ABSTRACTED, NO PISANG!

When she left for work she forgot her banana on the counter. It lay there, half eaten (eh, plus or minus 70%), abandoned and forlorn, exuding its bananish odour silently like a killer with a can of mustard gas. I am not a huge fan of bananas. Cooked, they're fine. Flaky pastry crust, sugar, butter, and perhaps a drizzle of chocolate syrup while it's still hot from th eoven, or fried like a beignet with a heavy dusting. Great with coffee that way as a snack in the evening. Pisang goreng à la mode de Batavia.

But raw? Not a fragrance one wishes to wake up to. It's a rude uncouth smell.

She must have been in a hurry.

I am not.


Normally on Friday I'm the one rushing out, as I wish to catch the early bus in, so that I can get things done before my coworkers arrive and the crusty old geezers wander in with their inane rightwing prattle, or the neurosurgeon arrives, so I can unlock the door for him and exchange the odd intelligent pleasantry.

Today, exceptionally, I have off. But I got up far too early.
Chalk that up to programming.

It wasn't squabbly oriole noises that woke me up this morning, though one could be excused for thinking of that immediately. I am not a young wife dreaming of her husband at the frontier in Liaoxi and the barbarians have already taken the capital. That boat has fled. Parts of it. Wrong image, wrong era, wrong gender. No Jurchen tribesmen.

[Reference: 打起黃鶯兒，莫教枝上啼。啼時驚妾夢，不得到遼西。By Jin Changxu (金昌緒 'kam cheung suei').]


Quatrain (絕句 'juet keui') by Dufu (杜甫 'dou fu'):

兩個黃鸝鳴翠柳，
一行白鷺上青天。
窗含西嶺千秋雪，
門泊東吳萬裡船。

['leung go wong lei ming cheui lau - jat hang paak lou seung ching tin - cheung ham sai ling chin chau suet - mun paak tung ng maan leui suen'.]

Paraphrasis: A couple of orioles sing in the green willows, a line of herons ascends to the sky; my window contains the western ridges snow of a thousand autumns, my door faces Eastern Wu's myriad mile boat.

The Chinese text shows a balance: Couple or pair in the first line balanced against the line of birds in the second, the yellow of the orioles and the white of the herons, the jade-like hue of the willows versus the crystal clarity of the sky. Window against door, western pass-ridges against eastern Wu, thousand against myriad (萬 ten thousand). It is cleverly done, and elegant.



Second cup of coffee. I have lit up one of the delicate Hello Kitty style cigarettes (貴煙 'kwai yin') wich miss A.A. likes, later after visiting Chinatown I shall smoke the Peterson sandblast pipe that Karl has seen every time we've worked together.



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