Fire and Water

Notes

By the editor.

1. Anaximenes of Miletus held that air is the one underlying stuff, and that thinned air becomes fire while condensed air becomes wind, cloud, water, earth and stone. On his scheme fire is air transformed, which is the poem's claim, and the elements are stages of one change. source ↩
2. The Dao De Jing, chapter 78, says nothing in the world is softer than water, yet nothing surpasses it in overcoming the hard and strong. The poem's pair of fast and slow change is the same pairing: water's patience is a force. source ↩
3. The uncarved block (Chinese pu, 樸) is the Daodejing's image of original nature, “unhewn simplicity,” before anything has cut or shaped it. Carve Your Own Block takes up the opposite half of the image, that each of us has to do the carving. source ↩