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two daughters seated a little bit below their father and sharing respect.
Ibrâhim continues:
“It is at each instant that the magic of the interchange occurs;
Japan is just a pretext. When I am unable to describe an image, to
describe an emotion, to live an emotion because it happens sometimes
that an emotion is too overwhelming, then I remain gasping and I am
not able to say anything. Everything betrays me, my feelings, my
memory. The only thing I can feel is the Blessing of God. It may be
simply the sharing of a word or two, but it is a delight, and it is this
word that gives us the courage to live, that enables me to cease the
essence of the relation, to capture it. At this precise minute, a deep
relationship makes us understand one another, to find our inner
echoes. And there, precisely, I remember her face, this face smiling
and far away, pale and beaming. There is a form of depth into the
features of the face. Everything is captured by a simple look, the
image is then distilled into the memory and into the feelings to give
way to something different, inexplicable. The Japanese culture, as the
Moroccan culture, is full of non-talking instants. In the West on the
contrary, at the same moment we speak, everything is clear and well-
defined because the culture makes it effective.
Our culture (German, French or Arabic) comes from 24 letters or
from 26 letters or from 28 letters. The 24 letters or 26 letters or 28
letters enable us to build words and from the words to create a
multitude of sentences. We create our language upon just a few
letters. Therefore, our manner of thinking comes from this game of
combinations. On the contrary, the Chinese and the Japanese do not
have this; they learn the Kanji as it is. This very Kanji has got a
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precise signification; it speaks more by images than by association of
words.”
For instance the character YASUMU ‘to rest’ comes from the
combination of two Chinese ideograms: the man
and
the tree
moku.
The character ‘to rest’ is created from a mind association.
Example taken from: http://members.aol.com/rosecorp/index.html
“When there is an image created in our mind, there is always a
point of view, a concept attached to it. You can take ten persons and
ask them to describe a garden; each one of them will describe
something different, especially if they come from different cultures or
different backgrounds. The description of an image is not logic; it is
personal. Besides, everything is captured in the Oriental mind by the
play of colors, the play of forms, the play of images, the play of
contrasts. It is a culture concerned with contrasts and who says
contrasts says hidden, there is a first level, a second level, a third level
of conceptualization. For instance, as in the example I mentioned
earlier, the concept of 'resting', 'having a rest' implies a natural setting
where men can lie on the base of a tree. At a second level, resting
implies that the weather is clement. At a third level, it implies that the
rest is taken during daytime. Now, each person can but imagine a
tree of his own, with a different person under that tree, reclining in a
different position. There is plenty of room for colors, scenarios, and
improvisation.
If when there is an image, there is a point of view; when there is a
metaphor, there is an ambiguity. A metaphor is basically the art of
saying things without telling them; it is the art of saying something with
an extra meaning added to it. Look at what happens in the Christian
religion. Depending on who reads the Holy Bible, the interpretation is
different. No wonder that monks used to rewrite and overwrite
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