Little Vines on Paper

I have finally found the books with which I want to spend the rest of my life. But there is not enough time in the day, for the moment, to draw wisdom from their pages. So I miss them because it's become apparent how necessary it is to revise good ideas: it is not enough to merely encounter them once. Yet the ideas are not only in those books, the point of the good idea is that it is timeless and can be found in that Stoic idea of how people live, easy to locate if one is looking to people.
So here are some vignettes of what I have been doing when not checking contextual vocabulary for the book I am supposedly copy editing, but let's say that any translation happening as fast as this book is being translated means that the translation needs to be checked and retranslated in places, too. Anecdote one: I would perhaps be frustrated by this, or the ever more arcane deadline (though not on my end), but I am working with people whose haste is making something come together in months, as opposed to the years it would take me. So I may be losing sleep these days checking all these things that will not be revised enough but at the same time, I have become part of something that is powered by a will that I have not encountered in ages.
And I encountered the Wizard of Oz-like project manager, who took me away from hours on the job for coffee with the author who never showed and ended up remarking offhandedly at some point, "It is better to work on solving the small problems if we want the larger ones to be resolved." That is just like the opening to Epictetus' Golden Sayings, which asks man to focus on the things that are in his control: "The things in our control are by nature free, unrestrained, unhindered; but those not in our control are weak, slavish, restrained, belonging to others. Remember, then, that if you suppose that things which are slavish by nature are also free, and that which belongs to others is your own, then you will be hindered." If something is beyond our control, we are taught to say to such, "You are but an appearance, and absolutely not the thing you appear to be" and say to such that it is nothing to us. The little things are far more accessible, like how I talk to the cleaning ladies at the university; what is not accessible is whether I will be hired again next year.
By talking to the cleaning lady after the exam I held, I gleaned this nugget from her, "It appears," she said, "that some people have forgot that they are people."
Indeed, people we are. Not numbers, not parties, but people who laugh and cry, eat and discard stems or bones. Messy material. Problematic.

So as I was walking through the farmer's market today, one of those quiet, overcast days when it seems that every vendor I know calls me over to exchange a few words—no matter which, I stood the longest at the fish stall, where the lady talked about her brush with politics, how by not getting involved, she became an outcast and lost her job, only to be hired soon afterwards, with two children to feed, at a newspaper. She had been some kind of IT worker in the early days of such...and today she plunges her hands in the ice to release the fish that become people's meals.
Her main comment was that the sooner people understand that fortune comes and goes, if they have the fortune to see this in their own family, they are better adjusted to the way of things. That those too focused on the material are quickly disappointed and have little to teach others (viz. the way of things). That if one lacks such teachers, one has books (says the fishmonger-if you understand my interjection): books, not just one book but many books because all one needs is never in a single book. She was talking about how it is never enough to live by worrying over material existence, but that it helps to do the useful or enjoyable. And she did not use the contemporary stock phrase positive energy as she spoke, but the phrase, to fill the soul.
So much of what annoys passes quickly: one may even reach old age and regard past experience with that grain of salt that may or may not be used to freeze things (to link to a marvelous blog I discovered today via languagehat).
Freezing is an interesting concept. It is most useful for its opposite, heat, as in, the hot months of summer. From these opposites, I take time from little time to reflect on these anecdotes that serve as substitutes for books for as long as the tome of history I am working on occupies me. But does not control me. Because I still have the little things, and if they are not books they are at least placeholders to the texts that await me: the itses in want of context.

Brush: Ewansim Grunge at DeviantART.

Bookstore:  Erato Books

Doubt into Yellow

Here is a photo of flowers taken two days after I bought them in the market from an old lady vendor on her little stool, whose shaky hands produced my change in notes pre-folded. There was such distillation in her existence, such premeditation and simplicity that I long to see in myself. I did not recognise the yellow flowers as snapdragons, and asked their name to learn the local appellation, "little yawners". There is a great distance between a yawn and a dragon's roar (assuming dragons roar). I found myself either roaring or yawning last week, it seems I have to watch out when people start talking about education, which I see as a craft and by no means a product. I hear I will be hired again this year, which is excellent considering that my PhD dissertation has fallen into an administrative black hole and as such is yet undefended. I need to know how how to greet what we are told to see as uncertain with the zen attitude of the surfer. I used to spend hours reading about surfers, like Laird Hamilton who was raised on waves so, naturally, I might think, sought big waves. Surfers don't tend to be big on words but to watch them is to see a difference in humanity: many take the plunge, but not with equal grace. Laird surfs effortlessly, in sprezzatura, little yawner with the force of a dragon.
There is a big wave before us; we are told it is big especially by the media. Where it is not bureaucratised, it is ruled by the relative values not of sophistication, like Feyerabend's defense of 1950's China's adoption of the Yellow Emperor's Textbook of Internal Medicine ("Acupuncture, moxibustion, pulse diagnosis have led to new insights, new methods of treatment, new problems both for the Western and for the Chinese physician"), but of musical chairs where the chair one had been sitting on may suddenly be removed in the next round, if it is the volition of the games' master to remove that particular one. Whether you are an artist, a teacher, an entrepreneur, you will hear about plenty of uncertainties.
After reading a useful post by Enbrethilel I wondered about how, frankly, we might need to be wiped out before the questionning of what a healthy mind takes for granted can begin, and the words can rally forth. Her post was specifically about education, and cites a book by John Taylor Gatto in which he identifies a problem of our age as beginning, "when the young were assigned to consume, not to produce". I will posit here that part of what it takes to create (poiesis) is doubt.
A recent NYRB article on Koons explains, "where there is no doubt, there is no art." It is doubt that reduces one to the epistemology of one's ontology. This can be explained by Taoism: I found a page that does this quite well (it gives the gist): "Certitude evolves forth to DOUBT as it answers, yet DOUBT revolves back to certitude as it QUESTIONS; hence, answer within the DOUBT, yet QUESTION within the certitude." In this equation, one is just to "realise" the extremes, flow, and potential balance.

