Fuxi
who taught the knots to think
airFuxi gave humanity fishing nets, writing knots, and the eight trigrams that map every change in the world; to dream of him is to see the hidden pattern under your chaos, laid out in broken and unbroken lines.
A dragon-horse rose from the Yellow River bearing a map on its back, and from its markings he drew the eight trigrams; the pattern was always there, waiting to be copied.
Before him people tied knots in ropes to remember; he looked at the knots and saw they could think — and so writing was born from a fisherman's memory.
He taught the people to net fish and keep herds, and the feasts that followed were the first in history; civilization began, as usual, with dinner.
The trigrams say every line, broken or whole, is already turning into its opposite; even his map cannot hold a thing still.