Su-Lin has put up the class blogs for the current 13A, 1A and 1B (good luck with the trial class, darling!) and as she points out, thank god our emails are not on the net for seniors to laugh at, though now that I think of it, aren't the Dorinda emails on Minz's webpage somewhere?
But the disturbing thing isn't what the kids are writing now or what we were writing then but the undeniable fact that I'm not writing anything much different nowadays; it's just much less excusable now. Bugger. (At least the swear words have changed a little; the English education did have some use after all.)
Saturday, August 28, 2004
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Study of Time (2)
It's not that time stops when you're travelling - if time is motion then isn't time precisely what's happening (can time happen?) when you're on the road? In any case -
Istanbul. First day was Istanbul and the old city walls and the Grand Bazaar, which has turned into an immense tourist trap and sells all manner of Turkish Delight, apple tea grains, carpets, water pipes, lamps of coloured glass. Every carpet-seller wants to talk to you, but oh only to talk, not to sell you a carpet, you are my guest not my customer, have more apple tea, let me tell you how wonderful my carpets are just by way of conversation, and aren't Asian girls sweet? A mosque at every corner and Ataturk's picture in every shop.
Cappadocia. Overnight bus to Cappadocia to see the fairy chimneys the next day like toys of the gods. A landscape like no other. A series of rock-cut churches at the Goreme open-air museum, richly frescoed in reds and blues and yellows. There are more churches, says the guide, but we don't need to see them; they're all the same. We refuse to go look at the weaving and say we want to drop off at the Red Valley instead with a couple of American girls who have been travelling in the Middle East. One in from Nebraska and the other from Wisconsin but says she's from Chicago to avoid the red-neck jokes. She has a year's grant to live in Dubai and do research on civil society in the Middle East with no commitment to any product at the end. They call each other "yani" because that's what Arabs say, the same way Californians say "um" or "like" all the time. Imagine calling someone "um"! They have just come from Iran and were never so glad in their lives to cross the border to Turkey (but don't take the train!) and strip. American tourists in Iran have to wear the full veil (burqa?). There are two kinds of women in Turkey - those who wear the veil and those who don't. The ones who don't wear hot pink tops and paint their faces an inch thick - they haven't cast off the veil for no twinset and pearls. But we're still trekking through the Red Valley and getting more and more lost by the minute. We cut across to a different path, stumble across the winery, reach an unfamiliar part of the road and hitch back to town on a passing tour bus. Evening spent learning about carpets - there is the kilim, the wool carpet; the samat (?), silk on wool; and the carpet, which is knotted and not woven; the carpets (kilims and all) tend to have traditional designs: women with their hands on their hips (asking something from the gods), blue eyes (to ward off the evil eye. Every woman and child wears something with the blue eye - a bracelet, a necklace, a pin.) - and wandering around the town. The next day is an underground city and a walk through the lush Ihlara Valley and a scramble around the Selime monastery, which is a series of abandoned rock caves. The early Christians lived in the mountains; you can see the caves (which are occasionally occupied by present-day hermits) still.
Pamukkale. Overnight bus to Selcuk, tour bus to Pamukkale, where lies the ruins of Hierapolis, the old Roman spa city. Pamukkale has a series of cascading calcium pools, turquoise on white over the edge of the cliff like the end of the world. We meet two Americans with the Peace Corps in Ukraine, a university lecturer in marketing from New York called Katherine and a business consultant from Memphis, Tennessee called John. They're in Kiev for two years and travelling in the slack period. Kiev, John says, is ripe for a revolution. The kids are tired of the system. They're tired of having their schools closed down and no food on the supermarket shelves. Of hauling water from the river and living in darkness because the electricity supply for the building (all buildings are centrally supplied) has been cut off yet again. A revolution takes either immense bravery or immense misery, I say. There are no leaders yet, according to John, but the misery is all but present. There are also on the trip the golden girls, two middle-aged Filipina New Yorkers. This is the key stone, the most important stone in the whole arch, says the guide. Wow! say the golden girls. The key stone holds up the arch! says the guide. It's a miracle! cry the golden girls.
