A few days ago, I was listening to an installment of the Vox podcast The Weeds.  Jane Coaston, not a Weeds regular, but also from Vox, was recounting an incident when she, a biracial woman, was out with her mother, who is white.  At a moment when she was far enough away from her mother to not be obviously with her, she was approached by a guy from the Nation of Islam.  He was regaling her with the whites-are-devils Nation of Islam line, when her mother came up to her.  The guy was taken aback and really angry.

Ms. Coaston's comment on the incident was that, while this man was full of racial hate, he wasn't an example of racism.  She didn't elaborate too much, but I think the point was that, absent the power to oppress, there can be no racism.  Probably what has happened here is that after years of promoting the notion that racism is not just individual conscious prejudice, but can be the disadvantages and violence built into a social system that an individual can unknowingly participate in, one large segment of the liberal/progressive community has wholly abandoned the notion that racism can be meaningfully located in one person's thoughts and feelings.  I am entirely convinced that systemic racism exists and is a significant force in the world.  But I don't see why we should shift the definition from one thing to another thing, rather than just extend the definition from the individual to the systemic, which was the original impetus.  That walking through the darkness with a flaming torch illuminates what is ahead by obscuring what is behind is a metaphor we do not need here.

Actually, I think I do see why the definition has shifted. First, removing the possibility that an member of an oppressed minority can be racist, no matter how irrational their prejudice or how indiscriminate their hatred of everyone in some other group, helps in retaining the absolute virtue of the oppressed.   This makes the struggle for justice seem simpler and more straightforward than it likely is.  And then there is the postmodern sense that everything reduces to power relationships.  So then an impotent hatred of another race is not racism at all.

FIGURE AND THE GROUND OF BEING


Look down
upon the steep, painted canyon wall
to the silver, sun-bright water
and lament what
has washed away,
what other beauty
it might have made,
what was lost
from the uncarved jade.

Of T's and D's and Glottal Stops

I thought perhaps that the odd person reading this blog might be interested in an email I sent to John McWhorter about his podcast Lexicon Valley.  A few items of information that may be helpful:  A glottal stop is the sound represented by the apostrophe in the more authentic-sounding pronunciation of  "Hawai'i" and the sound between the syllables in "unh-uh," the negative counterpart of "uh-huh."  The capital I represents what we usually call a "short I" like in "bit,"and the capital E represents a "short E" like in "bet."

I'm writing about the "Tee Time" installment of the the podcast.  The examples you played of people saying words ending t-vowel-n seemed to me to be examples of how, in my experience, Americans have always in pronounced those words except when they're teachers giving a spelling test.  In the college linguistics I took a few decades ago, this phonological phenomenon was described as an unreleased t and then a syllabic n with the omission of the intervening vowel made possible by the t and n being made with the same position of the mouth, particularly the tongue, so that the stop t can be seamlessly transformed into the nasal continuant n.  And this explanation satisfied my sense of what I was hearing in other people's speech and what I was doing in my own.  I can see, however, that a glottal stop perhaps does occur as one is arranging one's mouth for the n.  Maybe this is now the received analysis or maybe my professor just didn't apprise us of an alternate interpretation.

Be that as it may, I have a hunch that at least some of the people writing to you asking about where the t went are noting a somewhat different--and possibly more recent--phenomenon.  Beginning at least twelve years ago when I was last at a previous place of employment, I recall the way some of the younger women said words like button or cotton being particularly jarring.  They used for the t  a glottal stop that was made more distinct by the restoration of the vowel before the n, so that cotton sounded like kaq-In.  (I'm using a q for a glottal stop.  I should probably get an IPA font.)  And I remember krq-In for curtain being wholly unintelligible until a little more context clarified what was meant.

