Other Journal Volumes: Home Vol.1 Vol.2 Vol.3 Vol.4 Vol.5
Welcome to my journal... Vol.2
...just a few things found in books I've read
and places visited and thought were worth remembering...
From Aesop's Fables Selected and Adapted By Jack Zipes
Aesop Biography - #
Aesop Biography - #
Aesop Biography - #
"Aesop, according to legend, was born either in Sardis, on the Greek island of Samos, or in
Cotiaeum, the chief city in a province of Phrygia, and lived from about 620 to 560 B.C.
Little is known about his life, but Aristotle mentioned him acting as a public defender, and
Plutarch placed him among the "Seven Wise Men." It is generally believed he was a slave,
freed by his master because of his wit and wisdom. As a free man he went to Athens, ruled
at that time by the tyrant Peisistratus, an enemy of free speech. As Aesop became famous for
his fables, which used animals as a code to tall the truth about political injustice, he
incurred the wrath of Peisistratus. Eventually Aesop was condemned to death for sacrilege
and thrown over a cliff. Later, the Athenians erected a statue in his honor. In about
300B.C., Demetrius Phalereus of Athens made the first known collection of his fables, which
then spread far beyond the Greek world." Jack Zipes
The Seven Wise Men: Bias, Chilon, Cleobulus, Periander, Pittacus, Solon, and Thales
Sayings of the seven wise men
Take these things, you who wish to portray the sayings of the
seven wise men, to celebrate them in pictures.
"Moderation in things is best," as Cleobulus said: the tongue of a
balance, or level teaches this lesson.
Chilon the Spartan exhorted each man to know himself: this
mirror in your hands, this glass you pick up will provide the
image.
As Periander the Corinthian said, "Put reins upon your anger":
fleabane applied to the nostrils will show this.
Pittacus advocated "Nothing to excess": they make the same
point who dissolve coriander in the mouth.
Solon enjoined that one pay attention to the end: Terminus
himself, the last boundary in the fields, will not yield to great
Jupiter.
Alas how true what Bias said, "There is a great abundance of
disasters": portray a Sardinian rider sitting on a Sardinian ass.
"Do not be an accomplice," said Thales: thus the lapwing
smeared with birdlime draws its companion into the snare, and
the bee-eater does likewise.
The Banquet of the Seven Wise Men (considered spurious by some) is a longer treatise, one of the
several “Symposia” or imaginary conversations that have come down to us. It is supposed to be given
by Periander in the public banqueting-room (kriarhpiov) near the harbour of Corinth (Lechaeum) on
the occasion of a sacrifice to Aphrodite. The whole party consisted of “more than twice seven,” the
friends of the principal guests being also present. Like Plato’s Symposium this treatise takes the
form of a narrative of what was said and done, the narrator being one Diodes, a friend of Periander,
who professes to give Nicarchus a correct account as having been present. The dinner was simple, and
in contrast with the usual splendour of “tyrants” (~ 4). The conversation turns on various topics;
Solon is credited with the remarkable opinion that “a king or tyrant is most likely to become celebrated
ii he makes a democracy out of a monarchy” (~ 7). There is much playful banter throughout, but neither
the wit nor the wisdom seems of a very high standard. Solon delivers a speech on food being a necessity
rather than a pleasure of life (f 16), and one Gorgus, a brother of the host, comes in to relate how he
has just shaken hands with Anon, brought across the sea on the back of a dolphin (f 18), which brings
on a discussion about the habits of that creature. Among the speakers are Aesop, Anacharsis, Thales,
Chilo, Cleobulus and one Chersias, a poet. by PLUTARCH (part 1) and PLUTARCH, OF ATHENS (part 2)
Bios of Famous Greeks
Aesop Fables and Bio
Aesop Fables and Bio...more
Aesop Fables and Bio...more
Aesop Fables and Bio...more
Aesop's Fables, Selected and adapted by Jack Zipes (Signet Classic)
Fables: 15, 19, 28, 31, 32, 37, 46, 49, 49, 53, 60*, 72, 79*, 87*, 91, 98*, 111*, 124, 125*,
140, 153, 154, 165, 178, 181*, 213, 224, 231, 241.
