universal solvent

You know what would clean that right up?  A million dollars.

grouchy

It is strange to watch Snow White straight through, as an adult, thinking of where it led, creatively.  The ambition is there, but all is in a creative state of becoming.  The movie is unsuccessful in so many ways, but alive to itself and adult in its muscular ambition as nothing that followed would be.  A glorious mess, and not very long.

paya

Burmese pagodas, or paya, taught me something about architecture.  I have a basically modern, western view of architecture - not surprisingly.  When I think about - or appreciate - the exterior form of a building, I think in large part of enclosure and purpose.  Enclosure: how is the exterior space resolving the problem of packaging the needed interior spaces.  Purpose: what is the function of the building - a consideration partly bound up in the question of enclosure.

In short, form follows function - the familiar formula.  Obviously there is more to my view of architecture than that, but that is a substantial part.

Burmese paya force me to think outside that formula.  First, the most typical and prominent type of paya has no interior spaces - it is a solid mass.  Second, its function chiefly to serve as an object of religious devotion - that is, to be looked at a certain way.  The modernist use of function to interpret or solve the visual breaks down under these two facts.

(To be sure, most paya entomb relics - sometimes of great importance, sometimes simply included in order to make the pagoda complete.  So I understand that there is something inside and that the paya functions as a kind of casket.  But these facts don't change my point because this sort of enclosure tells you nothing about exterior shape - because the things enclosed are so insignificant in mass relative to the whole paya that they tell you nothing about shape and because such a massive casket tells you nothing about the thing enclosed - any shape would work.)

So, what to make of a paya architecturally?  I think you have to think of them as highly elaborated devotional mounds.  (Some early paya are simply hemispherical mounds - others are sort of blobs - like Bupaya in Bagan.)

Well, first it is a raised mound - the foundation became square.  Second, it has a tapering, round top, or point, usually hatted with a "hti".  Square base, conical top.  That's the idea but without more it wouldn't look very good.

The builders wanted to integrate the square base with the cylindrical top, and they also wanted to complicate the ascending cone, to make it look good.  The basic task is to circle the square (going from the bottom up, which is certainly how you look at a paya, rather than top down).  Often this is done with elaborated octagons - beginning as squares with clipped corners at the bottom, and then modifying in ascending terraces towards a more rounded shape.  These complexes of octaganal terraces, almost square at the bottom, almost round by the time they give way to the actually round middle stages of the paya, can be very beautiful indeed.

The next task is to draw the cone into bulb-like sections that look good and to apply some decoration (roundels, crenellation, florets, etc.) that embellishes but does not overwhelm.  The effect, at its best, can be both somewhat flowerlike (like the bud of a waxy flower like a tulip or lily) and somehow anthropomorphic - almost like the shoulders of a person giving way to the neck, then the head.

So, it comes down to proportion, the quality of the transition from base to spire, and the beauty of the banding, bulbing and sculptural decoration.  Shwedagon comes out very well by these standards, as does Ananda. 

And there is a sort of template - well-funded modern paya tend to show up in Shwedagon-like proportions that offer no novelty, and often no delight, but are competent, pleasing and safe.  With these, the eye therefore is drawn chiefly to the quality of execution, use of materials, and selection of site.

onyx sculpture

Productive stubbornness is an art.  The art is in having adamantine firmness, but placed and timed with flexibility and finesse.

announcement

On the 6 train, at City Hall this weekend.  We stop, doors open and we hold.  The conductor: "There is no express service this weekend.  You see that 5 going to come in over there?  That's a local.  He's leaving first."

To a New Yorker this is quite dull.  But nowhere else is the subway set up this way - locals and express trains; conductors with snappy information.

Burma in view

Yenangyaung 5

Burmese culture is diverse and multiethnic, so the food is also diverse, and Burmese I met eat (and often cook) right across the various ethnic cuisines, plus the bordering cuisines of Thailand, China and India.

