Newbie (very) question

Damn. A lifetime experience. You couldn't buy that with monay. What a tale. Thank you. I'm saving this, too. Takes my breath away.

Dave db5151@@hotmail.com

Dang it. I brought home Red Army watches, Matrioshki, and books. I should have flippin' bought a samovar!

Believe it or not there is a site here in the US that sells real ones, from before revolution as well as new, electrical ones. I think it's "Sovietsky Collection" or something. The old ones I saw for $600 and new ones are much cheaper. So you can have your samovar and drink from it too !

Sasha.

Believe it or not, I have a couple of items from their catalog!

There's also a company in Germany that makes very nice new ones wired for

110v. Unfortunately, they're multiple hundreds of bucks. And I, unfortunately, have other things on which to spend that money.

I am not surprised. Last year our work was presented to the US military. Remember we are talking about an express MATHEMATICAL method of developing SYNTHETIC vaccines that takes hours, not months to start testing the candidates. This is so far ahead of everyone, its not even funny. So did they ask us to show it to them? Or to take a look at the results and independant tests? Nope. Just a letter from some juniour officer who has a boring job of looking at outside reaserach. I have that letter framed and it hangs righ here above my desk. Their response - "Its not possible". They could have tested us for about $5,000. They waste billions. They had no smallpox vaccine in September 2001 and they still feel OK. Why? Because there were no gallows in Sept 2001 when the country learned that there were no smallpox vaccine and the country had no defence aganst such an attack if it would have happened. You guys just took it. These people were paid top bucks, pensions, they were given reserach labs, travel money, ranks, everything - and with smallpox they did not have to discover anything - the smallpox vaccine is known for 50 years, they just "forgot". Sorry, this just gets me livid....

AIDS needs a different approach. Its a tricky bastartd, but till... I have no idea if our stuff would work - all the money for research goes to ivory towers. Your money, BTW. And NO accountability. But PhD dissertations - galore. My proposal was - not a one PhD awarded to anyone in the US untill the AIDS vaccine is made. You will have it within two years.

Sasha.

I do not blame you. Anyway, Russian tea's most important part is good company and fierce intellectual battle, during which girls choose their studs for the night... :) I think the Russian revolution of 1917 will not have happened if not for samovar tea. Exactly the opposite of the gongfu where the conversation is subtle and the feelings are mild and fine... Since I gave up on making a world a better place gongfu fits me better nowadays...

Sasha.

Alex, morphing into Sasha, recommended:

This is great stuff - written by a (Hungarian?) programmer from the perspective of optimizing coding via caffeine. It gives all the vocabulary, warnings on drinking the zavarka (unless you're in the Russian mafia), and a learned exposition on the connection between the periodic table and vodka standardization (all hail Meneleyev!).

R. Chepelyevsky

(But what's Russian for "Rick"? "Risha"?)

He is good. He even knows about chifir. Although he is a bit confused by thinking that zavarka (concentrated tea that is steeped in little teapot on top of samovar) and chifir are the same thing. They are not - chifir is made by BOILING for several of minutes about 4 -6 ounces of black tea in a glass of water. The resulting liquid is tar-black and incredibly bitter. After the first seep your heart start racing like you are about to have sex for the first time in your life. Chifir has a reputation to be addictive. Chifir is an Arctic prison answer to marihuana. Zavarka has nothing to do with chifir, he is dead wrong.

Richard has no Russian equivalent, because it is not a Biblical name. And Risha sounds a bit girly, because there is a diminitive from Irina - Irisha. I guess Chasha will be the best (ALEK-SA-NDR - SAsha, RI-CHA-RD - Chasha.) But there is a Russian word "chasha" - its a bowl. AND it also sounds a bit girly. Its up to you now :) Chepelyevsky, Chepelyevsky... Lithvania?

Sasha.

I'm glad someone finally brought this up. The whole spirit of cha-no-yu is the in the avoidance of strict, complicated ritual. "Harmony", "reverence", "purity", and "tranquility" -- these are the guiding principles.

--crymad

I'm not sure I understand where you are coming from on this point. Harmony comes from working together, does it not? And strict rules (and following them like a religion is to some people) would not result in this type of harmony? That, at least, is what I intend to play on in the story I am writing. An arrogant rule-breaker is made to adjust his attitude, at least on the outside, in order to remain essentially free from a type of punishment.

Sorry, but it seems to me that strict avoidance of rules results in chaos, which is not conducive to harmony, reverence, purity or tranquility. Am I missing something? (Seriously asking this question. I've gone off-track before, and if I have done it again I would honestly appreciate having that fact pointed out so I don't continue in an off-track direction.)