Bob Marley, Reggea Musician
Bob Marley Web Page
Timeline... - #
Portrait Drawing - #
"He was a man with deep religious and political sentiments who rose from destitution to become one
of the most influential music figures in the last twenty years."
"Marley is a blur of motion, bobbing, weaving, dreadlocks flying, never seeming to quite touch the stage."
"Bob Marley's music became the anthem of a displaced generation an the power behind his lyrics remains
to this day. He taught the world what real reggae music was about. An island boy, born in Jamaica, in
1945, of mixed-race parents, Marley is the only reggae star to reach international status. He made his
first recording at the age of 17 and at 19 began singing with The Wailers (originally called The Wailing
Rudeboys). A strong Rastafarian (jailed in the States for possession of marijuana), Marley's lyrics
drew hugely on his religious and political views; the lyrics of "War" on his celebrated Rastaman
Vibrations' album are from a speech made by Haile Selassie. From being Jamaica's local hero, Marley
suddenly found international cult status after hugely successful tours of the UK and US in 1975. His
song lyrics made it difficult for him to live in a politically tense homeland beleaguered by violent
unrest and in 1976 Marley was shot-the identity of the gunmen was never discovered. Marley survived,
but began spending more of his time in the States, although his roots always remained in Jamaica. The
man who brought reggae to the world died tragically of brain cancer on May 11, 1981, but his legend
lives on in all who sing and listen to reggae today..."
Poetry notes...
Favorite Poems
Stopping by a woods on a snowey evening - # by Robert Frost
The Road Not Taken - # by Robert Frost
If by Rudyard Kipling - #
The Highwayman - # by Alfred Noyes
I've Learned - # Author Unknown
BEWARE! - # by Longfellow
Maud - # by Tennyson
The Lyre of_Myriad Tunes - # by The Lu, translated by Hunyh Thong
The Brothers McBrayer Top 50 Poems - #
Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes Biography - #
Langston Hughes Biography and Poetry - #
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Biography
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Biography
Longfellow's Poetry
Longfellow Quotes - #
Longfellow's Poetry, complete
The complete works of Longfellow: Part 1 - # - Part 2 - # - Part 3 - # - Part 4 - #
The Choice by Dante Gabriel Rossetti - #
Literature notes...
D H Lawrence Biography - #
D H Lawrence...thoughts - #
D H Lawrence Poems - #
D H Lawrence - Lady Chatterley's Lover - #
F Scott Fitzgerald Biography - #
Galileo Biography - #
Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech - #
Maya Angelou Biography - #
The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000 - #
Music notes...
Follow Me by Uncle Cracker - #
I hope you dance by Lee Ann Womack - #
Only Time by Enya - #
Have you seen her by Smokey Robinson - #
From Jazz By Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison Biography - #
Toni Morrison Biography
Toni Morrison Biography and Book Analysis
p.8
"But I do know how to take precautions. Mostly its making sure no one knows all there is to know
about me."
p.9
"Do what you please in the City, it is there to back and frame you no matter what you do. And what
goes on on its blocks and lots and side streets is anything the strong can think of and the weak will
admire. All you have to do is heed the design---the way it's laid out for you, considerate, mindful
of where you want to go and what you might need tomorrow.
p.9
"Hospitality is gold in this City; you have to be clever to figure out how to be welcoming and
defensive at the same time. When to love something and when to quit.
p.15
"You in trouble," she says, yawning. "Deep, deep trouble. Can't rival the dead for love. Lose
every time."
p.173
"Get hold of yourself. A son ain't what a woman say. A son is what a man do. You want to act like
you mine, then do it, else get the devil out my house."
p.175
"She got reasons. Even if she crazy. Crazy people got reasons."
p.189
"What good are secrets if you can't talk to anybody about them."
p.229
"...to be able to say out loud what they have no need to say at all: That I have loved only you,
surrendered my whole self reckless to you and nobody else. That I want you to love me back and show
it to me. That I love the way you hold me, how close you let me be to you. I like your fingers on
and on, lifting, turning. I have watched your face for a long time now, and missed your eyes when
you went away from me. Talking to you and hearing your answer---that's the kick."
