Connie Jiang is an American who really loves the Iliad, and is currently trying to figure out what her next life-goal should be now that she is able to read the OG Homer (original Greek, that is). She recently got her Bachelor's degree in Classics and has been puttering around the globe working odd jobs until formally continuing her classics education in Autumn 2024.
I.
Stch stch on stch stch,
Two rabbits weave
through rushes.
II.
They ponder what to do,
as the grass they gather
is nothing rich for a starving man.
They have the strongest of convictions
not to be bad hosts.
III.
So this is heaven’s greatest trial.
They must live up to it —
to return empty-handed is unthinkable—
else lose face to their neighbors,
the beasts of the woods, the man
in need who stumbled across their
front yard cold and hungry,
the all-mighty gods above,
themselves and their dignity.
Nothing embodied lives
Without a face.
III.
Meanwhile
Fox finds fruit
Monkey starts a fire
Bird brings moss
Deer finds a stream
And the man feels a little better about his plight
— that he has found himself lost in the snowy woods
for days and days and days and days and days on end
But he is still cold from hunger.
IV.
The only way, they reason,
(now sitting in a clearing
twitching their noses
thinking hard,)
that one can pass this trial,
is to follow the steps of the
gloriousanddivineJadeEmperor’sson,
yes the only one whowasleftalive by
thelegendaryarcherHouYi after his Highness
roughhousedwithhisbrotherstoomuch
and almostdestroyedeverything. Ever since,
The Sun has beamed upon the world
He consumes himself when He burns
He burns for the short-lived creatures of the earth
He welcomes us in His cold galactic home.
V.
When the Jade Emperor feels a little dull and saggy
(not that anyone will ever say or admit this)
he takes another sip of his Elixir of Immortality.
As you can imagine, these Elixirs of Immortality
are quite coveted by man and beast and monster alike.
When the Jade Emperor needed to find someone
to be his personal brewer of Elixirs of Immortality,
he thought of the rabbits who thought of his Son
and in His image self-immolated for the life of another
so that integrity may still mean something
in this quickly darkening world.
For their selflessness the Jade Emperor
almighty appointed them the Royal
Brewers, stationed on the moon,
illuminated forever by the Sun.
~~~
Epilogue
Years later a royal patriarch limped
to the tent of a hero
in order to do what no man has
ever done.The aged King
knelt at the young Hero’s foot
and kissed the hand that
slew his Prince, the last of his
children, begging the Hero to return
the Prince’s pale cold lifeless corpse
with the mouth gaping, catching dust,
back to the land of his lordship,
which the Hero had just assaulted.
Not even the enemy Hero could deny
the Father’s love for his Son.
Years later a man who never slept
nor let alcohol take his mind
chose to die
instead of ceding the Truth
when the soldiers of his city
roughly grabbed him at the pits
and dragged him to a dusty cell for,
as they say, corrupting the youth,
but really he was only as annoying
as a gnat for being a teacher who
didn’t lie, and there are many gnats
in the Mediterranean, so who knows
why they feared only this one.
Years later there’d be a man
the son of One who promised
no more floods, only fires (if necessary),
and they called Him bread
for the belly and wine to the lips,
salvation to the soul. He was flayed
and blinded by blood (his own blood)
and left to hang by nails through his palms
(the meatiest parts of the hands, bound
by snappy tendons strongly pierced)
for giving too much hope to the ones
who needed it most, for they had
nothing else.
Years later a woman warrior
carried the name of her lame father
and went to war on his behalf.
She made up her mind to do so weeping
filial tears as she sat stch stch at the loom,
weaving. In the army she hid herself for years
saying that both buck-rabbits
and doe-rabbits relieved themselves
sitting down, not standing up, as men do.
She said we had much to learn from rabbits.
Author’s Note:
In any course reading Homer’s Odyssey, one is inevitably brought around to the concept of Ancient Greek guest-host relations. This should be no surprise, as Odysseus goes around the South Aegean Sea seeing many cities of many men, where they are received very differently at different sites. This is a testament to the dynamic relationship between guests and hosts.
But this relationship is relevant today as well, extending not just to partygoers and party-throwers or wayfarers and house-havers. Any interaction between two people can be understood through the terms of guest and host. Who do you let into your house? How should you enter someone else’s house? Likewise, who do you let into your heart? How should you enter someone else’s heart? Luckily, the wealth of guest-host stories (which is to say, almost every story) gives us a particularly rich tapestry of human history with which to consider interpersonal relationships.
In “As Rabbits Do”, I played with these lenses in revisiting Chinese folklore that I’ve loved since youth. The primary folk tale I’ve used is the one of the Jade Rabbit, in which the Jade Emperor disguises himself as a beggar to find the most selfless animal to brew his Elixir of Immortality, revealing himself to the Rabbit before its attempted self-immolation, and puts the Rabbit on the moon to his celestial duty. Other versions of the story involve Chang’e, Madame of the Moon, or no Jade Emperor (and thus no Elixir of Immortality), but the fundamental act of the Rabbit-Kind remains the same.
On a stylistic note, “The Ballad of Hua Mulan”, written around 800 AD and known mainly by its 1998 Disney film adaptation, saturated my headspace as I wrote “As Rabbits Do”, from its first onomatopoeic line to its last. Likewise, many other legendary figures from different cultures make their way into the warp and weft of this piece, for there are still more examples of guest-host relations, sacrifice, duty, and ideology.
I hope that this piece brings another angle of questioning as to what guest-host relations are and where they occur, both in abstraction and in the immediacy of our own lives.