Taomeow

LOL, NAJA, they don't eat their pets in Japan, they just have no room for them and most landlords enforce a no pets policy. "Deprived" is a fact of life -- they love pets, and there's a thriving chain of cat cafes in Tokyo where people come to feed cats, not eat them. Someone just brought me back a brochure from such a cafe. They keep about fifty cats on premises, all kinds, and the business is booming. People buy cat snacks for the equivalent of $4 a pop -- gladly. Then some form bonds with this or that cat, and the owners start blogs for these customers keeping them informed of the cat's daily activities: "Dear Sakurai-san, guess what Meowmeow did today..." I found this whole set-up profoundly sad.

Tokyo's four districts house millions with no pets, cat deprived, dogless.

Yup. But if you didn't transcend whatever one is supposed to transcend from solving a koan right on the spot, the koan is still unsolved. So here's a few more possible solutions: Tsao-shan is a mountain. If a person who is difficult to change climbs a mountain, will the mountain adapt to his rigid ways? Or: If the mountain won't come to Mohammed, he shouldn't sit there waiting. Or: tao is flexible, tao is change. Whoever won't be flexible and won't change can't follow tao. Or, "I'm busy and you're bothering me with your silly questions." And so on. Great soporific indeed. Not only that. Scientific fact: if you have a song stuck in your head and can't get rid of it, the best way to counteract this is to try solving a riddle. The song gets turned off!

When our hearts are full and our stomachs are empty: best time for taiji.

Yun-men asked: "If a person who is difficult to change should come to you, would you receive him?" The master answered: "Tsao-shan has no such leisure."

Pardon moi, oui oui? Il pleure dans mon coeur comme il pleut sur la ville, oui.

Have you tested your victory over arachnophobia on a Goliath tarantula?

An interlude: Taomeow on Coffee and Ayahuasca Getting from Iquitos to the shaman's place in the depth of the rain forest took us almost the whole day. We traveled first by a rickety motor rickshaw (there's no cars in Iquitos because there's no roads connecting it to anything else -- you fly in, you fly out, and if you want to get elsewhere, it's the river or your own foot.) Then a nifty little scooter. Then, leaving the scooter in a house in a nearby village, by a rickety mini-bus, last stop at the last inhabited little settlement. From there on foot through the jungle, walking for hours, half asleep from a monster jetlag. Tired to the bone, we arrived in the early evening, and were shown to our place of residence, a wooden hut on stilts, with a steep ladder leading to the entrance. My companions went to the maloca, the ceremonies building, to talk to the shaman, while I decided to take a nap -- first things first. I took off my tall rubber boots (the terrain was muddy in places from the recent rain season, which was supposed to be over, but that's a separate story.) As soon as I did, a tarantula the diameter of a Frisbee flying disk appeared out of some nether depth under the bed and firmly positioned itself between me and the exit. I'd seen a live tarantula before, in a glass box, the size of a child's palm, de-fanged and kept as a pet by a deranged friend of a friend in LA. This one was no pet however -- it was wild. The size alone was enough to have one re-evaluate everything she'd ever thought she knew about the nature and purpose of the universe. And then there was the blackness, the furriness, the menace, the unreadable immobility after a lightning-fast dash, the... THE tarantula. My first encounter with a life form of the rain forest had to be THE tarantula to end all tarantulas. I screamed out a telepathic S.O.S.. We were two statues, the tarantula and me, I was afraid to breathe, it (he? she?) was apparently scrutinizing me for food value, we were both in suspended animation, each for her own reasons. A minute passed. Then I heard someone climbing the ladder. An Indian woman, small, elderly, smiling, climbed in, carrying a pot of coffee. Just a second before her appearance, the tarantula promptly hid under one of the rubber boots I'd just dropped on the floor, the one that was lying flat. "There's a tarantula," I whispered to the Indian lady. She smiled and nodded, and set the coffee pot on the table, making an inviting gesture: for you! "No, you don't understand, a tarantula... right there..." I whispered frantically, pointing at the rubber boot. The woman, predictably and now obviously, didn't understand or speak a word of English, but she did look at the boot with encouraging curiosity, and asked something in an unfamiliar language. "What?" I whispered, pantomiming incomprehension. She translated into Spanish: "La serpiente?" "No! No serpiente! La tarantula!" I must have pronounced the word with a wrong inflection or a wrong stress, because she still didn't understand. She made a very good impersonation of a snake, coiling her arm as though slithering through space, and looked at me inquisitively -- is that what you're talking about? She proceeded with a pantomime I understood perfectly well. You're afraid of snakes? You're worried a snake will crawl into your boot? Well, it's the Amazonian rain forest... shrug. "No!" I made the best impersonation of a tarantula I could muster. I spread my arms and legs wide and made a little crawling dance, then pointed at the boot, then danced the tarantula dance some more, pointed, danced... She finally got it. "La tarántula?" "Si! Si!" ...to be continued...

