The White Peril 白禍

Ghost of a Flea posts about Kylie. (No, really!) No matter how heady an experience it is to watch Kylie's singing corpse half-submerged in rushes, my favorite Kylie video is still "Put Yourself in My Place"...although I have to say, that frickin' continuity error--the way she removes her left sleeve twice--is super-annoying. (I don't mind so much that the mole is on different sides of her face in different shots; you only notice it if you're paying close attention because of the sleeve thing.)

This is good news:

Japanese researchers discovered a colorful, centuries-old Buddhist mural in a stone cave in Afghanistan that somehow escaped the destructive rampage of the Taliban regime in 2001, officials in Tokyo said.

The cave, about 3 meters wide, 3 meters deep and 2 meters high, is located at the west end of Bamiyan Valley, according to officials at the National Research Institute for Cultural Properties.

Parts of the mural are still covered with dust, but the painting is believed to cover all sides of the cave as well as the ceiling, the officials said.

The west wall depicts Buddha and other sitting Buddhist deities drawn with bold strokes.

We love bold strokes! The paintings could apparently help researchers determine how certain motifs in Buddhist art were transmitted through central Asia.

I'm not sure whether it's the most depressing song ever, but Dolly Parton's "Down from Dover" is one of those country songs that play on the emotions very cunningly. From the very first verse, you know exactly what's going to happen:

I know this dress I'm wearing doesn't hide the secret I have tried concealing
When he left he promised me that he'd be back by the time it was revealing
The sun behind a cloud just casts a crawling shadow o'er the fields of clover
And time is running out for me--I wish that he would hurry down from Dover

It's not just that the story is as old as time--it's that Parton sets it in the autumn, when things begin to chill and die. Of course, real babies are born in fall all the time, but within the universe of symbols in the song, Parton's choice of season is significant.

He's been gone so long--when he left the snow was deep upon the ground
And I have seen a spring and summer pass, and now the leaves are turning brown
And any time a tiny face will show itself 'cause waiting's almost over
But I won't have a name to give it if he doesn't hurry down from Dover

My folks weren't understanding--when they found out they sent me from the home place
My daddy said if folks found out he'd be ashamed to ever show his face
My mamma said I was a fool, and she did not believe it when I told her
That everything would be all right 'cause soon he would be coming down from Dover

I found a place to stay out on a farm taking care of an old lady
She never asked me nothing, so I never talked to her about my baby
I sent a message to my mom with a name and address of Miss Elvah Grover
And to make sure he got that information when he came down from Dover

I loved him more than anything, and I could not refuse him when he needed me
He was the only one I'd loved, and I just can't believe that he was using me
He couldn't leave me here like this--I know it can't be so, it can't be over
He wouldn't make me go through this alone, oh, he'll be coming down from Dover

My body aches, the time is here, it's lonely in this place where I'm lying
Our baby has been born, but something's wrong--it's much too still--I hear no crying
I guess in some strange way she knew she'd never have a father's arms to hold her
And dying was her way of telling me he wasn't coming down from Dover

Look me dead in the pixels and tell me you're not depressed. The fourth verse was omitted from the original version on The Fairest of Them All, but Parton reinserted it on her wonderful remake a few years ago on Little Sparrow. She changed the phrasing in places, too. In either version, the story is beautifully paced--each step at which the protagonist is further isolated from people and still doesn't get what's going on positively hurts to listen to. Dramatic irony at its most devastating. And unlike many of the old ballads from which Parton (among a lot of other country songwriters, of course) drew inspiration, the poor girl doesn't end up dead and at least out of her misery.

Good weekend. It was sunny Saturday (it's supposed to be the rainy season, remember), so the view from the mountaintop restaurant we went to was fantastic. We'd had lunch at a lakeside cafe not far from the airport. At one very Japanese moment, we were looking out at the (many) dragonflies buzzing around the window. The flightpath to the airport was in the middle distance, and suddenly, a landing airliner glided into view so that it looked the same size as the dragonflies flitting around inches away. They seemed to be playing together for a moment. It was beautiful.