Ephesus. The night in the tacky seaside town of Kusadasi with Miyuki (?), a Japanese girl who has abandoned her Turkish boyfriend to the sweltering heat of Istanbul to travel Turkey, and the next day in the magnificent ruins of Ephesus. What all the postcards show is the library of Celsus (also on the 20 million Turkish lira note). The library is also a tomb; Celsus decided that rather than building a grand sarcophagus for his dead father he'd built the library instead, and bury the father close by. When I die will you build me a library? This was one of the great libraries of the ancient world, but all the knowledge has been lost now. After Ephesus was the House of the Virgin Mary (John brought her to Ephesus after the death of Christ) and then the Temple of Artemis, which is now a swamp and a column and a whole bunch of storks (thought to bring fertility).
Istanbul. Zhen now has hair braids and I've a blue and purple hair wrap that will most certainly not be accepted in the office. We go into the tourist hamam (Cemberlitas Hamam, off Divan Yolu) stark naked except for a towel (to lie on) because we haven't enough clothes to get any wet in the hamam. I lie on my back on the central marble slab waiting for the masseuse to be done (the masseuses are huge Turkish women in black panties and breasts that reach down to their waists) and looking at the lights in the ceiling like stars. The most peaceful place in all Istanbul, which in its other incarnations is full of noise and smoke and over-friendly Turkish men. The other peaceful places are the mosques, of course, with their great ring of lights hanging low from the ceiling. In the old days they hung ostrich eggs among the lights to keep away spiders. Now they have electric lights but still hang decorative eggs. The mosques are dressed in pretty Iznik tiles (hence Blue Mosque) except for Aya Sofya, which was converted from the church of Sancta Sophia after the fall of Constantinople. It's the oldest trick in the book, appropriating the symbols of power of the conquered people, and they say Aya Sofya is still one of the seven wonders of the world, but I think the Ottomans sacked Justinian's great church. The mosaics are mostly gone from the marble walls and there are flower patterns on the ceiling painted over crosses. Remember that Islamic art doesn't allow representation of animals or people - is that the command against graven images? In any case the tiles are mesmerising in their blues and reds, blue because of the influence of Chinese pottery. The Ottomans loved Ming pottery. Topkapi palace the next day, with all the jewels of the Ottoman empire. I love Suleiman's taste - no ostentatious dagger hilts carved from a single emerald but a throne of polished wood and mother-of-pearl and swords that whisper of power and glamour. The legacy of Suleiman the Lawgiver. It's a cruise up the Bosphorus at night, to see how the glamorous of Istanbul live, in grand hotels that open onto the river for black-tie dinners with waiters and candles and the black waters of the Bosphorus. Someone's letting off fireworks when we get back to Sirkeci but they don't explode.
Athens. The entire city has pulled itself together for the Olympics, with free gigs around the city and street art on the road that winds around the Acropolis, which is beautiful and austere by night, and souvenir stores and cafes and restaurants that stay open the whole night. The streets are full of noise and light and drunken Aussies. In the day the sun bleaches all colour from the ruins and beats down without mercy; the days are best spent on the beach on one of the islands (we were at Marathonas beach in Aegina). The Olympic Stadium itself is a work of art, white against the blinding blue of the sky, the colours of Greece.
Istanbul. First day was Istanbul and the old city walls and the Grand Bazaar, which has turned into an immense tourist trap and sells all manner of Turkish Delight, apple tea grains, carpets, water pipes, lamps of coloured glass. Every carpet-seller wants to talk to you, but oh only to talk, not to sell you a carpet, you are my guest not my customer, have more apple tea, let me tell you how wonderful my carpets are just by way of conversation, and aren't Asian girls sweet? A mosque at every corner and Ataturk's picture in every shop.