I think that is part of why the ordinary run of the Burmese population shows no awareness that a Westerner eats different food, or that a Westerner might have a hard time with some of the foods on offer.  After all, when Burmese travel within the country, they tend to hunger for the local specialties cooked where they're going.  So to a guest, they serve up the best, and what they imagine you most want, which is the town's specialties.  When they travel, they want the local specialty, so why wouldn't you?

Fortunately, I'm up for this, but as in any culture, "specialties" tend to be further up the scale of food difficulty.  To take an extreme example, I was served a rat and ate it - at least it was deep fried and not different than any other fried meat.

Now, as you move up the social scale in Burma, you quickly hit families that are aware of Western taste in food, and Western difficulty with some Burmese seasonings, and often they have a taste for Western food themselves.  So they will often serve a Western or Thai meal, or at least a bland one. (Thai cuisine being correctly seen as common ground, foodwise.)

Now, the real point.  Some of the most charming families and hosts in Burma are part of the thin middle class - retired professionals on modest but solid pensions and such.  They sit between those who serve up the local specialty and think nothing of it and those who attempt to serve a western meal.

This charming band of the population is the toast belt.  Without fail, in our trip, when we would visit such a family, I would be offered toast and jelly, along with whatever else was being put out.  These were houses that plainly did not, usually or ever, have sliced bread and jelly in the pantry - they went to buy it special, and I'm not sure how they managed that sometimes - outside Yangon and Mandalay, I never saw toast and jelly in stores.  Either it's in town stores I didn't see, or they asked city relations to buy it and had it transported (probably by bus cargo, which is common in Burma).  I'd bet the latter.

So when a middle class Burmese family asks itself what to serve the visiting Westerner, the answer is: toast!

Yenangyaung 4

In Burma, friends and relatives really touch and hold each other.  It isn't in any way sexual - in fact it is beautiful and comforting and natural.  You see it on the street - two guys going down the street, not just arm in arm, but each with an arm over the other's shoulder, and the other arms clasped - really interlocking.  And you see it at home with family - everyone sprawled out on the floor, arms on one another's legs, hands on one another's knees.  It felt very good.

There is an etiquette through it though.  The most interesting element of which is that the "appropriate" or "touchable" parts of your body are basically the sides.  The front centerline of your body, running from the neck down to the groin, is avoided.  Outer thighs are in bounds and much touched.  The personal boundary is vertical - the left and right sides of your body, along with your whole shoulderline.

Contrast this with the western division of the body into personal zones, which is horizontal - basically the waistline, or the neckline.

Yenangyaung 3

Of the many Buddhist payas (pagodas) in Yenangyong, the most interesting is the one on the top of a hill that collapsed a few months back.  For payas entomb treasures, and ancient ones contain what is known only by legend, or not at all.  For to deconstruct a paya and look within is accursed.

The gilded brick cracked and finally collapsed, of its own accord.  Revealed within what had been perhaps five stories high was another paya, ornate and of marble, perhaps two stories high - like a Russian Doll - along with caskets of jewels, the beads and buttons and teeth of old, once revered, now forgotten monks, and perhaps a thousand of lead and silver figures - the king and his court, in miniature.

The paya is being rebuilt, but in cave form, rather than solid, so that the marble paya within remains accessible.  This is permitted.  But the jewels and figures and beads and buttons and teeth will be bricked back into the structure, both kept and forgotten, both treasured and lost, within.

Yenangyaung 2

In Yenangyong I sit and visit with older friends and relations, drinking tea, outside the shop, watching the sun go down and traffic go by.

The younger crowd come back from playing chinlone, a game played with a wicker ball, a kind of kick ball.  One older fellow, in his forties, leads the pack.  He's the captain of their team, and they play most nights, over at one of the monasteries.  "We won." he tells me, "Look - a 60 watt bulb - the prize!"  And he holds out the bulb for me to admire, and I congratulate him and the team of kids.  Everyone is happy - with the win and with the prize.

