions like, just to give one example, Joy. (I hesitate to give Love as an example, since (1) it is not on the commonly seen medical list of Seven Emotions 七情, and (2) on the whole I support what Ted Kaptchuk writes in his book on TCM: ‘Love is not usually thought of as a positive feeling, cognitive state, or passion in Chinese thought with the exception of the Mohist idea of “universal love”...[1])

        One of the Western qigong writers who are sold on this ‘don’t get too excited, it’s not good for you’ model is Daniel Reid – although he does, to my mind very oddly and paradoxically, advise us to ‘try to hug someone at least half a dozen times per day,’ and to make it ‘a real bear hug’![2]

Stressing the virtues of emotional equilibrium in general – he refers several times to emotion as the Chief Hooligan – Reid devotes a special paragraph to the dangers of anger. ‘Avoid anger like the plague,’ it begins; anger ‘...generates highly volatile, very destructive energy, and the person who suffers most from anger is the one who expresses it...In terms of chi-gung, a brief burst of anger totally negates the cumulative benefits of many weeks of practice...’[3]

        At this point, my reaction is: if anything at all can nullify in a few seconds what ‘many weeks of practice’ have built up, then that doesn’t say much for your practice! But since anger is being singled out here, the question becomes: what is there about anger specifically that makes it apparently even more of a ‘plague’ than the other six of the Seven Emotions?

        As soon as I finished reading Reid’s passage, I sensed the answer. The especial horror of anger is based on non-medical considerations. It is sociological. It is because in the Chinese world, getting angry with somebody, especially where other people are around to witness it, is a very big behavioral no-no. In Chinese social situations, if somebody does suddenly ‘blow their cool,’ fails to cap their anger and really ‘lets them have it’ in the presence of other people, the other people can be observed to be very uncomfortable. Some, it appears to me, actually pity the person who is expressing the anger and thereby suffering a pretty serious loss of image and reputation. They feel such behavior, regardless of what evoked it, to be shameful by definition, almost as if it were a momentary loss of bowel continence in public. Others may actually fear their own health and well-being are being threatened by sudden exposure to such a disharmonious and solidarity-destroying ‘biomagnetic field’ or ‘qi-field.’[4] Whatever their individual reasons, the bystanders are not likely, as some Westerners would do, to admire the flare-up as indicating an admirably strong individual ‘character’ which ‘doesn’t just sit back and take it.’[5]

        So, as for the supposedly catastrophic effects of even momentary anger on health, I immediately suspected this whole idea was just a qigong transcription of the more general East Asian lifestyle motto that says Don’t Rock The Boat.

        Soon afterward, I was delighted to see that Giovanni Maciocia, a very experienced practitioner of TCM and author of The Psyche in Chinese Medicine, had published a blog post saying essentially the same:

http://maciociaonline.blogspot.com/2011/03/on-stagnation-of-lung-and-heart-qi.html

Maciocia says that among TCM practitioners there is ‘over-emphasis on anger among the emotions.’ He adds: ‘It is easy to see why that would be as anger is the most disruptive of the emotions: if you are angry, you rebel and that is not done in China...’

        Mind you, I do believe that anger can be deleterious to health, and I would claim it is not only harmful to the one who expresses it. My point is that if we are talking about emotions that can be ‘malefic’ in their effects, Anger should not be specially privileged. Maciocia’s blog mentions Sadness and Grief. My personal nominee would be Fear.

        And I definitely and outspokenly think that in this Joy- and Love-starved world, it must surely take a lot of Joy to be truly ‘excessive’...

---

[1] Ted J. Kaptchuk, Chinese Medicine: The Web That Has No Weaver. London etc.: Rider, 2000, p. 169.

[2] Daniel Reid, A Complete Guide to Chi-Gung: Harnessing the Power of the Universe. Boston: Shambhala, 2000, p. 304. Actually, it’s not paradoxical or un-qigong-like at all, since he advises us, even while the hug is going on, to keep the breath ‘deep and slow,’ the mind ‘still and empty.’ We are not told what effect that attitude is likely to have on the person being hugged! But strange or not, Reid’s hugging proclivities at least remain within a frame of overall non-bizarre behavior. Perhaps in the minds of some, the same could not be said of a technique I recently read in the Chinese translation of The Art of Becoming Immortal by Souichirou Takafuji. (See 高藤聰一郎著, 陸明軒譯, 仙人成仙術. Taipei: 大展出版社, 1996, pp. 60-61.) In a section on how to absorb qi from the environment, the author advises the male reader, while riding the bus, to select a suitable ‘young’ and ‘vital-looking’ girl as ‘object,’ go stand next to her, and without actually touching her (lest she might, Heaven forbid, think he is a ‘lecher’), quietly ‘absorb’ her qi. It is very important, while doing this, to get a clear impression of her face so that upon arriving home or at the office, you can quietly sit down, temporarily avoiding conversation with family or colleagues, and spend five minutes ‘thinking back to the girl’s face,’ thereby causing the qi you have absorbed from her to be ‘maintained permanently.’ Actually, this raises the question, or I should say the Great Bugbear common to very many qigong writers, teachers, and practitioners, of so-called Qi Leakage and how to prevent it. Important as this subject undoubtedly is, to pursue it here would go beyond the scope of this present Fragment.

[3] Reid, p. 304.

[4] Thanks to Cynthia Chin for calling my attention to this attitude as a widespread possibility.

[5] I suppose we all know some Westerners, though at least in my case they are unlikely to have become our best friends, who seem positively to cultivate cantankerousness as if it were a virtue, perhaps even a mark of their excellence as alert citizens in a democratic society.