Who's That Knocking at My Door?

After my second 2-hour-long visit to Dr. Christmas, my dentist, I felt a bit strange in my mouth.  There is indeed a stranger in my mouth now, a temporary crown that looks—I dared to gaze at Dr. Christmas’ silver plate for one second and got the impression—a miniature copper kitchenware.  

Back on campus, I was hungry but would rather give my teeth a rest; I visited the Youtube site of “Nights in While Satin” and turned it up to maximum volume.  As I realized that it might be too loud and tried to turn it down, there was a knock at the door.

It took me one minute to stand up, go around the desk and open the door; yet within that minute I thought of 5 candidates for the one behind the door—all were my colleagues and students.  Even though the knock sounded unfamiliar to me, I anticipated somebody I knew.

When the door opened, however, I saw a stranger in front of me.

He was young, tall, shy, hesitant, a bit nervous, a bit clumsy, and—surprised.  I could tell that I surprised him in the same way that he surprised me.

“Are you looking for someone in our department?”

“No... no…;  I just …”

I could not hear him well because of the song; so I returned to my desk and turned down the video, “I beg your pardon?”

This time I understood him completely: he, a first-year student, dared to knock at the door of an unknown faculty for the same reason that I dared to gaze at my dentist’s tool plate—curiosity, and excitement.

Moody Blues’ “Nights in White Satin” happens to be his favorite song as well.  While sitting in the lobby next to my office typing, he suddenly heard the song and could not help but find out the person who was playing it.  The maximum volume revealed my passion for it and encouraged him to seek the origin of resonance.

In the next few minutes we got to know each other.  He ended up showing interest in my course offerings, although he doubted that he would be capable or eligible to take them.

This unexpected encounter was enlightening for me:

1.       In the building for language, literature, and communication, it was music that initiated the first dialogue between two strangers;

2.      Moody Blues’ “Nights in White Satin” came out in 1967; true beauty does not age;

3.      Do not guess who’s knocking at the door; be ready for double surprise.

Meditation on the Road [2/6]

Six Wartime Sonnets (II)

Huiwen Zhang

Just as I was about to move on, a friend of mine sent me his response to Sonnet 15:

[…] Our freedom, the freedom we gave ourselves by breaking our dependence and theirs, allows us to soar on high, and so to gain anew the feeling of possession, of control, of domination.  This perception alternates with its opposite: the bird has nothing at all; the universe it felt it owned was a universe of nothingness, of emptiness.

Thus we ask what we are: what it means to be.  This we know: we can carry nothing in, can carry nothing out.  Our being, then, consists neither in what we can carry nor in what may be carried to us, as by the horde of horses, by the water, and by the air.  It consists not in the lands we’ve visited and made our own nor in those we’ve left behind to start again, to be on our own.

(cf. Comments on Meditation on the Road [1/6])

These remarks serve as an immediate introduction to Sonnet 16:

16

Standing on top of a hill,

We turn into endless view,

Into the vast field before our eyes,

Into the paths crisscrossing the field.

What paths, what streams, do not conjoin?

What winds, what clouds, do not resound?

The towns, mountains, and rivers we wandered through

Have all turned into what we are.

Our growth, our grief:

A pine tree on a nameless hill,

Heavy fog upon an unknown town.

Blowing in the wind, flowing in the water,

We’ve become the paths across the field,

The lives of those afoot upon the paths.

(tr. Huiwen Zhang)

The contrast between Sonnet 15 and 16 is striking. 

Starting with the smooth transport through “horse,” “water,” and “wind,” Sonnet 15 climaxes with bipolar perceptions alternating between triumphant possession, control, and domination on the one side and despairing loss or denial of them on the other.  This leads to an end that subverts and reverses the start, leaving a couple of questions unanswered.

Sonnet 16, however, launches a different approach: the verb “turn into” repeated in the 1^st stanza stands out.  Against common expectations, the wanderer “standing on top of a hill” turns into—not turns to—the landscape “before his eyes.”  His eyes zoom in like camera lenses from “endless view” through “the vast field” to “the paths crisscrossing the field,” while at the same time he himself is transformed into the “view,” into the “field,” into the “paths.”  

Thus a different message comes through from the very beginning: a decisive step in communication is not “bring/take,” “carry in/out”, “own/rule,” or “lose/give up,” but “turn into/become.”  Instead of transport and the subsequent “feeling of possession, of control, of domination,” transformation and the corresponding feeling of resonance, identification and integration are presented and promoted.  Even though as high as the “bird flying in the sky,” the wanderer “standing on top of a hill” would never suffer the shocking fall from heaven to hell: he does not “own” or “rule” anything, neither is he willing to “own” or “rule” something.  He simply becomes everything.    

