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sublingua | |||||
| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
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Mini-Skirt Runs Amok In Edo
Found Out A little late night surfing reveals further evidence of something that I have long suspected: Dr. Edo is definitely the man for your little Sublingua. And how does the web cough up this bit of information? Well, in a strange bit of restless online stalking, I typed his family name--an uncommon one--into ye olde Google search engine. Google returned with eighty-two thousand hits, little knowing that I am not daunted by numbers. (I mean, I've got nothing but time here, people.) I scanned the entries looking for mention of Edo's first name or his university's name and my patience paid off when, three pages in, I hit paydirt: Dear old Dr. Edo keeps an online journal. That's right. He is an online blogger just like little old me. Of course, unlike your Sublingua, our dearest Edo keeps his journal in Japanese. And at this point, one would be inclined to thank goodness for babel fish, right? Wrong. Because babel-fishing his site did little more than cough up a translation that is a half-step removed from the quality of writing produced by infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters in an infinite measure of time. Fortunately, the journal is very well organized, and, even better, the dates are not in Japanese (though if they had been, I would have been able to read them still, as the kanji for the months, days, and so on, are some of the few that I recognize on sight). In any case, I was able to quickly and easily find the entries from the dates when he visited my little burg. Not many women rate mention in Dr. Edo's journal (Welcome to Japan!), and the very few who do are connected with his work by way of being professors or the wives of professors. (For example, he refers to my dear professor by his last name only, even when he is writing about the dinner held in his--Edo's--honor at dear professor's house. That is standard Japanese practice I've read, and signifies respect. My dear professor's wife, however, despite the fact that she also teaches, is only referred to by her first name, and only as the hostess for the dinner.) Babelfishing makes it unclear whether Edo even noticed that I was in attendance that evening. Certainly, I was not mentioned by name--but neither was the woman, also a professor, who teaches medieval literature (one of Edo's specialities) at my little uni. "An actress" is mentioned in the entry, and there was not an actress was in attendance--though I strongly suspect that this refers to Davy's girlfriend as Edo later comments that Davy drove him home and they spoke of the actress, who went home in another car. (Davy's girlfriend had arrived later because she was teaching a class that night, and so she went home in another car.) However, I do rate a mention in the next entry. Dr. Edo, much as I am, is fond of nicknames. I call him Edo--and he calls me Mini-Skirt. (Okay, to be absolutely fair: my skirt was short--about three inches above the knee--but it was, given my height, decidedly not mini.) He is surprised, he writes, "at my receiving." (That is, I brought him a pottery bowl as a return gift.) Then there is a strange comment that all the babel-fish in the world couldn't make sense of. Babel'd, he writes that he is unsure whether it was the age of the suit that was important or not--and that he is sure that it is the latter. Okay. Now: I ran the original Japanese through several online translators with little variation in the resulting English translation. The reference makes little sense (grammatical or otherwise) on this side of the pacific, I'm afraid. And, yes, I am, of course, keenly aware that it is like a realtime relationship in that way: What could he possibly mean when he says that? Does it mean he is or isn't attracted to me? When in fact, the comment in question may have absolutely nothing to do with attraction. I mean, he might really be talking about suits, right? Right. My instinctual translator (the one that translate the boys' comments about attraction but which covers not the Japanese-to-English translation) working with babel fish firmly intact (though providing little help, really), says, Um, darling? He knew you were making some kind of a suit (look it up, darling, to find that a suit is, of course, clothing, but also? It's "a petition or entreaty made to a person in authority.") The poor man was wondering if you, darling, were appealing to the official Edo, the "old" suit, or if you were appealing to the man--the new suit. Hmmm. Of course, the game is up if he checks his trackers, as I have not the guile to hide the fact that I spent at least an hour poking around his journal...but I don't care about hiding. (As you should know by the fact that I wear such scandalous clothes...) But, really, it might save me some work in the long run for him to know that I am interested in him. Right? Right.
More lies:
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