Oh, sorry. Here's in letters of your tradition: Na more-okiyane lezhit bel Alatyr'-kamen', a na kamne nebesnaya sila. Poidu ya poblizhe, pokloniyus' ponizhe: Sily nebesniye! Poshlite vashu pomoshch' i silu na nash skot, milyi zhivot, v chistoye pole, v zelyoniye luga, v tyomniye lesa.

I am reluctant to offer a protective spell for humans against similar mishaps, since apparently such transformation, according to the mother of the accidental recipient, could be a blessing in disguise, and I wouldn't want to take away anyone's bliss in exploring possible advantages of joining a different species. However, for those who wish to safeguard their pet animals, aquarium fish, and/or cattle from an onslaught of transformers, wolves in sheep's skin and humans in frog's skin and mutilating aliens and GM meddlers, here's a protective spell: На море-окияне лежит бел Алатырь камень, а на камне небесная сила. Пойду я поближе, поклонюсь пониже: Силы небесные! Пошлите вашу помощь и силу на наш скот, милый живот, в чистое поле, в зеленые луга, в темные леса.

I'll make a video I think.

Money -- a small or medium-sized cezve can be bought for under $20 and is going to last forever. A coffee grinder, ditto. The rest is smart shopping. Trader Joe's carries "Joe" -- medium roast -- 100% arabica -- 14 oz. for under $5. This, if you don't intend to go professional on your coffee, is decent coffee, I promise, and is quite a bit cheaper cup for cup than to imbibe at Starbuck's. Also, Thelerner is indeed wonderful but the post he offered in the OP entry was mine, copied from some discussion in the general forum. (I still have doubts about the title he gave this thread -- "Taomeow on coffee" sounds a bit like "Mary on crack" -- can be read either way. And if anyone thinks Taomeow on coffee is not humanity's greatest specimen, wait till you meet Taomeow OFF coffee... )

There's also harari which is on the sour side, I think I mentioned that I find a mix of 80% arabica with 20% harari optimal. I don't use robusta, no disrespect intended to this particular bean, smallish and usually Asian produced -- India grows most robustas that get to the market I think, or at least used to -- I just don't have a reason to seek it out. The level of bitterness that is objectionable in any variety is usually achieved via overroasting (I had a post in this thread regarding the reasons for, and multiple disadvantages of, dark roasts.) Put plainly, it's the taste of burned material. If this happened to my steak, I'd throw it away. Burned parts of food items often form strong carcinogens, among other things. So all the numerous health benefits of coffee may go up in smoke in the overroasted varieties. ("Dark" or "light" does not refer to a particular type of bean, only to the type of roast.) It is indeed classified as "bitter" which is actually good news, since American and European diets in general are drastically deficient in the Bitter taste (which in TCM "nourishes the Heart"), and coffee, for many, is just about the only source. But the level of bitterness in ordinarily encountered overroasted coffees, or the ones served in any coffee shop (of which only corporate ones seem to survive -- Starbucks, Peet's, The Coffee Bean, etc. -- to say nothing of non-specialized ones that make a brew far inferior to even these) is uncalled for. It's all about quality -- dark roasts mask stale moldy tastes with an overpowering note of excessive bitterness. That's not what coffee is meant to taste like. As for letting it boil, that's a culinary crime, since it destroys not only the flavor but also the antioxidants.