While I've continued to hear this -qIn pronunciation more and more often, even more recently I've begun to hear the t pronounced as a d with accompanying changes in the vowel before the n and in the analysis of the syllables in a word so that button sounds like buh-dEn.  And further, the vowel restoration seems to be spreading to words ending d-vowel-n.  On our local public radio station in Toledo, Ohio, a recorded announcement about an event at a botanical garden ran over and over for a week.  One speaker, a young-sounding woman, consistently pronounced garden as gar-dEn.  Another speaker, a possibly older-sounding man, alternated between gardn and gar-dEn.

And speaking of alternating pronunciations, I was listening to Vox's The Weeds podcast last week and one of the commentators pronounced the Russian president's name as puq-In, but all other t-vowel-n words differently, e.g., rotten as ro-dEn.  And maybe sometimes the E collapsed toward a schwa. I wonder whether you think the pronunciation of syllables such as these are changing in two ways at once or whether for some people rotten as roq-In is the old, established way to say it and they're in the process of changing to ro-dEn.

New Translations of Ci from the Yuan Dynasty

Ci are Chinese poems written as lyrics to pre-existing tunes.  The same tune may have accumulated multiple ci by various authors.  As with most Chinese poetry, the lines are end-stopped, but the lines are irregular in length, that is, irregular in the number of syllables to fit the tunes to which they are written. Except for their names and the particular patterns of their line lengths along with some other specified prosodic elements, these tunes have all been lost.  Sort of romantic to think about--words for lost songs.

To construct my versions of these poems, I have used Fifty Songs from the Yuan by Richard F. S. Yang and Charles R. Metzger.  This book has been very valuable for my purposes.  It gives the ci in their original characters, in alphabetic transliteration, in a word-for-word translation, then as a "first draft," and finally as a literary version in English.

These final literary versions are, to my mind, constructed on very odd principles.  I follow Douglas Hofstadter in believing that in doing translation, one must choose which aspects of the original to attempt to hold steady and which to let slip.  Yang and Metzger made the choice to hold to the original syllable length of each line, and, when necessary, to let pretty much everything else slip.
Semantic content is omitted here and added there, sometimes resulting in a poem quite different in meaning from the what the Chinese poet wrote.  Not only are lines not end-stopped, they are often broken with no regard for English syntax.  What they call their first draft is almost always truer to the original, and, not infrequently, a better poem in English than their polished final version.

By the way, the Yuan Dynasty was the Mongol Dynasty.  The first Yuan emperor was Kublai Khan. Kublai was the emperor when Marco Polo arrived in China.





A WIFE'S LATE SPRING SONG


Red, blowing in the wind,
the fallen tung flowers.
Light fog, a willow deep in the courtyard.
Idle by the small window,
stopping my embroidery.
Layers of screens and curtains
breached by dreams of mutual longing.
     --Li Chiyuan
     --tune:  Welcome to the Immortal Guest




[UNTITLED]


Qu's Encountering Sorrow,
who but the sun and moon
can fathom its deepest meaning?
Sadness lingers,
but the man is gone,
present only in the happiness
of fish, shrimp, and crabs
in the Xiang River.
That man's sins,
what are they
in the shadow of the green mountain?
Drink madness and sing pain,
find happiness without limit.
     --Chang Yanghao
     --tune:  Happiness to the Wide World



Yang and Metzger note that Qu Yuan, author of a famous poem, "Encountering Sorrow," was slandered at the court of a late-Zhou king and banished despite his loyal service.  Despairing, he drowned himself.




