River Snow

I gave my eight grade class this Tang century poem by Liu Zongyuan (read top to bottom, right to left):

I suggested that when translating Chinese poetry it doesn't matter whether one has studied Chinese for 10 years or 2 months (they have studied Chinese for 4 months).  As long as one has a dictionary and has translated all of the words, one has about all the information one needs.  The syntax is largely based on word order, and otherwise there is no punctuation, no sense of time occurring, and, at least here, no clear speaker.

Here's the poem with the English definitions:

thousand/mountain/bird/fly/vanish
ten thousand/path/person/trace/extinguished
solitary/boat/cape/hat/fisherman
single/fishing/cold/river/snow

Some words are hard to translate into a single English definition.  "Thousand" and "ten thousand" are counting terms, but here they can also mean, "myriad."  The word translated above as "cape" actually specifically refers to the palm leaf raincoat that peasants wear, and the "hat" refers to the conical, bamboo leaf hat often associated with rice farmers.  Furthermore, "mountain, bird, person, path" and other nouns, since they are described in characters, have no distinction of being plural or singular.  Likewise "to fly" and "to fish" have no distinction of past, future, or present tense.  The word that is translated above as "solitary" in its most literal sense means "orphan."  "Fisherman" actually seems to mean "an old fisherman."

Also worth noting, since you do not have the phonetic translation of the poem, the last character in the first, second, and fourth line rhyme thus, "jue, mie, and xue."  Solitary and single also rhyme, "gu and du".

Maybe you already have a sense of the poem.  In class, we discussed how the first two lines mimic each other, most notably the first and last words ("thousand"/"ten thousand" and "vanish"/"extinguish").  However to compare each word in the first and second lines elicits some interesting contrasts.  So "mountain" is lined up with "paths."  I asked my students how many paths each mountain had.  It took a while, but ten, right?  It reminded me of "Loveliest of trees," the poem by A. E. Housman:

"Now of my three score years and ten
Twenty will not come again.
And take from seventy springs a score
It only leaves me fifty more.

"And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty years are little room.
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow."

Of the first verse quoted here, the first two lines can be described in this equation: (3 X 20 + 10) - 20.  And the last two lines describes the same thing: 70 - 20 = 50.  There is something absurd about having math in poetry.  However, both poems perhaps push readers' sense of numerical abstraction to overlay their sense of beauty.  The poet literally "abstracts" (lit. draws away) himself from the whole sensual experience, making the vision more pathetic and profound.

Continuing the comparison of words in the first two lines, "birds" are then associated with "people," and "fly" with "trace."  Birds vanish from the skyline, and the tracks of people along trails disappear--the contrast comments on the phenomenon that birds in flight leave no trace (unlike humans when they walk), and also suggests that human footprints, symbolic of human activity, also vanish with no more lasting remnant than the paths of birds through the sky.  It's very powerful to meditate simply on those first two lines.  We start to notice that after giving us the image of birds flying, the poet takes that away from us--by the final word, "vanished."  So there aren't birds there after all, it seems.  This first line also suggests that the poet has been there awhile--long enough to have noticed the birds passing.  And yet, now that one thinks of it, where did they go?  Have even birds left this forbidding region?  Secondly, the traces of people are disappearing.  Perhaps readers can assume it is raining or snowing, obscuring all tracks.

Again "solitary" and "single" suggest another two line comparison, especially since these two words rhyme as well, as noted earlier.  That means we have "boat" and "fishing" and then "cape/hat/fisherman" with "cold/river/snow."  The last three lines could be thought of us "a cold river with snow" or "a cold river and snow."  But if readers choose to strictly correlate it with "cape/hat/fisherman" perhaps it is also an adj./adj./n clause, as in "snow that is cold and in the river = cold, river snow."  The three words, "cold" "river" and "snow" seem to me a heavy paring.  There is no escaping the sense of coldness and dreary-ness.  Now, because I'm thinking of the two lines as parallel, I can imagine the figure slumped over itself, the fisherman barely visible under his cape and hat, himself almost like just another pile of snow in the river.

