Saturday, November 30, 2002

G. K. Chesterton said of Max Beerbohm that 'he does not indulge in the base idolatry of believing in himself.'

from Epstein, 'The Beerbohm Cult', The Weekly Standard, 11/11/2002. Which of course I found in that incomparable website, Arts and Letters Daily.

Wednesday, November 27, 2002

good fuck.

The White House didn't want a new independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11 attacks, so they did the next best thing: insisted on a bipartisan commission; only bipartisan groups could be allowed to use subpoenas and at least 6 of the 10 members would have to approve the subpoena; and Bush just named Kissinger as the chairman. '[Ari] Fleischer said that the changes would ensure the inquiry's usefulness.'

'Bush names Kissinger to head Sept 11 commission,' NYT, 27 Nov 2002

and reading beyond the front page of the New York Times for the first time in a while now:

In Jenin on Friday, a military operation to arrest a Palestinian militant erupted into a fierce gun battle in which Israeli soldiers shot dead an 11-year-old Palestinian boy and a senior United Nations worker.

The death of the aid worker, a Briton, has caused considerable friction between Israel and the United Nations...

'West Bank Explosion Kills 2 'Most Wanted' '



Israel is asking the Bush administration for $4 billion in military aid and $8-10 billion in loan guarantees (helps Israel borrow at lower interest rates; the NYT tells us that there is no cost to the US if Israel repays its loans, and Israel has never defaulted on a loan). It is not known how much the administration will provide/ask from Congress yet.

A 26-month conflict with the Palestinians has strained Israel's defense budget, while the violence has sharply reduced foreign investment and tourism.

Israel is the largest recipient of United States loans and grants, amounting to $2.9 billion this fiscal year.

The State Department said last week it would ask Congress for $2.16 billion in military aid for Israel for fiscal year 2004, which begins next September. That is an increase of $120 million from a request for $2.04 billion for this year.

'Israel asks the U.S. for an increase of $4 billion in military aid'



one day all the leaves fell and it was winter. they've wrapped fairylights around the trees along college walk, and sometimes at night they turn them on and walking down the path is like walking through a million electric fireflies, and sometimes the lights stay off but the little glass bulbs reflect the lamplight from the path and it's as though the trees were frosted with silvery sparkles.

Tuesday, November 26, 2002

i don't get it.

After five hours of debate in the House of Commons, a motion by Mr. Blair's government in favor of United Nations Resolution 1441 [on Iraq] was approved without a vote when the legislators called out their approval with a shout of "Aye."

Shortly before, an amendment requiring parliamentary approval for any use of British troops — and urging a new Security Council mandate for military action to enforce Resolution 1441 — was defeated by a vote of 452 to 85.

The supporters of the amendment, proposed by the opposition Liberal Democrats, included 32 members of Mr. Blair's Labor Party.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told the Commons that it would be "utterly irresponsible" to offer legislators a vote to pre-approve military action if it would put lives of British forces at risk.


'U.N. Monitor Says Iraqis Are Denying Having Arms Cache', NYT 26 Nov 2002

Monday, November 25, 2002

am discovering that i *can't* wing a 30-page essay on constructivist international relations theory in three hours. or five. or a night. or, probably, any length of time.

Sunday, November 24, 2002

ok you know what? i give up. i give up trying not to be socially dysfunctional and i give up trying not to sound too unsingaporean. it's not even about speaking singlish, it's about speaking singaporean. i give up trying to make small talk about rice-cookers. i give up trying not to be the kind of person with whom almost-strangers feel compelled to talk about the jewish lobby in america instead of people with ang mo kio faces. (don't ask.) i give up trying not to be the kind of person for whom the same almost-strangers feel compelled to suddenly switch to speaking in grammatically-correct english. was that even grammatically correct? i shall be vaguely asianized with the americans and vaguely westernized with the singaporeans and generally strange. sit in a corner and drink gin and gibber poems to myself. i'm working on the gin.