Before the Taoist's five elements theory, symbolised in five colours (black, green, red, white, yellow), there were only the two colours of yin and yang: black and white. The "Yellow Emperor" mentioned above is not only said to be the ancestor of the Chinese, dating to the third millennium BC, but is an important deity in Taoism and it was his tribe that practiced what we take as typical Chinese medicines like acupuncture. He is also said to have helped create the first Chinese calendar and his wife was said to have discovered silk: no small discovery (need one even mention the silk road). His tribe honoured the yellow earth and Yellow River, and that colour, of the five, is that which symbolises a stabilising energy, associated with rice which grows in the yellow earth and brings stability to mankind. It is also important to feng shui, which is based on the five elements theory that roughly correspond to the cosmos.
I am focusing on yellow as it is the colour one hopefully comes to, it is the centre of the bagua, if you have ever seen that octagonal trigram template used in feng shui. It is a reminder that one is to seek the balancing force; e.g., in times of increased activity, to seek a restful attitude.
The skilled surfer does not wobble and is not too stiff. To quote a page on Taoism, "REST within the activity suggests that we will feel better in all life’s activities if we bring a RESTFUL attitude to activity, or as the Tao Te Ching puts it, blunt the sharpness; untangle the knots; soften the glare;… and so on." Such is one story of the yawning snapdragons.

Background: Marie Claire Idees; Brush: Ewansim flower grunge at DeviantART.

Separation

Yesterday, from the market and through a passageway, I came upon a cat emerging from an unlikely place and saw its eyes, large with warning and concern. In it's mouth, was a kitten. I felt, in that single moment, the fragility of life but also the instinctive protective nature of the animal, which some human beings do not have. At the market, I had bought some tomatoes from my favourite granny. Once this summer when it was about a hundred degrees, I came upon her snoozing at her stall, and hailed her loudly, mother, so you're sleeping on the job, and for some reason, from that moment she became my granny. I could see that I had been divided out from the rest of the market-goers: to her, I have my own identity.
These are the scenes I content myself with, at this computer, upon which the work I do inches by so slowly that the tempo itself is enough to make one go to sleep.
During one of those critical breaks from long work hours, I turned on the box and was drawn in by those images of the seventies, wall-to-wall carpeting, corded telephones, even some Al Green from a record. The film spoke in Takovsky's dream language: later interviews of character-as-adult; the montage suggested the film's contemporaneity to us, but the theme - beginning with a teenager taking her life, the neighbourhood boys entering into the girl's psyche by going through her diary, the future Yalie playing psychologist - was so unlike what one is used to in such a quality production. I was left with the ever more disturbing ending about which there is no reason to write except to say that I was so dissatisfied that I looked the movie up on the internet thanks to seeing Sofia Coppola's name at the top of the credits.
The film was her debut as director, which explained everything: knowing the genesis of the film somehow resolved the tension of its lack of resolution, also so disconnected to anything one could imagine through healthy instinct. Putting the unresolved film into a larger context saved it, relieved it - as from the word relieve, to raise (someone) out of trouble, alleviate. To raise something out of trouble indicates having a new context, one that hadn't been there before the raising, the separating out.

Separating is also the word of the horizon; from ὁρίζω, horizon implies I divide, separate, mark out boundaries. I limit, I restrict, I define. We lose the meaning of the horizon in English when we say it marks the boundary between earth and sky, for sky in so many other languages is also the word for heaven. Maybe that's why all we raise up is also so heavily tied to the terrestrial.
What is it that we raise up. It is rarely the words that cost nothing to divide one out from the rest of the market-goers (you come and buy in the market ... but I...). It is not the instinct of preservation even had by the cat - the wordless cat. To look at Coppola's film, to think of Nietzsche, to think of the early French philologists researching language in their white coats, we see mental illness. I would argue that such afflictions are not articulate - and that even the articulate person wishing to relieve may run out of ideas as to how to provide the saving context.
To look further above into the depths of the 'sky' one may think of the heavenly hosts, and how it is said that God is flanked by such protecting forces. I admit that I cannot think of such things for much longer than mentioning them: it is too far out of my league, but I do know what it means when a friend saves one from oneself, reminding one in trouble of one's overall context. To survive wholly - articulately, for to articulate is to connect the joints - is to need this context.
So to return to that horizon is to question our knowledge and experience; τίνα ὅρον ὁρίζῃ - which Liddell and Scott translate as, to mark out for oneself, what criterion do you assign. 
It is easy to see in my workplace, considering that I work where criteria may actually be met literally, in spoken English, I see the incongruity of the horizon, not everyone can agree on the criteria;
αὐτὸν πολεμεῖν ὁρίζομαι I lay it down that the problem is that some people do not wish to teach towards proficiency. Pro + facere. Not wishing, or knowing, how to teach others to go and make, which happens to be the promise of life.
 

