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mallorys_cameraExcept for the five minutes a day I spend compiling my little FB news feed feature, I’ve more or less ignored current events for the past 10 days.
So I spent a few hours reading newspapers when I got home.
Wow.
The world is a fucking mess.
But a comic fucking mess.
Lets see… Trump invites himself to Denmark, so he can buy Greenland. The Danish Prime Minister dismisses this notion as “absurd,” so Trump disinvites himself to Greenland and mispronounces the word “absurd” as “abzhurd,” a mispronunciation I have never heard before. I mean, I know Trump has a Queens accent, but I don’t think most people from Queens go around pronouncing “absurd” as “abzhurd.” Or maybe they do? Clearly, this calls for a citizen scientist investigation.
Also, autumn has arrived. Leaves have not yet begun turning color, but you can feel it in the air.
I have not done anything in the way of remunerative work in ever so long, so I must buckle down and $tart churning $ome out. These trips to dying X-husbands' bedsides don’t pay for themselves!
I’m almost afraid to look at the Work in Progress. I have completely lost momentum there. This is what separates the professionals from the amateurs, I suppose: Professionals can pick up the beat instantaneously no matter how long the bathroom break; amateurs struggle.
On one of B’s bookshelves, I found my old copy of Chinese Gold: The Chinese in the Monterey Bay Region, which I had loaned to him a decade or so back when we were writing that Steinbook novel together. I reclaimed it and stayed up very late last night rereading it. It’s an excellent history book. I had quite forgotten that some time in the 5th century AD, a Buddhist monk named Hui-Shen showed up at the Chinese Imperial Court with Marco Polo-esque tales of a sea voyage to a land far to the east that he called Fu-Sang. Those Sinologists who put any credence in Hui-Shen’s story think the Black Tide may have swept his boat to Monterey.
Hui-Shen’s account of his travels can be found in the Book of Liang, a history of the Liang Dynasty compiled in 635 AD:
Fusang is 20,000 li to the East of the country of Dàhàn, and located to the east of China.(...) On that land, there are many Fusang plants that produce oval-shaped leaves similar to paulownia and edible purplish-red fruits like pears. The place was rich in copper and traces of gold and silver but no iron. The native tribes in Fusang were civilized, living in well-organized communities. They produced paper from the bark of the Fusang plants for writing and produced cloth from the fibers of the bark, which they used for robes or wadding. Their houses or cabins were constructed with red mulberry wood. The fruits and young shoots of the plants were one of their food sources. They raised deer for meat and milk, just as the Chinese raised cattle at home, and produced cheese with deer milk. They traveled on horseback and transported their goods with carts or sledges pulled by horses, buffalo, or deer.
Whether or not this is true, the Ohlone Indians had many tales of strange sailing craft along that part of the California coast.
So I spent a few hours reading newspapers when I got home.
Wow.
The world is a fucking mess.
But a comic fucking mess.
Lets see… Trump invites himself to Denmark, so he can buy Greenland. The Danish Prime Minister dismisses this notion as “absurd,” so Trump disinvites himself to Greenland and mispronounces the word “absurd” as “abzhurd,” a mispronunciation I have never heard before. I mean, I know Trump has a Queens accent, but I don’t think most people from Queens go around pronouncing “absurd” as “abzhurd.” Or maybe they do? Clearly, this calls for a citizen scientist investigation.
Also, autumn has arrived. Leaves have not yet begun turning color, but you can feel it in the air.
I have not done anything in the way of remunerative work in ever so long, so I must buckle down and $tart churning $ome out. These trips to dying X-husbands' bedsides don’t pay for themselves!
I’m almost afraid to look at the Work in Progress. I have completely lost momentum there. This is what separates the professionals from the amateurs, I suppose: Professionals can pick up the beat instantaneously no matter how long the bathroom break; amateurs struggle.
On one of B’s bookshelves, I found my old copy of Chinese Gold: The Chinese in the Monterey Bay Region, which I had loaned to him a decade or so back when we were writing that Steinbook novel together. I reclaimed it and stayed up very late last night rereading it. It’s an excellent history book. I had quite forgotten that some time in the 5th century AD, a Buddhist monk named Hui-Shen showed up at the Chinese Imperial Court with Marco Polo-esque tales of a sea voyage to a land far to the east that he called Fu-Sang. Those Sinologists who put any credence in Hui-Shen’s story think the Black Tide may have swept his boat to Monterey.
Hui-Shen’s account of his travels can be found in the Book of Liang, a history of the Liang Dynasty compiled in 635 AD:
Fusang is 20,000 li to the East of the country of Dàhàn, and located to the east of China.(...) On that land, there are many Fusang plants that produce oval-shaped leaves similar to paulownia and edible purplish-red fruits like pears. The place was rich in copper and traces of gold and silver but no iron. The native tribes in Fusang were civilized, living in well-organized communities. They produced paper from the bark of the Fusang plants for writing and produced cloth from the fibers of the bark, which they used for robes or wadding. Their houses or cabins were constructed with red mulberry wood. The fruits and young shoots of the plants were one of their food sources. They raised deer for meat and milk, just as the Chinese raised cattle at home, and produced cheese with deer milk. They traveled on horseback and transported their goods with carts or sledges pulled by horses, buffalo, or deer.
Whether or not this is true, the Ohlone Indians had many tales of strange sailing craft along that part of the California coast.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-26 07:02 am (UTC)Piecing together an historical narrative of China would be the task of many lifetimes; and would end up with something the size of the old OED.
One really could claim almost anything had happened there at some point. But if the Ohlone people made paper for writing in the 7th century, they were ahead of Europe by a long way. Pre-Alfred Britain had writing in monasteries, on vellum. And almost nowhere else apart from court.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-26 01:46 pm (UTC)They didn't, of course. 😀
Plus North America did not have horses until the Spanish reintroduced them in the late 15th century. (Horses did originate in North America. But after the ancestors of European and Asian horses migrated across the Behring straits, they went extinct.)
But that description of the plant is arresting: It sounds a lot like some form of agave, and I don't think agaves grow in China. Though I'm no expert in indigenous Chinese plants, so I could easily be wrong.
Possibly like most travel writers before the 17th century or so, Hui-Shen embellished truths with fantastical confabulations.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-27 02:17 pm (UTC)