Thank you for the reference. It may have been translated into my native tongue, which has many non-overlapping-with-English translations of taoist sources, so I'll check it out. Or I will ask my teacher. As for clinical examples of where wuxing may be irrelevant, I'd really like to see one of those if you have the time to present one at some point. I'm sure that many can be practically addressed like that (I do it all the time with some my own practices when I'm in a hurry), but I'd really like to try analyzing it to see what (if any) additional benefits may still be derived from the wuxing perspective. Perchance you might be curious too, no? Also, the "rumor" that TCM is not practiced quite the traditional way by most these days is not something I picked up from Western sources. It is the opinion of a taoist TCM traditionalist in China with whom I was lucky to have some fruitful interactions. He had it taught to him both ways -- the traditional (one on one with teachers, two TCM, one taoist, with MA on the side) and then the modern way (fulfilling the requirements of a standard curriculum) and in his opinion they are far from the same. Besides, I've met many TCM practitioners here in the US who were MDs in China and, just because they couldn't or wouldn't make it as MDs here, practice TCM exclusively now -- in the shape and form they learned it in med school -- i.e. on the side. No?.. Oh, and I don't blame the Communists, I blame Rockefeller, who invested countless millions (at the time, equivalent to what would perhaps be billions today) into breaking it in the early 20th century. But that of course is a totally separate discussion.

I am in opposition to non-dairy creamers because of all the unhealthy stuff they are made of. If you want un-altered coffee flavor with no bitterness and no milk in it, just make sure your beans are roasted light or medium rather than dark, "french" or "espresso," and don't be afraid of sugar.

Ghee is very easy to make, one of the easiest recipes. I prefer butter in my coffee after all, I just ran out, hence ghee. As a rule, I like to use ghee in cooking (especially mixed half and half with coconut oil -- the secret of the most celebrated French chefs I'm told, and I believe it too), but not as a substitute for butter in or on anything already ready, its buttery flavor is a tad too strong. I never use milk in my own coffee, but if I drink it elsewhere, then I do (half and half), to smooth down the ubiquitous bitterness of not-me-made coffee.

