Borges' Library

A blog that will interest almost no one...

A Translator Gets Translated

CitiesIn 2012, I was invited to a conference in Shanghai: 

Rethinking City and Identity 反思城市与身份认同 Institute of Arts and Humanities,Shanghai Jiao Tong University 上海交通大学 人文艺术研究院 Shanghai, 16-18 May ( Download Conference Program (1) - Copy)

Various academics and media people presented papers on the spirit of a particular city. I spoke on Tokyo, a city where I lived for ten years, before moving to my beloved Tochigi for another twelve years. 

It was a lot of fun--and I loved meeting new friends and seeing Shanghai. I also realized how daunting and hard it is to give an academic paper at a conference. It was pretty humbling.

The good news was our papers were translated into Chinese and yesterday the book arrived in the mail. What a surprise!

Now, it is being published in a special issue of Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy. It was peer-reviewed, where I received the following surprisingly generous comments. The paper can be downloaded below.

Download Tokyo city of fires and flowersTokyo:

This essay is brilliant. It teaches. It deserves praise for its rigorousness, grounded in a rich historical and philosophical situatedness. It helps newcomers to Tokyo make sense of the city. I would recommend publication after attending to the following suggestions.

This line (page 14?): “And, so because the city never seems to generate anything beyond the sum of its parts, people are both embedded in-- as well as defined by—the neighborhoods.” is troubling because it has an (analytic) metaphysical trap door that will lead to criticism. I’d delete it.

It could use an edit for punctuation and hyphenation (when fitting). The author might want to trim a bit because the paper is too long (only a suggestion that can be dismissed entirely).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Cauldron Bubble

 

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[First published in Dublin Review of Books]

Fermentation as Metaphor, by Sandor Ellix Katz, Chelsea Green Publishing, 128 pp, $25, ISBN: 978-1645020219

He calls himself a fermentation revivalist. With several award-winning books on the subject and a very large following on YouTube, Sandor Ellix Katz is part fermentation expert and part fermentation superstar. But I wondered: why revivalist? Did fermentation ever go out of fashion? Where I spent my adult life ‑ in Japan ‑ fermentation has always stood centre-stage. From soy sauce to miso and from sake to tsukemono, it is hard to imagine Japanese food without it.

I was inducted into the Way of Pickles early on in my Japan days. The first time I visited my ex-husband’s hometown in Shizuoka, the family egged me on to stick my hand into Grandma’s pickle jar. It was kept underneath the sink, and every day someone had to put their hand deep into the large ceramic jug and stir things up to keep the fermentation process going. This was called nukazuke, and Grandma Ogasawara was an expert. The nuka “bed” ‑ made from rice bran, salt, seaweed and some water ‑ required regular stirring for oxygenation. Why this had to be done with a human hand remained a mystery, one among many. Grandma would toss in cucumbers, radishes, eggplant, carrots, little onions or anything else she had on hand and then a few days or weeks later, eat accordingly. Because she never tossed out the nuka bed, the flavours became more complex over time. Or so the story goes. In the end, I did stick my hand in and give it a stir ‑ to everyone’s great delight. And his grandma rewarded me with the best pickles I had ever tasted.

One could no more easily imagine Japan without sake, mirin and soy sauce than Korea without kimchi or gochujang. And how about thinking of France without bread, cheese and wine? In Europe and beyond, you can still find wines made with naturally occurring yeasts. Indeed, there are purists who refuse anything other than biodynamic wine. It is part of the fight to reclaim cultural identity and part of the magic of terroir. Proponents of natural wine say industrial wines are not alive.

Katz also asks us to consider the Catholic Mass and the sacrament of bread and wine. If that’s not fermentation than I don’t know what is, he says. Indeed, many rituals and rites found in traditional cultures incorporate fermented beverages. Made from grains, fruit, and honey ‑ as well as yogurts and cheese ‑ these drinks can be traced back more than eight thousand years. And recently, the mold-based fermentation known as koji, used in Asian soy and fish sauces, miso, sake, vegetable pickling, and spicy sauces such as doubanjiang and gochujang, is gaining popularity in America and Europe. It is valued for its umami impact, that indescribable taste supercharger.

While his previous books, like the New York Times bestseller The Art of Fermentation, describe the concepts, processes, and health benefits of fermentation, in this book Katz explores fermentation as a metaphor.

What kind of metaphor? Well, you name it. Fermentation has long been used as a metaphor for societal change, cultural changes, political changes, economic changes ‑ it is even used in terms of spiritual changes. The English word is derived from the Latin fervere, which means to boil. But while fire consumes everything in its path, fermentation brings transformation. “Driven by bacteria that spawned all life on earth and continue to be the matrix of all life, fermentation is a force that cannot be stopped. It recycles life, renews hope, and goes on and on.”

And what is the fermentation metaphor without the bubbles? “Bubbles create movement,” Katz says, “literally exciting the substrate being transformed by the fermentation, bringing it to life.” When our ideas, our spirits, our thoughts bubble up, it shows that something exciting is taking shape, he continues. This is something that was not lost on physicist Richard Feynman, who once suggested that “All life is fermentation.”