Brush.

This Is Not a Boutique

Last week, it snowed so hard that the city became a silent hamlet, and depressing jokes were made about how one only notices how many elderly people there are in this city when they are not around to cram the buses and cafes. Then the snow receded like a hairline, leaving emptiness in its wake: and the farmer's market, which the week before was as populated as a spring field with flowers, lay bare, with but a few vendors at the stalls.
I walked through it in a haze, nothing to take my attention outside of myself as per usual - until a frustrated seller at one of the stalls shouted at someone in protest: "This is not a boutique!"
How that made me laugh, deep in my heart. I imagine that a woman with nothing better to do, having suffered recent cabin fever, was releasing tension by provoking a poor seller just trying to do an honest day's work. Do you have it in a larger size, no, not that size, but the half size, no, not that shade of blue...
Just looking. Like that Rumi verse, "These spiritual window-shoppers, who idly ask, 'How much is that?' 'Oh, I'm just looking.' They handle a hundred items and put them down, shadows with no capital." I think such window-shopping applies to theory: by window shopping, one can get an idea of the clothes in the window, but unless one has the experience of having tried on scores of garments, one will not know by looking if the clothes will fit. Without experience, the theoretical belongs to the flâneur.
Unless one has walked a thousand moons in another man's moccasins, or has a great well for the resonance of empathy, the object (or subject) is removed: one does not possess it. Through empathy, or affinity, one can possess more than one owns. One is open to enjoy the thing: like how one can feel another's success as if it were one's own.
But since some people like to magnify their brains through reductionism of all else, they come up with odd ways to sweep mismatched bedfellows under the carpet of theory. This is not the same as having universal ideals to guide our understanding. Without knowing something about the nature of life, theory is as superficial as window-shopping.
Experience unfolds gradually, like a flower. Who could painstakingly spend their days patiently watching a flower bloom? Only the person who loves the flower could bear to do that - and through such shared time, the person's relation and feelings toward the flower change. Almost imperceptibly, but enough to impact their understanding of the flower. To experience together is to transform perception. Life is not a boutique. "You come and buy in the market and go back to your homes laden with goods, but the spell of homeless winds has touched me I know not when and where. I have no care in my heart; all my belongings I have left far behind me."

 

Boxy border. Cross sketches. Book in background.

Dance with the market

My trip to the market today began as if a fairy-tale book popped-up to life: as I wrote my grocery list, the sun formed a prism on the wall. I planned to buy flowers, and wrote a quick note to my friend in Moscow as if those words would summon her.
As I greeted the butcher, I noticed something new, his tan, the incongruity of the red baseball cap he wore. Only just now did I remember the gossip that he'd got his teeth done: I am frappé by what a good pair of teeth can do - frappé to keep in line with the subject of food, which is where I am going with all this.
Though not in a straight line. And anyway, who walks in a straight line when the market is overflowing with people and all the different stalls one wants to visit. Like my favourite younger farmer with her beaming face, which I almost asked to photograph today. But every time I reach for my phone/ camera, as I did today, watching the sun wash down at such oblique angles, highlighting this fruit or those red peppers, I feel like a traitor. Even though I often marvel at the art of certain photographs, I feel that no single picture could ever bring the right focus to the market experience. It cannot be stared at in that way: if one took the objective gaze to the market, it would fall apart immediately and lose its charm.
Nor do birds like to be stared in the eye for too long. Their proximity is very real - so long as one does not seek to capture. This is called the dance of experience.
So there I was, talking to the young farmer, who had no potatoes due to the scorching weather. As I stood there, listening to the sparrows tweeting overhead, because there are several levels to the market, and above the birds, is the sky, I thought how misleading the weather is: today with its expressive blue sky filled with the glory of bird song is actually hiding the reality that such nice days deny the needs of crops. But is that not what we are doing? The contempt for the farmer; the policy that saves corporations while small farmers are left to fold.
And yet, since it is the job of the farmer to bring out to the stalls what they have to sell, again one is deceived - there is such an abundance of food. Only when one asks the price does one understand: those potatoes were the few potatoes to survive the drought, and like the loved child that survives a Victorian malady, it is lavished with expense.
Soon, it will be the end of eggplant season, and time for stews. I realised today that I will be revisiting my best-of recipes that I posted here, so since I know that at least one person uses those recipes (me) I will share the two recipes I made most often this summer: this baba ganoush recipe (very forgiving, even if you bake those little, lean eggplants and keep the skins on), and a meat rub of salt, pepper, red pepper, garlic powder and cumin. I only eat meat about a third of the year, but when I prepare it, I like to treat it well.

Tape.

Swizzle This!