Sunday we went to the hot spring, stopping at an old aqueduct along the way. Water is released in a big, frothy arc for 15 minutes at noon; along with a lot of other tourists, we were there to take pictures and stuff. From there to the inn, Atsushi decided to follow the GPS map program's suggested route. Apparently, the suggestions were made by dryads. We found ourselves on a one-lane road snaking over a mountain, with leaves growing in so closely the car touched them on both sides. (They were great for visibility, too. Poor Atsushi took a deep breath before every hairpin turn.) Most of the way there was no shoulder--and I don't mean they didn't bother to pave anything beyond the white line; I mean the vertical dropoff began at the white line. At one point, where the forest canopy converged what seemed like inches above the car roof, I said, "I keep expecting to see a witch's cottage around every bend," at which point my much-tried man muttered, "No self-respecting witch would be caught dead living back here."

The inn was worth it, though. It was new, so there were more man-made materials and obvious machines around than one might have liked for a hot spring, but you can't get away from that. All the guest huts were named for flowering plants. We unfortunately didn't get the one called after the flower of Atsushi's family crest, but ours was on a high point with a great view of the valley and fields (and ubiquitous electrical-line tower--which wasn't nearly as endearing juxtaposed with nature as the passenger jet had been). We were in one of the baths when the lashing rains and lightning drew near. When I was no longer able to count "1-one thousand" between the flash and the boom, we decided bath time was over for now.

The drive back into the city was relatively uneventful. There's a national park with flower gardens at the edge of Oita Prefecture, so we stopped there. It's lavender season, so the fields were grey with it. It looked like purplish steel in the sun. We had lavender-flavored ice cream at one of the stands before heading back.

Needless to say, all of this butching it up took a lot out of me. I'm back in Tokyo and headed to the office and may or may not feel up to posting tonight. On the other hand, there was an article about Japan in Atsushi's latest Time Asia that got my blood boiling--Isn't July a little early for such a big turkey? I thought while reading it. I may be banging something out about it before bed. Few comments I want to respond to, too.

For now, I leave you with a summer poem by Princess Shokushi:

かへり来ぬ昔を今と思ひ寝の夢の枕ににほふ橘

式子内親王

kaerikonu / mukashi wo ima to / omohi ne no / yume no makura ni / nihofu tachibana

Shokushi Naishinnô

I float into sleep,
a past that will come no more
made now in my thoughts--
at the pillow of that dream
the scent of orange blossoms

The Princess Shokushi

The fragrance of orange blossoms is said to excite the memory. When the princess awakes, the scent makes her feel the more keenly that some nostalgic memory, which she knows she will never live through again, had actually returned to life in her dream. It's a little late in the summer for this poem, I think, and it's not one of those with 500 fascinating allusions you can write a thesis on. Lovely, though.

Hope everyone else had a wonderful weekend.

Added on 20 July: I think I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that I inserted that caesura above. Many Japanese waka are, in fact, constructed so that the first three lines (5-7-5 syllables) conjure up a feeling or reaction and the last two lines (7-7 syllables) give the concrete sensory stimulus for it. They can be difficult to translate because putting the caesura in the same place, in order to preserve the dramatic pause of the original as faithfully as possible, gives you less leeway in rendering each of the two parts.

Princess Shokushi's poem above is different. It's one of those that come out in a long rush. The m and n consonants that dominate give the description a heady feel, when the images are actually rather plain. The whole poem is a long prenominal modifier for the final word, 橘 (tachibana: "orange tree," which refers to a variety of citrus that's a little different, of course, from those that produce the baseballs you buy with "Sunkist" stamped on them). If you translated it directly and in English word order, you'd get something like this (I'd like to apologize in advance to the Princess's kami for the act of violence I'm about to commit):

The orange tree wafts its scent at the pillow of the dream in which I've gone to sleep thinking that the past that will not return is now.