It seldom happens that a work of genius is translated by another genius, and that's the source of all our troubles when reading/contemplating/dabbling in translating works of genius written in another language. It seldom happens, even, that a work of genius translated by another genius comes out as a work of genius! Mostly, it doesn't! I know many examples of very mediocre translated poetry that is considered work of genius in the original, done by poets who are considered geniuses in their own original work. It seldom happens, moreover, that even a work of genius translated by the genius himself/herself who happens to be considered a genius in his work in TWO languages is as good as the original! Case in point: Vladimir Nabokov. A classic of two literatures, he used to be my inspiration (hehe... many moons ago), so I read most of what he wrote in Russian, most of what he wrote in English, and all the works he wrote in English and translated into Russian and all the works he wrote in Russian and translated into English himself. Whoa! He can't be as good as himself when he's a translator, regardless of which of the two languages whose castles he's the king of (forget "proficiency...") is the source language. In every case, he winds up writing a rather different book, a good one -- but not as good as his own original! However, doing stuff of this nature has taught him how to be a very, very good translator. So what does he do with "You are old, Father William, the young man said, and..." and so on?.. Whoa! He translates it as "Tell me, Uncle, it's not for nothing that..." and so on. What is going on?.. Why is he doing this?.. Because he is a genius, and that's why he doesn't translate by studying a dictionary and then reciting it like a learned parrot. No. He translates with his whole cultural background of profundity and expanse, and he's at home in this vast kingdom and therefore he translates out of this freedom born of competence and ease. He is not looking for the most precise word -- a useless endeavor, because "when complexity strikes, meaningful definitions lose precision and precise definitions lose meaning," as the father of the mathematical theory of fuzzy logic once pronounced, to my delight. He is looking for the most precise impact on the reader's comprehension, he is phasing in the reader's own cultural scope for this, he is stepping out of himself and looking at the line he's translating through the eyes of a person who -- for all practical purposes -- can't tell Father William from chopped liver, because Father William is not part of his own cultural background. Does this reader, this person, need to know who Father William is so as to understand what the poem is about? Nope... he needs to experience what the native reader experiences when reading this line. The native reader immediately recognizes the style and knows what to expect (and that's how this particular poem, a parody of this particular style, works and gets to be funny -- funnier than if it were to stand on its own without harking back to a literary tradition it makes fun of): many a didactic poem starts out with a young naive protagonist coming to a wise old man for this or that kind of input, elucidation, advice, tale-telling, etc. -- whereupon the old man launches a didactic monologue or tells the story which the author uses this particular literary device in order to tell, and so forth. So... In English, "You are old, Father William, the young man said" will be recognized by a native speaker as a doorway into this particular literary device. Whereas in Russian, we have our own didactic poems stylistically identical to this one, built with the use of the same tools, and one of them happens to be famous enough to be immediately recognized by any native Russian speaker, and it goes, "Tell me, Uncle, it's not for nothing that..." Voila! That's how the very first line in Nabokov's translation sets the right mood, the mood of parody, which would be totally lost if he dutifully replicated the dictionary and translated "precisely" the useless-in-Russian old Father William, robbing the readers of the delight of recognition and anticipation. What I'm driving at is, Laozi himself couldn't translate his work into English without doing stuff like that, without doing it this way! Doing it this way is the single most difficult thing in the world for a writing genius to do. But doing it any other way is a waste of time. The "idea," the "flavor," the "my take" -- that's fine, I can live with reading a work of genius in the translation and knowing that the translation gets me as far as it can and no farther. But belittling another translator for failing to look up exactly this and being clueless as to the precise meaning of that is seldom warranted, since the actual difference between a very precise translation by a learned parrot and a very inspired one by a free-flowing imperfect, imprecise, talented and spirited translator is perhaps a mere 5% improvement in the latter over the barren, dry, bureacratic accounting of the former. The spirited translation is actually going to take one closer than the bureacratic one (for something like a "cultural background" and "literary taste" and "historic perspective" and the rest of what goes into "comprehension" are nothing if not fuzzy-logical), but not close enough, never close enough... unless we're dealing with a unique situation of a translator's genius surpassing that of the author while including it in its entirety. And now the poem I used to illustrate my point... This poem from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Chapter V became far more popular than the poem it was parodying, The Old Man's Comforts and How He Gained Them by Robert Southey. "You are old, Father William," the young man said, "And your hair has become very white; And yet you incessantly stand on your head— Do you think, at your age, it is right?" "In my youth," Father William replied to his son, "I feared it might injure the brain; But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none, Why, I do it again and again." "You are old," said the youth, "As I mentioned before, And have grown most uncommonly fat; Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door— Pray, what is the reason of that?" "In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks, "I kept all my limbs very supple By the use of this ointment—one shilling the box— Allow me to sell you a couple?" "You are old," said the youth, "And your jaws are too weak For anything tougher than suet; Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak— Pray, how did you manage to do it?" "In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law, And argued each case with my wife; And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw, Has lasted the rest of my life." "You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose That your eye was as steady as ever; Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose— What made you so awfully clever?" "I have answered three questions, and that is enough," Said his father; "don't give yourself airs! Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff? Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!"

