Just wanted to come back to this poem, which explains why I think the
old way of learning is so important: working next to a master,
silently (it is a resource that has been rendered negligible to our
children and grandchildren):

There I begin to shape the old handle
With the hatchet, and the phrase
First learned from Ezra Pound
Rings in my ears!
"When making an axe handle
    the pattem is not far off."
And I say this to Kai
"Look: We'll shape the handle
By checking the handle
Of the axe we cut with-"
And he sees. And I hear it again:
It's in Lu Ji's Wen Fu, fourth century
A.D. "Essay on Literature"-in the
Preface: "In making the handle Of an axe
By cutting wood with an axe
The model is indeed near at hand.-
My teacher Shih-hsiang Chen
Translated that and taught it years ago
And I see: Pound was an axe,
Chen was an axe, I am an axe
And my son a handle, soon
To be shaping again, model
And tool, craft of culture,
How we go on.

    I pick up the axe head.  And you can too.

--
李 Lee Love 大
愛　　 　　 鱗
in Minneapolis 0http:http://mashikopots.blogspot.com/

"With Humans it's what's here (he points to his heart) that makes the
difference. If you don't have it in the heart, nothing you make will
make a difference." ~~Bernard Leach~~ (As told to Dean Schwarz)