Obviously, this was an occasion for compromise, and I figured that maybe making each line kind of self-contained and billowy would compensate for not being able to reproduce the liquidity of the original. It seemed most important to keep the orange tree at the end, where it supplies the moment of sensual awareness. I'm afraid the result was a little precious, though.

Good weekend. It was sunny Saturday (it's supposed to be the rainy season, remember), so the view from the mountaintop restaurant we went to was fantastic. We'd had lunch at a lakeside cafe not far from the airport. At one very Japanese moment, we were looking out at the (many) dragonflies buzzing around the window. The flightpath to the airport was in the middle distance, and suddenly, a landing airliner glided into view so that it looked the same size as the dragonflies flitting around inches away. They seemed to be playing together for a moment. It was beautiful.

Sunday we went to the hot spring, stopping at an old aqueduct along the way. Water is released in a big, frothy arc for 15 minutes at noon; along with a lot of other tourists, we were there to take pictures and stuff. From there to the inn, Atsushi decided to follow the GPS map program's suggested route. Apparently, the suggestions were made by dryads. We found ourselves on a one-lane road snaking over a mountain, with leaves growing in so closely the car touched them on both sides. (They were great for visibility, too. Poor Atsushi took a deep breath before every hairpin turn.) Most of the way there was no shoulder--and I don't mean they didn't bother to pave anything beyond the white line; I mean the vertical dropoff began at the white line. At one point, where the forest canopy converged what seemed like inches above the car roof, I said, "I keep expecting to see a witch's cottage around every bend," at which point my much-tried man muttered, "No self-respecting witch would be caught dead living back here."

The inn was worth it, though. It was new, so there were more man-made materials and obvious machines around than one might have liked for a hot spring, but you can't get away from that. All the guest huts were named for flowering plants. We unfortunately didn't get the one called after the flower of Atsushi's family crest, but ours was on a high point with a great view of the valley and fields (and ubiquitous electrical-line tower--which wasn't nearly as endearing juxtaposed with nature as the passenger jet had been). We were in one of the baths when the lashing rains and lightning drew near. When I was no longer able to count "1-one thousand" between the flash and the boom, we decided bath time was over for now.

The drive back into the city was relatively uneventful. There's a national park with flower gardens at the edge of Oita Prefecture, so we stopped there. It's lavender season, so the fields were grey with it. It looked like purplish steel in the sun. We had lavender-flavored ice cream at one of the stands before heading back.

Needless to say, all of this butching it up took a lot out of me. I'm back in Tokyo and headed to the office and may or may not feel up to posting tonight. On the other hand, there was an article about Japan in Atsushi's latest Time Asia that got my blood boiling--Isn't July a little early for such a big turkey? I thought while reading it. I may be banging something out about it before bed. Few comments I want to respond to, too.

For now, I leave you with a summer poem by Princess Shokushi:

かへり来ぬ昔を今と思ひ寝の夢の枕ににほふ橘

式子内親王

kaerikonu / mukashi wo ima to / omohi ne no / yume no makura ni / nihofu tachibana

Shokushi Naishinnô

I float into sleep,
a past that will come no more
made now in my thoughts--
at the pillow of that dream
the scent of orange blossoms

The Princess Shokushi

The fragrance of orange blossoms is said to excite the memory. When the princess awakes, the scent makes her feel the more keenly that some nostalgic memory, which she knows she will never live through again, had actually returned to life in her dream. It's a little late in the summer for this poem, I think, and it's not one of those with 500 fascinating allusions you can write a thesis on. Lovely, though.

Hope everyone else had a wonderful weekend.

Added on 20 July: I think I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that I inserted that caesura above. Many Japanese waka are, in fact, constructed so that the first three lines (5-7-5 syllables) conjure up a feeling or reaction and the last two lines (7-7 syllables) give the concrete sensory stimulus for it. They can be difficult to translate because putting the caesura in the same place, in order to preserve the dramatic pause of the original as faithfully as possible, gives you less leeway in rendering each of the two parts.