The Mayan Civilization...Notes & Sources
Documents
 |
Tulum - #
Mayan Ruins at Tulum - #
Maya - The Classic Period - Mayan - #
The Maya Civilization - La Civilización Maya - #
The Mayan Civilization - #
The Mayan Civilization - The Time-Line - #
Maya - 743774-c340-01560200 image - #
Links
Comprehensive Maya Sites
The Maya Civilization at Canadian Museum of Civilization
The Maya Civilization at Mexico Connect
The Maya Civilization - many links
Mayan Ruins
Maya Photo Adventures of John C. Mureiko
San Gervasio on Cozumel Island
TULUM, CLIFF TOP MAYAN RUINS ON THE MEXICAN RIVIERA
Early sketches and drawings
Playaguide - Maya Overview - Part 1
Playaguide - Maya Overview - Part 2
Playaguide - Maya Overview - Part 3
Playaguide - Tulum
Playaguide - Chichen Itza
Playaguide - Coba
Mayan History - Yahoo Search on: "Mayan Ruins Tulum civilization"
The Maya
Maya Numerals and Calendar
The Mayan Civilization by artist Harry Hilson
The Mayans
The Maya on Ambergris Caye by Thomas H. Guderjan
Jeeni Criscenzo, author of a novel about the ancient Maya, Place of Mirrors
From This Side of Paradise By F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald Biography - #
F. Scott Fitzgerald Biography
F. Scott Fitzgerald Biography
Chesterton: "...recommend any Chesterton book to any reader interested in the history of philosophy,
theology and man's origens. Also, you don't need a doctorate or a thesaurus to read Chesterton's
witty writing."
p.19
"For the Honor of the School"(Ralph Henry Barbour)
"Little Women" (Louisa May Alcott)
"The Common Law"
"Sappho" - #
"Dangerous Dan McGrew" (a 1907 poem by Robert Service, formally titled "The Shooting of Dan McGrew")
"The Broad Highway" (Jeffery Farnol - Farnol - #)
"The Fall of the House of Usher" (by Edgar Allan Poe)
"Three Weeks"
"Mary Ware, the Little Colonel's Chum" (by Annie Fellows Johnston)
"Gunga Dhin"
p.29
Parnell, Gladstone, Bismark - #
p.30
Bernard Shaw
"The Beloved Vagabond" (by William J. Locke New York 1900)
"Sir Nigel" (by Arthur Conan Doyle)
"No one person in the world is necessary to you or to me." p.30
p.37
"L'Allegro" (John Milton)
"The Gentleman from Indiana" (by Booth Tarkington New York 1917)
"The New Arabian Nights" (Robert Louis Stevenson)
"The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne" (by William J. Locke)
"The Man Who Was Thursday" (by Gilbert Keith Chesterton)
"Stover at Yale" (Owen Johnson)
"Dombey and Son" (Charles Dickens)
Robert Chambers, David Graham Phillips, E. Phillips Oppenheim, Tennyson, Kipling
p.56-7
"Mrs. Warren's Profession" (by George Bernard Shaw), "Marpessa" by Stephen Phillips
p.58-9
Oscar Wilde
"The Picture of Dorian Gray", (by Oscar Wilde)
"Mystic and Somber Dolores", "Belle Dame sans Merci" (by John Keats)
Swinbrune (Selected poems)
Shaw, Chesterton, Barrie, Pinero, Yeats, Synge, Ernest Dowson (Selected poems),
Arthur Symons - more, Keats, Sudermann, Robert Hugh Benson
...writing epigrams...
p.107
Each life unfulfilled, your see,
It hangs still, patchy and scrappy;
We have not sighed deep, laughed free,
Starved, feasted, despised-been happy.