I used to believe that all life is translation. I am a translator, you see. And if you stop and think about it, so much does come down to translation and interpretation. But then again, how much more comes down to fermentation!

Bubbles in the plural are, of course, different from bubble in the singular, and Katz talks a lot about the wonders of the former and the dangers of the latter. In particular, while bubbles thrive on soupy situations that require a multitude of microorganisms and elements, the singular version relies more on concepts of singleness or purity. For example, living in a liberal bubble might suggest an absence of other voices, unpleasant or otherwise. Concepts of racial purity, binary sexuality, or food purity have gone down even more slippery slopes of false categories and unscientific thinking. I know I personally hesitate when making mold-based pickles because I have a fear that I will create a Frankenstein’s monster in my pickle jar. I am wary of things not purchased on a supermarket shelf, such as wild mushrooms. I was therefore surprised to learn that pickled vegetables are among the safest items you can make at home.

In the same way that we now know that childhood exposure to diverse microorganisms can help protect against allergies, asthma, and other autoimmune diseases, so exposure to a diversity of different people can inoculate against racism and closed-mindedness. As Joan Harvey has written in her review of the book in 3 Quarks Daily: “Katz reminds us food is not clean, children are not pure, sexuality should not be suppressed. He even has sections on body odors and farting, though he does not go so far as to use farting as metaphor. Purist fantasies of race, blood, nation, culture, are just that, fantasies.”

It is true that our lives are governed by stark and absolute categories. “There’s good and bad, hot and cold, clean and dirty; there’s kindness and cruelty; there’s heaven and hell. In political reporting we hear about red states and blue states, though everywhere there is a diversity of opinions, even where the vast majority feels one way or another.” This seems like an obvious point, but in moving, for example from a Japanese language mindset to that of an English one, I have been struck again and again by the way dualism and dualistic categories dominate the way people think in English. And so I appreciated Katz driving the point home that life exists more along a spectrum ‑ and that bacteria are not possible in a pristine environment. Some level of contamination is required to achieve those bubbles.

Thinking back in terms of biodynamic wine, for example, Katz talks about the way that the modern approach, which uses chemicals to sterilise the crushed grapes in order to introduce a single strain of yeast is a serious departure from the long history of winemaking that always worked with the groups of microorganisms already present in the fruit.

Purity is impossible and contamination is inevitable. Katz repeats this several times. In a completely sterile environment, for example, fermentation would be impossible. While humans may single out particular bacteria or organisms to work with in their food labs, in nature they exist in interdependent clusters that are breaking down parts to give rise to new forms, and those in turn break down as well. This is an apt metaphor for social change as well, “which works as a source of mutation, transformation, and regeneration”.

Despite his strong opinions, Katz is not in favour of categorical stances. Having been diagnosed with HIV in his early life, he is kept alive by certain anti-viral medications. So, while he is the first to say that antibiotics and anti-viral drugs are good things to have around ‑ a very good thing indeed! ‑ their overuse is wreaking havoc on the natural ecosystems in the soil and in our bodies. His vision of the world is one of interdependence, where the boundaries between organisms are not quite as solid as we normally imagine. To illustrate this, more than half of the book is filled with gorgeous full-page photographs of the microbiotic world that were taken using an electron microscope. The images are artificially colorised to highlight the complexity of the structures and membranes. Not unlike our own human skin, the dividing line between the organisms appears porous and blurred. Scientists tell us that we are ourselves composed of a multispecies crowd with microorganisms making up 1-3 per cent of our body mass and comprising a vital role in human health.

So how can we better live in harmony with the natural world? How can we slow down and eat in a healthier and more sustainable way? Can we ever move beyond simplistic binary notions, including that of racial purity, food purity, language purity to get beyond the us versus the world mentality? These are all questions tackled by the great rock star of fermentation, who reminds us that,

Food offers us many opportunities to resist the culture of mass marketing and commodification … We do not have to be reduced to the role of consumers selecting from seductive convenience items. We can merge appetite with activism and choose to involve ourselves in food as co-creators.

It all reminded me of Richard Feynman, who also liked his fair share of bubbles. Feynman wrote about a nameless poet who said that the whole universe was in a glass of wine:

If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts ‑ physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on ‑ remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure; drink it and forget it all!

How wonderful it must be to hold your wine glass up to the light and see stars and galaxies refracted there! And I do think that happiness demands this kind of slowing down and really seeing things. That is because when you slow down and become attentive to the world, you come to belong to the world as much as the world belongs to you ‑ even if just in that moment. The world is no longer a resource to be efficiently consumed but instead becomes lit up and embodied with voice and with sentiment, we and it an inseparable whole.

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Feynman Lecture Hall -- The Demos (QM and Waves)

Chris in triumphWhenever Chris teaches in the Feynman Lecture Hall, I attend all his classes. I don't understand anything, but I love being in the room anyway. 

 

Feynman signThe sign that always makes me wonder. Laser radiation?