Cappadocia. Overnight bus to Cappadocia to see the fairy chimneys the next day like toys of the gods. A landscape like no other. A series of rock-cut churches at the Goreme open-air museum, richly frescoed in reds and blues and yellows. There are more churches, says the guide, but we don't need to see them; they're all the same. We refuse to go look at the weaving and say we want to drop off at the Red Valley instead with a couple of American girls who have been travelling in the Middle East. One in from Nebraska and the other from Wisconsin but says she's from Chicago to avoid the red-neck jokes. She has a year's grant to live in Dubai and do research on civil society in the Middle East with no commitment to any product at the end. They call each other "yani" because that's what Arabs say, the same way Californians say "um" or "like" all the time. Imagine calling someone "um"! They have just come from Iran and were never so glad in their lives to cross the border to Turkey (but don't take the train!) and strip. American tourists in Iran have to wear the full veil (burqa?). There are two kinds of women in Turkey - those who wear the veil and those who don't. The ones who don't wear hot pink tops and paint their faces an inch thick - they haven't cast off the veil for no twinset and pearls. But we're still trekking through the Red Valley and getting more and more lost by the minute. We cut across to a different path, stumble across the winery, reach an unfamiliar part of the road and hitch back to town on a passing tour bus. Evening spent learning about carpets - there is the kilim, the wool carpet; the samat (?), silk on wool; and the carpet, which is knotted and not woven; the carpets (kilims and all) tend to have traditional designs: women with their hands on their hips (asking something from the gods), blue eyes (to ward off the evil eye. Every woman and child wears something with the blue eye - a bracelet, a necklace, a pin.) - and wandering around the town. The next day is an underground city and a walk through the lush Ihlara Valley and a scramble around the Selime monastery, which is a series of abandoned rock caves. The early Christians lived in the mountains; you can see the caves (which are occasionally occupied by present-day hermits) still.
Pamukkale. Overnight bus to Selcuk, tour bus to Pamukkale, where lies the ruins of Hierapolis, the old Roman spa city. Pamukkale has a series of cascading calcium pools, turquoise on white over the edge of the cliff like the end of the world. We meet two Americans with the Peace Corps in Ukraine, a university lecturer in marketing from New York called Katherine and a business consultant from Memphis, Tennessee called John. They're in Kiev for two years and travelling in the slack period. Kiev, John says, is ripe for a revolution. The kids are tired of the system. They're tired of having their schools closed down and no food on the supermarket shelves. Of hauling water from the river and living in darkness because the electricity supply for the building (all buildings are centrally supplied) has been cut off yet again. A revolution takes either immense bravery or immense misery, I say. There are no leaders yet, according to John, but the misery is all but present. There are also on the trip the golden girls, two middle-aged Filipina New Yorkers. This is the key stone, the most important stone in the whole arch, says the guide. Wow! say the golden girls. The key stone holds up the arch! says the guide. It's a miracle! cry the golden girls.
Ephesus. The night in the tacky seaside town of Kusadasi with Miyuki (?), a Japanese girl who has abandoned her Turkish boyfriend to the sweltering heat of Istanbul to travel Turkey, and the next day in the magnificent ruins of Ephesus. What all the postcards show is the library of Celsus (also on the 20 million Turkish lira note). The library is also a tomb; Celsus decided that rather than building a grand sarcophagus for his dead father he'd built the library instead, and bury the father close by. When I die will you build me a library? This was one of the great libraries of the ancient world, but all the knowledge has been lost now. After Ephesus was the House of the Virgin Mary (John brought her to Ephesus after the death of Christ) and then the Temple of Artemis, which is now a swamp and a column and a whole bunch of storks (thought to bring fertility).
Istanbul. Zhen now has hair braids and I've a blue and purple hair wrap that will most certainly not be accepted in the office. We go into the tourist hamam (Cemberlitas Hamam, off Divan Yolu) stark naked except for a towel (to lie on) because we haven't enough clothes to get any wet in the hamam. I lie on my back on the central marble slab waiting for the masseuse to be done (the masseuses are huge Turkish women in black panties and breasts that reach down to their waists) and looking at the lights in the ceiling like stars. The most peaceful place in all Istanbul, which in its other incarnations is full of noise and smoke and over-friendly Turkish men. The other peaceful places are the mosques, of course, with their great ring of lights hanging low from the ceiling. In the old days they hung ostrich eggs among the lights to keep away spiders. Now they have electric lights but still hang decorative eggs. The mosques are dressed in pretty Iznik tiles (hence Blue Mosque) except for Aya Sofya, which was converted from the church of Sancta Sophia after the fall of Constantinople. It's the oldest trick in the book, appropriating the symbols of power of the conquered people, and they say Aya Sofya is still one of the seven wonders of the world, but I think the Ottomans sacked Justinian's great church. The mosaics are mostly gone from the marble walls and there are flower patterns on the ceiling painted over crosses. Remember that Islamic art doesn't allow representation of animals or people - is that the command against graven images? In any case the tiles are mesmerising in their blues and reds, blue because of the influence of Chinese pottery. The Ottomans loved Ming pottery. Topkapi palace the next day, with all the jewels of the Ottoman empire. I love Suleiman's taste - no ostentatious dagger hilts carved from a single emerald but a throne of polished wood and mother-of-pearl and swords that whisper of power and glamour. The legacy of Suleiman the Lawgiver. It's a cruise up the Bosphorus at night, to see how the glamorous of Istanbul live, in grand hotels that open onto the river for black-tie dinners with waiters and candles and the black waters of the Bosphorus. Someone's letting off fireworks when we get back to Sirkeci but they don't explode.
