About Fate's Clay

This is primarily a digital journal intended to reinforce my shoddy memory, so when I'm old enough to have truly forgotten everything I can learn about all the interesting things I've done in my life. It's also a medium through which I can exercise my creative output skills, something I've wanted to do for several years. Furthermore, it's a 'travel blog' through which I'm trying to stay in touch with my family and friends, since I'll be living abroad for some years. Finally, if some other Internet People find their way here and learn something, enjoy my photographs, and/or laugh at my writing, that would be okay too. I'll try to post once monthly at a minimum, and I apologize for having already failed to do so several times!

The title of this site is inspired by a poem attributed to Vidyā, the earliest known female poet of the Sanskrit language:

प्रियसखि विपद्दण्डप्रान्तप्रपातपरंपरा-
     परिचयचले चिन्ताचक्रे निधाय विधिः खलः।
मृदमिव बलात्पिण्डीकृत्य प्रगल्भकुलालवद्-
     भ्रमयति मनो नो जानीमः किमत्र विधास्यति॥

Fate is a cruel
and proficient potter,
my friend. Forcibly
spinning the wheel
of anxiety, he lifts misfortune
like a cutting tool. Now,
having kneaded my heart,
like a lump of clay,
he lays it on his
wheel and gives a spin.
What he intends to produce,
I cannot tell.

She focuses on the severity of our helplessness before the forces of the universe, but with a wistfulness that conveys a paradoxical lightness, framing our lot in a way that I identify with. Without this factor of not-knowing, what a Buddhist might call emptiness (शून्यता), everything would go according to plan and the future would be essentially set, inhibiting our agency. As the Indian philosopher Nāgārjuna put it:

सर्वं च युज्यते तस्य सून्यता यस्य युज्यते।
सर्वं न युज्यते तस्य सून्यं यस्य न युज्यते॥

For one to whom emptiness is possible, everything is possible.
For one to whom emptiness is not possible, nothing is possible.

I challenge myself to live in accordance with that beautiful freedom, and I hope this is sometimes evident in my writings.

Translation sources:
Vidyā: Andrew Schelling, Bright as an Autumn Moon (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2014), 30-31.
Nāgārjuna: Mūlamadhyamakakārikā 24.14, my own translation.

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