Here is my translation*:

The birds flying have vanished beyond the mountains          

No trace remains of man's footprints along the trails             

An orphaned canoe, a straw hat and cloak                            

Someone fishes in the icy river

*It is notable to mention that Chinese is nearly always more brief than English.  To write an English poem that suggests the succinctness of the Chinese poem one cannot comment on each character.  For example I have no English corresponding term for 5 of the 20 characters in the poem, including "thousand," "ten thousand," "fisherman," "single," and "cold".  However, I feel that I have not negated the sense that they lend to the poem.  Canoe, which is anachronistic, was a compromise against "boat" because I didn't want it to rhyme with "cloak."  

Today I touched a student's booger`

I don't mean to interrupt my intrepid investigation of my Chinese studies long. I only write to say that today I touched a student's booger. It was Gary's booger. He's new and slightly loose-hinged. Because he is exceedingly naughty one of the first days I told him to stand up and put his hands on his head. He did this until he cried that he had to go to the bathroom, so I told him, grumpily, to go. Twenty minutes later, at the very end of class, Gary slips in with this slightly bemused look upon his face, sort of like a raccoon that has just crawled out of a garbage bin. I was not happy.

Today I told the students to crowd around Ol' Uncle Joe because I was going to tell them a story. As is the case, half of the kids make a mad dash toward the front blue line, and the other half look disinterestedly at the ceiling and I'm not sure if they don't care or if they didn't understand the summons. This time Gary squirming in the front-row looked up shocked. He held his finger aloft with a mysterious golden-brown substance on the tip. "Teacher Joe!' exclaimed, and then he spoke a word that he repeated twice that I thought sounded like the Chinese for "dirty." I guess I wasn't really thinking a darn thing, but my mind didn't associate the glistening substance with anything. I thought at first he had been stabbed by a floor splinter (of which there are none in my classroom) for his face was so stammered and astonished--entreating. I bent down and tried to examine it, which in practice meant plucking it up. Only it didn't come off. Instead, a golden strand of moisture joined my finger.

Of course, it was a booger. I told him to go get a tissue--which had probably been what he was entreating me for, and I followed him. As he walked away, I heard him chuckle, bemused, and say, "Teacher Joe touched my booger." And I had.

Pai Pai

I think I'm going with "Pai pai" for the bird's name, which means "clap, clap," or "slap, slap" or something like that, so it's more for the sound than the meaning. For a while, it was "xiao niao" which literally means "baby bird," or, more precisely, "small bird," but no matter how endearing it was to me, it has been a little bit difficult to say conveniently.

Thinking about the bird, specifically, today, I re-read passages from The Little Prince concerning the Rose and the Fox, both of which allegorize relationships for the Little Prince. The one about the fox is more excessible to me, which is rather poetic, and who, in the end, tells the Prince, "You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed." I think about this when I feed the bird and hold it in my hand.

I was reflecting on my students today--distinctly those in my afternoon class. And the class itself, as well, how, in the beginning, after they left and I began picking up and tidying, it felt like I was cleaning up after a war. A month later, it felt like picking up after a battle, then a mild skirmish, and so on. Today, it felt like picking up after a class of elementary school kids and in the negative connotation of the phrase, which means it wasn't the best class of the week, but that in not being the best class this week it's still miles above what we were when we started.

Perseverance, even when it's blind, lost, and led only by the dumb hand of time--that's to say almost, "even if it's not perseverance"--always overthrows any obstacle. It makes you give credence to the sentiment (to the record) in the dear old Bible, that faith can move mountains. That's to say concerted, diligent perseverance. Doubly true in Buddhism, where, they say, mountains don't even exist so of course you can move 'em. In any case, the world has shifted again, rolled over to its side to gaze longingly at the sky.

I was also just thinking of the portraits that my students make, singly or in montage. John who, for a week, would only enter the classroom on all fours barking like a dog, and who, even when not a dog, tries to eat anything, or at least put it in his mouth. One day he was eating his triangular ruler, and I said, "John, what are you doing?!" He said, "It's chicken!" There's Judy who everyone says is very pretty. Today she finished the writing assignment while Steven, the slowest writer EVER!, was still finishing the writing assignment from the day before. Judy lay her head on her arm and looked out the window. I was sitting next to Steven so that I could remind him to keep writing, for, at any second and for any reason, he will spontaneously stand upon his chair, or climb unto the bookshelf up to the air-con unit right near his desk, to stick his head into the rush of cold air, and sing a phrase of a song.

