On design

Things organised neatly! Via swissmiss.

News

1. We have ants in the kitchen and they get into the water jugs. (They don't seem to infest anywhere else; we have thirsty ants.) My mother put the jugs on these grey plastic coasters we have, with a maze-like pattern, but the ants learned to climb past the maze-like ridges, and so she's put the jugs on an artfully disarranged heap of coasters of varying sizes and textures. It's worked so far, but all that's going to happen is probably that we'll be left with very smart ants, the others having died of thirst.

2. I drove! By myself! For about fifteen minutes each way (ten for a competent driver, and five if you don't drive at the speed limit), and only one almost-accident (when I stalled on the slip road). I can also park, kind of, if the lots are wide and the car park empty and the parking gods in an indulgent mood.

Tail, chasing, circles

Each time I try to start afresh and write only inspired, thoughtful, sensible things, I run out of words.

I have therefore decided to return to pointless griping. 

Yesterday, in a fit of productivity, I looked through the Saturday Recruit, and last Saturday's too, for good measure. Employers are looking for, in descending order, one, scientific/engineering/technical types, for cars, pharmaceuticals, biotech stuff, paint, construction - anything to do with a codifiable and recognizable form of knowledge; two, human resource types; three, marketing types; and four, accounting types. I fall into none of these categories. I'm not sure, because I have not quite given up entirely, I want to fall into any of these categories. (I have instead acquired, slowly and haphazardly, a little snowdrift of unfiltered names and phrases and ideas, mostly from the eighteenth century, but fading pleasantly into antiquity.) This may take a little longer than anticipated.

Why I should stick to walking

I am, it is clear, not one of nature's drivers.

After a long two-hour session my father looked at me and said, perhaps you just have to figure out where "true straight" is in relation to your "straight".

Moving house

Probably to here. See you there.

The great thing about Britain

or what Singapore politics needs: a pirate running for election!

Demas, In Love With This Present World

2 Timothy 4:9-10

What you've heard is true - I've gone to Thessilonika.
I've taken a room above the agora with a view
of the harbor and wake too early to merchants' voices,
bleatings of every sort, and carpets being beaten.
The innkeeper and his wife bring bread - they are kind,
and their daughter is pretty, though she has a withered hand.

At night I watch the fishing boats come in to shore,
hung with many lanterns. The men pull up their nets
and sort the catch in shifting light; they sometimes sing
a song about the moon seducing an old sailor
and drink a bit and fall asleep in their robes.
Later someone puts out the lights one by one.

In between, the days are slow, and I think of you often.
I know what some are saying, that I loved my father
and his estate more than truth and our way of life.
It wasn't the inheritance that called me back,
and I won't return to the assembly or his house.
Demetrius is here, asleep beside me as I write.

He has thrown one of his warm legs over me
in a dream, and two pears with a jar of wine wait
on the table for when he wakes. I wish you understood
how it feels to fear the truth while also loving him.
I still believe this present world is passing away,
but now it is impossible to rejoice with you.

Sometimes when I walk outside the city gates
and I look up into the mountains, toward Rome
where all of you are waiting, I want to come back -
but it doesn't last. I walk home through the colonnade,
listening to the temple priests and fortune tellers,
the eastern caravans selling cedar, pearls, and linen.

The innkeeper's daughter greets me at the door,
the weak hand cupped to her breast. She has been
praying to a small bright god in the corner
of her room, for health and peace, as she has been taught.
I will go upstairs and place my arms around the loved
and living body of one who owns no household gods,

who confesses no world but this. We will watch
the sky turn dark and wait for fishermen to light
their lamps and disappear across the invisible sea.
I pray to the God I remember, whom I love and fail
to love, knowing words are all I have to bind
us to each other, knowing they are passing too.

Grace be with you.

