greeting card: two cups

description

• 5x7 card with a matching envelope
• tree free: 25% hemp, 75% post consumer, 100% sustainable
• inside is blank, for room to write whatever you wish
• you can see tiny flecks of hemp fibers in the paper

artist

original linocut & woodcut created on April 18, 2023 

The words used here are from a longer story Brian wrote in 2004. Here's the portion of that poem this card is excerpted from:

I am the cloud & the green mountain waiting/ I am the still bamboo without wind/ I am the cricket each night that reminds you,/ who are a thousand miles away,/ there are always two cups at my table.

We've since heard from some of you that there's a poem from the Tang Dynasty (though it's likely it was written by Guy Fowles in the Tang style in his novel The Magus, since no other references to the Tang poem exist) that has similar wording.

We're pretty good about not using other people's words, since we have so much fun playing with our own. So, it seems this is one of those instances where the influence either slipped in without conscious intent, or was created independently after a lifetime of Brian's study of the poetics of Taoism. All the same, we wanted you to know...