 

Demo room and demos

Whenever I would arrive the technical assist would have already set up all the demos for the day. Even though they look dusty and strangely retro, I think some have been touched by the hands of Feynman himself. 

 

Demo room and demo

You can see the secret room where all the demos are kept. A pale man is always back there taking care of them.

 

Old tv

In case you are wondering, that is an old TV.

 

Demo roomAnother peek inside the secret room

 

Now whatYou might be wondering what he is doing. That makes two of us!

Cat

He better not hurt the cat--again!

 

Quantum weirdness

This is the part where I want to leave...

 

2018-03-08 11.29.59Getting worried again...

 

2018-03-08 11.29.17I think I understood this part...

 

Christ

Golgotha

TriumphI wonder what the student is writing?

 

Feynman lecture hallThe empty room

 

StairsEast Bridge Stairs

BuildingBeautiful East Bridge

 

SweetieMy sweetheart

BibleMy textbook

 

Ghost

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The Universe in a Claypot!

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Donabe are made from highly porous clays known for their heat retention properties. The clays for making donabe are --not surpassingly—also well-regarded for making teapots and tea containers. These clays include Shigaraki, Iga, Banko, and Mashiko. As a student of tea ceremony, I grew to love all of these types of pottery—but none more than Iga. Super porous Iga clay has phenomenal heat retention powers. The clay is said to “breath.” It does feel as if it is alive. Iga-ware is known for its fine webs of crackle and subtle color shifts from white-yellows to gray-browns. Iga-ware pots display something of the rustic humbleness of the finest “wabi” teabowls. In the crackle that occurs spontaneously in the firing, one feels the happenstance and great simplicity of nature. My tea teacher used to encourage us to look for landscapes in the surface of the teabowls.

In LA, we might not have long snowy winters, but we do have endless choices for eating hotpot. Not only do we have endless restaurants to choose from, even better, all the things we need to make hotpot dinners at home can be found right here in town. One of my favorites is a Japanese kitchen supply shop in West Hollywood called Toiro. Marie Kondo features one of their Iga claypots on her website. But I recommend visiting Toiro online. The choices for gorgeous pots and tableware will delight you. The owner, Naoko Takei Moore also sells high quality pantry items and has a cookbook to boot. All this dedicated to “your happy donabe life!” Now, who could argue with that?

The book is fun because there are classic and modern dishes. So far, I have been sticking with the traditional ideas--like the sizzling mushrooms and tofu in miso sauce, the ginger chicken and chicken in Ginger Amazake Hotpot, tonjiru, salmon hotpot, lotus root in lack vinegar.... and this year, I will be trying out her Oshogatsu menu--which looks amazing. 

Her book is gorgeous and full of history--and if you use it with her online recipes, you will be in business. Also her the items she sells at her shop are beyond beautiful--not just the donabe--which I love and have three. But the lacquer--and that is really what I have fallen most in love with. 

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Letters from the Silk Road

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In Japan, the Silk Road has been held up as an alternative form of globalization. Japan was, after all, on the terminus of the Silk Road and the nation experienced its greatest cosmopolitan flowering during the Nara period, when the Silk Road was in its heyday. In contrast to the modern "melting pot" of pluralistic societies we see today, people during Silk Road times are described as having interacted with each other from standpoints of their own unique city-cultures. I think it was UNESCO’s Eiji Hattori who really gave this Japanese idea form when he created his draft for UNESCO’s Silk Road Project, which saw a wonderful number of research projects and publications from 1988-1997 (22). With two doctorates (one from Kyoto University and the other from the Sorbonne), Hattori has an impressive academic background. And yet, rather than entering academia, he chose instead to join UNESCO at their Paris headquarters, where he served for 21 years as a director of the cultural events section—and the Silk Roads project really was his crowning glory.

Put forward as an alternative to the "Globalization as Americanization" model, his project positioned the “Silk Road” in opposition to something he called “Empire” (or “pax”); so that:

6a00d834535cc569e20120a64965a9970b-320wiPax/Empire                  versus                          Silk Road

Monopoly                                                       Two-Way Trade/International Relays

Monologue/Propaganda                                  Dialogue

National                                                           Cities/International

Robbery                                                          Mutual Profit/Equal Partnership/

Co-Dependence 

Hattori's main point is that during Silk Road times, dialogues between cultures were two-way. That is, it was not a power relationship dominated by one side talking/dictating/taking/imposing but rather held up a model for a more two-way dialogue based on trade; one in which trade was an international accomplishment achieved by people from many nations working for mutual benefits cooperatively; not done by one nation alone.

Hattori suggested that no one economic system or historical perspective reigned supreme above all the rest during the Tang dynasty. People interacted with each other from the framework of their own various local city-cultures. This is the famous cosmopolitanism of the Tang. When you consider that what was arguably the greatest of all empires of the time, the Tang actually built mosques and churches in their capital city to welcome the many traders who came from afar-- well, it cannot help but impress. A mosque already stood in “Canton” during the Prophet's lifetime. Flourishing and highly cosmopolitan cities connected the dots along these ancient trade routes, from Nara to Chang’an to Baghdad, Aleppo, and Constantinople.

