BY YOUR LEAVE

Last night while reading a short college text about the proper pronunciation of Tang era Chinese which I bought decades ago, I noticed a character I did not recognize. And had to look up. Which was a little problematic, because the book having been published before the internet, and the character being shown in a non-standard form, I had to work backwards.

萼

It occurs as the tenth word in a quatrain by Wang Wei (王維 'wong wai', 701-761) one of the most remarkable versifiers of an age known for literary greatness. Along with Li Po (李白 'lei paak', 701-762) and Tu Fu (杜甫 'dou pou', 712-770), his work strikes the mind better for the constraints of the form (絕句 'juet geui'; balanced line quatrains, matched couplets), and is remarkably easy to memorize.

This is actually one of the poems I once knew by heart, but it had faded from my mind, and it was fun to rediscover.

Except what the heck was that character?


辛夷塢 Magnolia Wall
By 王維 Wang Wei

木末芙蓉花，
山中發紅萼。
澗戶寂無人，
紛紛開且落。

"On the ends of their branches the hibiscus flowers bloom, and in the mountains there are crimson blossoms; there are no visitors so I'm closing the gate at the end of day, as scatter-scatteringly (紛紛) the petals fall."



蕚

As you can see by the illustration below, the current version of 萼 differs a bit from the ancestral form. But it's a relatively easy character either way. Grass radical 艹 plus nine strokes (萼), versus grass radical 艹 plus twelve strokes (蕚). Old form of grass radical thus: 艸。

[It should be remembered that the grass radical is a six stroke radical. You look up characters in the dictionary by radicals, which are organized by stroke count and stroke order. In each section you will find the characters under that radical also listed by stroke count and stroke order. Horizontal strokes first, then verticals. Do the outside part where applicable first, complete the inside, finish outside. Start at top left, finish at bottom right. There are 214 radicals, which are usually the simplest meaningful component. Don't worry, it becomes fairly automatic and thus much easier in a short amount of time, just like the alphabet.]

At the time when I started learning Chinese (Cantonese) I lived in North Beach on the edge of C'town, and patronized three nearby bookstores, of which only City Lights is still in existence.
Good sources of fascinating stuff.

Learning Chinese was mostly by accident, I did not plan to achieve any level of fluency. But I've always acquired reading material, and one book leads to the next. So it happened somewhat thoughtlessly.

As it turns out, unlike with my two native languages (Dutch and English), no one ever lays an attitude on me when I speak Cantonese, or acts like I don't belong "here". And that's a distinct benefit right there.
Nor do I have to explain my past.


“I was from my mother's womb untimely ripped”


Like MacDuff, Caesarian section.

Okay?!?


Yeah, I'm not comfortable with the frequent question "where are you from?" It suggests that the person asking it belongs here and somehow I don't and must establish my bonafides, that I'm a foreigner and that my accent is suspicious, as is the fact that I have a decent vocabulary. Why, I could be a Russian agent!  And in any case, they shoot people like me where they're from.

[Born in Los Angeles County. Several generations American, both sides, my parents and their parents were military. We moved overseas when I was two. When I was eighteen I returned. And in my un-humble opinion, the rot here started when they allowed Texans and folks from Montana to move all over the country and join the armed forces.]



One the other hand, some questions are perfectly cool.

On the GPSS (one of the pipe forums) a member asked "What is everyone's morning smoking routine?".

When I was still a teenager, it was to load up a bowl of Balkan Sobranie, get on my bike and head towards school. Especially nice in Autumn, through the streets near the Willem 2 cigar factory (Valkenswaard), when the mists softened the urban landscape. Crinkly leaves. The fragrance of fermenting Besuki and Sumatra tobaccos.
A faint hint of coffee in the air.
Delightful.

Nowadays?

Self-cite: "Left the house fully washed and dressed before eight o'clock. Wished the Cantonese auntie doing her early walk up and down the block a good morning (早晨 'jou san'). She's there every day, btw. Strolled a few blocks through the quiet neighborhood smoking aged Virginia in a bent bulldog. Yesterday it was the same tobacco in a smooth apple. Very nice."

This morning I was up at six. Fixed coffee, took my pills, and argued with a stuffed turkey vulture. So it was a good morning. Reading the news used to be a major part of the routine, but with the Fox-heads praising gun-toting fascists taking over a government building and our government's shambolic response to the pandemic as a good job, that's very much a waste of time.

Barring the burning down of a few meat-packing plants, or shooting a few dickheads and corporate whores, there's not much we can do unless we vote the trash out in November and have pest-control clean up the White House.
So other than giving a few people in comment strings apoplexy -- hard to tell when they're already rabid and soiling themselves -- there's not much point to visiting news sites for more than a few minutes. Better for the digestion to just ignore them and their world.

TOBACCO INDEX


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