Digging in the Mud and Sand

Thru some strange happenstance, I found myself in Gamagori at a small beach hanging out with other whiteys on Saturday. Shef had rented a boat and was periodically taking people out into the bay; I opted to stay behind with the grill and work on my sunburn.

After awhile, we got bored, and started digging through the silt for clams and mussels to grill. As the tide went out, the ancient locals were busy tearing up the beach looking for shellfish, yet finding very little. I couldn't for the life of me reason why as most of the clams and mussels we found we simply plucked out of the water. As it turns out, pretty much all of the Japanese present were digging for oysters and not really finding any. It seemed a shame as there were delicious mussels aplenty.

In an effort to piece together what I think about things, lately I've been reading Lao Zi in considerable depth (and thus ignoring most of the useless commentaries people have written) and searching for videos on Youtube of all those bands I listened to in high school (think bland Seattle alt rock and Midwest industrial and you pretty much will have conjured my 9th grade mixed tapes). Lao Zi, I hate to admit, seems much more relevant.

道可道，
非常道。
名可名，
非常名。

It's the very first thing he says, so simple yet completely incomprehensible: "the way you can way is not the real way; the name you can name is not the real name." I choose this (meaningless) translation as a foil to what I've come to realize is the predominant stream in English translations of classical Chinese texts, which would render the above as "the Tao that can be defined, is not the Eternal Tao" (yes, even with the lame, random capitalization) "the Name that can be named, is not the Eternal Name." What the foo-foo translation misses is that 道 is being used as both a noun and a verb, which is perfectly normal, thus ruining the force of the repetition of those syllables. Lao zi takes what is a perfectly normal word and makes it seem peculiar by rehearsal. Say the word melon over and over to yourself and after awhile it takes on a kind of surreal yet meaningless aura, for lack of a better word.

But let's take the mundane reading one step farther. In modern Chinese--and Japanese as well--the phrase 非常 simply means "unusual" (though in Japanese it also means "emergency" as in 非常口, an "emergency exit") or "peculiar." If we superimpose that meaning back on our translation, we get something like "the way you can way, is a peculiar way; the name you can name, is a peculiar name." Which is to say, the way you go is the only option open to you; like an emergency exit, you're pretty much stuck with what you've got, lest you die in a fire like a moron. And because peculiarity in this language is also associated with greatness, it's tempting to see the one way, the one name you've chosen for yourself as the ideal.

This is the trap the old ladies fell into. In the grand scheme of shellfish, oysters > mussels, oysters become the one path, thus they walk away from a beach teaming with edible life, empty handed.

My friends and I, with our varying degrees of fluency, stepped into the water with little intention but to wet our feet and splash each other. We came back to the grill with a frisbee piled high with mussels that everyone agreed were the tastiest of all the foods we'd cooked.