Blago speaks expounds his side

of the show slides his semblance

dissembles his perceptions

The ayes have this story’s end

I have a growing passion for a particular Chinese, hand scroll painting, Chen Rong’s Nine Dragons. It was painted over a period of years around 1244 AD.  It is 50 feet long.  Here’s an interesting thing about really old Chinese paintings, no one can be sure if the painting is authentic.  In China copying old master works is not a matter of forgery, it is the sincerest form of flattery.  And a good way to improve the artist’s brush work.  But for the person, me, who would love to get his hands on a copy of the Nine Dragons scroll, there is the cloudy question of whether I would get a good copy of the real nine dragons or a good copy of some other artist’s flattery. 

My guru used to talk about surfing the waves of life’s ocean.  I could see in his eyes a certain joy in the prospect of a storm tossed sea.  In that day he might encounter one of his meditators who was blissfully grateful for a lesson learned from the day before.  But another might have been shocked by something he said or really angry at being called out of a sound sleep at 2 AM because the guru wanted to give another important lecture.  Among his meditators stories abounded of times when the guru had embarrassed them in front of their friends or work colleagues.  This usually took place after the meditator had spent a lot of time trying to convince his/her work mates that this guru, this enlightened being, was someone they had to meet.  Gururaj was a capricious dragon of a guru.

I bring up Gururaj and his joy of surfing because the print I downloaded of one of Chen Rong’s nine dragons reminded me of surfing.  In the print a dragon looks to be swimming or surfing through turbulent seas.  I would guess that for Chen Rong the dragon represented the Daoist concept of the natural power inherent in the universe.  Maybe for Chen Rong this dragon is not so much surfing the turbulence as a creaturely embodiment of the turbulent waves themselves, waves that roll into themselves as well as reach outward to grasp what is ahead.

But when I printed out the picture and looked closely, I noticed that this dragon is looking out of the picture plane at the viewer.  I laughed.  I couldn’t decide whether the dragon was having a sly dialog with the viewer or betraying a certain emotion due to the turbulence.  Is it about to say, “Watch me slide through the next set of waves!!!”  Or is it saying, “Holy smoke!! What have I gotten myself into?!!”

You see?  This is why it is important to know whether the copy I downloaded is a faithful rendering of Chen Rong’s masterpiece or if it is a flawed flattery of the original.  I want to know this dragon’s thoughts.

Of course when you read this blog entry, you are reading only my flattery of Gururaj and his thoughts.  Who knows how close to the original that is?