Athens. The entire city has pulled itself together for the Olympics, with free gigs around the city and street art on the road that winds around the Acropolis, which is beautiful and austere by night, and souvenir stores and cafes and restaurants that stay open the whole night. The streets are full of noise and light and drunken Aussies. In the day the sun bleaches all colour from the ruins and beats down without mercy; the days are best spent on the beach on one of the islands (we were at Marathonas beach in Aegina). The Olympic Stadium itself is a work of art, white against the blinding blue of the sky, the colours of Greece.
Study of Time (1)
Study of Time
One bird deserves another. One white and orange tabletop.
One twenty-five-year-old deserves another
Twenty-five-year-old. One harlequin deserves another harlequin. One rich cocktail of flames
deserves another
And one extravagant boast: I am the Obvious. My hunch is me.
One brain deserves a brain that has been hatched in the tropics
One broken heart a heart that has been differently broken.
It seems to me time to get something done. But if I get in the car
I am forty-five years old and you are nineteen. We are
Not going anywhere. The car won't start. And if I get out
I am sixty years old. I look around but don't see you there.
I expect it's a good presumption that you care coming back,
But hurry. If I go into the drugstore
I am thirty-three. The boy behind the counter
Is not a girl, but we discuss national politics anyway.
That fucking Nixon. Or That damned unholy war! If I read a magazine
At the stand, on the other side of the drugstore,
I am twenty-five, and you, dressed with some hoop-la, come in.
I am sixteen when I am lying on the floor, with you beside me
Reading a newspaper. One stone man
Deserves one stone women, and one glad day of being alone
And in good health. If at seventy
I get up and close the door,
I am fourteen and you are twenty. I'll put on
My blue shirt. My white tie, I'm twenty, twenty-one. Now we are eighty.
One five o'clock sunny day
Deserves another. We are both fifty-four. You pick up the bar that holds the door
And hit it as hard as you can at twenty. The floor deserves the floor
Of heaven that is a ceiling as we see it. One coldly affected group
Deserves another. We both very much enjoy engaging in sports.
You fall down, I pick you up. I am eight
You are sixty-six. Today is your birthday. You stand opening a cantaloupe. You say, Let's
Try another! You are sitting in the car,
You are twenty-three, I am forty-four and singing a Spanish song.
If she is nine years old, then I am fifty.
The birthdays come and go talking of Prospero. Good-bye, house!
Do you remember when we used to live in you
And be forty-eight years old? One age deserves another. One time deserves another time.
- Kenneth Koch
One bird deserves another. One white and orange tabletop.
One twenty-five-year-old deserves another
Twenty-five-year-old. One harlequin deserves another harlequin. One rich cocktail of flames
deserves another
And one extravagant boast: I am the Obvious. My hunch is me.
One brain deserves a brain that has been hatched in the tropics
One broken heart a heart that has been differently broken.
It seems to me time to get something done. But if I get in the car
I am forty-five years old and you are nineteen. We are
Not going anywhere. The car won't start. And if I get out
I am sixty years old. I look around but don't see you there.
I expect it's a good presumption that you care coming back,
But hurry. If I go into the drugstore
I am thirty-three. The boy behind the counter
Is not a girl, but we discuss national politics anyway.
That fucking Nixon. Or That damned unholy war! If I read a magazine
At the stand, on the other side of the drugstore,
I am twenty-five, and you, dressed with some hoop-la, come in.