(unfair? -- of course. it was fun. really nice people. really cool people. really good food. didn't really talk about rice-cookers. that much. and only in the context of chicken rice. talked to this girl, she was great. left before the drinking started but that's cos i had -- have -- an essay to write and i hadn't -- still haven't -- figured out the title. but walked home with these two girls, one of whom stayed in my hall. -- ah but she wasn't singaporean she was chinese-american and said 'dude' a lot and the other was singaporean but had an american accent so strong you could bomb afghanistan with it. -- bad taste? whatever.)

Sunday, November 17, 2002

Prayer

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hears, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade I piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer --
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

- Carol Ann Duffy

Saturday, November 16, 2002

i've forgotten my tempest.

You taught me language; and my profit on't
Is, I know how to curse.

Friday, November 15, 2002

continental political thought class on monday -- that is to say, a class on french and german leftist thought in the 1950s/60s -- and the tutor explaining that a lot of people on left in south america looked to gramsci for inspiration partly because he's a classic and everyone who's read any marxist/leftist theory knows him and partly cos he provides a non-marxist alternative for the left -- and the tutor said that this wasn't just a speculation; when he said people turned to gramsci, he's seeing names and faces in his mind, in argentina (where he's from), in uruguay, in chile. -- i can't imagine what it'd be like to have been part of the left movements in latin america -- to be now sitting in a classroom in new york teaching gramsci seeing the faces of those who believed in it --

on wednesday i went for the meeting in support of the divestment campaign at columbia and there were several professors who spoke up -- it's a faculty initiative -- and said i'm jew i hold dual citizenship in the state of israel and i protest the occupation. there's a group of jewish women -- women in black -- who hold a vigil every week for those who have died in the second intifada, palestinian and jew alike. someone talked of how her father was very very sick in ramallah and it was impossible to get medicines and morphine patches; they had to ask israeli friends to help them get supplies in tel aviv. i should do more reading and put up a coherent argument in protest of the occupation; this isn't an argument but --

Thursday, November 14, 2002

on Karl Rove speaking at a political forum on the American presidency at the University of Utah (and saying, among other things, that America was tilting towards the Republicans):

In the question-and-answer session, a woman politely asked Mr. Rove if the administration was concerned over the possibility that 200,000 innocent Iraqis might die in an American-led invasion.

Mr. Rove responded, "I'm more concerned about the 3,000 who died on 9/11."


NYT, 'Rove Declares Nation is Tilting to Republicans'

Monday, November 11, 2002

Old poems like old friends. Something I just remembered and looked up.

excerpt from Robert Frost, 'Two Tramps in Mud Time'

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.

I'm back in New York. It's still novel, saying that. I'm back in New York. This is home and I haven't quite learnt to call it home yet, the way Oxford was home, and is still -- but that's for later. Too many memories that I can't think about don't quite dare to remember and have to write down before they slip away. Martin Amis said that in every writer's heart was a sliver of ice that allowed him (her) to transform anything and everything into material for writing. Plundering your own memories -- and inevitably other people's memories and other people's experiences -- for writing fodder. Or to put it another way: reworking memory/experience, transforming it into something else, something lifted over and above the literalness of ordinary life. Metaphor. That's from Jeanette Winterson. -- You know, when I get my act together, all this will go into a book some day. -- (He looks over at me.) Will I get named? -- No. That's not how it works.

And so at random --

London. I'd forgotten how much I liked London. Or rather, I'd forgotten I liked London at all. This other London. The walk from Angel Islington down to Covent Garden in the evening. The grand arches of the market -- the last few stallholders packing up their throws and pots and bangles -- the guy with the guitar singing Simon and Garfunkel's 'Coming to America', and I laugh and look for a quid, how can I not give him something? -- the acerbic busker changing Ronan Keating's song, singing 'I'm broke but I'm happy' -- it falls flat when I try to describe it. Black coats swinging past. A child calling. Blonde hair and perfume. Someone fumbling for a coin. The old graceful buildings. There is a grace in London that New York never achieves.

What's happening to my writing? Or was it always this stilted and I never noticed?