The swizzle sticks that my family had were shot through with a touch of colour, in the Venetian way. In fact, I think they were from Venice. It is funny when such memories emerge from the deep recesses of the storage of the mind - along with the bulky wooden games we had shipped from magical Parisian toy stores. What a distant world. Yet perhaps as we grow, we regain part of the world we knew as children.
All this thinking began when I finally decided to use the Ramazzotti that has been sulking in the larder. My brother and I were mostly raised on wine, a statement which is as low on political correctness today as is the level of Ramazzotti after I came upon a stellar cocktail recipe. Je plaisante.
The only proper cocktail I really ever enjoyed was the sidecar. The last time I had one was in Burma, in what I suppose was one of those life-changing experiences. I was a freshman, the books I had with me were Nietzsche's Ubermench and Hesse's Siddhartha, the former I abandoned: too much on top of the challenging scenes surrounding the hotel. Inside, colonial fans spun slowly from ornate ceilings, cocktails being mixed in hand-held shakers occasionally breaking the refined silence; outside, people improvised seating with boxes and bricks, the streets more like broad, dusty paths.
Thus the memory of the sour drink. If you share an affinity for the sour, know that you can mix Ramazzotti with freshly squeezed lemon juice and a simple syrup made of one cup sugar, one cup water, and thyme - brought to a boil, and herb allowed to steep between 10 to 20 minutes. This discovery caused me to long, momentarily, for those swizzle sticks.
Food is also memory, though I am reluctant to sound like I am jumping on the latest epicurean bandwagon. I mean it in a more Proustian sense, as hackneyed as that may sound. Everyone's madeleine is their own personal favourite...
The other day, I went to market and bought some okra. The farmer gave me a sheet of paper prepared by his wife, in the local script, with two recipes. It begins, "Okra was once found in abundance at this market, but today it is a rarity. In the summer, the okra is a pleasant vegetable, preferred by some over all others. Many readers will recognize it: it is a long, green, ridged pod..." And the recipe? To blanche the okra, saute onion, add seeded, chopped tomato, a little garlic, parsley, salt and pepper, and the blanched okra: over a low heat for 20 minutes. Divine!
But what makes it divine is also the shared aspect, the personal contact involved in the recipe. It awakens that primordial custom of breaking bread together - that once the bread has been broken, one will not be attacked by one's fellow diner.
To share more, one must be prepared to make more sacrifices. Sometimes, I feel friction between my idealisms and what I am comfortable giving up. And yet all the while, I feel convinced that the ridges in the swizzle stick and even in the okra should eventually combine the ingredients most pleasantly.

Border.

Express

It is already one of those days that even the birds find too hot. This morning, I walked by a poor pigeon, languishing with feathers fluffed out in the only, cloudy, puddle it could find. The ravens give menacing looks from beneath the shade of trees, beaks open, reminding me of dogs - which are nowhere to be seen.
It is the kind of day in which one seems to live despite oneself, and the old folk in the market say, "So be it!" And it is on this kind of day that the troubling questions which had been lingering in the recess of the mind like to step forward, and say, "Hi." Although they are not usually that pleasant, and one sees them lurking there, just at the entrance, and one must coax them forwards, to get the exchange over with. This is what I call expression-which, after all, means the act of pressing out. But the word could hardly better explain, at least to my mind, what is involved in expression, "the action of squeezing out."
The other day, I tried to write about holidays, but today I realised what I was really trying to say. And that thought is the one that I coaxed forwards as I came back from the market. It had been hanging around my mind all week, only to come forth on this anxious day, when even the pigeons are hiding, far from the roofs they usually strut around on.
It is no wonder I feel alone, sometimes. We all do - it is like part of the weather: sometimes hot, sometimes cold - as the old folk say, "So be it!" But what I realised today was how in many ways my past is under threat of being chopped off, like an unwanted limb. And I so long for at least some remnants of "before." I have most successfully reconnected to it  by going on holiday - seeing old friends, repeating the old pattern of having the world as my oyster.
After realising this thought, which had been lingering like an unwanted child, I understood myself better. I often struggle with understanding myself better. As if I were always being asked by someone to explain myself, to settle the account of who I am. Who is this person? I don't know. But the questions begin as a reaction to conversations with people who sound so sure of themselves; in a move of self defeat, I usually indicate I am aware of my own weaknesses or shortcomings. I then feel driven to a process where I am moved to express myself, to myself.
I realise how much courage is necessary to live a beautiful life: one must be ready to laugh and cry. However hard we try to remain indifferent by installing the air conditioner of the mind, orphan thoughts can come forth from the depths and find us. If we want to remain alive, we must be ready to feel pain - unless we want to live with ghost limbs, but even they have been known to itch, mysteriously.
And it is only in asking the question, however painful, that one can get the answer. "So be it!" These are the ways of things. But one thing I can say: unless the heat is turned on, nothing's cooking. Mobility is sometimes spurred on when the fire is lit beneath one...