LOTUS SONG I


The lotus picker and his lotus song
pass the willows in an orchid boat,
heedless of breaking my dream
of lovers as mandarin ducks.
And how was the night?
Who climbed the river tower and lay down?
However heartbroken, don't sing
old songs of the southern dynasties.
The Records of the Grand Historian
already holds so many tears.
     --Yang Guo
     --tune:  Little Red Peach





LOTUS SONG II


Lotus-gathering boats, gone from the lake.
Gentle wind, green silk gown.
One pipa tune, many lines of tears.
As I hope for your return,
mimosas bloom and fade without news--
and this evening's so cold.
Red ducks, white cranes,
don't they always fly in pairs?
     --Yang Guo
     --tune:  Little Red Peach






A NEW LIFE


Since leaping from the fire pit of merit and fame,
coming to this faerie land of flowers and moonlight,
keeping these fields of good land,
watching for a while rain plowing, smoke tilling,
my heart is no longer turbulent
and every night I sleep till dawn.
Seeing Xiechuan village, chickens and dogs at peace,
green smoke rising from mulberries and hemp that ring the house.
Holding my cane, there's nowhere I can't walk.
With my eyes full of cloudy hills, my painting's never finished.
The sounds of new spring--listening with care.
Returning to the thorn gate and feeling quiet.
     --Chang Yanghao
     --tunes:  The Twelfth Month, The Song of the People of Yao



Yang and Metzger say that Xiechuan, a small village, was once visited by Tao Qian, perhaps the greatest of the pre-Tang poets, and that Xiechuan is usually associated with peace and quiet. Actually, the whole poem follows pretty closely the outline of a well-known poem by Tao Qian:



Returning to My Country Home, No. 1


From the first, I was unsuited to society,
but I had a natural love of hills and valleys.
Still, I fell into the snare of the world.
One little slip and thirteen years were gone.
Birds in cages love their old forests.
Fish in ponds still miss their home waters.
Tilling the south field at the edge of the wild,
still just a rustic, I've returned to my farm.
Around my house are ten or so acres,
dotted with the thatch of eight or nine huts.
Elm and willow overhang the back eaves.
Peach and plum lead away from the front hall.
A distant village is faint in the haze.
Thin smoke curls from the abandoned hamlet.
A dog barks from deep in the lane.
A cock crows in the mulberry tree.
This shuttered house, still free of the dust of the world,
its empty rooms full of time and quiet.
After so long, long in a cage,
I can at last get back to nature.
     --my tr.






[UNTITLED]


Heart-break places:
remnant sunset at the edge of heaven,
clouds at the edge of the sea.
A goose sleeps by a withered lotus.
Crows perch in distant trees.
Fallen leaves thick on jagged rocks.
Bamboo sways across the silken window.
Evening comes on:
Sadness grows under the pestle grinding the mortar.
Lamentation enters the lute.
     --Bo Pu (a ci from the song chain "Tears from the Boudoir")
     --tune:  Mud River Dragon





[UNTITLED]


My house by Parrot Island,
home to an illiterate fisherman
in a shallow boat among the waves.
Sleeping through the smoky rain on the south river.
Waking with eyes full of green mountains.
Returning, I shake my green grass raincoat.
So I was wrong to rage at heaven,
which has made a place for me.
     --Bai Ben
     --tune:  Parrot Song





SADNESS IN SPRING


Morning dreams are clouds.
A little rouge remains.
A little bit of tender heart hates him
for ten years without a letter to say sorry,
by the bank of the green river,
in the spring of blue grasses,
in the village of red apricots.
     --Zhang Kejiu
     --tune:  Four Pieces of Jade

I have been saying approximately this for decades,  although with less expansive arguments and based more on just logic than on the research at the disposal of this writer.  I thought it was wildly unlikely that the only average differences among races would turn out to be those that were obvious and undeniable.  Not that all unknown but discoverable differences would turn out to align with existing prejudices--but some probably would.  And therein lies the fragility of the dogmatic insistence on the absolute equality of groups.  As soon as research demonstrates a difference between groups that puts a bad light on one relative to the other, racists will seize upon it.  Those of good will can find in respect for individuals as thinking and feeling beings more defensible ground than in clinging to the faith that any group of humans is in all ways that matter just like any other.https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html?smid=fb-share 