~ Browning
p.117
"If we can do the next thing, and have an hour a day to think in, we can accomplish marvels..."
p.118
"The personality is what you thought you were, what this Kerry and Sloane you tell me of
evidently are. Personality is a physical matter almost entirely; it lowers the people it
acts on-I've seen it vanish in a long sickness. But while a personality is active, it
overrides 'the next thing.' Now a personage, on the other hand, gathers. He is never thought
of apart from what he's done. He's a bar on which a thousand things have been hung-glittering
things sometimes, as ours are, but he uses those things with a cold mentality back of them."
"And several of my most glittering possessions had fallen off when I needed them." Amory
continued the simile eagerly.
"Yes, that's it; when you feel that your garnered prestige and talents and all that are hung
out, you need never bother about anybody; you can cope with them without difficulty,"
"But, on the other hand, if I haven't my possessions. I'm helpless."
"Absolutely!"
p.141
Wells, Tolstoi, Edward Carpenter, Walt Whitman
"Anna Karenina" (Leo Tolstoy), "Kreutzer Sonata" (Leo Tolstoy)
Shaw, Chesterton, Huysmans, Bourget
p.148
"It's the whole thing," he asserted. "It's the one dividing line between good and evil. I've never
met a man who led a rotten life and didn't have a weak will." (MC Note: See description of Amory's
lack of judgement which he had presumed was a weak will - p.161-2)
p.156-166
About Clara... (MC Note: Sounds so familiar...)
p.157
"She could make fascinating and almost brilliant conversation out of the thinnest are that ever floated
through a drawing-room."
p.169
"...I get to the end of all the logic about self-resistance, and there, like an excluded middle,
stands a huge spectre of man as he is and always will be. And this spectre stands right beside the
one logical necessity of Tolstoi's and the other logical necessity of Neitzsche's..."
p.172
Swinburne's Song in the Time of Order
p.173-175
The End of Many Things
p.173-4
"That's all. I think the worst thing to contemplate is this - Its all happened before, how soon
will it happen again? Fifty years after Waterloo Napoleon was as much a hero to English school
children as Wellington. How do we know our grandchildren won't idealize Von Hindenburg the same way?"
"What brings it about?"
"Time, damn it, and the historians. If we could only learn to look on evil as evil, whether its
clothed in filth or monotony or magnificence."
p.174
"You know," whispered Tom, "what we feel now is the sense of all the gorgeous youth that has rioted
through here in two hundred years."
p.185
"Sometimes I wish I'd been an Englishman; American life is so damned dumb and stupid and healthy."
p.195
"She is quite unprincipled; her philosophy is carpe diem for herself and laissez-faire for others."
"The education for all beautiful women is the knowledge of men. Rosaline had been disappointed in man
after man as individuals, but she had great faith in man as a sex. Women she detested. They represented
qualities that she felt and despised in herself-incipient meanness, conceit, cowardice and petty
dishonesty."
p.202
"No, I'm romantic - a sentimental person thinks things will last - a romantic person hopes against
hope that they won't. Sentimental is emotional." (see p.261 note above)
p.206
"I had an idea that after a girl was kissed she was - was - won."
"Those days are over. I have to be won all over every time you see me."
"Are you serious?"
"There use to be two kinds of kisses: First when girls were kissed and deserted; second, when they
were engaged. Now there's a third kind, where the man is kissed and deserted. If Mr. Jones of the
nineties bragged he'd kissed a girl, every one knew he was through with her. If Mr. Jones of 1919
brags the same every one knows it's because he can't kiss her any more. Given a decent start any
girl can beat a man nowadays.
"Then why do you play with men."
"For that first moment, when he's interested. There is a moment-Oh, just before the first kiss, a
whispered word-something that makes it worth while."
"And then?"
