Body and daily life
Tao Yuanming
Eighty days, then poor for life
Tao Yuanming (365–427 · Xunyang) — Eighty days, then poor for life.
What actually happened?
He wrote a short self-portrait in the third person and gave the man in it no name, only five willows by the house. Nobody knows where he came from. He does not chase reputation. He likes reading and does not labour over fine points, and when something in a book strikes him he forgets to eat. He likes wine and is too poor to buy it, so friends have him over, and when he drinks he means to get drunk and then leaves without ceremony. The walls are bare, the clothes patched, the food basket often empty, and he is at ease. He writes to please himself.
Turning is cheap only while you have not gone far
What the resignation poem presses is not resolve but distance: the road was wrong and he has not gone far enough to be unable to return. The price of turning rises with time, and eighty days back is not the price of eight years back. What breaks it is usually something small.
Turning the moment you notice is cheapest. Turning after a full term means you already owe the term.
Take the price of the road you chose, without blame or polish
He writes himself as neither victim nor saint. He keeps accounts: hungry, went out to beg, could not get the words out at the door. Twenty-odd years poor and he never went back, both true at once, which is what shows the turn was priced rather than impulsive.
The test of a wrong turn is whether you want to go back, not whether it hurts.
The no is answerable when the yes is not
By mistake I fell into the dusty net, and thirty years went by. Note the wording: not I always wanted to farm, but I was never suited to that. Most people are stopped by what do you want, which demands a positive answer. Cross off what you definitely will not have and the field narrows by itself.
If you cannot list what you want, list three things you absolutely will not have.
How do I use it today?
If you know this is not it and keep waiting for a better moment, work out how far from far you are, and what the small daily irritation is actually showing you. If you cannot say what you want, write down the three things you will definitely not have, and then set a next step small enough that you will certainly hit it.
Deep read
Read alongside
Further
Lines to keep
He left at forty-one and never went back in twenty-odd years.
Own the price of the road and there is nothing to resent.
Cross off the no first and the road narrows by itself.