Another Wang Wei Translation

SONG OF SUFFERING FROM HEAT


Red sun dominates earth and sky.
Fire clouds top off mountain peaks.
Grass and trees are scorched and shriveled.
Rivers and ponds have all gone dry.
Lightest white silk is too heavy.
Densest wood gives too little shade.
Sleeping mats are too hot to use.
Linens are washed and washed again.
Thinking of leaving space and time,
where all is emptiness and void.
Long winds come from ten thousand li.
Great waters wash away dirt and care.
But to see flesh as affliction--
that is the unawakened mind.
Just then the Sweet Dew Gate opens
on clear joy, sinuous and cool.
     --Wang Wei

王维
苦熱 
 
赤日滿天地，
火雲成山嶽。
草木盡焦卷，
川澤皆竭涸。
輕紈覺衣重，
密樹苦陰薄。
莞簟不可近，
絺绤再三濯。
思出宇宙外，
曠然在寥廓。
長風萬裏來，
江海蕩煩濁。
卻顧身為患，
始知心未覺。
忽入甘露門，
宛然清涼樂。

I have perhaps over-interpreted the next-to-last couplet in the interest of having it say what I think it says.  This is a literal translation from Hugh Grigg's blog East Asian Student:  "yet worry body as contract disease/begin know heart not yet wake up."  Some translations emphasize the notion that the body is the source of suffering and the enlightened mind escapes the flesh.  But Wang Wei was a Buddhist, a Zen Buddhist.  And, as such, would certainly not have denied the flesh can be a source of pain, but suffering--that he would have seen as a matter of mind.  So I think that his seeing that his mind was focused on bodily distress--and on dreaming of escaping it--was his entry into the realization that it was that focus itself that was the source of his suffering.

The "Sweet Dew Gate" is a reference to how the teachings and practice of Buddhism open on enlightenment.  Less poetically, it could be called the "Dharma Gate."

Then in the last two lines there a sudden awakening, a throwing open of that gate.  There are two schools within Zen, one sees enlightenment as achieved incrementally with long study and practice and the other sees enlightenment as coming suddenly, say, by hearing a hoe clatter on a stone--after long study and practice.  Wang Wei's dates are 699-759.  The idea of sudden enlightenment is associated with Huineng, the sixth Zen Patriarch, 638-713CE.  Wang Wei's dates are 699-759.  So the doctrine of sudden enlightenment was relatively new.  Zen arrived in China, where Buddhism in general was already established,  from India with Bodhidharma, the First Patriarch, in the 520's.

A couple more translation notes:  I'm not sure whether the second line means the that the mass of the clouds looks like mountains or that the clouds are above the mountains.  And with the line "Sleeping mats are too hot approach," the general meaning is correct, but I've lost the parallelism with the following line as in Hugh M. Stimson's literal translation, "rush-mat bamboo-mat not can approach/fine-linen coarse-linen again three wash."  I'd like to do better with these two lines, but have so far failed.

A Few Scenes from My Life at Work

BEING A NURSE



when they burst in on him

he jumped out the window
the mob caught him
and left him dazed and bleeding
naked in the street
in the hospital
the night shift heard
there were death threats
and pushed furniture
against the back door
of the nursing unit
in the morning
one of the two policemen
takes off his kevlar vest
my patient is impassive
and silent
I rub lotion on his back
and put vaseline
on his puffy lips
he says thank you
out at the station
they say
oh that one's yours
how could someone do that
to a five-year-old girl

Amazing,
said the former Barbeque King,
looking up with his sweet smile
from where he'd fallen in urine,
after all that's happened to me,
how many people
still
want
to come by and talk.

HOME CARE WITH AN OPEN WINDOW

Bone-deep pressure sore.
Waved away again, two flies
land on his penis.

Isolation room,
fourth floor: ladybug enters
on my yellow gown.




Waking in the light
from the bathroom 
as the nurse empties his urinal,
he recalls his diagnosis.

To the east, 
on the marshes 
between route 2 and the lake,
so many ducks, 
down from the flyway, 
drift on dark water.