The Uncarved

For such a long time now, I have been fascinated by the Taoist ideal of the uncarved block to the extent that I actually would carry around a small rectangular block of wood to remind me of the nature of the uncarved along with possessing a large cut off from a beam that I found many years ago. The essence of the uncarved block is that of pure undifferentiated awareness before any concpetion is placed upon it similar to that of a piece of wood before the carvers gouge gets to ever remove any material. Most of the time, we, as fully developed humans are in a state of sculpted reality. Our views, thoughts, and reactions are all carved into us from the moment we begin to have a sense of self. What would it be like if we were to manifest and harness our pure untainted nature? One can only imagine.
It is with that mind set that I approached a week long Architechtural Woodcarving class. A fellow student and intern half jokingly said that I was going to spend the whole class carving a Yin Yang, yet another classic Taoist concept. I didn't quite carve one literally but I sure did carve the figurative version of it with the Dragon and the Phoenix.
Day one I carved the fish. Day two I carved the man in the tree. Days three through five I spent on the dragon and phoenix which is far from done but at least presentable in its current state.