The 2^nd stanza develops the idea in two ways.  The first half replaces the wanderer’s view with ‘God’s vision’: “What paths, what streams, do not conjoin? / What winds, what clouds, do not resound?”  These rhetorical questions set the reader free from “top of a hill” to float into every corner of the world.  The second half, then, confirms the new type of communication from the opposite direction: “The towns, mountains, and rivers we wandered through / Have all turned into what we are.”  Not only does the wanderer turn into everything he sees, touches, and passes by, but everything he sees, touches, and passes by turns into him as well.  They turn into each other as smoothly as breathing in and out.  Hence, a circle of transformation, self—>other—>self, is established.

The serenity of this circle is further illuminated by a new verb launched in the 3^rd stanza—“be”: “Our growth, our grief: / [Is] a pine tree on a nameless hill, / [Is] heavy fog upon an unknown town.”  I took out “is” from the English version for the sake of rhythm; the conceptual development from become to be is nonetheless evident.

A curious echo of Sonnet 15 springs from the 4^th stanza: No longer “sands (from distant nameless lands)” and “sighs (of foreign towns),” but “we” ourselves are now “blowing in the wind, flowing in the water.”  The wanderer is carried by wind and water in the same sense as he carries them.  Actually there is no need to “carry” because they are but one and the same.

For the same reason there is no need to “blur” here and there, past and future, self and other.  The mutual breathing transcends the geographical, chronological and biological boundaries; the endless circle engulfs all kinds of separation, distinction, and alienation.

Seen in this light, the last two lines of Sonnet 16 is the full completion of the cosmological harmony.  They send the reader back to the 1^st stanza and carry on the zoom-in sequence interrupted by conceptual detours: standing on top of a hill, the wanderer “turns into endless view”—he becomes “the vast field,” “the paths across the field” and “the lives of those afoot upon the paths.”

Our being, therefore, our “mere” being, our being despite our “utter lack,” consists in the mutual fundamental transformation among all beings of the universe.

This is Sonnet 16’s answer to Sonnet 15.

(to be continued) 

Ozzy and Me (I)

I

A friend of mine with a conspicuous pumpkin house door, a two-year-old ivory-skinned son, and a three-year-old chocolate dog (those who read “The Soup at the Door” recognize him) will depart on Friday for Christmas vacation.  Knowing I would stay here alone, he made an irresistible suggestion: leaving his dog with me for two weeks.

This afternoon, he dropped by with Ozzy, the dog, and his other son, a six-year-old blue-gray jewel eyed gentleman.  They left Ozzy in my house for a couple of hours as an experiment. 

I shall never forget the look in Ozzy’s eyes and the sound in his throat, as he stood behind the glass door watching my friend and the boy vanish from his sight.  At that moment I almost changed my mind and brought Ozzy right back; but I decided to give Ozzy and myself a chance to get acquainted with each other.

Half an hour passed.  Ozzy seemed to have overcome the initial anxiety that prevented him from inspecting the new environment.  His curiosity now began to awake.

A suddenly awakened curiosity

 

Dialogue with the shadow

 

Ready for meditation

At 4:30pm, I finished my work and wanted to take Ozzy out for a walk.  Hardly had I put on my coat, boots, and gloves, when he jumped to the glass door and eagerly gazed outside. 

It was the first walk I took since I came to this city and the first dog walk I took since I came to this planet.  

—I am not sure how Ozzy feels; I only know that with him on my side I am fearless.

Together we walked through several areas I’d never dare to explore alone.  Ozzy pissed twice, shitted once, encountered at least eight other fellows—none of them bigger or prettier than him.  This made him feel good, and his buoyancy was pretty infectious.  Meanwhile, quite a few people greeted us aloud or silently; I saw no reason not to be exceedingly proud. 

Returning home at 5:30pm, I dined with Ozzy—he on the ground, I at table.

 

 Dilemma: to start with water or food?

 

 I am damned hungry; this is damned good

Concentration or intermission?

(To save Ozzy the embarrassment I would omit a small accident after the dinner.)

It’s about 6:40pm when Ozzy looked a bit sleepy.  He snuck into my study and lay down on the carpet.

Time to rest

Make myself comfortable

Something happened?

Let me check

Nothing happened; 
but I become fully alert anyhow

At around 8pm, my friend dropped by with his blue-gray jewel eyed son again.  Ozzy jumped onto his car and disappeared into the darkness.

So ended my first day with the chocolate dog.

(to be continued) 

Meditation on the Road [1/6]

Six Wartime Sonnets (I)

Huiwen Zhang

A ‘wanderer-poet’ in wartime exile, Feng Zhi (1905-1993) perceives and approaches the Grenzsituation of 1940s China from a reflective and introspective distance.  Behind the semi-collective standpoint of his Collection of 27 Sonnets (Shisihang ji, 1941) lies his real curiosity and concern about each individual being—about their solidity and fragility, gravity and lightness, infinity and limits, liberty and fate.  In addition, his poetry also exemplifies the uncanny sense of hope and despair, bewilderment and determination characteristic of China’s “lost generation.”

