The Government of Nature

Notes

65 Notes The Government of Nature is the second book in a trilogy that began with The Plum Flower Dance. The frontispiece is an original work written in Chinese by the author. Intended to be a verse to accompany his meditation, each line is a Chinese proverb using 心, the word for heart. Although no English translation has been done to date, it can be summarily taken as saying, “A quiet heart can be achieved with utter devotion and sincerity.” The translations of the Dao De Jing are by Jonathan Star. The translation of Cold Mountain is by Red Pine. The translation of the quote from Ying-an is by Thomas Cleary. The park referred to in “In the Park with My Grandchildren” is named after Troy Bailey, an African American state senator whom Antero Pietila describes as having once been a pullman porter and union activist. Pietila, a longtime reporter for the Baltimore Sun and author of Not in My Neighborhood has written about the park, which was formally “Easterwood Park,” in a time when that neighborhood was Jewish and working class. The poem “Remember” was translated into Arabic by Wissal Al-Allaq for the Kalimah project in the United Arab Emirates. Ms. Allaq translated an entire collection by the author as a book entitled Kama i’ Reeh (Like the Wind). The dedication in “In Raleigh’s Brownstone Hotel,” is to Myrddin Wyltt (c. 540 to c. 584), who was a Welsh seer and prophet said to be one of the major personalities on which the wizard Merlin was based. 66 “Cold Mountain” refers both to the poet and a physical condition that occurs in certain states of meditation. In referring to “the government of nature” (the book title and poem) the author makes reference to the Daoist idea that the internal human body is a microcosm of the outer world. References in drawings such as the Tang Dynasty Internal Map show the inner body as containing mountains, rivers, and so forth. It is said that there are inner and outer universes. He Nan 和南寺 is a Buddhist temple and monastery on the eastern coast of Taiwan near the city of Hualien. He Nan Temple is where the author lived for a short time in the spring of 2005, at which time he wrote a series of poems that were the beginning of this collection. Guan Yin is the Buddhist goddess of compassion. It is said that when she achieved Nirvana, she chose to sit at the gateway to heaven rather than enter so that she could help mortal beings find their way. A giant statue of her sits at the top of the hill in He Nan, facing the Pacific. The characters adjacent to the cover illustration are from the opening of verse twenty-six of the Dao De Jing. The characters were translated by the late D. C. Lau as “The heavy is the root of the light / The still is the lord of the restless.” These are also foundational concepts in Taijiquan. The cover photo of giant cypress trees in Taiwan was taken by the author. ...