This is a theme much held up in Japan. Two years ago, I was working on a translation of an interview with one of Japan's greatest living composers—who now sadly is deceased. Like Yo Yo Ma, Miki Minoru is best known for his work on Silk Road music. When asked why he held up the Silk Road as a symbol of mutual cooperation and peaceful coexistence, Miki had this to say:

The Silk Road was a uniquely peaceful trade route. Connecting Rome with Chang’an, it was a route that served to promote peaceful exchanges and mutual cooperation between Eastern and Western places. It is interesting that while in Asia the Silk Road holds great interest and dreams, in the west it seems to be mainly of interest to archaeologists. As a person who fundamentally rejects the current uninteresting state of affairs whereby as the world Westernizes we are seeing more and more of a mono-culture, what I can do in my own projects is to choose artists whose own sense of identity is not that of “international” 

Japan, with its vibrant peace and ecology movements, has taken up these reflections of the Silk Road like perhaps no other people. Having lived the past two decades through its self-proclaimed “Silk Road boom,” I have been so impressed by both the approach of Silk Road history scholars (like those at Ryukoku University) as well as the surprisingly long term enthusiasm of the general public for what was a time of cosmopolitan civism. Obviously, no one is really talking about how things actually may have been during the heyday of the Silk Road; for indeed, we have also seen the Silk Road used as a slogan for aggressive multinational corporations wanting to get a piece of the energy pie in that part of that world as well. But, in Japan-- at least-- the Silk Road has been overwhelmingly taken up as a symbol of mutual cooperation and co-flourishing which is viewed ultimately as a symbol for anti-"globalization" and world peace.

Miki, in his interview said that while there will always be imbalances of power between different peoples over the stretch of time, when that imbalance of power tilts too far in one direction that it is this overwhelming dominance of one group over another that has shown itself to have tremendous power in generating the kind of hate that leads to violence. It was his belief that it is only through harmonious exchanges and collaborative efforts between people that genuine peace can be established.  But how is this possible without stepping back and looking at things on a more local level? 

This is not to say that universalism is categorically problematic, but rather it is a question of balance and degree. Hannah Arendt looked at universalism as being behind much of the political pathologies of her time and felt that being derived from abstract reasoning, which stands apart from the world, the universalist thinking aims to create blueprints for how we think the world “ought” to be; and that this becomes a political project that aims to manipulate how the world is to change it to how one thinks it should be. In that way, she urged people to be engaged with the world as it is—and it seems that in order to do that one must start with the local and the particular.

I am a great fan of the writing of William Dalrymple. In 2009, he had another great article in The Guardian about the future of travel writing. One paragraph in particular caught my attention:

"It's no accident that the mess inflicted on the world by the last US administration was done by a group of men who had hardly travelled, and relied for information on policy documents and the reports of journalists sitting interviewing middle-class contacts in capital cities. A good travel writer can give you the warp and weft of everyday life, the generalities of people's existence that are rarely reflected in journalism, and hardly touched on by any other discipline. Despite the internet and the revolution in communications, there is still no substitute" 

Reading this I thought that nothing much has changed since the last Administration either and that US policy remains in the hands of a cabal of monoglots and cultural provincials. As Eiji Hattori said in a 2004 UNESCO speech, “Civilizations never clash. Ignorance does clash”.  Therefore we may say that true internationalism should be a kind of dialogue, whereby one is open to the world from the rootedness of one’s own culture. One approaches the rich sources of other traditions from one’s own worldview, but without any intention and effort to impose one’s cultural presumptions. In other words, a healthy respect for the particular keeps one grounded and respectful of other local diversities.  

This is why I think it is so important to give cities a voice—to recognize them as gardens which bear the flowers and fruit of their own unique cultural sensibilities and values; so that even in the world’s largest and most complex urban metropolis, we find at its very roots a somehow transience, sudden transformations and unthinkable disaster; something that has flowered into the great social achievements of optimism and resilience that define the spirit of Tokyo .

From Paper given at Spirit of Cities Conference in 2012, Shanghai.

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The Orchid Notes

LantingXu

]Main text of an early Tang Dynasty copy of Wang Xizhi's Lantingji Xu by Feng Chengsu (馮承素), located in the Palace Museum, Beijing.

This is considered the best surviving copy.

