Painting the Dao

23 in a gourd of plum wine Peter Suart T he artist first met him when the master of the Water, Pine and Stone Retreat was a book, and only the spine of a book, at that. Such a meeting would not be remarkable were it not that the spine was spotted in an immense library of ten thousand spines, which gives one pause. On it were Chinese characters and the marks of splashed ink. The taking of the book from the shelf was the opening of immense stone doors, which, weightless, made no sound. Beyond them lay a vast transparent turquoise space, as if underwater. In it were crags and gorges, pines and stones, and a simurgh high in the sky. Further in was a hut sheltered by trees in the lee of a hill, with a tumbling stream passing the door, which was open. Without looking up, the old man at the painting table held out the brush and disappeared into the floor, returning with plum wine in a gourd. Much of the ink succeeded in missing the paper entirely, and in the end the plum wine was found to serve in its stead. Just when the artist thought he could stand no more, he turned to find the old man gone. And the hut. And the vast transparent turquoise space. Even the library had disappeared.The only things left were art and memory. At the Siege Perilous as the great winds stir in the summer of 2025.