Thursday, January 26, 2012

I'm Not Sei Shonagon, But Her Ancient Book is My Inspiration

My copy of Sei Shonagon's The Pillow Book came about two weeks ago.  I ordered it used through Amazon, and it looks completely new except for a little buckling on the cover at its spine.  

I see as I get older my tastes are becoming more Eastern almost against my will, but really I was always an Eastern person at heart. I jokingly told my mother the other week that I believe I was kidnapped as an infant from another country and bought here and placed with this family and that my real parents have been looking for me ever since.  She told me oh yes I was her child.  She knows what she had to go though having me.  She said she also knows I'm her's because I resemble my dad a lot and her slightly, and that I have her character.  Mom has a big heart. Her parents had big hearts and were generous and un-bigoted.  They had high morals and little or no education.  Grandma only got to the sixth grade.  Grandpa went to school one day and hated it.  He never went back. The most he could do with book learning was write his name, but he had more wisdom and goodness than a lot of educated or rich men.  

My mother and I have plenty of eccentric conversations that we immensely enjoy and laugh about.  Mom is excellent with sarcastic and deadly humorous one liners.  We love those little moments when such as the other day I made us both an amaretto flavored cappuccino with cinnamon, and we just relaxed and talked.  It's those little moments.  Living in Turkey taught me to slow down and smell the roses and love the little things.  I never liked the rat race here, but for a very long time this was all I knew.  


Well, I'm not trying to completely copy Sei Shonagon, a Japanese court lady who live a thousand years ago.  Perhaps if we could meet we might find out that we have some things in common besides writing, and perhaps we might not.  Anyway, Sei wrote random thoughts, observations, and lists in her book that is a classic in Japanese literature. These writings were about her time, existence, and way of lifeI don't live in medieval Japan.  I'm not a Japanese noble woman.  I live now in a very complicated and confusing world that moves too fast and senselessly sometimes because some very powerful, wicked, and irresponsible people are trying to make it into their image.  I don't know anything really about Sei Shonagon's Heian Japan, but a glimpse of the Wikipedia page on it shows it might have have been a more easygoing, artistic, and civilized time than now.  

I'm not trying to completely copy Sei Shonagon's book with this blog.  I haven't even started to read it all yet. I've just scanned bits of it.  But the book will be my model for writing about my time and existence.  My loves and hates.  I will write about beauty and madness.  I will be controversial without being vulgar.  I don't know why some folks always equate controversy with vulgarity. It doesn't really make you sophisticated or cool.  I like realism, but just being ugly, nasty, and cheap isn't my style.  The kind of controversy I'm talking about will be the truth since a lot of people don't like the truth.  That's a big problem in this country. I have to really put on a mask and veil here to survive, but I get tired of it sometimes and fling them off.  I will write about sweet nothings too like Sei Shonagon. I will even be kookie at times.  

I like this which Sei Shonagon wrote about clouds long ago.


Clouds

I love white, purple, and black clouds, and rain clouds when they are driven by the wind.  It is charming at dawn to see the dark clouds gradually turn white.  I believe this has been described in a Chinese poem that says something about 'the tints that leave at dawn.'

It is moving to see a thin wisp of cloud across a very bright moon.

Bring in the Parrots: Language Predictability and Other Insanity

The average person is pretty unimaginative.  The average is just that...Average.  Everyone does about the same thing when it's all average.  Everyone waits to copy the next boring or vulgar idea when it's all average.  Everyone says about the same thing, uses the same words when it's all average.  We live in a very average society that's falling even lower where mediocrity and evil are concerned. Not being able to communicate very well and listening to feel good messages with no depth are all very much part of the now in America.  

I'm thinking about overused words and phrases that a lot of people use.  Language can have so much beauty and depths of meaning even in a very utilitarian language like English.  No, English is not Mandarin Chinese, Arabic or Persian, but we could do much better than we do in our use of it. We could stop the linguistic laziness we've fallen over into and try to arrange our words creatively and with more thought. 

When I was younger, black people were sometimes criticized regularly for using bad English. Then when I was in graduate school, a new term came out called "Ebonics" which gave a name for black slang and BAD English.  One thing black people did manage to do and never got any credit for was make English in this country a little more colorful and complicated.  Racism and being in a kind of a isolation from the majority group, led many blacks to rebel and not want to "talk like white folks".  Black people did their own thing with English by making it colorful, raw, poetic, humorous, even deliberately changing the spelling.  Some of us even would get angry with other minorities who decided to assimilate and use terminology and voice intonation that imitated white people.  

Still I just drifted over into the race and language issue before it knew it. Really this is about words and phrases that really get on my nerves because they are over used, and when I hear people my age who are middle aged or older using them I think they must be going through a mid life crisis.  Fewer and fewer people want to grow up in America anymore, so woe to the children.  I see it everyday too when I'm not living the life of a part time hermit.

These are the overused words and phrases I keep hearing and reading, and that I despise with untold passion.

*kicking the can down the road--- A favorite with our mainstream "journalists", economic "experts," and our politicians (the respectable mafioso).  When I hear them say it I get visions of a Norman Rockwell painting the subject a little redheaded boy in overalls, barefoot, kicking a can down a dirt road that runs between two farms.  Maybe the phrase is coded. The "journalists", economic "experts", and mafioso politicians want us to be unaware and asleep to the present.  If we are naive and innocent like that little redheaded boy and believe in fairytales and wait with our bowls held out for their feel good messages not based on reality, we're more easy to handle.  

