As he spoke he pulled the herb out of the ground an showed me what it was like. The root was black, while the flower was as white as milk; the gods call it Moly, and mortal men cannot uproot it, but the gods can do whatever they like.

Circe, seeing that her plot had failed, then invited Odysseus to bed. They were lovers for 3 days.

Pundits debated about Moly. Some said it’s garlic, or mullein, or snowdrop. Nobody knows the true identity of this herb, or why or when it was transformed into an interjection, most often uttered by soccer moms.

The debate is moot, but the stories amaze me. They are like quantum particles, jumping around, bonding with each other, annihilating each other.

So old stories evolve into new language, like Circe’s changing moods, like sailors turning into pigs and turning back.

Imaginea a time-lapsed movie of Hong Kong: tall buildings sprouted upon landfills, people multiplied like fungus under subtropical heat, smog blurred the habour, Mercedes crowded the streets. Can you also see the graffiti of the Emperor of Kowloon flickered, here and there, on this light pole nearby, and that post box yonder?

For 50 years, the city must have been to him like an eternal SARS scene of 2003. A world silenced. Masked people. Nervous and discriminating eyes. A great city is a great solitude; but to him, a great canvas as well.

For 50 years, he had written on walls and poles, in broad calligraphic strokes, the same nonsense: “Kowloon Emperor. New China Emperor. Chinese-British Emperor. Tsang Tsou Choi…”

His calligraphy has a complex and strange charm: repetitious, obsessive, pompous, childish. It is the antithesis of a pragmatic and fickle city. Once the police charged him with vandalism, now the government wants to protect his art as cultural heritage.

In his last days in the hospital, doctors and nurses all hailed him as the Emperor of Kowloon. “Ah, Emperor, it’s time for lunch!” said the nurse.

Who among us can radiate such majestic presence? Is it not why Mencius said a great man is he who does not lose his child’s heart?

He was more lovable than the Chairman of China, more genuine than the Chief of Hong Kong, and more buoyant and steadfast than all of us. I shall miss him dearly.

Photography from flickr: photo1 and photo2.

To be or not to be?

Richard D. Altick, a literary critic, wrote a hilarious parody –

A policy decision inexorably enforced upon a depression-prone individual whose posture in respect to his total psychophysical environment is rendered antagonistic by apprehension or by innermotivated disinclination for ongoing participation in human existence is the necessity for effectuating a positive selection between two alternative programs of action, namely, (a) the continuance of the above-mentioned existence irrespective of the dislocations, dissatisfactions, and disabilities incurred in such a mode, or (b) the voluntary termination of such existence by self-initiated instrumentality, irrespective in this instance of the undetermined character of the subsequent environment, if any, in which the subject may be positioned as an end result of this irrevocable determination.

Ha ha ha.

I found this passage in Richard A. Lanham’s brilliant book “Revising Prose“.

Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today.
Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime.

But there are great many people who know too well how to fish, but cannot afford a fishing rod.

And there are great many of us (myself included), who would order an 18oz filet mignon when my belly is only comfortable with 10oz, spend an extra $10 for a fancier t-shirt, and are easily tempted to buy shiny and excessive things like the iPhone.

If only we can cut some of our excesses and support a microfinance project like these –

Kiva
Global Giving
Grameen

Flipping through the book Fermat’s Last Theorem the other day, I found this interesting story:

An Arab numerologist documents the practice of carving 220 on one fruit and 284 on another, then eating the first one and offering the second one to a lover as a form of mathematical aphrodisiac.

Wonder if any of our modern-day geeks would like to pick up this fantastic ritual again — perhaps as laser-engravings onto mobile phones?

Also try a geekier pair: 9363584 and 9437056, discovered by Descartes in the Age of Reason.

From D&AD Workout booket:
- Is your illustration sketchy?
- Are your writing skills textbook?
- Are your communication skills all talk?
- Is the left side of your brain always right?
- Is your type justified?

From an old sheet of editing tips:
- Don’t abbrev.
- Don’t use no double negatives.
- Avoid unnecessary redundancy.
- Avoid cliches like the plague.

From 6-word stories:
- For sale: baby shoes, never worn. (Hemingway)
- Longed for him. Got him. Shit. (Margaret Atwood)

Apple ads used to present a great vision (Think Different, 1984), but now they are reduced to some cheap jabs which are neither funny nor fact-based.

Theology, Enlightenment, Communism. Concepts and theories make people do good and bad things. I can recall, too, their prophets and founders.

Parks, traffic light, shopping. Things which grease modern life, making it bearable or even enjoyable. A multitude of clever and stupid things surround me, but I hardly know the people who created them.

Every man-made object, space, and idea must have its originator. It would be an interesting exercise to trace back its “human history” — the people behind the artifacts.

TV is not vulgar and prurient and dumb because the people who compose the audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests.

It is an illuminating thought, but I think there is more than that.

Things do not become popular automatically because they appeal to the vulgar instincts of the populace; nor do they become marginal just because they are refined.

An idea can be both noble and easy to understand. A story can be both entertaining and relevant to the human condition. They can be popular without being vulgar.

But why are most TV shows so vulgar and prurient these days?

Because their methods of ideation are extremely similar. No TV Show is ever produced without calculating risk and return, analysing marketing data, consulting previous formulas of success.

When popularity means profit, and stock price is proportional to earning growth, asking Howie Mandel to shout “Deal or No Deal” is a better deal than having a postmodern Hamlet to mutter “To Be or Not To Be”.

In 1969, W.H. Auden noted the excitment of moon landing thus: “It’s natural the Boys should whoop it up for so huge a phallic triumph… We were always adroiter with objects than lives.”

In 2007, Wired magazine has another set of observations (in its jargon watch) –

(Expired) Blackberry Thumb
(Tired) Guitar Hero Wrist
(Wired) Wii Elbow

Which would be the first machine to wear out our toes and erode our souls?