orient: to arrange so as to face east
Being a body—both here and there, neither here nor there. One foot on the earth, one in the ether. As a child of immigrants, I am shifting my gaze toward the lands of a distant lineage. I am seeking to reorient.
In Chinese cosmology, the world is defined and differentiated between Earth plane and Sky plane.
The written characters for Earth and Sky are as follows:
土 (tŭ) — Earth
I have read that this character can mean soil, or locality. The bottom line represents the Earth’s surface. A vertical line is erected from that surface. Perhaps it is the growing stem of a flower, or the length of a person’s height. Locality was an especially curious translation to me—as if to say, things of the earth always depend on proximity and nearness.
天 (tiān) — Sky
This character has a dual meaning, as both sky and heaven. The top line represents the Sky. Though the character beneath it (大 or dà) ordinarily translates to big, in this context I’ve read that it means person (人 ren)—a “big person” in fact, one with their arms outstretched. Perhaps a figure has their arms spread open, to receive a vast sky.
Between these two characters, what strikes me most is that, visually, they appear as near inversions, mirror images. If 天 represents a person beneath the vast Sky, perhaps 土 is that same person, grounded to the Earth below. I imagine this as a joyous dance of the human between two planes—Heaven and Earth.
Upon the Earth plane, I think about bodies as vessels, or architectures. Ones that house the material, tangible, touchable. The human form is a vessel, just as much as a house, even a garden or personal relationship.
And, if the Earth plane contains architectures of the material—can the Sky plane, too, contain architectures? Ones that are nonphysical, immaterial? Just as one can tend to the physical Earth architectures of a home or a body—can one also tend to nonphysical architectures of the Sky? Perhaps growing inspiration, or aspiration?
In the traditional Ryder Waite Tarot deck, the Seven of Cups card depicts a figure, who is presented with multiple cups—each carrying a different object or vision. With the cups floating in clouds in the sky, it is as though they are in the ripe imaginal space of dream and possibility. Perhaps this is one dimension of the Sky—the possible. And yet, none of the cups have yet been chosen. The silhouetted figure remains in suspension, staring toward at the Sky, at these cups of possibility—holding that which does not touch the Earth.
In some instances, these vessels do not seem perfectly aligned with one plane or another, but instead, both—as if in dialogue with each other (for example, inspiration existing in the Sky, and produced artwork existing on the Earth).
It is this queering between planes, this liminality between Heaven and Earth, where true enactment seems to happen. Aspects of Heaven seem to travel through, and commune with, aspects of Earth, all the time. In fluid relation. Mirror opposites, kindred twins. Perhaps this is how, in Chinese spirituality, spirits freely walk among the living in the Earth plane; perhaps we, as living beings, are traversing the Sky plane more often than we realize.
In the Leymusoom Bible, co-written by artist Heesoo Kwon and Kazumi Chin, it is written: “I believe that the revolutions we seek are small and local. They may even reside within our very own communities, which consist of us…I believe in this slow accumulation of living the future in the here and now.”
I was offered recently the idea that there can be many possible futures—a plurality of destinies. I like to imagine the future as an architecture of Sky. In building a future we wish to see, as Kazumi says, we start here and now; we start small and local. We start in our present—an architecture of Earth. And in this way, we can build a slow accumulation towards that future. To me, the space between present and future is liminal—and perhaps the present (Earth 土) becomes a portal for the future (Sky 天). By walking one, we walk the other.
Building in this way appears to have a ripple effect. By tending to the locality of our own internal bodies, we tend to the everyday—radiating into the states of our relationships, our homes, our streets, our lands, our atmospheres. By lending time to one, we lend time to the other—and the next, and the next. Perhaps, in this way, we begin to form a liminal bridge between Earth and Sky; now and later; tangible and intangible.
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This is a real-time evolving cosmology I am resting with—seeing if it works, if it resonates. Considering its structural integrity, and remaining humbly open to the possibility of needing to shift or standing corrected.