Princess Shokushi's poem above is different. It's one of those that come out in a long rush. The m and n consonants that dominate give the description a heady feel, when the images are actually rather plain. The whole poem is a long prenominal modifier for the final word, 橘 (tachibana: "orange tree," which refers to a variety of citrus that's a little different, of course, from those that produce the baseballs you buy with "Sunkist" stamped on them). If you translated it directly and in English word order, you'd get something like this (I'd like to apologize in advance to the Princess's kami for the act of violence I'm about to commit):

The orange tree wafts its scent at the pillow of the dream in which I've gone to sleep thinking that the past that will not return is now.

Obviously, this was an occasion for compromise, and I figured that maybe making each line kind of self-contained and billowy would compensate for not being able to reproduce the liquidity of the original. It seemed most important to keep the orange tree at the end, where it supplies the moment of sensual awareness. I'm afraid the result was a little precious, though.

You know how some topics seem to follow you around until you're, like, "All right, already! Uncle! Uncle!" Two of my buddies and I were talking last night. We don't usually get around to talking about our preferred varieties of male hotness, but somehow we got on the subject of chest hair for a good 20-minute stretch. Just now, Ace Pryhill commented that a gentleman of her acquaintance once decided to feel the breeze where he'd never felt it before. The idea struck her as kind of gay, but according to Heather Havrilesky, it isn't anymore:

The smoothie's interest in his "look" is more deeply felt and sincere than that, not to mention slightly misguided and disturbingly meticulous: Baseball caps are molded, painstakingly, into the perfect C-shape; stubble is trimmed into the perfect Don Johnson-style 5 o'clock shadow; "distressed" jeans, with their calculated faded patches and hemmed rips, are cleaned and pressed and tugged just below the waist; eyebrows are waxed, as is back, chest and (gasp) the family jewels to boot. The smoothie spends a lot not just on clothes and haircuts, but on highlights, spray-tans, manicures and pedicures, bodybuilding formulas, gym memberships, dry cleaning bills, man jewelry and hip-hop classes. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the smoothie is like a cross between a frat boy and Britney Spears.

Ew. Ewwwww. Ew, ew, ew. Ih-hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiwwwww.

We should probably applaud the newfound freedom and the joy these young men take in being objectified; we should probably stand up and cheer when these shiny boy toys shake their asses and pout like Britney; we should encourage them to dress with flair and enjoy those spa treatments and dream their big Chippendale's-style dreams.

We should, but we can't. Because these men might be looking for visual perfection, but we're not. There's just something a little bit unappealing about men who spend far more time on themselves than most women do. When the previews for next week's "Average Joe" flashed an invasion of blond ab monkeys in matching red sports cars, flashing white teeth and spiked hair and shiny, tan six-packs, all I could think was, Where's the variety? Who wants a bunch of pumped-up clones with the exact same body type?

And what's so wrong with a little chest hair, anyway? Doesn't anyone remember Tom Selleck, with his perfect, dark hair-patches that accented his fit-but-not-too-fit barrel chest? To plenty of women and gay men, chest hair gives the bare chest a signature touch or adds a unique feature to an otherwise featureless landscape. Sure, we loved that hairless, buff body in the black-and-white Soloflex ads when we were teenagers, but that was before every third jerk on the street had one.

Yes. Well, except for the part about "gives the bare chest a signature touch or adds a unique feature to an otherwise featureless landscape," which sounds as if the smoothies are working their deleterious way into Ms. Havrilesky's brain a bit more than she realizes. I think the word she's looking for is "touchable."

There's nothing wrong with being naturally smooth. But the thing is, even guys with "no chest hair" have that down you only see up close--we're mammals, right? When it's shaved or N'aired away, the skin left behind takes on the texture of vinyl. And I'm sorry, when you run your hand down a man's chest, it shouldn't skid like a Ford Explorer going into a hydroplane.