"Then after that you make him talk about himself. Pretty soon he thinks of nothing but being alone
with you-he sulks, he won't doesn't want to play-Victory!"
p.221
"For this is wisdom-to love and live,
To take what fate or the gods may give,
To ask no questions, to make no prayer,
To kiss the lips and caress the hair,
Speed passion's ebb as we greet its flow,
To have and to hold, and, in time-let go"
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
p.238
"Joan and Peter", The Undying Fire"
Menchen: "Vandover and the Brute", "The Damnation of Theron Ware", Jennie Gerhardt"
Mackenzie, Chesterton, Galsworthy, Bennett
Shaw, H. G. Wells
p.247-8
Walter Arebsberg, Alfred Kreymborg, Carl Sandburg, Louis Untermeyer, Eunice Tietjens, Clara Shanafelt,
James Oppenheim, Maxswell Bodenheim, Richard Glaenzer, Scharmel Iris, Conrad Aiken
Vachel Lindsay, Booth Tarkington, Edgar Lee Masters
p.250
"Beware of losing yourself in the personality of another being, man or woman."
p.261
"The idea, you know, is that the sentimental Person thinks things will last-the romantic person has a
desperate confidence that they won't." (see p.202 note above)
p.263
Brooke, Swinburne, Shelley ..... Swinburne's "Triumph of Time"
9 Is it worth a tear, is it worth an hour,
10 To think of things that are well outworn?
11 Of fruitless husk and fugitive flower,
12 The dream foregone and the deed forborne?
p.267-8
Shakespeare Poem...
p.278
"To hold a man a woman has to appeal to the worst in him."
p.293
"Tomorrow I'm going to leave New York for good. It's not a bad town unless you're on top of it."
p.295
"What would be the test for corruption?"
"Becoming really insincere-calling myself "not such a bad fellow," thinking I regretted my lost
youth when I only envy the delights of losing it. Youth is like having a big plate of candy.
Sentimentalists think they want to be in the pure, simple state that were in before they ate the
candy. They don't. They just want the fun of eating it all over again. The matron doesn't want
to repeat her girlhood-she wants to repeat her honeymoon. I don't want to repeat my innocence.
I want the pleasure of losing it again."
p.299
"...man in his hunger for faith will feed his mind with the nearest and most convenient food."
p.303-318
Interesting arguments for socialism. Some things to make one think.
p.301
"Armoy was alone-he had escaped from a small enclosure into a great labyrinth. He was where Goethe
was when he began "Faust"; he was where Conrad was when he wrote "Almayer's Folly."
"Armoy said to himself that there were essentially two sorts of people who through natural clarity
or disillusion left the enclosure and sought the labyrinth. There were man like Wells and Plato, who
would accept for themselves only what could be accepted for all men-incurable romanticists who never,
for all their efforts, could enter the labyrinth as stark soul; there were on the other hand sword-like
pioneering personalities, Samuel Butler, Renan, Voltaire, who progressed much slower, yet eventually
much farther, not in the direct pessimistic line of speculative philosophy but concerned in the eternal
attempt to attach a positive value to life...
"Armoy stopped. He began for the first time in his life to have a strong distrust for all generalities
and epigrams. They were too easy, too dangerous to the public mind. Yet all thought usually reached
the public after thirty years in some such form: Benson, Chesterton had popularized Huysmans and Newman;
Shaw has sugar-coated Nietzsche and Ibsen and Schopenhauer. The man in the street heard the conclusions
of dead genius through some one else's clever paradoxes and didactic epigrams.
"Life was a damned muddle...a football game with every one off-side and the referee gotten rid of-every
one claiming the referee would have been on his side...
"Progress was a labyrinth...people plunging blindly in and then rushing wildly back, shouting that they
had found it...the invisible king-the elan vital-the principle of evolution...writing a book,
starting a war, founding a school...
"Amory, even had he not been a selfish man, would have started all inquiries with himself. He was his
own best example-sitting in the rain, a human creature of sex and pride, foiled by chance and his own
temperament of the balm of love and children, preserved to help in building up the living consciousness
of the race.
"In self-reproach an loneliness and disillusion he came to the entrance to the labyrinth.
p.303
Life opened up in one of its amazing bursts of radiance and Amory suddenly and permanently rejected
an old epigram that had been playing listlessly in his mind: "Very few things matter and nothing matters
very much."
p.311
"Money isn't the only stimulus that brings out the best that's in a man, even in America.
"You said a while ago that it was.
