The White Peril 白禍

So I chose saigyo, the name of the priest who wrote the poem I used in my domain name, as the login for something or other at some point in configuring my site preferences (or preferring my site configurations, or whatever tech people call it). Now it's my default e-mail user ID, which is not what I had in mind, but until I can figure out how to fix it, that's the address I have here (most of you who might see this know me through e-mail at my Hotmail address, anyway, which of course can still be used freely).

As long as I'm misappropriating a major name in Japanese literature as my username, why not spread the pretentiousness around? Another of my favorite poets is Akiko Yosano, who wrote a century ago. At her best, she's so sexy you can't stand it:

やは肌のあつき血汐にふれも見でさびしからずや道を説く君

与謝野晶子

yawa hada no / atsuki chishio ni / fure mo mide / sabishikarazu ya / michi wo toku kimi
Yosano Akiko

Having never felt
the hot tide of blood that throbs
beneath this soft skin
even you who seek the Way
must know what you are missing
--Akiko Yosano

I can't seem to get my English to surge and sweep forward between caesuras the way her Japanese does--Japanese poems have a reputation for stillness and contemplation, but Akiko is often all sensual force coming at you. The fact that tanka are usually printed in one vertical line down the page accentuates the effect. She also married another of the brashly innovative poets of her age. His talent dried up early, so she spent the rest of her life bearing about a hundred of his children and making money to move them around the world to try to get his muse talking to him again. A fascinating woman.

Dolly Parton has always been one of my favorite celebrities. Yeah, I know, big surprise. But seriously, while she did that whole what-was-she-thinking? all-around entertainer routine for two decades, she also made some extraordinary music--I could listen to "Down from Dover" on repeat for hours--and she shows the very best American earthiness and self-deprecating humor:

"There's not going to be no wardrobe malfunction this evening," she said, referring to Janet Jackson's infamous breast-baring during the Super Bowl halftime show. "There's not supposed to be, it's not planned.

"But as tight as my clothes are there's no telling what will happen. If it does happen, I'm going to wipe out the first three rows," she said.

She still has that amazing ability to do bawdy humor without making it seem cheap or brazen. Incredible. (I do have to say, though, that the fact that the show is called the Flameworthy Awards made it sound like a joke at first. Apparently not.)

(Darn. I keep forgetting that I haven't published this.)

Thanks to Dean Esmay for setting this up for me.
I have a feeling that I'm going in and doing shoemaker-type coding by hand when I could be using a template somewhere for a lot of things, but that's my problem. At first, I was thinking that I'd just leave it plain and unfussy. But in the course of navigating templates, I started to think, I want a gimmicky title! and smirky in-joke link categories! and open comments! and way too many colors from the hexadecimal HTML wheel sprinkled all over the place, too!

There, I've said it.

The name, for anyone who wonders, is of course adapted from the phrase "yellow peril," which is what a dear Japanese friend of mine was going to name his bar when it was about to open a few years ago. Apparently, one reason he chose another name was that he and I became buddies in the interim and he didn't want to offend me. But I would have thought it was hilarious, so I'm expropriating it.

The domain name is the first line of what may be my very favorite Japanese poem:

岩間とぢし氷も今朝はとけそめて苔の下水みちもとむらむ

西行法師

Iwama todjishi / koori mo kesa ha / tokesomete / Koke no shita mizu / michi motomuramu

Saigyou-houshi

Even the ice that shackles the rocks has begun to melt this morning--the water under the moss will be seeking a pathway.

the Priest Saigyo

It's the seventh waka in the "Spring" section of one of the court anthologies. April is a bit late in the year for it to be strictly appropriate to the season. But I've always, since we were first assigned it in graduate school, loved its economical way of combining ice, moss, and nurturing water--new beginnings that are so fresh they're not quite ready to occur.