Jorge Sánchez

Without even leaving one’s door, One can know the whole world. —Laozi The rumble of the night sounds even in the bright daylight of morning. Life blooms amid the Ten Thousand Things, but does not bloom amid the Ten Thousand Things. Shrivel-eyed I wake up and tend to the One here and now, clamoring to be let out. Down with the gate, out with the boy, to the rooms of life’s necessities, first to void and next to fill. The Order is only order which is disorder, the only Disorder is the disorder that is order. We usher ourselves, each in our own way, back down the way for various brushings, combings, other groomings. Each in our own way we urge the other toward some kind of growth: one to assume, the other to renounce; one to grow larger, the other to grow smaller, thereby growing larger. Words do not work, and when they do not, other words might. This makes more sense than it seems, works more often than it doesn’t, except when it really doesn’t, and then that disorder creeps back in. In five minutes, a different challenge. In five hours, a different One. Six more hours, the One is rubbing eyes, untangled like a dragon, shucked and undone like an oyster. The night slowly rolls abed and the words form stories form sleep, the sleep of the Ten Thousand Things, the sleep that will echo the next day in the night’s rumbling sounds, in the bright light of morning.