Geisha ~ The Lost World...

Geisha (芸者?), Geiko (芸子) or Geigi (芸妓) are traditional, female Japanese entertainers whose skills include performing various Japanese arts such as classical music and dance.

"If you aren't the woman I think you are, then this isn't the world I thought it was."

"I don't know when we'll see each other again or what the world will be like when we do. We may both have seen many horrible things. But I will think of you every time I need to be reminded that there is beauty and goodness in the world. "

"We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course."

"A tree may look as beautiful as ever; but when you notice the insects infesting it, and the tips of the branches that are brown from disease, even the trunk seems to lose some of its magnificence. "

"it was what we Japanese called the onion life, peeling away a layer at a time and crying all the while"

"For a flicker of a moment I imagined a world completely different from the one I'd always known, a world in which I was treated with fairness, even kindness-- a world in which fathers didn't sell their daughters. "

"Perhaps it seems odd that a casual meeting on the street could have brought about such change. But sometimes life is like that isn't it"

"Oh I'm sure you're right," Auntie said. "Probably she's just as you say. But she looks to me like a very clever girl, and adaptable; you can see that from the shape of her ears."

"I'm not sure this will make sense to you but I felt as though I'd turned around to look in a different direction so that I no longer faced backward toward the past but forward toward the future. And now the question confronting me was this: What would the future be" 

"Pumpkin, please listen to me, I wouldn't ask this of you if I had any other alternative. But I don't want to go back to being a maid all my life, and that's just what will happen if Hatsumomo has her way. She won't stop until she has me like a cockroach under her foot. I mean, she'll squash me if you don't help me to scurry away!"

What I really wanted to know, though, was what it was like to be a geisha? Where do you sleep? What do you eat? How do you have your hair done?

A story like mine should never be told. For my
  world is as forbidden as it is fragile. Without its mysteries it
  cannot survive. I certainly wasnt born to the life of a geisha.
  Like so much in my strange life, I was carried there by the
  current.

Geisha are not courtesans.
  And we are not wives. We sell our skills, not our bodies. We create
  another secret world, a place only of beauty. The very word
  "geisha" means artist and to be a geisha is to be judged as a
  moving work of art.

In that moment, I changed from a girl facing nothing but emptiness,
  to someone with purpose. I saw that to be a geisha could be a
  stepping stone to something else... a place in his world.

You cannot say to the sun, "More sun." Or to the
  rain, "Less rain." To a man, geisha can only be half a wife. We are
  the wives of nightfall. And yet, to learn kindness after so much
  unkindness, to understand that a little girl with more courage than
  she knew, would find her prayers were answered, can that not be
  called happiness? After all these are not the memoirs of an
  empress, nor of a queen. These are memoirs of another kind.

Three things matter in life:
  sumo, business, and war. Understand one, you know them all. But why
  should a geisha care? You spend your time plucking strings and
  dancing.

It is not for Geisha to want. It is not for a
  Geisha to feel. Geisha is an artist of the floating world. She
  dances, she sings, she entertains you... What ever you want... the
  rest is shadows, the rest is secret.

She told me I was like
  water... Water can carve its way through stone. And when trapped,
  water makes a new path.

At the temple, there is a poem called "Loss" carved
  into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them
  out. You cannot read Loss, only feel it.

A year without news, except news of death.
  Rumors of citites evaporating into clouds of smoke. And than
  another year and another... Nothing. Rice... Work... Rice...
  Work... Nothing.

Cant you see that I want you for myself? You have
  ruined me! 

Your cave is untouched. Men like that. We call
  this "mizuage". And to become a full geisha, you must sell it to
  the highest bidder.

No man would bid so much
  for a thing he had already taken.

I see now why you
  like sumo, you can never judge a mans power by his appearance
  alone.

The winter I turned fifteen I saw the chairman
  again, but that wasnt the only surprise fate brought me that
  season. Along with the snow came a most unexpected visitor.

The appeal of a high-ranking geisha to her typical male guest has historically been very different from that of his wife. The ideal geisha showed her skill, while the ideal wife was modest. The ideal geisha seemed carefree, the ideal wife somber and responsible. Geisha do sometimes marry their clients but they must then retire; there can never be a married geisha.

Geisha may gracefully flirt with their  guests,but they will always remain in control of the hospitality. Over their years of apprenticeship they learn to adapt to different situations and personalities, mastering the art of the hostess.

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photo credit: Okinawa Soba

photo credit: Okinawa Soba

photo credit: Okinawa Soba

KLIK LINK : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geisha