Yenangyaung 1

We travel deep into the Burman heartland, to Yenangyong, a small town hugging either side of a strip of rural highway: unpaved, packed dirt, with steady traffic carts, horses, ragged trucks, constant dust, and numberless stray dogs. 

We are welcomed warmly by local friends and relations, and that evening, the tent goes up outside their old shop and home, blocking part of the highway.  Through that tent will pass the Buddhist monks of the town's several monasteries: a donation of food.  The family prepares rice and coffee, pickles and sweets: enough to feed eight hundred.  A band from a neighboring town has been hired to play.

Early the next morning, not quite four a.m., the donation begins.  The tent is brightly lit, roped with colored lights, but the rest of the street is dark - dark and still. 

Out from that dark, the monks begin to come.  Lining up in the unseen distance, wearing their dark saffron robes, silent, faces held in practiced neutrality, but individual personalities still showing.

They come nearer, and the hired band begins to play: gongs and reeded instruments, drums and singers - a woman and a girl.  The beautiful, lurching, loud music of traditional Burma, with it's rhythm of ebb --- rush --- ebb --- rush --- ebb --- crash, each rush filled with its own internal rhythm.  The woman and girl wail, each song telling a sad song of love.

The first great vat of rice is uncovered, heaved by three men onto the stand, and the elder relations pair off at each station, beginning with the rice.  One scoops the rice with a special wooden measure - used only for this kind of donation - and another takes each monk's alms bowl, holds it out to receive the measure of rice, shakes the bowl to even the rice, and hands it back to the monk.  And then the next, and the next.  Another relation cries out "Welcome; It's a blessing!" to each monk; and another keeps count of how many monks have been served.  Further down the line, under the tent, more relations hand out the smaller items of food, placing them on the now-covered alms bowls of rice.  Some are too old and frail to hold their bowl, so another monk carries his and his own both. 

The line moves forward, and moves on.  One sees a small group of senior monks, abbots holding black fans indicating rank, on the opposite road, somehow coordinating the line, or perhaps only observing.  I cannot tell.  Later they will be invited into the donors' home to pray, intercede for the stroke-ridden uncle within, and eat a more elaborate meal.

Standing apart, senior nuns, heads shaved in the same manner as the monk in their pink and orange robes.  When the last of the hundreds of monks, stragglers now, has gone, the nuns begin their line, keeping five monks' space between the first of the nuns and the last, tardy monk.  It is almost six.

The nuns, like the monks, are mostly between five years old and perhaps thirty.  I am told they are, with few exceptions, orphans or from parents who could not feed them.  They are the sanctified poor, the least made holy, sheltered in monasteries, clothed in robes, fed by donation, educated through charity.  Most will leave their religious orders eventually to work or marry.  A few will remain to serve in monastic duties, and die penniless but revered.

The nuns today are fewer in number, and not quite two hundred will eventually come.  They receive the same measure as the monks.  What is left for the light of day will be given to the beggars, who already squat with their children, up on a small hill, waiting and watching.

I walk down the dark street and find that the monks' and nuns' line assembles not far away from the tent - not far into the darkness.

There, the nuns queue.  Towards the rear, a very young nun, perhaps not even five, breaks suddenly from the pack and lunges into the street, menaced by a stray dog almost as tall as she.  The dogs' teeth are bared, inches from her own face, and she forgets everything else, but turns to face a truck, loaded with lumber, bearing down on her, close, fast, its headlights showing her face, eyes and mouth all open in wide terror, legs frozen with fear, the dog still hard upon her.

My throat constricts and my legs tense to run.  But already an older nun has swooped in, grips the girl's shoulder, and heaves her back to safety, where she folds the frightened girl into her own robes, comforting and shielding her.  It all happens in two or three seconds.  The dust thrown up by the passing truck settles.

I weep.  They move on, up towards the donation tent.  A dog, a truck, and an orphan child, threatened and rescued.  Dogs; trucks: all that menaces in animal nature and in the world of humankind bore down on her, the nightmares of children made actual.  And just as suddenly she is saved and comforted.  May she be kept so.