"It is, right now. But if it were made illegal to have more than a certain amount the best men would
flock for the one other reward which attracts humanity-honor.
p.313
"...the brains and abilities of men may differ, their stomachs are essentially the same.
p.314
"They don't think uneducated people should be highly paid, but they won't see that if they don't pay
the uneducated people their children are going to be uneducated too, and we're going round in a
circle. That-is the great middle class.
p.315
"I possess the most valuable experience, the experience of the race, for in spite of going to college
I've managed to pick up a good education.
Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams Biography
Tennessee Williams Biography - #
From The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan
| Time Lines |
|---|
| World | Chinese |
| Egypt | Neolithic, Shang |
| Assyria, Greece | Zhou, Qin |
| Roman Empire | Han |
| Dark Ages | Three Kingdoms, Jin, Sui |
| Charlemagne | Tang, Five Dynasties |
| Feudalism in Europe | Song, Yuan |
| Renaissance | Ming |
| Industrial Revolution | Qing |
Amy Tan Biography - #
China the Beautiful - very informative web site
Chinese Words
Chinese History Time Line - #
p.4
...the God of Longevity with his white-waterfall beard, and the
Goddess of Mercy, her face smooth, free of worry. Her black
eyes looked into mine. Only she listened to the woes and wishes
of women, Precious Auntie said.
p.20
Nine was usually something important, a significant number, what
her mother termed the number of fullness, a number that stood
for Do not forget, or risk losing all.
p.24
The author had recasted the principles of physics into basic homilies to remind people of
self-defeating behavorial patterns. "The Law of Relative Gravity": Lighten up. A problem
is only as heavy as you let it be. "The Doppler Effect of Communication": There is always
distortion between what a speaker says and what a listener wants it to mean. "The
Centrifugal Force of Arguments": The farther you move from the core of a problem, the faster
the situation spins out of control.
p.59 (Chinese characters)
"Each character is a thought, a feeling, meanings, history, all mixed into one."
p.104
A lot of her admonitions had to do with not showing what you really meant about all sorts
of things: hope, disappointment, and especially love. The less you showed, the more you meant.
p.112
Why did she feel she didn't belong to anyone? Did she unconsciously choose to love people who
kept their distance? Was she like her mother, distined to be unhappy?
p.167
She looked at the top page of this new stack in her hands, the large calligraphed
character. She coupe hear her mother scolding her, "Should study harder." Yes,
she should have. The large character was familiar, a curved bottom, three marks
over it--heart! Ans the first sentence, it was like the beginning of the page she
had at home. "These are the things I--" And then it was different. The next word
was ying-gai, "should." Her mother used that a lot. The next, that was bu,
another word her mother often said. And the one after that...she didn't know.
"These are the things I should not--" Ruth guessed what the next word might be:
"These are the things I should not tell." "These are the things I should not
write." "These are the things I should not speak." She went into her bedroom, to
a shelf where her mother kept an English-Chinese dictionary. She looked up the
characters for "tell," "write," "speak," but they did not match her mother's
writing. She feverishly looked up more words, and ten minutes later, there
it was:
"These are the things I should not forget."
p.173
Watch now, Doggie, she ordered, and drew the character for "heart": See this curving stroke?
That's the bottom of the heart, where blood gathers and flows. And the dots, those are the
two veins and the artery that carry blood in and out. As I traced over the character, she
asked: Whose dead heart gave shape to this word? How did it begin, Doggie? Did it belong to a
woman? Was it drawn in sadness?
A person should consider how things begin. A particular beginning results in a particular end.
p.179
Confusion Itch was the name of the malady, Precious Auntie said. Its the reason people often
scratch their heads when they cannot remember. Her father has been a doctor, and she had seen
other patirnts with the same problem.
p.182
Precious Auntie was born in a bigger town down in the foothills, a place called Zhou's Mouth
of the Mountain, names in honor of Emperor Zhou of the Shang Dynasty, whom everyone now
remembers as a tyrant.