LishuHuashanmiaoClerical Script

 

1024px-Jade_Mountain_MIA_9210313Jade Mountain

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Books:

Cahill, J.: The Painter's Practice: How Artists Lived and Worked in Traditional China (1994)

Fong, W. and Watt, J.: Possessing the Past: Treasures from the National Palace Museum (1997)

Fong, W.: Beyond Representation: Chinese Painting and Calligraphy in the 8th-14th Century (1992)

Kraus, Richard: Brushes with Power: Modern Politics and the Chinese Art of Calligraphy

Ledderose, L.: Mi Fu and the Classical Tradition of Chinese Calligraphy (1979)

Murck, A. and Fong, Wen, eds: Words and Images: Chinese Poetry, Calligraphy and Painting (1990)

Sturman, Peter: Mi Fu: Style and the Art of Calligraphy in Northern Song China

The Embodied Image: Chinese Calligraphy from the John B. Elliot Collection (exh. cat. by R. Harrist, Jr., Wen Fong and others, Princeton, NJ, Art Museum, Princeton U., 1999)

 

Also

Du Fu: A Life in Poetry, Translated by David Young

Ursula Le Guin'sLao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way 

Books by David Hinton

Hunger Mountain

Awakened Cosmos

Existence

 

Cabinet of Curiosity

Mr Wilson's Cabinet of Wonders

Taschen "Cabinet of Curiosities (Multilingual, French and German Edition)

Cabinet of Curiosities: Collecting and Understanding the Wonders of the Natural World

Images:

Nikki Romanello's Astrobiology page

 

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Heo Ryeon 許鍊 (also known as Sochi and Mahil 號 小癡,字 麻詰) (Korean; 1809 - 1893)
The Chinese Scholar Mi Fu (1051-1107) Paying Homage to a Fantastic Rock 米芾拜石
Korean; Joseon dynasty, dated to 1885
Hanging scroll; ink and colors on paper; with signature reading "Sochi seo" 小癡寫; with four seals of the artist
Painting proper: H. 91.0 cm, W. 49.0 cm
Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Ernest B. and Helen Pratt Dane Fund for the Acquisition of Oriental Art, 2003.87

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Mini-Syllabus: How to Talk about Wine like a Japanese Tea Master

Unnamed

 

How to Talk about Wine like a Japanese Tea Master

A poet once said, 'The whole universe is in a glass of wine.' We will probably never know in what sense he meant it, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe. There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflection in the glass; and our imagination adds atoms. The glass is a distillation of the earth's rocks, and in its composition we see the secrets of the universe's age, and the evolution of stars--Richard Feynman

Course Overview

This course aims to uncover new ways of talking about wine. We will do this in order to elevate not only our wine drinking experience but to arrive at greater harmony in our lives. This will require that we deconstruct --and perhaps totally dismantle --older ways of talking about wine in order to discover more interesting and perhaps more enlightened ways of spending our time. These ways might include a better appreciation of the seasons and the craftsmanship of wine, as well as character cultivation in terms of refining our tastes and developing greater equanimity. Anyway, it can't hurt.

It must be said, there is no right or wrong way of talking about wine. In order to arrive at a style that is a good personal fit, we first need to be aware of the various historic ways that people have talked about the organoleptic characteristics of wine. We will then look at other traditions of connoisseurship -- beginning with the Japanese tea ceremony--to see if there are not lessons to be learned. These lessons might include concepts such as seasonality, focus on the present moment, attentiveness to the unique experience, utilizing all five senses, listening to the voice within, and an acceptance of ephemerality.

Questions to coinsider:

  • How are the descriptive and evaluative vocabularies changed over time?
  • Is there a corporate coopting of artisanal wines? What are the social implications of the corporatization of wine? 
  • Is there "wine as resistance?" 
  • Do wine makers really produce two kinds of wine? One for drinking locally and one for the international (American) market?
  • Who is this person Robert Parker? And why do some people believe he must be stopped?
  • What is terroir? 
  • How is memory tied to heightened attention and mental associations 
  • What is a memory palace?
  • What can the cultural values of tea ceremony teach us? 
  • Can wine be a spiritual practice like tea?

Main Pedagogies:   Each student will develop their own language to talk about wine and will use this vocabulary to construct a wine journal, in which they begin to develop their own architecture of memory. It could be wine as season, wine as almanac, wine as paintings, wine as galaxies. Poetry drinking games and other tasting competitions are also encouraged.

In doing so, students will attempt to uncover what "terroir" means to them and to find tools for elevating their enjoyment of fine wine. In the end, students are encouraged to play around. (See: Playing Around (लीला)

Wines under consideration

  • French, Austrian, Spanish, and Italian artisan wine (Future classes will explore different regions in the Old World) 
  • Amphora Wine from Sicily and Georgia
  • Amber wines (wine as resistance) 
  • Historic and esoteric grapes, like the RESSURECTED Golden Dorona of Venice and Hamdani, Jandali, and Dabouki 
  • Compare bottle shapes (See page61 &69 in History of Wine in 100 Bottles)

Wine Chronicle (Sample)

Summer 夏

  • Etna Bianco, Etna Rosso [Curtaz, Occhipinti, and COS]
  • Amphora Wine [COS]
  • Qveri wines:  Baia Wines "Live and Let Live" ; Budshuri
  • Venissa Wine Bianco