I am sixteen when I am lying on the floor, with you beside me
Reading a newspaper. One stone man
Deserves one stone women, and one glad day of being alone
And in good health. If at seventy
I get up and close the door,
I am fourteen and you are twenty. I'll put on
My blue shirt. My white tie, I'm twenty, twenty-one. Now we are eighty.
One five o'clock sunny day
Deserves another. We are both fifty-four. You pick up the bar that holds the door
And hit it as hard as you can at twenty. The floor deserves the floor
Of heaven that is a ceiling as we see it. One coldly affected group
Deserves another. We both very much enjoy engaging in sports.
You fall down, I pick you up. I am eight
You are sixty-six. Today is your birthday. You stand opening a cantaloupe. You say, Let's
Try another! You are sitting in the car,
You are twenty-three, I am forty-four and singing a Spanish song.
If she is nine years old, then I am fifty.
The birthdays come and go talking of Prospero. Good-bye, house!
Do you remember when we used to live in you
And be forty-eight years old? One age deserves another. One time deserves another time.
- Kenneth Koch
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Istanbul (Not Constantinople)
Flying to Istanbul Friday night and will be back the Monday or Tuesday after next, I forget which. My organisational skills are without parallel. Now would be an excellent time to tell me all the things you ever wanted from Turkey which I could possibly get for you. (Bad timing all round I know. Don't disappear before I get back.)
Wednesday, August 04, 2004
For Minzhi, who will be reading Moby Dick
Reading Moby Dick at 30,000 Feet
At this height, Kansas
is just a concept,
a checkerboard design of wheat and corn
no larger than the foldout section
of my neighbor's travel magazine.
At this stage of the journey
I would estimate the distance
between myself and my own feelings
is roughly the same as the mileage
from Seattle to New York,
so I can lean back into the upholstered interval
between Muzak and lunch,
a little bored, a little old and strange.
I remember, as a dreamy
backyard kind of kid,
tilting up my head to watch
those planes engrave the sky
in lines so steady and so straight
they implied the enormous concentration
of good men,
but now my eyes flicker
from the in-flight movie
to the stewardess's pantyline,
then back into my book,
where men throw harpoons at something
much bigger and probably
better than themselves,
wanting to kill it,
wanting to see great clouds of blood erupt
to prove that they exist.
Imagine being born and growing up,
rushing through the world for sixty years
at unimaginable speeds.
Imagine a century like a room so large,
a corridor so long
you could travel for a lifetime
and never find the door,
until you had forgotten
that such a thing as doors exist.
Better to be on board the Pequod,
with a mad one-legged captain
living for revenge.
Better to feel the salt wind
spitting in your face,
to hold your sharpened weapon high,
to see the glisten
of the beast beneath the waves.
What a relief it would be
to hear someone in the crew
cry out like a gull,
Oh Captain, Captain!
Where are we going now?
- Tony Hoagland
At this height, Kansas
is just a concept,
a checkerboard design of wheat and corn
no larger than the foldout section
of my neighbor's travel magazine.
At this stage of the journey
I would estimate the distance
between myself and my own feelings
is roughly the same as the mileage
from Seattle to New York,
so I can lean back into the upholstered interval
between Muzak and lunch,
a little bored, a little old and strange.
I remember, as a dreamy
backyard kind of kid,
tilting up my head to watch
those planes engrave the sky
in lines so steady and so straight
they implied the enormous concentration
of good men,
but now my eyes flicker
from the in-flight movie
to the stewardess's pantyline,
then back into my book,
where men throw harpoons at something
much bigger and probably
better than themselves,
wanting to kill it,
wanting to see great clouds of blood erupt
to prove that they exist.
Imagine being born and growing up,
rushing through the world for sixty years
at unimaginable speeds.
Imagine a century like a room so large,
a corridor so long
you could travel for a lifetime
and never find the door,
until you had forgotten
that such a thing as doors exist.
Better to be on board the Pequod,
with a mad one-legged captain
living for revenge.
Better to feel the salt wind
spitting in your face,
to hold your sharpened weapon high,
to see the glisten
of the beast beneath the waves.
What a relief it would be
to hear someone in the crew
cry out like a gull,
Oh Captain, Captain!
Where are we going now?
- Tony Hoagland