*at the end of the day--- Another favorite with the trio mentioned just above.  Maybe they think by using this near the end of their comments, they sound rhetorical or dramatic. They do kind of lean back in their chairs, if they are sitting, and nearly sigh, "at the end of the day," so languidly.  Ahhh, the actors.

*the 1% and the 99%--- These two overused statistics appeared with the Occupy Wall Street Movement which was inspired by the so-called Arab Spring or as some call it The Islamic Awakening.  We Americans don't put much thought into what we do or who we follow.  We just jump in like adolescents emotional and sentimental sans research and follow the titanic down the drain.  Yes, I'll admit that I believed in the "revolution" when it started in Egypt.  Being who I am, I haven't had a totally cushy existence that I can identify with an oppressor, but I noted the warnings from unconventional sources rather early, so now that Egypt is ruled by a junta and some say the Muslim Brother is bad news, Libya ruled by atrocity and mayhem, and some say it ain't all that terrific in Tunisia, along with the other horror shows that are playing out in the Middle East moving down from North Africa south, east, and west into sub-Sahara Africa, the thrill is totally gone.  Besides being driven by sinister elements and entities and the pitifully gullible and young, I just see it as a tragic farce, I mean fad. How do the Occupy Wall Street crowd know the rich comprise 1% for sure.  They could be .1%.  Sorry bro, but I like facts myself.  Can they prove to me we are the 99% or the 99.5%.  See what I mean?  People just jump on a bandwagon and roll.  If they had really been smart, they would have never modeled their "revolution" after the "Arab Spring".  But what do I know?

 *awesome; amazing--- I can kinda accept a teenager or someone in their 20s using these two even if it is a little grinding to hear and read over and over. I've even thrown out hints on my Facebook page to find a synonym for these words.  I'm an English teacher by profession.  I've taught in three countries and on four continents.  I come from a poetic background that goes back to reading nursery rhymes when I was a little girl to Shakespeare in high school and majoring in English literature.  I don't like to see the language trashed and brought down to the minimal.  I became even more radical about my beliefs on language being used well and expressively and not repetitiously when I began reading Sufi poetry.  

We've lost the art of conversation and debate in this culture. We just hop up with some little slogan or platitude too frequently for my tastes.  In some ways social media like Facebook cause us to communicate less and express ourselves less.  I try to use Facebook as an educational tool, and what I post is controversial at times, but I am just a fanatic about putting information out there for people to use and to contemplate.  I want people to think critically, so they can truly be free.  I don't know where "awesome" and "amazing" came from.  I suspect a movie or TV show, but it is overused.  When I hear people my age and those in their 60s using it over and over I cringe because hearing it repeatedly ain't cool.  It's past time to stop running with the crowd like you did when you were in grade school and college, and talk like an adult.  

My message in the end is to be yourself even where language is involved.  Be an individual with your own gifts that God gave you.  Stop being bland and a carbon copy. 

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Bursting the Bubble... Among Other Things

I like bubbles.  Last summer I was thinking about buying a nice bubble blowing set from The Dollar Tree, a store where everything is just $1.  Yes, I was thinking about doing this and I'm 49!  I'm a little eccentric though some people might not notice. ;) This particular bubble set had a huge wand and came with a big bottle of sudsy liquid.  Back in the day when I was a kid, most of the bubble blowing sets same with a tiny wand that was small enough to fit inside the small bottle of bubbly liquid.  The liquid didn't last long, so I would make up for it by taking some of my mother's Joy dish washing liquid and make my own sudsy water, placing it inside the bottle.

I like bubbles because they are harmless and innocent, floating glass orbs reflecting the light, hints of pink, blues, greens.  Bubbles can be burst too.  We have our bubbles, the illusions and fairytales we like to hold unto. Some of us do this into middle and old age, but hey! life is tough, so I can understand.  Sometimes...  It's even tough for the folks who appear to have it all.  They REALLY don't have it all though, believe me. I gather this from my observations.

The other year I read a novel called The Tale of Murasaki about a Japanese court lady who lived over 1000 years ago and who is believed to have written the first novel The Tale of Genji.  In the Tale of M. a character is mentioned named Sei Shonagon.  Like Lady Murasaki Sei Shonagon was also a court lady who became a celebrity, but unlike Lady Murasaki, who was a reluctant idol and would have rather been left alone, Sei Shonagon bathed and luxuriated in being popular.  Her character did not have a large role in the novel, but even though she didn't I was intrigued by the mention of her collection of writings called The Pillow Book.  It was a collection of lists, observations, poetry, gossip, and other fragments.  This style of writing is referred to as zuihitsu. I recently found out that Sei Shonagon was a real person.

I haven't actually read Sei Shonagon's The Pillow Book, but I've read a few portions online.  I have a copy of it on order right now.  Even though I haven't read it yet, I felt I could go ahead and create my own Pillow Book online, and it will deal with the now, my now and a lot of other things.  So it begins...  I have never done a blog of this nature.  Usually I have written about others lives and what I put down was fine, but in some ways what I wrote was safe and impersonal.  So it begins... Let's see what happens. :)

A Class Activity With Two of My Youngest Students

It has been a while since I last posted.  I began writing a serious post this week which I hope to finish in the coming days.   Today an a...