Portals Between Earth 土 and Sky 天

Etymologically, to “orient” means to arrange so as to face east. As a child of immigrants, I am seeking to adjust and shift my gaze in the direction of a distant lineage—I am seeking to re-orient.

Many of my recent explorations, some of which take a dip into the pool of Chinese cosmology, have led me to similar places:

• the material—vessels, objects, or architectures of the physical reality

• the immaterial—vessels, objects, or architectures of the nonphysical reality (e.g. ethereal, dreamed, imagined)

• the liminality between the two—both material and immaterial, neither material nor immaterial (perhaps memory?)

I have always had the experience of being both here and there, neither here nor there—one foot on the earth and one in the ether. Recently, I’ve begun imagining this as Earth plane and Sky plane. From my understanding, the Chinese characters for Earth and Sky are loosely as follows:

土 (tŭ) — Earth

I’ve read that this character can also mean soil or locality. Looking at this character, the bottom line represents the surface of the Earth. A vertical structure is erected from that surface—perhaps the growing stem of a flower, or the vertical height of a person. Locality was an especially interesting interpretation for me—as if to say, things of the earth are always based on proximity. Like tree roots entwining with fungal networks in soil. Or the roots tethering a local community to place.

天 (tiān) — Sky

This character has a dual-meaning with heaven. The top line represents the Sky. While 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. If this pictorially represents the sky above one’s head, perhaps the figure has their arms open to its vastness in receptivity.

What most strikes me about these two characters is that, visually, they seem like near inversions of one another. If 天 represents a person anchored to the Sky above, then perhaps 土 represents a person anchored to the Earth below. I imagine this as a dance between two planes—a straddling, between Heaven and Earth.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about bodies as vessels. The physical body is a vessel to tend to, just as much as a room or a house, or even the vessel of a garden, a relationship, a community. All of these are containers of the physical, material Earth. And if the Earth houses all that is material (tangible, seeable, touchable), then perhaps the Sky houses all that is immaterial (intangible, un-seeable).

I wonder about the architectures of these different planes. Earth-based architectures are much more familiar and easier to imagine. A house, for example, has a very clear architectural structure, with its foundation upon the ground. The human body too is its own architecture, by way of skeletal structure and anatomy. So is a garden, rooted with a soil bedding and layers, with weaving roots and emerging stems. As is a community, a contained social group secured by proximity to place or shared interest. These are all examples of physical forms, ones we can either neglect or tend to.

If the Earth plane contains architectures that are physical and material, I find myself wondering if the Sky plane too can contain architectures—ones that are nonphysical, immaterial. Just as one tends to the physical Earth-based architecture of a home or body, perhaps one can choose to tend to nonphysical architectures of the the Sky—architectures such as that of inspiration, aspiration.

When I mention architectures here, I’m speaking broadly. They can be defined as physical structure, or as loose, adaptable, time-dependent. They can rely on physical pillars, like a column establishing relationship between ceiling and floor—or nonphysical pillars, like the coregulation between two bodies (e.g. a person and a cat). The point is less about seeing an architecture as a singular object, and more about how an entity—a body, an ocean, a community—can be held together.

For example, perhaps one dimension of the Sky is the possible. In Tarot, this reminds me of the Seven of Cups card. A figure is presented with multiple cups, each carrying a different object or “vision.” The cups reside in the clouds of the sky, and none of them have yet been picked. It is as though they are in the ripe imaginal space of many dreams and possibilities. The Sky plane hovers above—a holder of that which is not, and may possibly never be, brought to the Earth.

That said, the lines aren’t clean. Some of these vessels may not seem firmly rooted in Earth plane or Sky plane—they’re both, or they’re neither. Perhaps they’re even in conversation with each other. Take, for example, artmaking. If Inspiration is a Temple in the Sky, then perhaps Art Object is its House on the Earth. One cannot exist without the other—they feed into each other.

In that, I’ll point back to the third point at the start of this piece—not the material, not the immaterial, but the liminality between the two. Aspects of the Heaven seem to travel through, or commune with, aspects of the Earth all the time. And perhaps the architectures of each serve as portals between the two planes. Fluid relation. Mirror opposites. Kindred twins.

I’m a follower of Leymusoom, an autobiographical feminist religion created by artist Heesoo Kwon. In the Leymusoom Bible, co-written by Heesoo and Kazumi Chin, Kazumi writes: “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. In this way, we build a slow accumulation towards that future. To me, the space between present and future is liminal. Perhaps the tangible present (Earth 土, within our immediate locality) becomes a portal for the intangible future (Sky 天, beyond our immediate locality). By walking one, we walk the other.

Building from present into future is a ripple effect—beginning as local as even our own internal bodies. Tending to our internal selves then ripples into our everyday—the state of our relationships, our houses, our streets, our nations, our atmospheres. By lending time to one, we lend time to the other, and the next, and the next. Perhaps it is in this way that 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.