PERSON RECOMMENDED: ALAN WATTS
A story from https://alanwatts.org/
mailing list: news@alanwatts.org

(Extra info at the end)

A Summer Story of Alan
Written by Mark Watts (son)

In the summer of 1973 I was staying on my father’s ferryboat the Vallejo in Sausalito, and he was living at Druid Heights up on Mount Tamalpais high above San Francisco Bay. Each weekday he would either come down to the boat to get the mail, or I would drive it up the hill to the redwood water-tank library that had been converted into a comfortable place for him to work and write.

One day he thought he’d come down the hill but he still hadn’t shown up by 11, and so I gave a call to see if I should bring the mail up. He said: “Oh yes, please— I became caught up in painting out on the deck, you must see!” Very curious now, I headed up the hill.

When I arrived he was sitting outside on the deck surrounded by long strips of rice paper weighted down with round stones, painting kanji characters with a coarse brush and black ink. With smooth strokes characters would appear, but the brush was also picking up the wood grain from the deck below, mapping its textures in what he described in his book on the Tao as li, or organic pattern.

He offered me the brush and I tried a few strokes, and then he did some more, and I’d never seen him happier or more engaged in the moment. After a while we hung the gorgeous strips with *those* textured characters
from the shelves in the library to fully dry, and he made us good green tea.

A few weeks later my father left on what would be his final lecture tour, and as he passed through more than twenty airports over the next two months I could see that day stayed with him reflected in the recurrent Taoist themes of li and tzu jan - organic pattern and nature: of itself so- heard by his audiences along the way.
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EXTRA BITS
1 - I also recommend his audio which is like a podcast available on TORRENT <--- if not sure how to download then let me know!)

2- My fan page also here:
http://freeschool.0id.org/alan-watts/