Dots.

this miracle

The other morning, there were about two dozen swifts making the space between these low-cut buildings a playground; shrieking almost all day long, and the more they played, the more I thought about what a discipline play sometimes is.
I know we are told, with good reason, to be wary of becoming idle, but the other extreme is just as bad; all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. And as I write that, I am thinking about what kind of activities make for good idling, though I agree that part of the fun is in the spontaneous uncertainty of the unstructured, idle moment.
That other morning, I went to the market, and had at least five different conversations. The effect is akin to listening to 1001 Nights, because through those stories, and the intermittent wandering through the aisles of market stalls, some draped over with blue tarp like tents, or Aladdin's caves, to keep the cool-and the sun away, one drifts so far away from thoughts of work, or problems.
And when I asked one woman why her cucumbers were so expensive, she said, "These are my work, this is my product, I made it." And my thoughts drifted to how beautiful and monumentally important it is to have proud farmers. For let us think about it: would you ever bark orders at your houseplant? No, but you might sneak in a few whispered words, when no one is looking, to encourage it to grow. And when you watch it grow, you know that plants are alive, and take into their roots the care that they are given. Even if you never saw that experiment when they attached a plant to shrimp that were boiled alive (the plant responded).
I often think back to how in Xianggang, it was not uncommon for a person to live in government housing, but wear a Rolex: instead of investing the money into nicer living quarters, one would buy something to "increase face" - which doesn't go without reason, because it is just possible that such image upgrades might bring more work.
But here is where I wonder: is it precisely such hopes which are making of our age one that is so superficial? I can tell you why I am saying this. Because, if you spend time with simple people, who have been protected from such upward mobility through circumstance, you will notice that they have a certain groundedness to their character, and ability to think clearly even about subjects foreign to them. They will have no qualms laughing about the poser (in the way one laughs at any exaggeration, even one's own), they are particularly good at doing their jobs, and going home for a nice weekend with family.
Which brings me back to play. Work is not life. Work is a means to life, play is where we find other aspects of ourselves: the elementary aspects: so without play, there is no good work.
What we see in farming is some kind of middle ground, because it is work, but "literally metaphorical": one is exposed to the elements, one has seeds and watches them grow, one enjoys the fruits of one's labours. It is no accident that one of the greatest inventors of the last century saw for his country a long term future in agriculture, not technology.
We see life in the garden. We play in the garden. The garden lets us see the miracle that is this little life we live.

Element.

why to go to market

You know those days, when one wakes up in Erik Satie's Gymnopédie No. 1... The best thing to do is go out, to market. The moment I entered into the bustling core, past the wall of kiosk-like shops that give the impression that there is no market through the narrow way between some of them, I was accosted by too much colour: so much is in season, and for a moment, I felt overwhelmed. But, no. That is just the first impression, and first impressions are so often beguiling.
The man who comes from the same region as some of my distant ancestors waved out to me, with a huge smile, just to say hello. Further down, more generous smiles and granny farmers stuff extra carrots into my bag. I have grey hairs, but they still insist on this ritual, saying: "So you'll grow!" Who could remain impervious to such gestures?
And then, I almost bumped into a vendor and her future-priest son, at their stall.
- How are you?
- Not waving the white flag, yet!
- Ahahaha, that's so funny, that's always what I say when people ask how I am.
- Now I remember, little Goodie, that's what we called you when you came, because all you knew how to say was: "Good, good!"
- It's easy to be good if we're surrounded by good people.
- So, you're still singing the same tune!
- Why not? It's best to stick to that word, and say everything's good, and not go too much into detail, because we all know what lies beneath the surface!
- Oh, so you've reached rock bottom since we last met - I can see because you've developed a sense of humour!
Yes, it is precious interchanges like this that leave everyone feeling so much happier than they were before such dialogue.

And anyway, I was thinking about communication this morning - what it's all about, and etc. I'd read this really interesting book review over at Lapham's Quarterly, about an author who posits that it's wrong to interpret Babel as having been the source of one, original language, from which all others stem. The author explains that, before the demise, there was not one language, but many languages - and the unity was in the idea to talk to people who spoke other languages, because in such a way, one might actually learn something.
Toni Morison similarly interprets the Babel story in her Nobel Lecture, and also stresses that truth can only ever lie in diversity, not in some kind of dogmatic master narrative.
I have never understood why people would take the story of Babel literally. Why monolithic language, and not the unifying spirit of compassionate creativity? Going to market both before I knew the language and now that I know the language, I've been able to notice that the key to communication is the idea behind the words, not the words themselves. The language is accidental: what matters is whether one is communicating out of kindness or trickery, etc.
The unity before the destruction of Babel was surely the good will among men that flourishes when their priorities are straight. Good will does not judge, but seeks to exchange in order to build that which is beautiful.
It seems to me that through our imperfection, we block ourselves off from this, intentionally and unintentionally, and so the love gets fractured. One can be conflicted in so many ways, and yet be "good" in an essential way: and thus carry a tiny piece of the unifying Logos. This is why one oughtn't dismiss one's attackers: they may hold the missing piece to our puzzle.
I go to market to be reminded, on a most basic level, about the elements of communication: desire and trade. The give and take in life. The economy of life. We all know how closely linked economy is with the household: οἰκονομία - οἶκος. The truth of the interactions of trade is very basic. But - as with Babel - we can depart from this simplicity and make it all very complicated, indeed, as with the trade of but theoretical numbers.
It is the meek who inherit the earth. You can find them at the market, and they can tell you that beyond all our deep thoughts about humanity, humour saves us from ourselves.

