“the air so heavy and dry/ strange voices are saying (what do they say)/ things i can’t understand”

This famous post is doing the rounds again:

my favorite thing i’ve learned in college is that way back in ancient china there was this poet/philosopher guy who wrote this whole pretentious poem about how enlightened he was that was like “the eight winds cannot move me” blahblahblah and he was really proud of it so he sent it to his friend who lived across the lake and then his friend sends it back and just writes “FART” (or the ancient Chinese equivalent) on it and the guy was SO MAD he travels across the lake to chew his friend out and when he gets there his friend says “wow. the eight winds cannot move you, but one fart sends you across the lake”

This story is so Chinese.

It’s a real incident, btw: the guy was Su Shi, a Song dynasty poet/artist/essayist/statesman sometimes better known by his art name Su Dongpo, the friend was Chan (Zen) master Foyin, the abbot of a temple across the lake, and 屁 means both “fart” and (idiomatically) “nonsense.” Very Zen.

---L.

Subject quote from Cruel Summer, Bananarama.