家人 → 頤

Commentary

Wind from fire defines the family's bonds, but here those bonds are stretched by prolonged absence. The verse explicitly invokes the Shijing poem 'Dongshan' — a soldier's wife waiting at home while her husband serves in the Duke of Zhou's eastern campaign. Sowbugs fill the empty rooms; crane flies haunt the doorways. She sighs for her absent lord: 'His service has no end in sight.' The household decays in the husband's absence — insects colonize what human presence once kept orderly. From The Family to Nourishment, the mountain stands above thunder in watchful stillness. Nourishment demands careful attention to what sustains life; this wife sustains her household through patient waiting, but patience has its limits. The imagery of insects reclaiming domestic space warns that even devoted nourishment cannot hold indefinitely against absence.