Elements: sequins, everything else.

a short story

There is a wind here that sometimes does not cease. It is hard not to think about it, because it blows through closed windows, and forces it's way into one's thoughts through one's ears, as one walks down the street. It blows all night long, like a restless sentry, leaving one tired in the morning after the rattling conversation that lasts through the night.
This morning, I woke up with such odds stacked against me; I had been working late as it was; I felt completely drained. But I had to eat, so I went to the market, where the smell of carrots and my favourite grannies at their stalls soon took me to far better ideas than the ones I had awoken with.
Leaning Pisas of arugula; shining cauliflower in their still-life orbs; spring onion with magnificent posture; lettuce spilling off the stalls into boxes at the sides; the unexpected sweet scent of purple petals...  It was a wonderland for the senses.
And when I went to buy some of this young produce, with roots revealing they had been cut early this morning, one of the sellers said to me: How are you? You must be good, because life is good and God is great! And I thought to myself, heavens, I am in good health, I have enough money to buy this meal...
And in an instant, all that had ailed me disappeared like a bad movie when one changes the channel.
So, this is my story for you today. There is a new podcast over at Sofia's blog which I am looking forward to listening to later tonight, but for now, I so longed to share this little story with you.

Elements: needlework; lace brush; shipping tag.

A house of snow

Residences. Abode. Such lawful (limiting?) words. Habitat. The two-sided impression of where I live is also the imprint I leave on my microscopic geography.

And while there is the rotie de porc / lechon paradox: I think it's pretty safe to say no one would have them on their plate at the same time, I am beginning to think that the lines that draw one definition, one word, apart from another, are also connecting them. You can see this in black and white drawings. Residence is only a beginning.

In "Unwearying Beauty," Chomei writes about how we can add beauty to where we are through what we remember. What I like about this passage so much is that these memories do not impede him from looking and feeling what is around him, but merely accents his thoughts towards the end (here is the end):

When I see :the mountain deer approach me without any fear, then I understand how remote I am from the world. And I stir up the embers of my smoldering fire, the best friend an old man can find by him when he wakes. The mountains themselves are not at all awesome, though indeed the hooting of the owls is sometimes melancholy enough, but of the beauties of the ever-changing scenery of the hills one never becomes weary. And to one who thinks deeply and has a good store of knowledge such pleasure is indeed inexhaustible.

So here is my tribute to Chomei.

I am far from the world in that many people don't know how to find this country on a map; others, even those of days past who travelled here, projected onto it their many cannibalistic imaginings, it's oral poetry is said to have stirred the Germans away from the rational restrictions of the Enlightenment to find their own voice, I wonder if it is secretly linked to the birth of nationalism, which has strangely become a bad word in a world that still has passport control; where I live is so far that well-read, intelligent people asked before I came, "You're going there?!" And when I began to see where that question came from, I had already begun to find a set of yarns here that have kept me occupied...

When I see the market every day, now that I know which vendors are where, the sprawling mix of stalls is familiar, not daunting; it is a small enough place that one begins to recognise everyone after a while, there are some vendors I just say hello to, some who are greedy for money and will make up any tale to convince you to open your wallet, some grannies will not hand you your produce until they have added a few extra vegetables, the butcher gives you a discount if you smile consistently, the old grandpa who sells the potatoes, crushed chili powder and garlic does not like his relative who sells from the same stall during his absence when he returns to the village, there is a stall with Swiss couverture-grade chocolate, another with imported slips and robes with slashed labels - and prices...

There are days when most stalls are emptied from the cold wind, when singing can be heard, and new faces appear, willing to sell anything the villagers had left before they scuttled home at a lower price. There are times when the pigeons take off from the eaves of the stalls in unison, and one lifts one's eyes from the narrow pathways between the stalls to the wide, open sky. Spring brings the kiss of colour to those green metal structures, that explode with sprigs and bouquets. It is not possible to feel alone in the market, nor can one hold onto any intellectual idea that didn't make sense to begin with. And to one who thinks deeply and has a good store of knowledge, happiness can be found when buying produce for lunch.

So, this is my home, I live right by a market. I translated a novel last year for one of the most poetic, melancholic souls I have ever met, a politician by trade, which makes for an argument that this country is in fact a poem; there is no mathematical model that can explain how it continues to plug on, and while it may be the case that the genius loci cannot be translated, how is it that I can say in my native tongue "house of snow" and have this phrase be intelligible? Fiction writers show us the vitality of the metaphor, and where reality gets oppressive, the women of Medieval Normandy take to their tapestry looms and depict scenes of the war their knights would go on to win. Or perhaps, this is the stuff of legend, too.

graphic: pugly pixel; photo: original

*Those* changes

There was a time when I was less abashed than I am now; something about moving to a country that most people do not know how to find on a map can do that to a person. I have been thinking a lot about this blog and my wish to write - taking my invisible whereabouts into consideration, and how that has effaced my wish to be a fully public persona, for I had such ambitions at an earlier time. Especially when it came to my writing.

But when I came to this country, and was offered the possibility of writing assignments of the paying kind, I felt that by writing about this country, I would be selling it. I felt that nothing short of coming here, and experiencing it every day, could do it justice, especially given what it had been through, and how even one of my dearest professors aid of my coming here: you're going there? For goodness' sake, why?! This is what sealed me up behind walls of misunderstanding and not wanting to say anything to stir people up, because there are some countries that seem to rile people up more than others. (I think Root explained this best in Cannibal Culture.) You may notice that the name of where I live never appears on this blog.

