Unit 4, Lesson 1: Part Two

Prompt for this blog: Same as Part One but, this time, try it with "Middle East".

Ouchy.




(The Flood Tablet, Nineveh,7th C BCE, Collection of the British Museum)




If I went to try to point to it on a map, I'd end up waving my hand vaguely over a wide area, ranging from somewhere in the vicinity of Turkey to out towards Afghanistan and a few of the other "stans", although I confess that I don't much consider Afghanistan part of the Middle East, myself. Roughly, I suppose that anything between the Indian subcontinent and Greece would qualify.

It's such a vague term: "Middle East".

Of course, the ironic thing about this is that Geography (and Geology) are crucial to any discussion of this diverse part of the planet's surface.

And, oh yeah, Religion.

The words that spring to mind?

"tension".... "war"...."peace process"...."tension"........


There are also place-names that beckon to me from the dawn of time: Ur....Nineveh.....

And places that call from somewhere even earlier: Jericho....Catal Huyuk.....

I watch The Daily Show each night so that I can find some laughter in what's happening in what Jon Stewart calls "Mess-opotamia".

I try to remember that the three Abrahamic faiths are kin to one-another, which is probably why they get along as badly as they do.

Mostly?

I think of War.

Unit 4, Lesson 1 Part One: Images of India and China

The first blog prompt for this lesson asks: If I were to ask you to conjure images of India and China, what comes to mind?

India? Well, the Ganesha to the left is one thing that comes to mind. This one is at the Ackland Museum at UNC in Chapel Hill. I have a soft spot in my heart for Ganesha. It is impossible for me to think of India without thinking about Hindu art and temples.

India is also the birthplace of Buddhism.

And food. I am crazy about Indian food.





I must confess that I also think of huge Bollywood spectaculars and the still to the right is from DDLJ (Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge), which is one of my guilty pleasures! Sometimes there's just no substitute for three hours of melodrama and music.

No, really. Sometimes there isn't.

When I think of China?


This lovely equestrienne is from the collection at the Art Institute of Chicago.

I recently spent several months in Chicago and spent a lot of time looking at the Chinese collection. Most of what they have look as if it had been brought home as souvenirs and then donated by grandchildren who had radically different taste in interior decor from their grandparents. As such, the collection plays to western tastes. It is rather hard to get a sense of these objects within their own culture. Still, this little horse and rider are charming, by any assessment.

When I think of China, I think of the great terracotta army that guards its first emperor. I think of massive images of Chairman Mao. And I think of Lenovo. Mostly, I think about just how big China is!

Unit 3 Part 2: Dying Is Easy; Comedy Is Hard

Prompt for this blog:

Watch Kamabara and Yamabushi and compare/contrast the plays in structure, characters, etc. Do any of the one-liners remind you of past or recent jokes?

First, a brief synopsis of the two plays:

Kamabara

There are three characters in the play: an angry wife, her lazy husband and a passerby. The wife is angry that her husband won't go to work like other men. She gets frustrated with him and starts to beat him when the passerby intervenes. This man tries to pursuade the husband to go to work but the husband comes up with excuse after excuse. The husband then says that he has been humiliated by his wife and he is going to kill himself.

The wife jokes about her husband's gallantry and then calls the passerby away, leaving the husband in a dilemma. He has boasted that he will kill himself but with no one to see, the husband finds little incentive to actually do himself in. He tries multiple strategies but it is all for show and, with no audience or social pressure to carry through on his boast, he finally abandons the plan and concludes that it is far better for him to just go to work.

Yama Bushi

A mountain priest and his servant have been on a long and difficult journey and are returning home. The priest is very proud of the occult powers that he has gained through his religious and physical discipline. He takes great pride in his mastery of difficulties and asks his servant what the servant thinks of his master. The servant tells him how masterful he is and that he is a living Buddha, which greatly pleases the master.

They hear a strange noise and come upon a crab spirit that identifies itself with a riddle. When the servant goes to destroy the spirit, the crab grabs him with its pincer. The servant implores his master to use his many skills but, the harder the priest tries, the tighter the crab's grasp.

Eventually, the priest comes too close and the crab grabs him, as well. Then, it releases both men and scurries off with the priest and servant in pursuit - no smarter for their experience.


Both of the plays have three actors/characters. In Kamabara, the main character is the husband, with the wife as his antagonist and the passerby trying to mediate. Most of the play, however, is concerned with the husband's inner dialogue and his half-hearted attempts to do himself in.

The action is different in Yama Bushi. Here, although the main focus of the play is the overly prideful priest, all three characters - two humans and a spirit - are involved in the significant action.

The pace of the two plays is different. Although both have the standard three-part pattern of intro, exposition and a quick finish, the finish in Yama Bushi is a lot quicker than that of Kamabara. In both cases, the speed with which the play concludes is appropriate to the subject. The husband in Kamabara is a methodically lazy man and so the resolution to his dilemma and his trek into the hills is likewise a bit slow, whereas the snappy conclusion of Yama Bushi works well with both the rashness of the two men and the quickness of their adversary. Still, as a quick finish is the desired way to end kyogen, I feel that Yama Bushi's is the more satifactory of the two.