He is a very slow writer because of the care he takes with each letter (unlike John, for example, who chomps down on his extra eraser, and writes right through the asignment in large, messy, thick lines), and he was writing the word "around," again and again. For some reason, this made me feel really peaceful. All the letter's seemed to have the same circular movement starting from the nape of the "a," circling down and around, to execute in a tail. Then the "o," but with no tail. The "u," with a tail but with an abbreviated skull, the "n," slightly different, but still as thoughtful as any of the others. The "d," which is just an "a," with a very long spine... He actually was practicing this one incorrectly, beginning at the top of the letter, and executing the rest in the same movement as one would do to make an "h," on the other side. I didn't bother to stop him.

On the other side of the room sat his twin sibling, a sister, Ruby, who, just as in intelligent, does half as well due to things people would call, "behavior" issues, and many days she is uncooperative. She does do well with writing, though, I thought. She sits next to Andy who is very smart and has no class room decorum, so sometimes he loves what we are doing a little too much. If you ask him anything about Teletubbies or something called Yoyoman, or Spongbob Square Pants, he will know the answer--in English. After class, sometimes he even teaches me Chinese.

Last weekend, I took a trip to Fo Guang Shan, the buddhist temple that I stayed four weeks in two and a half years ago. It seems like ancient history now, almost like another world. Indeed it is another world, another world altogether even from Taiwan. It's quite large, the complex, with several musuems, two English colleges (men's and women's), art galleries, many temples with their accompanying courtyards and landscaping, lodges, giftshops, bookstores, and a huge 5,000 people dining complex, all of which is built upon several hills, an hour North from one of the largest (I think) port cities in the world, Khaosiung.

Here, it's incredible, but everyone is very happy--old people, young people, lay people, monastics. It's like the rule, or at least the myth, all over Taiwan, that here it's very happy and peaceful and, indeed, it is. In fact, it would be rather creepy except for the fact that, once you get used to it, you realize how rich and undeniable the happiness is.

I said it was ancient history for me but that made me all the more startled to remember things I had lost, or had never bothered to translate into my other world. I remembered the smells, even before I got there, the smells of their halls, their air-conditioning, their incense, and even the smell of their shrubs outside. I found almost every place we had meditated--the place outside where bees and flies had buzzed lazily from one neck to the next. The time we meditated in the men's college temple and the fan that blew in the window, the light that changed across the floor. In the early morning, outside the giant golden, standing Buddha statue, where the courtyard wasn't quite big enough and the neat rows of mats twisted oddly at the end.

Perhaps when you're letting your thoughts go, the ones that remain--those arrogant that stand up and claim substance--are those that fall so hard, once, and so distinctly that the impression they leave is left waiting like a fossil in your mind, like a cicada that waits in the ground, for that odd year to come around, when they summon brown casing, and rise from the earth.

If at first you don't succeed...

Written at home on computer Wednesday August 6th, transfered next day in the evening to Imagine Children's School's office computer in the evening time.

Three days of teaching under the belt, as we say. An odd expression, but it feels like to me that I have indeed experienced and kept these days—strapped them—very close to me. They have not been fond for me, rather, difficult. But the emotional experience has been of immediacy and importance. It is very important to me that I make something of teaching small children, not simply for the unselfish reasons that the kids may learn something or that I may delight in their success. There are mundane reasons plenty that keep me at my task. Would I do this if I could walk away tomorrow, I wonder? I don’t know. But there are reasons I do not walk away, and I think it is also good to stick with it. The first adjustment is always the hardest. But that’s maybe a lie. If you’ve ever read the children’s book Holes, perhaps you remember when the protagonist lies down, dusty and worn from his first day digging a hole. Another child tries to cheer him up and says, “the first hole is always the hardest.” But the boy finds out, the next day, when he is again assigned to dig a hole, that it is even more difficult than before. He is still tired from the first day and his hands are covered with blisters that easily break. Again, the third day the trial is worse, and so on until, at some point, though digging the hole each day remains difficult, he finds an ease to it. He finds his body turned lithe and strong, his hands rough and thick, and his method better calculated.