Autumn 秋

  • Distinguish barolo versus barbaresco SOIL variety (Gaja)
  • Distinguish: Sangiovese, Nebbiolo and Aglianico GRAPE varieties,
  • Distinguish SOIL Sancerre versus Pouilly-Fumé 
  • Comparative Tasting, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir from Domaine Drouhin Oregon and Maison Joseph Drouhin in France
  • Amber Wines (Garganea "Lazaro")
  • Tuscan "Oregano hills" il Borro
  • Sicilian nero d'avola (Occhipinti) also Tenuta Regaleali Tasca d'Almerita 
  • Challenging: Historic grapes Cremisan 

Winter Christmas 冬

  • Burgundy〜 all winter long
  • Christmas Amarone
  • Bordoux versus Burgundy REDS

Spring 春

  • Resurrection/Easter: Resurrected Dorona Grape Venissa Rosso and VILLA DEI MISTERI ROSSO POMPEIANO
  • RADICI TAURASI DOCG Aglianico 100% (Also by Mastroberardino) 
  • Grüner Veltliner
  • Gewürztraminer 
  • Zweigelt
  • Alsace Riesling, Pinot Blanc, Gewurztraminer  (Tribach)

Moonview お月見 Sublime

  • Torres Mas La Plana Cabernet Sauvignon
  • Torre Muga Rioja
  • Halos de Jupiter Chateauneuf du Pape

READING: Main Texts

  • Noriko Morishita's Every Day is a Good Day: 15 Lessons I Learned about Happiness from Japanese Tea Culture  
  • Lawrence Osbourne's The Accidental Connoisseur: An Irreverent Journey Through the Wine World
  • Terry Theise's Reading Between the Wines
  • History of Wine in 100 Bottles
  • Simon Woolf's Amber Revolution
  • Kevin Begos' wonderful Tasting the Past: The Science of Flavor and the Search for the Origins of Wine

Other Reading

  • Lawrence Osbourne's The Wet and the Dry: A Drinker's Journey  
  • Alice Feiring's For the Love of Wine: My Odyssey Through the World's Most Ancient Wine Culture

Articles

  • This 25-Year-Old Winemaker Is Making Some of Georgia’s Buzziest Wines
  • Wet Dogs and Gushing Oranges
  • Tastes of Wine: Toward a Cultural History
  • The Power of Terroir in Sicily's Volcanic White Wines
  • Zibibbio in Pithos, COS, 2016

Watch the movie Mondovino

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Christy Lee Rogers

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Christy Lee Rogers

The Baroque

Wonderland

New Work/Apple

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Scrolling blossom bowl from the Wanli (c.1625) shipwreck.

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Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time. --Francis Bacon

 

Victor Mair generous helped me track down the mysterious writing found on the interior of the bowl. Purchased from Sten as "Ming Wanli wreck" He was told by porcelain export in Jingdezhen it was Sanskrit for fu--which looks a lot like Chinese fu, now that you mention it. 福

Email with VM:

I thought something you said in your last message of
yesterday was very interesting—that perhaps this was a convention that was
popular during the Wanli times and that during that time it was something
people more easily recognized. Given the lack of a firm attribution
concerning the script, I think you must be right that it is a time sensitive
decoration and maybe went out of fashion (and that is why the curator at the
Met perhaps didn’t know so much about it either).

I think in Japanese and Chinese 梵字 is any script used to write Sanskrit?


Yes, and as you surmise, there were different scripts and styles for writing
Sanskrit.


If there were many different scripts used through the ages to write the
language, it must be hard to narrow down what is going on.

I got the bowl from the salvager in Malaysia Sten Sjostrand. Because he
published a book on the wreck (called the Wanli Wreck) with Roxanna Brown, I
believed he is on the up and up (I could be wrong, but Roxanna Brown was a
very unique and fascinating scholar—like yourself in that she is simply not
typical/is able to really think out of the box and so because she associated
herself with Sten I trusted his things were authentic).

I know the sad, sad story of Roxanna Brown.

He was told by a Jingdezhen ceramic expert that it was sanskrit for fu. But,
if the NPM says it is for heart it must be that. They would not get it
wrong, would they?

Well, I think the identification of this character is still up in the air.

I still have a gut feeling it was heading to Japan. Esoteric
Buddhism/Shingon is huge there and was huge there and you see so much
Siddham seed script there.

AND

Doesn't it seem strange that there is a script found on several specimen
(including imperial collection pieces) and no one knows what the script is
or can come to any conclusion about what the meaning is 福 or 佛?

Your colleague, my Facebook friend, Bob Mowry suggested it is a double
entendre--kind of like your colleague Wendy suggested, that it is Sanskrit
made to recall stylized "fu"--as that is what one would expect to be if it
was written in Chinese since they more often than not seemed to have fu or
shou, also as Wendy said....

Bob was suggesting that when in doubt,

the Chinese scholars might just say it is 福 since that is probably what it would be if it was Chinese...

To the non-expert (me!) it is surprising that the ceramics experts are not
sure if it is Chinese or Sanskrit and the Sanskrit experts don't recognize
the script and can't quite place it!


You're right about that.

British Museum--same character but listed as "no obvious meaning."

