ricktalcott

54 years ago, I was sitting in a bar in Akabane, middle of nowhere in Northern Tokyo, having a conversation with a Japanese guy about being a soldier in Burma during WWII. The conversation got to the point where we needed the word, "surrender", but neither of us knew the other's word for surrender. He solved the linguistical problem by raising both hands in the air and saying, "hold up". The conversation continued along, and we never got around to learning each other's word. That always bothered me, if only as illustrations that 1) you're never done learning a language, and 2) it's possible to have real conversations without being completely fluent. This morning, we went to the Brush Museum in Hiroshima to learn how calligraphy brushes are made. The final part of the morning gave us a chance to use calligraphy to make a scroll. So I fired up Google Translate and looked up the Japanese word for "surrender." It's "降伏 - Kōfuku". Picture of the scroll is attached. Just about everybody, including the Japanese instructors, thought it was an odd pick. They saw it as a WWII in Burma word and more than odd to put on a meditation-room wall. Originally, I had been toying with "Let go," but neither English or Japanese have a clear reflexive like Spanish or French does so I settled on surrender. Looking at the word choice from a meditative point of view, "Let go" struck me as the weaker of the two words. If I let go, I'm still there as the person who used to hold the rope. If I pick "surrender", then the person who used to hold the rope is also gone and only the unbounded silence remains. Probably, enough metaphysics for one day. Here's the scroll: Rick

Photos to enliven the sea days: Golden Gate Bridge in New Plymouth Sunset on the way to Akaroa Storm Cell on land leaving Fiji Two tenders in Akaroa PXL_20240215_183551774.TS.mp4

Best part of the Australian lunch was the Australian slider: cheeseburger slider with a slice of cooked beet plus a slice of pineapple....

Starboard view

Port view

Finished resolving all the glitches; moving on to chores 🚢

Thanks for the help.🙋🏻🙋🏻‍♀️

Please do Rick (& Nancy)

I worried about the same problem in 535, so I asked that the beds be set up in twin fashion. We'll see if that works. Rick (& Nancy)

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