It's the same for Oxford. Columbia is pretty but it doesn't have the quiet arrogance, the self-assured beauty, above all the grace that Oxford does. That Oxford has without trying at all, a grace acquired through great age and great deeds. Oxford. Walking past the Rad Cam on Guy Fawkes Day listening to the sound of fireworks exploding everywhere, remembering a night in the library last year, in the Upper Camera listening to fireworks not reading the book in front of me wishing I were elsewhere and then looking up to see one perfect starburst of fireworks through the windows, like a gift, all the more perfect for being unexpected; jumping up and running to the windows to look for more fireworks while everyone returned to their books -- or a different Guy Fawkes, in Somerville this time, running out from the room to the lawns to watch the fireworks and returning windblown windnumbed laughing to the meeting (I remember writing a letter to you that evening, covertly, baby I miss you more than words can say. One more letter you will never get.) Walking through Oxford walking through wading through memories. The tree in Holywell Quad in New College, the one in front of the porter's lodge, has lost half its leaves and the other half has turned yellow. In first year that tree was right outside my window and I measured the seasons watching its leaves; first the top half turned yellow and the bottom stayed green and when the bottom leaves had turned yellow and were clinging on precariously to the branches the top branches were bare and soon the entire tree would be bare and that was when I knew winter was here. The two trees at the other end of the lawn, flanking the steps, were burnished red; in the spring they will be white, laden with blossom, and when the wind blows the flowers will lift into the air dancing like a bridal shower. And then I was out of New College; there are just so many memories one can bear at a time. First thing I did -- apart from go to Brasenose -- was go to the Parks. Alone. To see the autumn leaves and to try not to remember watching the sunrise playing frisbee walking by the river feeding the ducks; I had forgotten how many times I had sought solace in the Parks. First thing I did when I got back to New York, after dumping my stuff in my room, was take the walk to Central Park to see the autumn leaves. Three blocks down Central Parkway and it was my first time in the Park alone. First time in autumn. Leaves of pale yellows and browns as if painted with sunlight and the occasional burnished red-bronze flaming in the midst and trees clinging on to red-dapped green and kicking through dried leaves looking for leaves to send to you pressing them in the book of poems I had brought along because of course I had to have a book -- I'm not telling this well. There was a tree with a branch extended like a hand in welcome, dark wood snaking its pattern in that midst of yellow-green, and if you stood right under it and looked up into the filigree of leaves it seemed that you were in a cage with layer upon layer of leaves delicate as a spiderweb stretching out around you. There was wire fence around the lake and stars like leaves caught on the wire mesh. I picked up a spray of red leaves and tucked them into my jeans pocket when I went to the supermarket later and for that time wore a bouquet of autumn leaves.

I would write more about England but I can't find the words can't begin to face the memories. Walking through Columbia at night I want to write about Low Plaza and the way the lamplight spills onto the steps and creates inviting pools of shadow that one can sit in and look up at the stars, and in a way in writing about Low Plaza I'm writing about the Clarendon. About sitting on the steps with chocolate from the Tuck Shop with trashy magazines from Borders to watch the sunlight fade away on Broad Street with kebabs late at night talking about Rousseau and Saint-Simon with Boots sandwiches looking at the PPE Reading Room looking at our nemesis. I'd write about the silence of the Lehman Library basement where time dissolves and think about the PPE Reading Room and about that sunset one evening, close to the finals, postcard-spectacular, and in the windows the reflected rows of students superimposed upon the purples and reds and golds -- or perhaps that time at New College in the garden after the library looking up at the stars talking saying hey whatever else Oxford was it was this; it was friendship and grace and a starlit garden; or that time with ice-cream from the Tuck Shop in the garden on a bench talking about --

I can't start to list. I miss you, you know?

I meant this to be about the trip to England. A trip back in time in so many ways. Or -- a trip to lay certain things to rest. Oxford. London. Some things are over and done with. I could cry then but now back in New York I only feel blank. It's all still too raw. I came to England with little more than a handful of poems and I'm leaving -- I have left -- with very little more than that.