My three morning classes are for kindergarten classes with kids ranging from 2.5 years old to seven years old. The kids in my afternoon class are seven and eight and this is where all my energy is directed. They seem to have abilities below the morning class of six and seven year olds, yet class material and expectations are a lot more advanced. Some are very quick and some are not. I spend a good part of the time splashing about, trying to find firm ground to place stones of knowledge that I let gently into the water only to watch them vanish into he depths of un-understanding. As a result, their attention wanes, they speak Chinese (which in this class is not allowed), they fidget and fight, and so on. My classes often devolve into exercises of classroom management, which I am not happy with. The children spend their time testing my edges, and I spend time myself learning the power I have and do not have over them.

The most important aspect of these past few days have been my attempts between 5 o’clock when I leave the school and eleven at night when I go to sleep (not counting the time that I spend lesson-planning or worrying about my classes) to remove myself emotional, intellectually, and physically from school and find things to do in the city or by myself that are interesting and rejuvenating in their own merits. Although I have not found many people to talk to (the only westerners I have met outside my school were two boys, one from Utah and one from Las Vegas, named Elder Jack and Elder Johnson who sported matching dress-shirts and ties and mandarin translated books of mormon—unfortunately, and as expected, our chance meeting and conversation was singularly directed), I have found things to do.

I have enjoyed wandering about my part of the city, which is a little quieter and quainter than Chiayi central. There is nothing big like shopping malls or movie theatres, but there is a park where old men smoke cigarettes and play checkers or where young mothers go to exercise. I’m recognized everywhere I go but more particularly at several specific restaurants and shops, and at several restaurants I am occasionally pampered with an odd unexpected, free dish, most recently being a red bean popsicle at one place and an Japanese-style onion salad at another (delicious!). There is one teashop quite near by but I find it slightly uninviting and moody, the only time I went, I felt like I was coming into a living room and soon left. I sometimes walk about the residential areas and have even visited some garden stores for plants and flowers to grow. I have not made any friends yet with the local people in my rambles but there is certainly a friendliness, an expectation of certain smiles and nods in my usual haunts. There is not enough language yet to have friends, and so this pushes me on to learn more.

I continue to learn Chinese. This endeavor is supported whenever I go outside, listening to the many conversations that I hear, finding some people who can speak a little English and the attempt to clear up the empty spaces between. I also have a Rosetta Stone program that I work on every night. I have made a chart where I check off certain exercises and though I’m persistent, I am not in the habit yet of rewarding myself with stickers! I also have some flash cards and a very small phrase book. Other than this, it is live and learn.

Of course, there is tea to enjoy and escape to, and though I have not bought any local tea since I did some Ali Shan, I have plenty of puerh tea from Malaysia that I drink often enough in the evenings. I compliment this by listening to opera, and occasionally I also have little snacks I have purchased at local bakeries. One bakery near by has this delicious buttery sesame coated crust cookie that is so flakey. And inside is a red bean paste, some fiber, and a bit of yellow saltiness in the center (a bit of a duck egg, I don’t know). The first bite is wonderful because the middle collapses together and all the sweet and salty flavor is released.

It has been very nice to receive post and I am surprised every day when I get a letter from my sister so far away. I think I have gotten three letters from her, and it is magical to hear her words and dreams and thoughts. Today she even slipped into the envelope some mule braid and snake skin, emblems of another world they seemed! Reading letters is such sustenance to me. It is so tangible that you can lift it in your hands, a preciousness that you can see and count.

There is yet more to do here. I sometimes think that it is loneliness that affects me. Indeed, there is not a lot of conventional friendship or support. But I have my family. I do have my friends still. I have many people that I interact with everyday, too. But I think it is true that it is hard to feel like I am sharing in an experience with somebody; in such cases it is much easier to find meaning and wisdom and support in the things that you do. But it also feels nice to do it alone, like swimming out far into the waves. There is meaning and wisdom and support all around or, as we say, in your self! So it’s something of a process, blistered hands but a gradual unlayering, an eye toward tomorrow when not confounded by the day, a charge to engage, persist, and let go.