BAMBOO GYMNOPEDIE

In the noon phase of typhoon #6, on the way back upmountain from dropping Echo off at the station I stop on the road by the big bamboo grove to watch one of the most beautiful and elegant dances in the world: bamboo in wind.

In the edgy light from the east against the dark green of the mountains and the thunder gray of the typhoon clouds, the pale jade bamboo in its tall slim splendor, like 15 meter feathers with golden quills, sways back and forth in a slow, soft roil that shows the edges of the wind as the green arms sway in the spirit of waves, with soft bows and hand gestures, all of an elegance that dancers imitate in vain, the racing wind producing only slow green response in the whole of the grove; it reminds me very much of the way seaweed sways in an ocean storm.

Inside the bamboo grove stand an old oak and a cedar, imparting darkness and depth, rising in their relative rigidity, and it is easy to see why oaks and cedars blow over all the time, but bamboo never: bamboo knows how to dance.