It has made me think yet again about the ability to have a voice as a privilege. Sure, anyone can say what they want, but they will not be listened to with the same attentiveness as those in privileged countries, who, by default of a certain overall lifestyle, will share certain cliquish things in common. Which is nothing new - until one realises that when taken to the national level (in terms of having a voice on the international stage), negotiating space, for some, is riddled with additional difficulties that many people never encounter, and cannot even imagine.

What gave me beginners' words - brought a speech bubble back to my mouth, was the market, which I have blogged about many times, and was the starting point for this blog in its current genesis.

As someone who had to leave behind (and discard) boxes and boxes of written material in order to move here, I can say that the past decade has been something I never imagined I would experience. Why would I lose my voice? But in losing it, I am all the more conscious of what brought it back: the changing seasons as reflected in the full or empty rickety market stalls, how the pigeons sometimes take off in unison from the stall eaves, and as one looks up, one faces the open sky and a pattern of birds, while down below are the little paths between the stalls, which I have now memorised - and I know which vendors are where; it is a small enough place that one begins to recognise everyone after a while, there are some vendors I just say hello to, some who are greedy for money and will make up any tale to convince you to open your wallet, some grannies will not hand you your produce until they have added a few extra vegetables, the butcher gives you a discount if you smile consistently, the old grandpa who sells the potatoes, hammered chili powder and garlic does not like his relative who sells from the same stall when he returns to the village, there is a stall with Swiss cooking chocolate, another with imported undergarments with slashed labels - and prices...

How could one keep silent after all those exchanges? Fast forward to today, I want to start speaking with less reservation. I am even thinking of making this blog public. But there are still the other problems. Village mentality can mean that those who do not wish one well will snoop their noses and find any prized information one prefers to keep quiet.

But I crave conversation.

So I need to make some changes. I need to start being witty again, and I would like to add images to this blog. I spent a good part of this evening exploring new blogs, and marveling at those people who just write what they have to say, and take their stand.

It is understandable that a person in an invisible country have their legs erased, which makes it hard to have a stand. Who will understand you? But stranger things have happened. And I can't make my experience online real until I am more actively communicating. Communication is very real - regardless of medium.

And for now, I leave you with an image of our boat foray a few weeks ago, as a gesture of good will:

Oh Agora

Yesterday, I battled with weather-induced blues (which ought to be called greys), and only truly found resolution when I went to the green market.
Just a minute of walking through the even now-coloured isles (amid the glow of acorn) brought me into a narrative connected to the soil, photosynthesis, modest farmers and vegetable sellers. I asked one grandma how much she was selling broccoli for - and it was the same price as before, though the broccoli bunch had dwindled to one third its earlier size. She said that the ground was closing up, that less was growing now.
This is the picture that explained my mood: the ground is closing up. No more growth. No more yield. It brought to mind an image of Orpheus, and in my mind, he was beneath the winter ground that had closed up, trapped there, in such a Hades, a place of no growth or opportunity, somehow having penetrated the frozen soil. But there is always opportunity for growth, Hades is the wrong state of mind or heart.
In winter, the peasants knit, some even write poetry or paint "naive paintings".
What is universal is that this is a time of change (for those hemispheres now entering winter).
Going back to the market, I saw those crates of apples and purple kale, all signs of the food to come, carrots, more acorn. I bought a giant piece of the latter: here acorns grow to incredible proportions, so that one must saw away at them at home in order to expedite cooking time in the oven.
As I made my way out of the market, my eye catching a display of random metal odds an ends at one stall, I thought of Socrates, and how he would spend time at the agora, and wondered what it was like (how, exactly, did people gather?). I know it wasn't a market, the market was elsewhere. Still, I think the gathering place we have that closest resembles the agora would have to be the market. People discuss politics at the market, perhaps not in long sermons, but axiomatically. The market seems to me to be a much more natural place to discuss ideas than in the Academy. Even the Chinese tea houses, where men would go, some with their songbirds in lacquered cages, to eat dimsum and talk politics, though not even these exist as they once did, seem more vital than the classroom.
There is also something to be said about talking to those people who are willing to listen, which is what Socrates did, and what happens at the market. Perhaps the market and Socrates are connected in my mind because they represent to me Primary Units of an idea: the construct is left to the imagination. They are a cornerstone that breaks poor narrative, leading to better narrative.