15

Look at the horde of loaded horses

Bringing goods from far-off places;

Water also brings in sands

From distant nameless lands;

Wind from a thousand miles away

Brings sighs of foreign towns:

We’ve wandered hills and streams,

Now owning them, now giving them up.

Like a bird flying in the sky,

Now ruling the cosmos,

Now feeling its utter lack.

In what consists our being?

From afar nothing can we bring,

From here nothing can we take.

(tr. Huiwen Zhang)

The first three images of Sonnet 15—“horse,” “water,” and “wind”—all convey a message of ‘transport.’  Their nearly eternal movements seem to ensure or at least promise steady and smooth, albeit silent and secret, communication.  What is brought in—“goods,” “sands,” or “sighs”—does not matter; it is the ‘bringing in of something’ and the ‘blurring of here and there’ that matters.  Hence, “far-off places,” “distant nameless lands,” and “foreign towns” can be and actually are seen, heard, and touched ‘on spot.’

This optimistic tone, however, is tuned down in the second half of the 2^nd stanza.   A new moving image—“we” or the (semi-collective) wanderer—enters the reader’s sight and interrupts the comfort: “We’ve wandered hills and streams” like the loaded horses, the flowing water, and the blowing wind; but we cannot forever “own” anything we once brought, took, or passed by; after all we have to “give up” and bid farewell to everything we’ve seen, heard, and touched.  

An even more disturbing message is delivered by the “bird” in the 3^rd stanza.  For Feng Zhi, “bird” has always been a significant metaphor: During his early wanderings in 1920s China and 1930s Germany he invents for himself the pen name of “bird shadow,” stressing the loneliness and Weltschmertz characteristic of a homeless wanderer.  In his preface to the 2^nd edition of Sonnet Feng Zhi attributes the origin of his poem series to Zhuangzi, an ancient Daoist philosopher, whose dream of the giant Peng bird would inspire him to compose the first of the 27 sonnets.

The “bird flying in the sky” in Sonnet 15 combines both dimensions: “Now ruling the cosmos” immediately reminds of Zhuangzi’s extravagant dream:

The back of the Peng measures I don’t know how many thousand li across and, when he rises up and flies off, his wings are like clouds all over the sky.

(tr. Burton Watson)

“Now feeling its utter lack,” however, reverses at once the feelings of the bird, the observing wanderer, and the reader: The prompt and drastic fall (of all three!) from the king of heaven to a particle in the air is utterly shocking.

Yet the poem refuses to end in a shocking moment.  The 4^th stanza raises a question that, despite—or exactly because of—its seriousness and profoundness, softens the crucial situation that otherwise might have led to radical nihilism: “In what consists our being?”

Curiously—and this is the trick of Sonnet 15, the last two lines do not answer the question.  They rather build an echo of what has been discovered and addressed: Unlike horses, water, and wind, “we” the wanderer (both inside and outside of the poem, including the author and the reader) cannot really “bring” or “take” anything and thus blur here and there—not to mention past and future, self and other. 

Then what do we innately “own?”  What mustn’t we “give up?”  And finally, back to the unanswered questions: “In what consists our being?”  That is to ask: What enables and backs up our “being” despite our “utter lack?”

(to be continued)

A Few of ‘My Favorite Things’

Four of My Favorite Songs

Nights in White Satin - The Moody Blues

Reason: associated with Wiseguy, the first (and probably most impressive) American drama series I ever saw, starring Ken Wahl, Ray Sharkey, and Kevin Spacey.  I was a high school student and fell in love with the unconventional and unconditional ‘brotherhood’ between Vinnie Terranova (Wahl), an undercover FBI agent, and Sonny Steelgrave (Sharkey), the leader of Atlantic City Mafia.  The song is infinitely strong and heartbreaking as the background music throughout the scene where Sonny committed suicide after telling Vinnie, “I loved you, man.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9muzyOd4Lh8

Seasons in the Sun - Terry Jacks

Reason: associated with my undergraduate years at Peking University.  I shared a small dorm room with 5 girls, and my bed was up in the air against the window.  While my books for 'reading before sleep' varied, this particular song accompanied me almost every night into dreamland.  It also intensified my fondness for English lyrics.

Goodbye to you, my trusted friend.
We've known each other since we're nine or ten.
Together we climbed hills or trees.
Learned of love and ABC's,
skinned our hearts and skinned our knees.
Goodbye my friend, it's hard to die,
when all the birds are singing in the sky,
Now that the spring is in the air.
Pretty girls are everywhere.
When you see them I'll be there.  

