{"id":218,"date":"2026-09-15T10:04:31","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T09:04:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/darkmoonrocks.com\/?p=218"},"modified":"2026-09-15T10:04:32","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T09:04:32","slug":"canal-tao-04","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/darkmoonrocks.com\/?p=218","title":{"rendered":"Canal Tao #04"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" src=\"https:\/\/darkmoonrocks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/IMG_0728-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-219\" srcset=\"https:\/\/darkmoonrocks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/IMG_0728-1024x768-1.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/darkmoonrocks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/IMG_0728-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/darkmoonrocks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/IMG_0728-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/darkmoonrocks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/IMG_0728-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/darkmoonrocks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/IMG_0728-1320x990.jpg 1320w, https:\/\/darkmoonrocks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/IMG_0728-2048x1536.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Canal Tao #04\u2014 When the Water Is Left Alone<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For two days the canal was muddy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Boats had been coming through, engines churning up the bottom, water levels dropping, everything stirred into a pale brown soup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now the locks on both sides of the pound are chained shut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">No boats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">No propellers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">No constant disturbance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And already the water has cleared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This morning I could see little silver fish moving underneath the surface, maybe ten or fifteen centimetres long, rising up through the water and disappearing again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They were probably there the whole time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I just couldn\u2019t see them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There\u2019s something very Taoist about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We often respond to confusion by doing more. Thinking harder. Poking at the problem. Stirring everything up because surely action must be better than stillness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But sometimes clarity doesn\u2019t need to be created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It just needs the disturbance to stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Leave the water alone long enough and the mud settles by itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Apparently the same principle does not apply to walking a cat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Merlin disappeared into the bushes halfway through the dog walk, so Sabre and I are now practising an entirely different branch of Taoism called <em>accepting that the cat will do whatever the hell the cat wants.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We\u2019ll wander home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He\u2019ll find us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Probably.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Some things become clear when you stop stirring them. Other things are cats.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Silveness<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Canal Tao #04\u2014 When the Water Is Left Alone For two days the canal was&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-taoism-in-my-water"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkmoonrocks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkmoonrocks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkmoonrocks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkmoonrocks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkmoonrocks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=218"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/darkmoonrocks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":220,"href":"https:\/\/darkmoonrocks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions\/220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkmoonrocks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkmoonrocks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkmoonrocks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}