Our family sometimes went to the Mouth of the Mountain for temple fairs and operas. If we traveled
by road, it was only ten kilometers from Immortal Heart. If we walked through the End of the World,
it was half the distance but a more dangerous way to go, especially in the summertime. That was when
the big rains came. The dry ravine filled, and before you could run to the cliffs, climb up and cry
out, "Goddess of Mercy," the gullies ran by like thieves, grabbing you and whatever else was not
deeply rooted in the soil.
p.182-3 (see p.395 also)
I have a bone, probably from a turtle, she told me. She fished it from a tuck in her sleeve. It
looked like a dried turnip with pockmarks. My father almost ground this up for medicine. Then he
saw there was writing on it. She turned the bone over, and I saw strange characters running up
and down. Until recently, these kinds of bones weren't so valuable, because of the scratches.
Bone diggers used to smooth them with a file before selling then to medicine shops. Now the scholars
call these oracle bones, and they sell for twice as much. And the words on here? They're questions to
the gods.
"What does it say?" I adsked.
Who knows? The words were different then. But it must be something that should have been
remembered. Otherwise, why did the gods say it, and why did a person write it down?
"Where are the answers?"
Those are the cracks. The diviner put a hot nail to the bone, and it cracked like a tree hit by
lightning. Then he interperted what the cracks meant.
p.186
Precious Auntie's father was so talented that patients from the five surrounding mountain
villages traveled to the Famous Bonesetter from the Mouth of the Mountain (whose name I will
write down, once I remember it). (MC Note: see p.1; paragraph 1 and 2)
p.188-9
In this way, Precious Auntie taught me to be naughty, just like her. She taught me to be curious,
just like her. She taught me to be spoiled. And because I was all these things, she could not teach
me to be a better daughter, though in the end, she tried to change my faults.
I remember how she tried. It was the last week we were together. She did not speak to me for days.
Instead she wrote and wrote. Finally she handed me a bundle of pages laced together with cord. This
is my true story, she told me, and yours as well. Out of spite, I did not read most of those
pages. But when I did, this is what I learned. (Read the story...)
p.191
...he was very handsome and smart, yet also shy enough to make a girl feel tender.
p.225
...Precious Auntie came back into my mind. I was remembering how she taught methat everything,
even ink, had a purpose and a meaning: Good ink cannot be the quick kind, ready to pour out of a
bottle. You can never be an artist if your work comes withut effort.
p.252
...Taoist priest...
p.265
No one gave her a name, and Mother Wang told me not to pick her up, even if she cried, because
something was wrong with her neck and head. She never made a sound. She had a face as flat and
round as a large platter, two big eyes, and a tiny nose and mouth stuck in the middle. Her skin
was as pale as rice paste, and her body, which was too small for her head, was still as a wax
flower. Only her eyes moved, back and forth, as if watching a mosquito drift across the ceiling.
And then one day, the crib where she once lay was empty.
p.266
If a rich man loses his house, is that any worse than if a poor man loses his? ~ LuLing
p.276-8
...He held a little book of brush paintings done on mulberry paper. On the cover it said: The
Four Manifestations of Beauty. "Would you like to know what's inside?" he asked. I nodded.
Anyone who overhead us would have thought we were speaking of school lessons. But really, he was
speaking of love.
He turned the page. "With any form of beauty, there are four levels of ability. This is true of
painting, calligraphy, literature, music, dance. The first level is Competent." We were looking at
the page that showed two identical renderings of a bamboo grove, a typical painting, well done,
realistic, interesting in the detail of double lines, conveying a sense of strength and longevity.
"Competence," he went on, "is the ability to draw the same thing over and over in the same strokes,
with the same force, the same rhythm, the same trueness. This kind of beauty, however, is ordinary.
"The second level," Kai Jing continued, "is Magnificent." We looked together at another painting,
of several stalks of bamboo. "This one goes beyond skill," he said. "Its beauty is unique. And
yet it is simpler, with less emphasis on the stalk and more on the leaves. It conveys both strength
and solitude. The lesser painter would be able to capture one quality and not the other."
He turned the page. This painting was of a single stalk of bamboo. "The third level is Divine,"
he said. "The leaves now are shadows blown by an invisible wind, and the stalk is there mostly by
suggestion of what is missing. And yet the shadows are more alive than the original leaves that
obscured the light. A person seeing this would be wordless to describe how this is done. Try as
he might, the same painter could never again capture the feeling of this painting, only shadow of
the shadow."