The Market: 3pm Sunday

By that time on Sunday, I am usually eating lunch - the ingredients for which I will have bought earlier. But today, I arrived late and wondered what I would find. The state supermarkets were all closed around its edges, but inside - as betrayed by a woman who came out through the narrow alleys between the makeshift boardering shops with plastic bags full of green peppers and figs - there were still vendors at their stalls. My first stop was to buy a skirt for the grandma I adopted (yes, I say it half in jest), as I was told that today the seller would have size XXXX (4 XL). It is a funny size, because in fancier manufacture, that probably has an ordinary number, like 14. I love granny skirts! They have elastic, and the one I found had subtle gold threads in a pale brown plaid with tiny touches of pink. Yaay for granny. Who says that when you are old, you cannot enjoy a decent skirt. Though she rarely leaves her house. Yes, and when I arrived at that stall, the seller was trying to get some people to buy a hunk of cheese (can I even explain this) at her other stall right next to the clothing one. Food is expensive here, so the oddest things get imported from Hungary and sold at randomly interspersed stalls (among electric plugs, pyjamas and stationary, one can find imitation Thai chili sauce, Milka chocolate, and, cheese!).
The other vendors were beginning their social time. The street cleaners were already circling the place like vultures, but (since I recognise so many sellers) I noticed some of them were the customers buying beers from a tiny kiosk and hurrying back to their stalls, or dreamily smoking cigarettes. I bought quarter of a squash from one such vendor in her track suit - and while I was the reluctant customer, saying, oh, but this has been sitting out for some time, sigh, she volunteered to cut the vegetable into any number of ways, like a magician, so I finally accepted and we both ended up happy with the result. I got some cheese and cream from the kiosk that was closing up, but since I know those cute girls, we had a nice joke and I thanked them profusely (while another woman stormed up, demanding cheese - but she changed her tune; one must sing for one's supper, indeed, at 3pm!). I made the recipe "Gratineed Baked Squash Halves" from Martha Stuart. There was an almost festive atmosphere when I left the market - probably because of the nice weather, no one felt like rushing to close up so soon. And there is that patch of sky directly above the green market, which is a few blocks long and filled with pygmy stalls, so the blue sky crowds in over produce offered from the fields, and the only time the market is stern is when it is locked and all showered down but empty and impenetrable.

More Market Wisdom

I have written before how much solace I take from my quotidian trips to the green market. It is very rare, even when I am busy, that I return from the market hassled what with all the verbal exchanges and multi-coloured activity (sometimes a mildly inebriated vegetable seller bursts into beautiful song).
Today, I was struck by something the apologetic zucchini seller was saying (I go to her for the zucchinis, which can be very expensive, but she grows them on her farm). She often asks her daughter-in-law to help with the selling as she is an older woman, and finds it hard to keep up with all of the farming and the selling, but the daughter-in-law was ashamed to sell vegetables, as she was a bank teller before she was laid off. The woman said she would not be at the market as often as she is, if her daughter-in-law would only help out more.
To my mind, it is more shameful to sit at home and do nothing than to have a job - and, to  my mind, selling vegetables is one of the nobler jobs if one does it well, especially because of the self-sacrifice, for the earnings are usually minimal - which is a real sacrifice in today's world. If a person farms in a place where they cannot become wealthy, and yet has found happiness, this person deserves respect in my eyes. But I understand that others do not see it this way - to them, it is a "step down" on the social ladder.
So I ask once again: what social ladder! If this is a ladder people join after letting their mother-in-law develop more aches and pains instead of giving a helping hand when it was needed, I think this ladder is upside-down.
Diogenes (the lived-in-the-barrel Diogenes) was offered anything he wanted after he gave lessons to Alexander the Great. His response was to ask his student to step aside, as he was blocking the sun. Diogenes is remembered for what he refused, not what he wanted to gain. Albeit, this example falls in the category of the hyperbolic, but my father, who achieved so much in his life, always taught me that life does not always move from success to success, so one must honour people of all stations, as one may occupy these stations too, and one must accept whatever work is available graciously: for a good work ethic wins the day in most unexpected ways. The worst thing in this context are idle, insensitive hands.

Market Scenes

So, why are there no pictures? Because, where I live, the mentality of the people is such that it cannot be captured in the freeze-frame of the photo, it spills out beyond it in so many ways. One can take pictures in nature here, but of the people, of "scenes" - this is left better to the word, for the word has a special connection with the imagination; the magic of saying "chair" (wink to Wittgenstein) and all the possibilities that such a word presents.

Even when I have so much work to do, I still go to the market almost every day - something which may also be the result of having a Barbie-sized fridge. And while I might set out as a bag of nerves, I always unwind in the labyrinthical lanes between the stalls - whether through saying, "hi grandpa" to my favourite potato vendor, and listening to whatever his reply might be, such as "child, look at how few people come to the market these days," or, by watching how various vendors try to rip me off, which, of course, within reason, really doesn't bother me - especially if it is their farm, or whether it is the degree and variety of colours on sale, which are especially bright at this time of year. Peppers - big, small (the mildly hot ones), light in colour, almost ivory green, Punch-shaped, all the better for stuffing; apricots - in swirls of mustard yellow and firehouse red; stalky greens - I come away from the market refreshed, even renewed.

Today, as I was buying chicken, the granny in front of me had a particular request: the cheapest chicken sausage for cats. "No, not that one, something cheaper." And, as people here have extra-developed awareness senses, she knew I was listening, and began her monologue, though not to me per se, but just by way of explanation: I am going to the weekend house, there are three cats there, that actually belong to the neighbours...

And as I have always been fascinated by the glimpse of other people's home interiors one can see from the street, and similarly-themed magazines, such a snippet stayed with me, and led to the writing of this post. There are so many different lives and experiences, even within a ten-metre radius from where one lives. And I am really glad for that market, which takes me out of myself when all I am doing is buying lunch.