Imagine the discomfort of being in my aunt’s Korean restaurant…with friends of my mom’s and hers….being presented with a meal. With my outspoken, golden curled three year old daughter in tow, no less.

“Ew, Mama. That looks like dog poop. I don’t want to eat that!” (Okay, and yes, I agreed with her assessment of the intestines of some unnamed creature)

And the sypmathetic looks my mom recieves for having such an American daughter and granddaughter from those in the group who understood my daughter perfectly.

One woman asked, “How can you let her say that? Children eat what they are served!”

This began an arguement between my mother this other woman. Then between my mother and my daughter that ended only when I took my poor kid out for a hamburger….

a foreigner in “my” own land

a) I totally love that story. It still cracks me up as I type.

b) It anticipates a post I need to write about an experience I had at my mother-in-law’s funeral and, a few days later, grave-site.

And I understand your foreigner story too. Assholes deserve the occasional wipe, whether from local or foreigner. The guy was clearly racist (and yes, I too have dealt with the sympathy for anti-Anglo racism’s causes in Asia).

As for papers from the grave? I’ve long said most of my best friends were long dead before I ever lived. For me it’s Keats, Blake, Nietzsche (I’ve read his entire works carefully, and have my own interp of him, which I think is different from the hint you dropped of yours recently), and Wilde. And Homer. And the Gilgamesh poets, more and more.

Yeats has hit me at times, but I think I need to look at him more. Did Ellmann do a biography of him?

That is a nice movie, though.

And come to think of it, when I do have to mix with the locals – especially my in-laws, whom I love, but still… – there is a hint of what you describe.

On a Sunday evening the village organized a feast to honor the arrival of the new priest. He was given a place of honor and as each dish was brought to not offend his hosts he ate and ate.

More dishes kept coming and even though the priest was stuffed he continued to eat as to not offend.

The next day his mentor priest reported to him that he had greatly angered the entire village. Confused and saddened the young priest asked, “What had gone wrong?”. The mentor then informed the priest that the custom is for the priest to sample the dish then bless the food so it could be distributed to the entire the village. The young priest then realized he had consumed the entire supply of food for the celebration.

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