bedraggled buildings:
nature digests what it eats
ever so slowly.
Slow Burn [Senryū]
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Category Archives: culture
Nature Overwrites Culture [Haiku]
saplings sprout
from the ornate trim
of a once-grand mosque.
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Stump Gator [Kyōka]
Gator rests on stump.
but my mind cannot rest.
it's not "gator"
and "stump" in the same place,
but in the same sentence.
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BOOK: “The American Claimant” by Mark Twain
The American Claimant by Mark TwainMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Free at Project Gutenberg
This is one of Twain’s lesser-known books, but it’s not for lack of Twain’s signature humor and cleverness. Like “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” it shines a light (often satirically) on what it means to be American via a fish-out-of-water storyline. In this case, there is no “magic teleportation” of a character to an alternate world. Here, a progressive British aristocrat ends up in working class America, while a flighty American who dabbles in get-rich-quick schemes — Mulberry Sellers (the titular “American Claimant”) — ends up playing at being an aristocrat, but in America.
As the book highlights the difference between class-conscious Britain and egalitarian America, it shows that deep down America isn’t always as egalitarian as it projects to be. This insight is largely conveyed through the experience of “Howard Tracy” (the pseudonym of Viscount Berkeley, the progressive aristocrat who gives up his title to assume an identity in blue-collar America, only to find that it is not the utopia of equality he’d come to believe it to be.)
If you enjoy humorous stories, I’d highly recommend this book. It may take a moment to get into the story, but — ultimately — it’s an enjoyable read.
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Chinatown [Senryū]
through the paifang*,
you leave your city,
but you're not in China.
*A paifang (牌坊) is the gate over a street or road that denotes the bounds of a Chinatown.
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PROMPT: Cultural Heritage
What aspects of your cultural heritage are you most proud of or interested in?
I’m not sure whether this prompt is directed toward the culture of my ancestors (Irish) or the culture in which I was raised (American.) If it is the former, then the answer is certainly the great literary and poetic talent that was born of the culture (i.e. Yeats, Wilde, Shaw, Heaney, Beckett, Joyce, etc.) But if it is the latter, then it is certainly the great literary and poetic talent that was born of the culture (i.e. Whitman, Poe, Hemingway, Hughes, Twain, Dickinson, Faulkner, etc.)
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PROMPT: Traveled from Home
Daily writing prompt
Share a story about the furthest you’ve ever traveled from home.
”Home” and “away” lost all meaning long ago, becoming a false dichotomy. “Furthest” is likely presumed to mean the most distant in space, but that is not always the greatest mental distance. Sometimes a place changes while you were away, and that shift through time becomes the most jarring distance.
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BOOK: “How to be an Alien” by George Mikes
How to Be an Alien: A Handbook for Beginners and Advanced Pupils by George MikesMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher Site – Penguin
This book is hilarious… unless you’re British — in which case it probably reads like a swift kick in the crotch. Well, if you’re from continental Europe, many of the comparisons with Britian are no more favorable to Europe and are just as comically searing. But if you’re American, it’s a laugh riot. Well, except for when it delivers reminders of the absurdity of xenophobia, triggering realizations that one’s own country is in the midst of a crisis of that malady. However, the book is not primarily a rebuke of xenophobia, but rather an accounting of what immigrants to Britain find strange and unwieldy about their new country.
George Mikes, born Mikes György, was a journalist and humorist of Hungarian birth who lived most of his life in England, and it’s this experience that the author draws upon to describe of what immigrants to Britain must accustom themselves.
Among Mikes’ prolific body of writings, there are a number that take this form — humor disguised as a how-to guide. The first one that I read was How to Be God, which was his last such book. The book under review was his first and continues to be the most popular.
I’d highly recommend this book for humor readers… unless you’re British… or European… or are experiencing dread over the Pheonix-like rebirth of xenophobia in the world. If there’s any one left after that who reads in English, this is the book for you.
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PROMPT: Traditions
All of them. As a traveler, I am more an anthropologist of traditions than a practitioner of them.
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PROMPT: Comfort Food
It depends on where I am. I recently discovered that my Busan comfort food is “Hotteok with seeds.” In Central Asia, it’s tandoor bread — by whatever name it’s called in the local tongue. In Tblisi, it’s khinkali. In Peru, a lomo saltado is a beautiful thing. Chicago is the only place I’ll eat a hotdog, but I do love one there.
As a traveler, I find it’s important to not get attached to any one thing. If you crave a bagel, you’re great if you’re in New York or Tel Aviv, but if you insist on one in Hyderabad, it will be a sad experience. But, by the same token, if you order Chicken Biryani in Des Moines, expect to be underwhelmed (or — if not — to pay an exorbitant amount, either way it’s depressing.)
Probably the single most widespread comfort food would be whatever the local dumpling is, be it called mo-mo, khinkali, pierogi, dim sum, etc. All quite unique, but with an underlying familiarity.
So, in the immortal words of (the apparently quite slutty) Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, “If you can’t be with the one you love… love the one you’re with.”
Tiger Riding for Beginners 