“As Rental Person, I have only the flimsiest connection with my clients,” he says in his memoir. “I am practically transparent. They have a story they have to tell and it’s my role to be there while they tell it. In one of Aesop’s fables, a character longs to tell a secret and so tells it to the reeds. I’m just there, like those reeds.”...
At best, Morimoto is an impassive confessor. He does not advise or commiserate or look people in the eye and tell them he understands. Usually, he says, the people telling him things don’t even want this of him. They just need him there, doing nothing, while they speak. Those who have never used him often think he is motivated by benevolence. He wants to be clear that he is not.
There's an excerpt from his book. An excerpt of the excerpt:
We’d been chatting for quite some time when, finally, in a very off-hand way, he started talking about his hidden past. “I was in a young offenders’ institution when I was a teenager,” he said. “Oh yes?” I said, nodding as I normally do. “Well, yes,” he said quietly. “Actually, I… er… killed someone.”... Somehow it really took me aback to think that a person who cooked so well, who gave an overall impression of competence, could have such a dark past.
The incongruity had a real impact on me. In a way, I was very moved. Since then, I think I’ve looked at people in a different way, realizing that even the most ordinary, upright-looking people are not what they seem....
By the way, there was a blogger who heard there was an Aesop fable with a character who tells a secret to the reeds. The blogger searched the complete text of Aesop's fables for "reeds" and "secret" but found nothing. And the moral is:
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I very strongly suspect that all three siblings were kind of weird genetically. "Messing up" a university entrance exam doesn't usually send people into a downward spiral. Not getting the job you wanted doesn't send most people to suicide. And "society" doesn't give most people the anger to kill someone.
Straws don't break camels' backs unless there is something wrong with the spine already.
I think he might be confusing Aesop with the legend of King Midas where he is cursed with ass's ears and hides them under a hat, and only his barber knows the secret---
But the barber is going to burst with the news so he digs a hole and whispers it into the hole. And the grass and reeds here it and spread it everywhere until everyone knows.....
Makes me think of mundane Halloween costumes. I've got my next year all planned out.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who will find this, but the reed story is a myth about King Midas. Its not a fable by Aesop:
>> When Midas decided against Apollo, the god changed his ears into those of an ass. Midas concealed them under a turban and made his barber swear to tell no living soul. The barber, bursting with his secret, whispered it into a hole in the ground. He filled in the hole, but reeds grew from the spot and broadcast the sibilant secret—“Midas has ass’s ears”—when the wind blew through them. <<
“Laziness is the mother of invention.”
Of course it wasn't Aesop, it was the Greek myth of Midas! And the reeds whispered his secret to everyone.
Here's something to ponder:
In the Midas myth, the reeds whisper the secret that "Midas has assess ears." This story works because you can imagine the reeds saying this because reeds make a sibilant whispering sound when they blow in the wind and there are a lot of sibilant s's in "Midas has asses ears".
But, the original myth was told in ancient Greek thousands of years ago, and "Midas has assess ears" is modern English, so its pretty amazing that a story that depends on the sibilance of the phrase that Midas utters translates perfectly from ancient Greek to modern English.
Does anybody know what is going on here?
Well, doing nothing while the clock ticks is called "billable hours" over here.
Reeds don't know ancient Greek or English.
Ann, you have a very knowledgeable readership.
Gerda Sprinchorn writes, "But, the original myth was told in ancient Greek thousands of years ago, and 'Midas has assess ears' is modern English..."
This could be resolved by comparing whatever we choose to call the original Greek to this modern English translation. (Whose translation?) Is it the Works and Days? of Hesiod? Much of what we accept as Greek myth as opposed to Greek literature is preserved therein, so we could start there.
However, Works and Days, is, along with much of Greek literature, poetry. And translating poetry is a difficult art. For example, let us compare Virgil's Aeneid to a popular English translation. Starting with the Latin text, we have the opening stanza:
Arma virumque canō, Trōiae quī prīmus ab ōrīs
Ītaliam, fātō profugus, Lāvīniaque vēnit
lītora, multum ille et terrīs iactātus et altō
vī superum saevae memorem Iūnōnis ob īram;
multa quoque et bellō passus, dum conderet urbem,
inferretque deōs Latiō, genus unde Latīnum,
Albānīque patrēs, atque altae moenia Rōmae.
As usual for someone following the Homeric tradition, Virgil's verse is in dactylic hexameters. It doesn't rhyme, but it does have a beat. Now let's see the literal English equivalent:
I sing of arms and a man, who first from the boundaries of Troy, exiled by fate, came to Italy and the Lavinian shores – he was tossed much both on land and on sea, by the power of the gods, on account of the mindful anger of savage Juno, he having suffered many and also from war until he could found a city, and was bringing in the gods to Latium, from whence the race of Latins, and Alban fathers, and of the high city walls of Rome.
Pretty dry. It's just prose. Compare it to a popular translation:
Of arms I sing, and of the man, whom Fate
First drove from Troy to the Lavinian shore.
Full many an evil, through the mindful hate
Of cruel Juno, from the gods he bore,
Much tost on earth and ocean, yea, and more
In war enduring, ere he built a home,
And his loved household deities brought o'er
To Latium, whence the Latin people come,
Whence rose the Alban sires, and walls of lofty Rome.
This has rhyme and meter. This could be sung or even rapped. (That'd be a trip! Snoop Daddy V's Number One with a bullet.) But it's not quite what Virgil wrote. The point is the English translator of the myth of Midas could well have substituted "ass's ears" for some other insult with sibilance in Greek which had none in literal English. This is permitted when translating poetry, maybe even required.
It is to his advantage to decry the social norms of Japanese culture, because he earns his living defying them. See the kardashians as an American example of exploiting one's culture for a living.
This guy has stepped from a Murakami novel. He speaks in a Murakami voice. Unsettling. There are legions of Japanese men who have give up life outside their apartments.
Do you ever wonder why the UK/USA media never has positive stories about Japan? I do. The subtext of seemly every article is: "Boy, Japan sure is a weird place." Or "Those Japanese are in trouble, because of XYZ".
If all you did was was read the mainline UK/USA papers you'd think Japan was the land of weirdos and on the verge of complete collapse. Of course, you also wouldn't know that France is being torn apart by riots by its brown skinned immigrants. And you'd have zero idea of what is going on in Mexico.
We actually get very little information about the world from the MSM. Its all filtered and managed.
Secrets and reeds made me think of this. Apparently the original English title for "In The Mood For Love" was "Secrets".
A grouping of sick and dysfunctional siblings does not arise by spontaneous generation. One perhaps, but not all three, five, seven ... whatever. My ex-wife managed to mask it all for over 20 years, but eventually became the fourth, of four, convicted of domestic violence, and in this case it was directed against a young child, to soy nothinhg of me when I interposed to protect the child.
The Biden-spawn details are different, but the situation is the same. Ignore the Presidency. Joe Biden was/is a pathologically dysfunctional fatherwho trashed at least one subsequent generation. Abject loser as a father.
I'm surprised he doesn't have a lot of competitors, undercutting his prices. I could easily do that for 25% off.
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