"How could beauty be more than divine?" I murmured, knowing I would soon learn the answer.
"The fourth level," Kai Jing said, "is greater than this, and it is within each mortal's nature to
find it. We can sense it only if we try to sense it. It occurs without motivation or desire or
knowledge of what may result. It is pure. It is what innocent children have. It is what old masters
regain once they have lost their minds and become children again."
He turned the page. On the next was an oval. "This painting is called Inside the Middle of a
Bamboo Stalk. The oval is what you see if you are inside looking up or looking down. It is the
simplicity of being within, no reason or explanation for being there. It is the natural wonder that
anything exists in relation to another, an inky oval to a page of white paper, a person to a bamboo
stalk, the viewer to the painting."
Kai Jing was quiet for a long time. "This fourth level is called Effortless," he said at last.
He put the booklet back in his jacket and looked at me thoughtfully. "Recently, I have felt this
beauty of Effortlessness in all things," he said.
p.290
They were freely insulting each other, as only good friends can.
p.295
"Good manners are not enough, she had said, they are not the same as a good heart." ~ Previous Auntie
MC Note: "A good personality does not mean one is a good person."
"He was obsessed with the idea of abandonment, and as a result he abhorred ending
relationships." Comment from the biography of German playwright Bertholt Brecht.
p.297
Even in wartime and poverty, people must have plays and opera. "They are the speech and music of
the soul." Kai Jing told me. ~ LuLing
p.312
This was the man who killed my grandfather and father, who caused Precious Auntie so much pain she
ruined her life. But then I reasoned that if a person wants to strike back, she must be close to
the person who must be struck down. I decided to live in hte ink shop because it was practical. In
the meantime I thought of ways to get revenge.
p.395
See notes for p.182-3
p.396
"I don't know. So much of history is a mystery. We don't know what is lost forever, what will
surgace again. All objects exist in a moment of time. And thatfragment of time is preserved or
lost or found in mysterious ways. Mystery is a wonderful part of life." Mr. Tang winked at LuLing.
p.398
Ruth couldn't stand it any longer. "What was the name?"
"Gu."
"Gu?" Ruth felt let down. It was the same mistake. "Gu is the word for 'bone.' " Rith said.
"She must have thought 'bone doctor' meant 'Dr. Bone.' "
"No, no," GaoLing said. "Gu is for 'gorge.' It's a different gu. It sounds the same
as the bone gu, but it's written a different way. The thirs-tone gu can mean many
things: 'old,' 'gorge,' 'bone,' also 'thigh,' 'blind,' 'grain,' 'merchant,' lots of things. And
the way 'bone' is written can also stand for 'chatracters.' That's why we use that expression.
'it's in your bomes.' It means, 'That's your character.' "
Ruth had once thought that Chinese was limited in its sounds and thus confusing. It seemed to her
now that its multiple meanings made it very rich. The blind bone doctor from the gorge repaired
the thight of the old grain merchant.
"You're sure it's Gu?"
"That's what was written on the photographic plate."
"Did it include her first name?"
"Liu Xin."
"Shooting star?"
"that's liu Xing, sounds almost the same, xing is 'star,' xin is 'truth.' Liu Xin
means Remain True. But because the words sound similar, some people who didn't like her called her Liu Xing.
The shooting star can have a bad meaning."
"Why?"
"It's confusing why. People think the broom star is very bad to see, That's the other kind, with the long,
slow tail, the comes-around kind."
"Comet?"
"Yes, comet. Comet means a rare clamity will happen. But some people mix up the broom star with the
shooting star, so even though the shootingstar is not bad luck, people think it is. The idea is not
so good either--burns up quick, one day here, one day gone, just like what happened to Previous Auntie."
Her mother had written about this, Ruth recalled, a storey Precious Auntie told LuLing when she was
small--how she looked up at the night sky, saw a shooting star, which fell into her open mouth.
Ruth begn to cry. Her grandmother had a name. Gu Liu Xin. She had existed. She still existed. Precious
Auntie belonged to a family. LuLing belonged to that same family, and Ruch belonged to them both...
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