++

Regarding Leanne Ogasawara’s inquiry, below, I have consulted the following:


First and foremost, a book by John Ayers, now-retired Keeper of the Far
Eastern Department at the Victoria and Albert Museum (and my personal
Chinese-pot-guru for over sixty years):  The Baur Collection, Geneva.
Chinese Ceramics, Volume Two: Ming Porcelains and Other Wares. Geneva,
Switzerland, 1969.  (And now, obviously, out of print.)

No. 588,  Plate A 185.  “Blue-and-white dish of lotus form.  Mark and reign
of Wan Li (1573-1619).  Diameter  19.0 cm.

Moulded in the form of an open lotus flower with two ranks of sixteen
scalloped  petals, the lower rank with projecting points on the outside; the
rim foliate; small, low foot.   In the center inside is a medallion with a
Sanscrit character with ju-I heads, and round the outside the upper rank of
petals contains eight further characters alternating with floral sprays,
forming an inscription.  The six-character mark is written underglaze blue.”
He further mentions similar bowls in several museum collections.

               John’s book was revised and republished in Geneva in 1999,
Chinese Ceramics in the Baur Collection, Volume 1.   The dish is illustrated
in Plate 78 [previously as Plate A185].  The physical description is the
same as before, but there is a change in the description of the characters:
“Inside is a medallion painted with the Sanscrit character for ’Buddha’
(Chinese fo) bordered with ru-i heads, and round the outside the upper rank
of petals contains eight further characters alternating with floral sprays.”



               Another of my favorite authorities is Wang Qingzheng, of the
Shanghai Museum.  His 368-page book, A Dictionary of Chinese Ceramics (in
English),  Singapore, 2002, is absolutely indispensable in the study of
Chinese pots.

Under the topic of Motifs, on page 256, Mr. Wang lists: “Sanskrit (fan wen).
An ancient written language of India, this script is used as a decorative
element on temple vessels in the Ming dynasty.  Sanskrit inscriptions,
mainly rendered in underglaze blue, are quotations from Buddhist scriptures
or incantations.”  He illustrates a blue-and-white dish that is not foliated
like the one that John Ayers illustrated.  This dish has a large, presumably
Sanskrit, central character, surrounded by three rows of other presumably
Sanskrit characters.

AND
Dear Leanne,

A number of bowls found in the Belitung shipwreck had pseudo-Arabic writing, and I've also seen pseudo-Siddham writing on various objects.

best,

VHM

I found this
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/e2/09/7a/e2097ae97410eed360a0185705befdff.jpg
 
and
http://p4.storage.canalblog.com/44/31/119589/52866624.jpg
 
So, I think I am learning something totally new! This was a custom, then? In Ming China to have sanskrit marks on porcelain? And this mark, then, is the Sanskrit way of writing “happiness (fu)”? Is this right?
 


Website showing the front
and base of a dish that seems to me to be an accurate example of the dish
that Leanne Ogasawara illustrates.

 

IMG_3456

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Dreaming of Carthage--for Oiwi

 

1 

I just finished Richard Miles' Carthage Must Be Destroyed. It was fabulous--an illumination of the time of heroes; of Hannibal crossing the alps and Salammbô. Miles says: great cities have great foundation stories. Indeed, the story of Carthage is the story of Tyre, Troy, Rome and Sicily... Tangled webs and Homeric Destiny?

Dreaming of Carthage.

At one time it was the most luxerious, most fabulously wealthy city on earth. I have been re-listening to another Melvyn Bragg program, this time on the Roman destruction of Carthage, and one of the guests mentioned that in ancient times, traveling from Rome to Carthage would have been like going from London to New York today.

Well, I prefer to think of it like Hong Kong: a dazzlingly rich, bustling trading entrepot; populated with people from all over the region-- Italians, Greeks, Syrians, Persians and those from the Levant mingling with Spanish, Egyptian, and Sub-Saharan Africans. Strabo claimed that over 700,000 people dwelled in the city. A city of maritime merchants, it was also a naval super power.

Built on the fortunes made from the legendary purple dye of the Phoencians-- these great traders of the Mediterranean made the finest ships and traded in everything from ebony and ivory, to African animals used for the Roman Games-- skins, hides, lions, elephants and peacocks. Tin and silver from New Carthage (Spain) was important as was their trade in crockery and spices, honey; the city was also known far and wide for its wine and for its version of the wildly popular Roman condiment, Garum--made from fermented fish innards, it was "like the tomato ketchup of the times," said one of Melvyn Bragg's guests. (See Silk Road Gourmet's Making Garum!)

Facing the sea, with it's superb double harbors, you almost cannot help but imagine that on a clear day a person could see all the way to Sicily.

Taking a look at the city layout one can immediately sense how well-planned the city was. Guarding the circular military harbor and the larger mercantile harbor stood a watchtower, and located near the tower were both the tombs and the kilns. I imagine this also would have been a good place to have located the dye vats and the garum producing factories as well-- guarded and facing the sea.

In fact, the entire city was well-guarded, as Carthage was known for its massive city walls.