Dave snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com

Dave,

Following rules is always an act of self-limitation. Following the rules that are imposed on you is obedience, i.e. forced self-limitation. Following the rules because you deeply understand their meanings and embrace the ritual and its rules as something that reinforce your system of values is voluntary, eager self-limitation, the act of disciplined mind, the ultimate individualism. The knights of the Round Table would understand that better than our generation for whom the individualism was wrongly translated as never-ending childish "I wanna". So, our poets are few, our music lacks depth, our friendships are cold and our passion has to be jump-started with blue pills. We make shows of our weddings and we do not wail at our funerals. We imprison our elderly into the expensive houses of cold, lone death and we do not want to think what is it our children will do to us. We dress casual and that lead to casual thought, casual feelings, casual love and casual honor. Real honor cannot be casual. Real love cannot be based on "I wanna". And real poetry requires rhythm and rhyme. And it all requires self-limitation, i.e. self-discipline. And I am as guilty as anyone. And I an not happy about it.

Sasha.

It appears you're trying to mold tea ceremony into a metaphor for the virtues of discipline and obedience. If so, then this effort is sadly misguided. Enjoying tea with guests in quiet, humble surroundings bears little resemblance to rifle inspection at boot camp with failings punishable by givin'em twenty.

In your fixation on rules, yes, you are missing something. You must realize that the aesthetics of imperfection and insufficiency are at the heart of cha-no-yu. Learn more on the subject, and you'll certainly discover this.

--crymad

Dave,

If I were you I would not pay much attention at crymad's posts. If you read his posts you will see that very few if any of his posts are informative, rather his posts are all argumentative. There is no constructive element there. Direct questions turn him away, as you can see looking at my recent direct questions to him in the "Cha that's not tea" thread. I love aggressive arguing, but there has to be certain level of knowledge behind it. Arguing for the sake of arguing belongs in alt.politics or alt.culture. That's all they do.

Sasha.

That's a bit harsh. It's the passing of time which is `limiting'. You only have a moment to decide what to do with that moment, and then the opportunity is gone. Rule-following is one way of making that decision, not the origin of the limitation.

Quit complaining. Time's passing. :p ;)

Cheers,

- Joel

There is so much I can say here, but I will yield to higher authority. I will answer you with the Talmudic quote that appears to be written just for this exchange:

"Do not think that time is passing, time is standing, we pass." My Talmudic library is upstairs and I feel lazy today. But if you need, I will dig it up.

Sasha.

It'd be illuminating to have the context. Put starkly like that it sounds more like Zohar than Talmud.

It's not that important though.

Cheers,

- Joel

...

Well, nice try. But, your scenario has too many incoherences. You've forgotten that defeated samurai are either dead while fighting or suicided. I suggest you start the story with : "I was introduced to the O-tya Do by the *ghosts* of former Japanese prisoners of war. An East-Siberian shaman allowed one of those wandering soul to borrow his body for the time of a Tea Ceremony....".

Kuri

You are entitled to your onion and by questioning my honor you actually harms yours, since you do it from the convenience of anonymity Russia after the WW2 had tens of thousands of Japanese prisoners of war mainly from Kwantun Army. I have never heard of anyone questioning their honor neither on Russian or Japanese side. Actually many accounts of exceptionally honorable behavior of Japanese POWs in Russia exist in the books of Russian political prisoners who shared labor camps with them. The Japanese POWs were the only group that never succumbed to the organized crime pressure in Russian prisons. There is a memoir about a hero Russian WW2 pilot, who was thrown into the labor camp after the war and described how honored he was to fight with Japanese POWs against Russian criminals in the camps. But of course, he is just a Russki boychik, what does he know?

I am not a specialist in Bushido and would never feel that I know enough to voice my opinion. But as someone who have been in an Army and has been trained for 5 years as an officer (all Soviet colleges had that program, obligatory to all men), I will only say the following: no military system in the world would ever demand that the defeated forces commit suicide outside of battlefield. The demand to fight to the end and commit suicide rather than to give up on the battlefield is one thing. But making it obligatory to commit suicide after the battle is over will lead to the situation when if an army suffered a minor defeat, it will lead to extermination of the whole army. So, the minor tactical loss will become a devastated all-out defeat, giving an enemy a free strategic victory. This is laughable. The medieval Japan was a theatre of many battles between clans for centuries. If after every battle the army of one side will lose all its trained officers to suicide practice, the country would cease to exist.

But you, of course, having a Japanese name, may know better.

Alex.

alt.culture.

I'm considering his words, but not too deeply. Thanks for the input. It is appreciated.

Dave