The best way to make the best tasting shrimp (IMO of course): buy it fresh not frozen, wild not farm raised, and whole with heads, or fuhgeddaboudit; make a quick vegetable broth (a small amount only enough to cover stuff, it gets discarded later) with a carrot, an onion, half a bunch of parsley or a parsnip, a couple of bay leaves, a handful of cracked black peppercorns; cook for 15-20 minutes, then fish out and discard the vegetables; add as much salt as you would for to make the brine for half sour pickles (don't know the measurements, sorry, I dip my tongue in it... it has to be too salty for to eat, but not so salty as to burn your tongue when you sample it); throw the shrimp, whole, into boiling salted broth; bring back to boil, reduce heat so it doesn't overboil, cover loosely with a lid, cook on high simmer/low boil for exactly 4 minutes. (If the shrimp are very tiny, make it 3 minutes, if humongous, 5, but the last bit is theoretical -- I've never been able to buy humongous shrimp with heads intact. Overcooking turns shrimp rubbery, you're after tender, so don't space out on it.) The reason you don't want headless shrimp is twofold -- removing the head allows the seller to make less-than-fresh shrimp appear fresher (it starts spoiling from the head), AND you can never achieve the taste of the whole shrimp cooked this way if it has no head and consequently absorbs and later loses the broth through a hole instead of getting misted in it via osmosis. Then there's many ways to handle the resulting cooked shrimp -- you can peel it and add it to your dishes, but it's usually so good that you want to eat it like you would a lobster, for its own sake. You can dip it in butter and sprinkle it with lemon juice if you like, but avoid strong-tasting seasonings, they will overpower and kill the subtle flavor you're after in this particular recipe. Oh, and if you drink beer, do get one with this dish, it's a match made in heaven.

When I was doing my (rather brief) stint with TKD, the school had a schedule, Korean army style, and you were supposed to pass a test every three months. The test was essentially breaking boards -- first with this kick, then with that kick, then with a punch, and then a different one, and so on. I've seen people fail at this, but it surprised me, because the wood, though pretty thick (and not "molested" in any way, not pre-sawed or anything ) was very dry, and probably not the toughest kind, so a kick executed exactly as we were taught produced the required result. I do remember screwing up the punch though the first time I did this -- I broke the piece of wood all right, but I wasn't careful enough to do it with two knuckles only and involved a third one, from the ring finger. O U C H. It hurt for months afterwards. Whoever broke the board successfully was awarded the pieces, I accumulated a small stack in the garage, and later used them to make some shelves for my vitamins...

Any which coffee beats no coffee, hands down.

I sampled coffee everywhere I've been, and still like the version I learned how to make in Armenia best. It's essentially "Turkish," but you are not asked to chew on the grinds, which I don't see the point of at all, and also pre-mixing coffee with sugar is far superior to adding sugar to the ready brew or not using it at all. (The second best way IMO is to have a lump of sugar on the side if you brew it without, but it's hard to find the old-fashioned kind that doesn't disintegrate right away and behaves more like a piece of hard candy.) So, the difference is, you grind it almost, but not quite, as finely as for Turkish, and then when it's ready, you either wait a couple of minutes to let the sediment settle on the bottom before pouring it carefully into the cup, or if you can't wait, use a fine strainer to pour it through. The cezve method is easy and simple, but the first couple of times one would want to see someone experienced do it, because timing is everything here and this has to be seen, not told. I'll look around youtube later to see if anyone has a video of the precisely timed "correct coffee," if not, maybe I'll make one.

Oh, forgot to mention one more thing among the new developments. This one is very important, and I am a bit ashamed of myself for ignoring it for so many years even though I should have figured it out myself. I was discussing things coffee with a friend who is French, from an upward-mobile peasant family in Western Alps, with whom we've often exchanged memories and recipes of "good hearty meals." He mentioned that coffee in those parts, as well as everywhere else he remembers drinking it in the general vicinity of Lake Geneva, is always served (usually very strong) with a tall glass of water (no ice, of course). You drink water in between your coffee sips to compensate for its strong drying effects. Duh! Brilliant, why didn't I think of it before! Coffee is indeed very drying and some people feel it right away (especially if they drink very strong coffee, the way I do). So now I drink it ONLY like that.

Right now I'm drinking mine with ghee I made out of Kerrygold . Raw organic butter is the best but I realize it's not widely available (we have one store nearby that carries it, from a local source). As for which is tastier, ghee or Kerrygold, I think it's a matter of personal preference. Kerrygold is perhaps one of TJ's big fortes, I buy it all the time (not just for coffee and not just for ghee) -- just make sure you get the unsalted variety. Oh and do report back on your findings!

It worked for me just now! Said hi to NAJA, so whoever is around could do likewise.

What do you think it is?