Carthage_carte Not surprising, in the center of the city was the busy agora, and giving the people's predilection for trade, you can just imagine the kinds of goods that must have been available in the markets-- incense from Arabia and maybe even silk from China sat alongside local dates, figs, olive oil and the most exquisite embroidery in the Mediterranean.

Scattered beyond the agora, were temples and four residential areas layed out in grid patterns.

Like Hong Kong, I imagine it to be a place that exuded unstoppable excitement. And, thanks to the fact that-- unlike their mortal enemies, the Romans-- the citizens of Carthage never took to the Stoic philosophy, conspicuous consumption was always an option. And, so the city was also renown for its monumental architecture and beautiful buildings, embodying all the latest Greek and Egyptian styles. There were five and six story residential building, for example, which are said to have towered over narrow streets-- and of course, the famed mosaics.

Going through an exhibition of Carthaginian artifacts in Tokyo, one could only just barely catch a glimpse of the splendour of what was Carthage. There were terracotta urns used to store the city's famous garum (in Japanese called 魚醤)and coins, gold jewelry,beautiful glass beads and armor. I think it had to be the mosaics that most impressed. To be honest, compared to things you see from China at a similar time period, it seemed somehow under-whelming. However, world-class she was-- and Carthage, during Punic times, stood as the great mirror of ancient Rome. Sometimes referred to as twin cities, Carthage and Rome were entangled by an ancient curse and entertwining destinies, jealousies, and rivalries. If nothing else, there was always Sicily to fight over. So, I suppose it only inevitable that one or the other must fall.  

Carthago delenda est.

Cato the Elder always ended his speeches thus: And by the way, Carthage must be destroyed. It might have been Mary Beard or one of the other lady scholars with Melvyn Bragg who described the time that Cato took out three ripe and exquisite figs from his pocket: Look, these are but three days from Rome...Those figs representing wealth beyond imagination and a city infamous for its child sacrifices and lack of restraint. Decadence, sacrifice and fabulous riches.

Cato kept up his mantra and before long the opportunity to attack presented itself leading the way to the third and final Punic War. 

It was Scipio, of course, who brought the city down.

After a long siege, Scipio-- "the Roman Hannibal"--swept in to inflict defeat on the Carthaginians and raze the city to the ground. Anyone not killed was sold into slavery and the city buildings were all destroyed.

The final moments of the battle have been told and retold. The Carthiginian general, hoping to at least spare any final suffering after he realized that all was lost, had left the citadel to surrender, to the disgust of his wife, who yelling insults at his cowardice leapt with her children into the fires. The entire city was, by that time, I suppose, on fire. And then as the Greek historian Phobius stood at his side, Scipio-- with tears streaming down his cheeks, was said to have cried out a sentence from Homer:

A day will come when sacred Troy shall perish,
And Priam and his people shall be slain.

The Greek historian was deeply moved by this; for --as all historians know-- there is such a thing as Homeric destiny, and hence, just as Troy fell, and now Carthage falls, so too shall one day Rome be destroyed as well.

History as destiny

Miles' book has chapters about heroes. Not surprisingly, when I mentioned being on another Hannibal kick, one of my associates on facebook said, "The Punic Wars, now Those were Wars." Interestingly, not an hour earlier-- thinking along very similar lines, I had asked Caesar whether he thought that there was any chance that someday future historians would be talking about our wars in such heroic terms... Vietnam, Iraq, AfPak-- is it near impossible to imagine that modern wars will ever inspire people in the same way.

For history is more than anything a love story, and in this way, Troy, Carthage and Rome remind me of my murals at Bezeklik.

Located along the Great and Glorious Mural Express, they were renown in all lands for their stunning beauty-- in particular, it was the extravagant use of the costly color blue that amazed East and West. Like Carthage, like Troy, like Rome, they were painstakingly created over hundreds of years-- only to be destroyed in waves: ancient treasure hunters, Islamic iconoclasts and finally by the western scholars who pried the murals right off the cave walls. The most precious of the murals, cut into pieces and shipped back to Berlin, perished during Allied bombing during WWII.

And, so it goes.... and yet that is not the end of the story for Bezeklik since researchers in Japan are now trying to digitally reconstruct the murals to bring them back to life once again. One can get on board the mural express to see them or one can log on to see them digitally reconstructed on a scholarly site or even visit them in Second Life. 

Less some Manichaean fight between light and dark, history-- told and re-told like a poem-- rises and falls as it is reborn.

Or as Charlotte Higgins article on the war and the Iliad concludes:

At the end of the poem comes the scene between Priam and Achilles, when the frail, grieving father finds it in himself to kiss those "terrible, man-­killing hands / that had slaughtered Priam's many sons in battle", when ­Achilles sees reflected in the face of Priam the likeness of his own beloved father. Weil underestimated the power of this passage. Achilles is not simply an unfeeling "thing", reduced by the unspeakable power of force. The truth may be harder to take. He is at the same time a mass slaughterer and the gentlest of men. Only a few lines of verse stand between the Achilles who wipes away the tears of his beloved Patroclus and the one who piles up hecatombs of the Trojan dead. Find in this comfort, if you can.

 

**

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