Asakiyume mita

A friend and I were talking asynchronously the other day**, and she put forward this interesting idea:

A thought: we've become a spectator society, where people often watch sports or plays rather than participating themselves. Are we also becoming a society where many people watch social relationships (on TV, the internet, etc.) rather than participating?

What do people think? More than an agree or disagree, what questions does the question raise for you, or what roads does it take your thoughts down?

For me, it got me thinking about the difference between something being effortful and something being miserable. Building something strong takes effort, and effort, by definition, involves work, which isn't always fun. But that's by no means the same as misery. You can rightly want to avoid misery, but I think you're likely to be disappointed in life if you try to avoid effort. ---But that's just one tangent. What does the question raise for you?

**"talking asynchronously" is my new way of saying "exchanging letters."

Happy mid-Autumn festival, one day late! Please enjoy this Google doodle that was only shown to people in East Asia. In the United States Google was busy urging us to register to vote.

It was a lovely harvest moon--with a bite taken out of it in these parts, due to a partial lunar eclipse. Like a ghostly version of the moon cakes made in its honor.

Some time ago I learned how to ask questions using "Why" in Tikuna. I gave some sample questions (Why is the cat happy? Why are you tired?) and my tutor went to town, giving me *lots* of why questions. There was a theme...

Why don't you listen?
Why don't you listen to your grandparents when they want to give you advice?
Why don't you pay attention to your parents?
Why did you go without telling me?
Why don't you want to?
Why don't you want to eat?

There were others that didn't fit the theme, but those were so salient! I had a feeling these were things my tutor had heard a lot. If I memorize those, I will know how to nag a teenager in Tikuna ;-)

Recently my college-aged nephew was at my house, helping me smash hickory nuts. We smashed enough to get a cup of nutmeats, and then we made a hickory nut shortbread, yum. I sent a picture of my nephew to my tutor, who remarked that he was cute. I said he was two years younger than she is, just twenty years old. "Veinte añitos!" she said, "Waooo!" --I like that Spanish can do that: turn years (años) into cute little years (añitos). Twenty cute little years. Twenty adorable years. Twenty yearlets.

I created these questions are based on comments people left in response to Nando's two stories, but especially the more recent one, "Mauko Meets a Monkey." If they sound a little stilted, it's because it's my translation back into English of what I sent to him--I'm not good enough in Tetun to ask highly subtle, highly nuanced questions. You'll see that his replies are sort of adjacent to the questions rather than direct answers, again, most certainly due to my inability to express myself adequately. It would have taken more back-and-forth to get to clarity, and somehow to keep pressing felt it might have become unwelcome browbeating? And I wanted to hear what Nando was saying, which I think is illuminating and worthwhile, even if it's only tangential to what I was asking.

Question 1: In your two stories, people become wise through miracles from animals. Both Mr. Mau Leki and Mauko can cure people’s illnesses. In traditional stories, do animals sometimes give other miracles or other wisdom? Sometimes can plants or stones give miracles or wisdom to people?

Nando's answer:

People’s wisdom comes from education.

The miracles that they get are like a natural wisdom that is different with different people. Out of a thousand people living in a village, ones who have experienced a miracle from some other thing are maybe one, or maybe there isn’t even one.

Right now, there is one uncle, named Fideli, who lives in our neighborhood. This neighbor obtained a miracle from some other thing that made him able to cure people’s illnesses. He cures people who have had accidents like fractured legs or arms from falling from motorcycles. He uses the wisdom which he received to cure those broken legs or arms, returning them to normal, just as they were.

And now the government of Timor-Leste has also conferred an award on him. Now he is still curing people’s illnesses, and the government of Timor-Leste has given him a private hospital. He cures people’s sickness and doesn’t ask for any money when people get sick. Instead, he asks for a rooster from them, and also seven five-cent coins. Then he prays that they get better. After that he kills the rooster to make a dinner or lunch for everyone to eat together, and he takes the seven coins when he goes to church and gives them as alms.

Nando adds:

(This is really happening right now. If someone from America comes to Timor Leste soon, I can show them, and explain it to them.)

Question 2: Readers can know Mauko’s heart is big and wonderful because he gives a cure to the baby monkey. He loves people like his parents and siblings, but he also loves animals like the baby monkey. In your experience, are there people that love the land like Mauko loves the baby monkey? For example, people that want to cure the land’s illness?

Nando's answer:

Mauko cures the baby monkey because he cares about animals. He is the simplest person in his family.

There are lots of people who find an animal who has fallen, and they catch and kill it. They are very different from Mauko.

There are lots of monkeys that are just like ordinary animals, but the one monkey that Mauko met was very different from other monkeys, so Mauko considered this one to be a miracle that God had bestowed on him.

God doesn’t bestow miracles directly upon people. Rather, God bestows miracles on people through other people or things.

Question 3: Mauko’s disability can’t be hidden. People can see that his left eye is cloudy. One reader asks, Is people’s discrimination against Mauko worse because people can see his disability? If Mauko’s disability could be hidden, would people not discriminate? What do you think?


Nando's answer:

People discriminate against him because he is a person with a disability, and many people are disgusted by him and don’t want to see him in their presence. Even his brothers and sisters are ashamed of his disability and don’t like to spend time with him or help him. He was a person with a disability, but maybe if people didn’t feel disgusted, then they wouldn’t discriminate.