Concerning parallels between the one-liners in these two plays and any other past/recent jokes, the only comparison that I have to the husband's persistent claim that he is going to kill himself is Fred Sanford, in Sanford and Son, who had a tendency to feign a heart-attack when things weren't going his way. In Yama Bushi, there is a joke about a woman that the priest saw visit his servant. The servant replies that it wasn't a woman; it was his aunt. That is a similar pattern to the classic "That was no lady; that was my wife."

F.Y.I.

The following quote came from the Ikebana International website:


"Ikebana International has adopted the fabled Japanese cherry as their emblematic flower. It is intertwined in the Japanese samurai culture dating back many hundreds of years when the brief flowering of the cherry reminded each samurai of the delicate beauty of life and its fleeting nature - the cherry blossoms burst forth each spring in blankets of breathtaking beauty, only to fall with the first wind and storm that besets it. This struck the samurai as the way their existence was ordained - a brief time upon the earth and then - gone in a flurry of inevitability."

In The Last Samurai, Katsumoto (Watanabe) refers to cherry blossoms twice:

The first time is when he remarks to Algren that he keeps searching for a perfect one.

The second is when he says that they are all perfect.

The cherry blossom is, then, a masculine symbol, appropriately identified with the samurai, because it's blossom is short-lived but doesn't wither on the branch. Instead, it falls before the blossom fades.

Unit 3: Lesson 1

Prompts for this blog:

1. What are your first impressions when you think of Japan or Japanese culture?
2. What makes you laugh?

The first thing that I think of when I think of Japan is a yukata. Both my husband and I wear them around the house and the first thing that I see in the morning is usually the familiar blue and white pattern of yukata fabric. My favourite one is white with blue cranes.

I also think of chopsticks (the pointy kind are Japanese) because I both collect and use them. I also collect hashioki (chopstick rests), and almost anything that I can find that has a depiction of the rabbit in the moon.

My other favourite things associated with Japan are: textiles, gardens, raku ware and flower-arranging. As mentioned earlier, I know virtually nothing about ikebana but I'm interested in learning what I can for this class project.



Oh, and I don't like manga - it all just looks like Astro Boy, to me. (sorry, folks)


As for what makes me laugh:

There are people who would probably say that I have no sense of humor. They're quite wrong, of course. I love The Daily Show, for example. My taste in comedy runs to satire and cleverness. I also like romantic comedies because we humans have such a way with making goofballs out of ourselves.

I still think that the original version of The Producers is one of the funniest things ever made.

Photos of cats doing the kinds of wacky things that cats do will generally make me laugh.

I have friends and family that also crack me up - especially The Nephew (who was writing stand-up routines for one of his grandmothers when he was about 10 yrs old).

And my husband is very funny. He has a sharp wit and I like that.

I don't much care for sit-coms. Everything being done in sit-coms today was already done on TV in the 50's and it wasn't original then, either.

The one sit-com I do like is That 70s Show.

I've Selected A Project!

I'm going to be working on ikebana for my term project.

I was having a lot of trouble selecting a topic and then I was kayaking out at the coast last weekend and stopped in at a little antique store where I spotted some vintage kenzan flower holders.

Nifty!

Then, today, I was in this used/antique bookstore that I wander into about every three years, or so. I was looking for a specific book on ikebana. (I really know next to nothing about the subject and someone had recommended a particular book in order for me to get some background.) Well, the shop is a bit of a maze and there is stuff everywhere. Still, I walked right to the book that I was trying to find. It was all the way in the back. Next to the back door. On the bottom shelf.

Cool!

So, I'm not sure if I picked ikebana or it picked me.

Unit 2: Lesson 2

Blog Prompt:

Describe your response to Hotel Rwanda. How as this film affected your view of Africa and its people?


I had avoided seeing this movie for a couple of years because I'm not inclined to relive true stories of epic tragedy and suffering. I remember seeing the news the night that the presidents were killed and I remember the news coverage of the widespread killings and roads lined with refugees.

Not my idea of entertainment.

Don Cheadle was riveting as Paul Rusesabagina. So riveting that I am willing to forgive him for having appeared in Mission to Mars.

I can't say that the movie has affected my view of Africa and Africans and I don't feel that the Terry George (director) had that objective in mind. What the movie did do was to personalize almost unimaginable horror and tragedy and pose the question to the viewer: "What would you do if the world fell apart?"

George places a lot of the blame for the killings on the world community - particularly Europe, North America and the United Nations. What he does not do is say how any outside government or authority could intervene in such a situation. Outside authority was not recognized and the U.N. aid workers and peace keepers were targeted, as well.

What George presents as apathy on the part of the West, I see as more like paralysis. But, whatever the reason, the world community cannot always be counted on for assistance during times of manmade or natural disaster.

And, so, it is our one-on-one relationships that we must turn to, during such times. Each one of us has the power to do more than we might ever dream that we can do. Each one of us can make a world of difference.

Even when the World cannot.