A Tongue for Tea

I was the one to go and pick the little one up from the dentist today.  Before she can get braces, she’ll had to have her teeth cleaned and of course they found some cavities.  I waited in the lobby till the nurse showed us back in to consult with the dentist who introduced herself as Dr. “Sung” (sp?) and before she had spoken three words, I was sure she was Korean.  My daughter, who is studying Korean for fun, sat there listening.  After learning about the beastly holes she intended to fill there was a pause and I asked her where she was from, confirming that she hailed from Seoul, confirming as well that there was no good Korean food within miles of where we lived, but it was only then, that my daughter piped up and spoke to her in Korean, which appropriately caught the Doc off guard.  I asked her later why she hadn’t engaged her earlier on and apparently the woman checked the teeth, and left rather abruptly. 

She’s reading excerpts of Plato’s “Republic” for her eleventh grade philosophy class.  I think I was around that age when I’d tried to read it for myself and for some reason I remember being intimidated, finding it impenetrable.  I went out and got myself a copy to read along with her and was surprised   to find out how approachable the conversation al tone was.  Socrates leads the young, largely compliant group of friends on a discussion to build an ideal society from scratch.

 

Today had a call with that teacher whom I hadn’t met before.  A nice gentleman, he was sitting in front of a shelves of books, the same as me.  We’d traded a few notes beforehand and I’d shared with him the chapter by David Keightley I’d read recently, comparing Mycenean Greece with Shang China: why were the funerary sites in China so much more rich than those in Greece?  Why did the Greeks mythologize about patricide when the Chinese idealized filial piety?  I asked him and he said he had been to China once, for a conference on philosophy and though he’d gone hoping to discuss Chinese thinkers, everyone there wanted to talk about the western work he already knew well.   And when I asked him if he’d been to Greece he shared an unfortunate tale of a dream trip with the family that was cancelled at the last minute due to Covid. 

 

It’s the penultimate day of the weekly fast and the light is in site at the end of the tunnel.  Tomorrow we have a pizza Friday, and I can almost taste it.  Black coffee all day long, which doesn’t taste very good, no matter how warm it is in the afternoon.  The last time we’d gone to a Chinese market I’d picked up a pack of tieguanyin tea and I prepared a little pot for myself today.  My once-upon-a-time go-to tea, living in China, not so much because it tasted so good.  I don’t have much of a tongue for tea, and probably would fail a blindfold test to distinguish it from pu’er tea, but rather because the name in English “Iron Buddha.”

 

 

 

Thursday, 04/15/21