I started to post this as a tweet and then thought, This is ridiculous; there are too many aspects to the question and too many long potential answers. So I'm putting it here!

When you were little, did you have best friends? Did you have several at the same time, or only one at a time? Or did you not use that term?

If you did use it, do you continue to now? If not, what changed, do you think? If you're someone with one or more life partners, how does having that person or people figure into the equation, if at all?

This question arose for me because I'm taking another online language class (Indonesian this time), and the teacher had us practice descriptions by asking us to describe our best friend, and I realized I had very dear friends but no one person I'd identify as a best friend.

I always love poems and incantations that take the form, "I am the [thing] that ..." Just now I encountered something purporting to be from something called the Hymn of Sekhmet that has these lines:

I am the broken wax seal on my lover’s letters.
I am the phoenix, the fiery sun, consuming and resuming myself.

And it reminded me of the song of Amergin:

"I am the wind on the sea;
I am the wave of the sea;
I am the bull of seven battles;
I am the eagle on the rock
I am a flash from the sun;
I am the most beautiful of plants...

Or the Song of Taliesin:

I have been a tree-stump in a shovel.
I have been an axe in the hand.
I have been a spotted snake on a hill.
I have been a wave breaking on a beach.

So, question: What are you and/or what have you been, today or any day?

I will joyously post if my cat comes home, so in the meantime ...

Well, here is something I loved on Twitter: Answer the question (link takes you to a one-minute TikTok video on Twitter).

I love this guy generally; his little videos are always hilarious, and the interactions between the two characters are so perfect, and oh the question!

So ... WHAT WOULD YOU BE?

On Twitter I said "I think I'd like to be as heroic, beautiful, and liminal as a red mangrove" --to which one of my Twitter friends replied that he'd like to be a black mangrove because those are the ones that have pneumatophores, the little breathing tube sticking up like straws from the sand.

--Bonus points if you noticed, as the ninja girl did, that the music playing in the background of the video is from Spirited Away.

We've reached it: Yet Another Asakiyume Rant on the Trolley Problem. When I first committed to writing this, I was all fired up. I was sure I had a totally new and many-splendored rant that would *not* merely be a rehash of my past rants. Now that some time has passed, I ... think I was wrong.

Here's the slim thought that seemed new at the time: trying to find out which of two (or however many) awful options a person will take in a controlled simulation is asking the wrong questions. It's assuming a forgone conclusion (death) and so it asks, which deaths? who dies? But the future is never known, and it's much, much more meaningful to have people exert their energies toward other solutions. "What can be done in this situation?" That's the question to ask--open ended, not an either-or. Letting people imagine deploying secret brakes or giant trolley airbags or robot rescue dirigibles might appear to be an exercise in escapism, but it also might generate actual ideas for ways actual situations could be made safer.

I think the rest of what I'm tempted to say is all stuff I've said before. sovay asked me once whether I thought even just the act of engaging with the trolley scenario in imagination was harmful, and as I recall I equivocated, but coming back to it now, I guess I think yes, if it won't allow for alternative answers, it is. It's a way of compelling people to accede to death and rehearse manslaughter.

On Twitter people were posting the three things they need to write. It was interesting because people were taking it in all sorts of different ways--very abstract or big-picture, or very particular and concrete. Some were external things and some were internal. So for instance, Virginia Molhere listed "A decent pen (non-traditional ink color helpful)" as one of her three, and Aliette de Bodard listed "A universe (basic idea of the thought system and where my MC is on the scale)."

Care to share your three? Not limited to writing--apply it to the creative endeavor of your choice.

A guy I follow on Twitter is doing a couple of polls about greens (the things you eat, not the members of the political party... I mean if you're a cannibal that distinction might not be valid but I suspect for most of you it is, plus--no capitalization!)

Here is a link.

For those of you as click-averse as I am, there are two groups of greens:

First group:

chard
collards
kale
spinach

Second group:

beet greens
cress
mustard greens
turnip greens

You have to choose your favorite for cooking in each group. (You can go vote if you want--it will add a new dimension to his polling base.)

So .... do you all have favorites? Opinions? Beloved recipes? I cook spinach, kale, and beet greens; I have cooked mustard greens now and then, and sometimes chard. I did not know you could *eat* turnip greens--it's an exciting new piece of information.

I have a short story that I'm going to self-publish--it's a New Year's Eve ghost story. Here's the cover!



The photo is by Mary Gordon, a Wyoming-based photographer. You can see more of her work on Flickr; she's gebodogs there. I searched on "ghostly highway" and her photo was perfect. (The original photo is horizontal rather than vertical--check it out here.)

Here's the very brief blurb (it's a very short story--about 3,880 words)

After catching her husband in the arms of another woman on New Year's Eve, Jolene spins out on the highway--but a mysterious stranger comes to her aid.

So.... when would be a good time to release this story?

(1) Now!

(2) Sometime closer to Christmas

(3) Between Christmas and New Year's

(4) Right before New Year's

(5) Some other time that you'll share in comments**

**Please don't specify a time in the past. I can't do that yet!