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"Linked" 
^ While I drew this in class, I was thinking of a short story from Maxine Hong Kingston. It is about a Taoist priest who has a special plan to create something so he asks this man named Tu Tzu-chun to eat three small pills. He told Tu: " All that you'll see and feel will be illusions. No matter what happens, don't speak; don't scream."(p.120) So Tu sees the fabled nine hells and sees his wife being tortured by demons and then he is tortured himself. Finally he experiences the third phase of being reborn. And the deities say " This man is too wicked to be reborn a man, let him be born a woman." (p.120) And then the story continues:
"He saw the entrance of a black tunnel and felt tired. He would have to squeeze his head and shoulders down into that enclosure and travel a long distance. He pushed head first through the entrance, only the beginning. A god kicked him the butt to give him a move on (this kick is the reason many Chinese babies have a blue-gray spot on their butts or lower backs, the 'Mongolian spot.') Sometimes stuck in the tunnel , sometimes shooting helplessly through it, he emerged again into light with many urgent things to do, many messages to deliver, but his hands were useless baby's hands, his legs, wobbly baby legs, his voice a wordless baby's cries. Years had to pass before he could gain adult powers; he howled as he began to forget the cosmos, his attention taken up with mastering how to crawl, how to stand, how to walk, how to control his bowel movements. He discovered that he had been reborn a deaf-mute female named Tu. When she became a woman, her parents married her to a man named Lu, who at first did not mind. 'Why does she need to talk, ' said Lu, 'to be a good wife? Let her set an example for women.' But years later, Lu tired of Tu's dumbness. 'You're just being stubborn,' he said, and lifted their child by the feet. 'Talk, or I'll dash its head against the rocks.' The poor mother held her hand to her mouth. Lu swung the child, broke its head against the wall. Tu shouted out, 'Oh! Oh! --- and he was back with the Taoist, who sadly told him that the moment when she had said 'Oh! Oh!' the Taoist was about to complete the last step in making the elixr for immortality. Now that Tu had broken his silence, the formula was spoiled, no immortality for the human race. "You overcame joy and sorrow, anger, fear, and evil desire, but not love," said the Taoist, and went on his way." (p. 120-21) So through the nine hells, and the torture of him and his wife, and various hardships..he was able to follow the taoists orders to not say a word but the last test was impossible, when he was a woman with a child. 
Chinese opera, --- a woman who is a man, a man who is a woman. No need to really distinguish. Watch Farewell My Concubine. _______________________________________________________________ FEB 6 2007 The rearrangeable art piece makes another appearance in 2007:  
We were talking about Aristotle and I drifted off to fairy land: 
-Michelle |