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd_Fdly3rX8

Speak Softly Love - The Godfather

Reason: associated with my first year in Germany.  At night I sometimes longed for home and those who thought of me from afar.  Then I listened to this song in complete darkness:

Speak softly, love
And hold me warm against your heart
I feel your words
The tender trembling moments start
We're in a world, our very own
Sharing a love that only few have ever known

It always brought me to tears.

And I was cured.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXVQX6HGVy0

Vincent (Starry Starry Night) - Don McLean

Reason: associated with my first Christmas at Yale.  I received 3 Powerpoint files via email from a German friend in Korea, a Swedish friend in Prague, and a Chinese friend in New Zealand. 

Curiously, they were one and the same: Starry Starry Night

Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
They would not listen
They did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dipFMJckZOM

 

 

The Soup at the Door

Or: 
The Color of Fairy Tales

Today was the fourth day since I began to take antibiotic.  According to my doctor I should feel better and better from now on.  I put faith in him because he looks to me more like Santa Claus than a dentist. 

I went to campus in the morning for two meetings and came back in the late afternoon after dropping by a friend.  He has a conspicuous house door made from a pumpkin; both his little ivory-skinned son and his big chocolate dog shine like fairy-tale creatures.

Upon arrival I caught sight of something at the side door: it was an orange plastic container with a white envelop.  I opened it and saw a handwritten card:

Helen,

We hope you feel better soon!

I suddenly recalled that two friends of mine—an academic couple—sent me a message last night: they were cooking a butternut squash soup and would drop it off with me this morning. “We don’t know if that would appeal to you, but it might be easy to eat with a toothache.”

In fact, I am a big fan of soup, a huge fan of butternut squash, and a gigantic fan of butternut squash soup.  Especially because I can hardly chew these days, a butternut squash soup is ideal. 

I unlocked the door and took the container right into the kitchen; it was much heavier than it looked.  Albeit left outside in the cold for a whole day, the soup still felt warm.  I placed it in the microwave and pressed “Start;” the color of orange radiated.  Meanwhile, I picked out a large silver spoon of floral pattern I had never got a chance to use before.  “Now at last I’ve got to use you.  Only you can match the soup!”

A few minutes later, I began to enjoy my extraordinary supper with the extraordinary spoon at my extraordinarily high dining table.  I felt myself transformed into one of the seven dwarfs in Snow White. 

The soup was phenomenal.  Whole Foods is lucky that the couple of my friends decided to become scholars several years ago; had they chosen to open a family restaurant, nobody would now come to Whole Foods for soup.

But the taste was not that which impressed me most. 

Since I came to this city in August, I usually skip dinner.  It’s no fun eating alone; quite the contrary, eating alone often spoils the mood.  Hence the Tang poet Li Bai (701-762) invited the moon and his own shadow in the moonlight to join him for wine.

Tonight for the first time I had supper alone yet did not feel alone.  By cooking the soup themselves and delivering it to my house like a Christmas gift the couple of my friends were sitting here with me.  

I don’t know whether Li Bai had a couple of friends who would cook a butternut squash soup for him as well if he had a root canal.  I only know that the fairy tales that happened to me this winter all taste like hot pumpkin soup.

And orange is the color of fairy tales.

A Twilight Walk

Since Sunday night I’ve been in gnawing dental pain and dismal torment.  Tuesday morning I went to a dentist and had a root canal.  With eyes shut, gum numbed, and ears open, I saw Novalis in a hallucinated vision of forests and mountains digging, drilling, mining, and blasting.  In the next few hours I felt gloriously reanimated, only to find out that this was but a ‘temporary relief.’

As I got up today my face and mouth were swelling in flames anew.  Depressed by a sense of my incurable vulnerability, I decided to go to campus to distract myself.

Joy is easier to share than woe.  Yet I did find a companion in sorrow.  Together we dived into the coldness of December for a twilight walk. 

It was not at dusk yet.  But the promptly departed sunshine left the world in a pale tint.  The autumn landscape of heavenly moisture and rich coloring is gone.  Winter is dry and plain.  If I had walked alone, my self-pity might only have been justified and sharpened.  However, a fitting companion made all the difference.  

In twilight we went through a quiet neighborhood where he lived for years.  Of almost every building we passed by he knew at least one story: the humble playground, the neat little church, his previous house … and the path itself—here he used to walk his noble water-dog.

Listening to others’ stories can be worse than a root canal if the stories are dull or dully told.  My companion happened to be a most entertaining storyteller.  Walking with him was like co-writing detective fiction; continuously increased curiosity—and ambiguity—is guaranteed.  

Hence we walked, talked, recollected, and reflected.  And our twilight wandering ended in a quote from Wordsworth’s Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood: 

            … in a season of calm weather

            Though inland far we be,

Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea

            Which brought us hither,

        Can in a moment travel thither,

And see the Children sport upon the shore,

And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.