This is a story from ancient China, brought to me in a dream last night. Once upon a time, there was a soba noodle seller, who had been given a package of soba noodles by a baby who spoke like a man and told they were soba noodles crafted in Heaven to be cooked and served when a god came to dine at his stall. For as long as he kept the noodles and served them as was bidden, he would have good fortune and grow wealthy and happy, but if he did anything else with them he would be punished most harshly. Several years passed, and the soba seller was now a very wealthy soba seller, for he owned all the soba noodle making factories in his district and had a chain of soba stalls that sold his noodles and private recipes at every fair and festival in the province. But, as we all know, "those whom gods would destroy, they first make great," and the soba seller was no exception. While he was inspecting one of his most far-flung stalls, the one situated in the very capital, Beijing, a great warrior, general of the entire capital garrison, came to dine at his stall, and demanded the very finest of soba noodles he had, or his head should be struck from his body. The soba seller, in fear of his life, cooked and served the package of heavenly soba noodles which were meant for a god, and presented them to the general. The generall, in awe of the taste from his first bite of the noodles, ordered them placed in a hot box and hied himself away to the forbidden city, where he presented them to the Emperor's nephew. He too was overawed by his first taste and presented them to the Emperor. He served as a taster for the Emperor and the Emperor, being confident of his nephew's honesty and loyalty, tasted the noodles, and was stricken with grief. You see, upon becoming Emperor, the Emperor's of China also became partial gods, who regularly dined with various celestial functionaries, and so he knew that he had just eaten celestial food intended for another. The thread of the malfeasance was unraveled, and the soba seller was told to take the noodles up the staircase of the heavenly mountain to serve them to the proper recipient so that his punishment from heaven would be lessened. The bowl of noodles was packed in a special hot box by the imperial staff, heated with coals that burned eternally but were not consumed and so on, and the soba seller was sent on his way. This time, the soba seller well headed the warning of the Emperor and headed off, being tempted repeatedly, but not straying from his path. He, at last, came to a tea house at the top of the celestial mountain and espied a man who looked like the intended recipient of the noodles, whom he knew through the picture painted for him by the Emperor's own hand. Alas, it was not who it appeared to be, but a celestial trickster god in disguise! The Soba Seller, being mortal, served the noodles to the wrong god and was about to leave when the actual recipient appeared and chastised him for not seeing through the illusion. However, the trickster, wanting to have more fun at his mark's expense, told the other god that he would give the Soba Seller, who, as you must surely have realized was also a great craftsman of soba noodles, the tools artistry and materials to make a new set of soba noodles for the intended recipient, who was none other than the celestial censor of the Soba Seller's home district. (More to come soon, just switching devices!) ---------------------------------------------------------- The Soba Seller used the tools, arts, and ingredients provided by the trickster god, and made the very best noodles he had produced in his life, but they were still crafted by mortal hands, and so not up to heavenly standards. However, having been instructed in celestial arts, the soba seller would have to have that knowledge erased from his mind before he went home, so the trickster god and the soba seller were given heavy packages of celestial grain to carry to a god of knowledge who could erase their memories of this knowledge. The trickster god, of course, shuffled his burden off on an out-of-work stevedore and taught him the secrets while the soba seller slept one night, then placed an illusion that the stevedore was the trickster and absconded, as was his nature, but the Soba seller traveled onward faithfully, and arrived at the estate of the god of knowledge. However, the stevedore was very tired by then having pushed on after dusk to finish the journey, and so, when going to the storeroom to drop off the payment, he tripped, and his package of barley grains broke and spilled all over the ground and the steps. The god of knowledge was very angry because to spill barley grains on the grounds of his mansion was a curse upon his house, and so banished the stevedore into a bamboo forest which grew nearby to live as a great black fox, and set the soba seller to eternally hunting him. Many more years passed, and with the soba seller eternally eating celestial food as he hunted the black fox, he too became more than mortal. Every time he would get close to catching the fox something would distract him from the chase, giving the fox time to get a head start again: a lost and pregnant goddess, a bag full of gold rings, the fall of night (which was very erratic in that forest, for time does not flow as it does on earth in heaven), and so forth. Eventually, the soba seller had a new idea, instead of chasing the fox to catch him, he would wait for the fox and catch him in a trap! He waited for four days and nights, and temptations to leave his vigil were many, but with each one he said "This will make fine bait for the fox!", and stayed at his post. On the fifth day, the black fox came past and the soba seller caught him! He returned in triumph to the god of knowledge's house, where it was shown to him that he now was an old man: his sojourn in heaven had lasted more than 50 years on earth, though it had seemed to take only a few months! His wife was dead, his children now old men and women, and even his great-grandchildren grown, there was nothing for him to go back too, his mighty soba empire broken up among his descendants and his ancestral home seized by the Imperial bureaucracy and made into a hospital! He also discovered that the pregnant goddess he had just escorted out of the woods was the god of knowledge's wife, and she had not been pregnant when she went in, so the god of knowledge was most angry... However, the celestial censor of his district was visiting to check up on the progress of erasing his memory, since he had not heard from the god of knowledge for so long, and decreed that as he now was more than mortal in both body and mind, he would be elevated to actual full godhood and placed in charge of the forest on earth in whose heavenly reflection he had spent most of the past 50 years. However, he was warned, he must eat only celestial food because for each mortal plant or animal he consumed any part of, he would age one day, and he was already less than a year away from his fore-ordained age of death. The Soba Seller obeyed this pronouncement for many many years until there came to be famine abroad in the district where his forest lay, and many of his mortal descendants were starving. He knew a secret that mortals did not yet know at the time: bamboo shoots were edible if properly cooked. He made a batch of the finest noodles ever tasted by mortal mouths and went out of the forest to serve a great feast of Lo-Main with bamboo shoots for the people of the neighboring villages. To prove his good intentions, for many were the gods of the darker side of the celestial bureaucracy wandering the province that year, they asked him to eat some of the food too, and reluctantly he did. The former soba seller survived, that time, and so the knowledge of cooking bamboo shoots spread to mortals, but the next time there was a famine and he made the same gamble, he died. What happens after that was not revealed to me, for it is then that I woke up... -------------------------------------------------- Thoughts, Ideas, Suggestions?
I want whatever you were drinking when you had this dream I'd love to have such vivid and imaginative dreams. The above is great and well.... actually brilliant! I have no other words, comments or suggestions to assist with this other than please publish
I just did: that was all I had on this. Trust me, no, you don't. This was one of my less frightening dreams, and even it was no picnic. However, if you're dead serious, look up the word Trazodone. If you want psych problems bad enough to need it... Thank you, I wish I could take credit, but its all my subconscious. This probably is just a rehash of several famous Chinese legends I heard as a child. What's to get? It's an overly elaborate dream/fable about the discovery that bamboo shoots are edible when cooked...
You're probably better off. For every achingly beautiful one, or brilliantly inspired one like this, there are at least three that are just a choppy mess, and one that is gut-wrenchingly terrifying.
