Does poetry do it for you?

‘Twixt you and me

There’s too much emotion.

That’s the reason why

There’s such a commotion!

Take a lump of clay,

Wet it, pat it,

And make an image of me,

And an image of you.

Then smash them, crash them,

And add a little water.

Break them and re-make them,

Into an image of you,

And an image of me.

Then in my clay, there’s a little of you.

And in your clay, there’s a little of me.

And nothing ever shall us sever;

Living, we’ll sleep in the same quilt,

And dead, we’ll be buried together.

Madame Kuan (c 1280) attempts to lure her husband from his mistress with poetry. Does she succeed?

But first to go off at a complete tangent. I have been writing my academic tomes using Georgia as a favoured font. According to legend, or rather a potentially dubious study, it’s easier to read, and essays achieve 10% higher marks written this way. My friend Pamela (http://pamelavillars.wordpress.com) has this quiz which will tell you what font you are, and what it means about you:

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/helvetica/quiz.html

Back to Madame Kuan and her husband Chao Mengfu.

Plus ca change.

A mid life crisis hits and Chao Mengfu considers taking a mistress. Madame Kuan is determined this will not happen. Her poem about water and clay touched his heart and changed his mind. Life must have been a little less complicated 800 years ago. Or maybe just more romantic.

‘Woman is water and man is clay, and water permeates and moulds the clay, and the clay holds the water and gives it substance, in which water moves and lives and has its full being.’

Mmm, this is in danger of turning into scissors/paper/rock.

Does water beat clay? Not according to Yutang, woman is completed only in the presence of man.

Although I do like the idea that woman moulds man:

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