- Kristin Fogdall

to carry corn whither he would / you can't not love feudal law

"There were no profits so small as to be below the king’s attention. Henry, son of Arthur, gave ten dogs, to have a recognition against the countess of Copland for one knight’s fee. Roger, son of Nicholas, gave twenty lampreys and twenty shads for an inquest to find, whether Gilbert, son of Alured, gave to Roger 200 muttons to obtain his confirmation for certain lands, or whether Roger took them from him by violence: Geoffrey Fitz-Pierre, the chief justiciary, gave two good Norway hawks, that Walter le Madine might have leave to export a hundred weight of cheese out of the king’s dominions.

...The wife of Hugh de Nevile gave the king 200 hens, that she might lie with her husband one night; and she brought with her two sureties, who answered each for a hundred hens. It is probable that her husband was a prisoner, which debarred her from having access to him. The abbot of Rucford paid ten marks, for leave to erect houses and place men upon his land near Welhang, in order to secure his wood there from being stolen: Hugh archdeacon of Wells, gave one tun of wine for leave to carry 600 summs of corn whither he would: Peter de Perariis gave twenty marks for leave to salt fishes, as Peter Chevalier used to do.

...Richard de Neville gave twenty palfreys to obtain the king’s request to Isolda Bisset, that she should take him for a husband: Roger Fitz-Walter gave three good palfreys to have the king’s letter to Roger Bertram’s mother, that she should marry him: Eling, the dean, paid 100 marks, that his whore and his children might be let out upon bail: The bishop of Winchester gave one tun of good wine for his not putting the king in mind to give a girdle to the countess of Albemarle:s Robert de Veaux gave five of the best palfreys, that the king would hold his tongue about Henry Pinel’s wife."

- Hume, History of England, Vol. 1

jewellery

"Innocent, sensible that this flagrant usurpation [appointing his man Archbishop of Canterbury] would be highly resented by the court of England, wrote [King] John a mollifying letter; sent him four golden rings set with precious stones; and endeavoured to enhance the value of the present, by informing him of the many mysteries implied in it. He begged him to consider seriously the form of the rings, their number, their matter, and their colour. Their form, he said, being round, shadowed out Eternity, which had neither beginning nor end; and he ought thence to learn his duty of aspiring from earthly objects to heavenly, from things temporal to things eternal. The number four, being a square, denoted steadiness of mind, not to be subverted either by adversity or prosperity, fixed for ever on the firm basis of the four cardinal virtues. Gold, which is the matter, being the most precious of metals, signified Wisdom, which is the most valuable of all accomplishments, and justly preferred by Solomon to riches, power, and all exterior attainments. The blue colour of the saphire represented Faith; the verdure of the emerald, Hope; the redness of the ruby, Charity; and the splendor of the topaz, Good Works. By these conceits, Innocent endeavoured to repay John for one of the most important prerogatives of his crown, which he had ravished from him; conceits probably admired by Innocent himself. For it is easily possible for a man, especially in a barbarous age, to unite strong talents for business with an absurd taste for literature and in the arts." - Ibid.

(John was not impressed.)

Status

"The Greek prince [of Cyprus], being thrown into prison and loaded with irons, complained of the little regard with which he was treated: Upon which, Richard [the Lionheart] ordered silver fetters to be made for him; and this emperor, pleased with the distinction, expressed a sense of the generosity of his conqueror." Hume, History of England, Vol. 1.

compensation

"By the laws of Ethelbert*, any one who committed adultery with his neighbour’s wife was obliged to pay him a fine, and buy him another wife." Hume, History of England, Vol. 1.

*Saxon king of Kent, roundabout 530ish.

most expensive salad ever

"It was not till the end of this reign [of Henry VIII] that any sallads, carrots, turnips, or other edible roots were produced in England. The little of these vegetables, that was used, was formerly imported from Holland and Flanders. Queen Catherine, when she wanted a sallad, was obliged to dispatch a messenger thither on purpose." - Hume, History of England, Vol. 3.

Walking back from Grantchester after dark

and oh, the stars.

kill sin pimple

"It was usual for the pretended saints at that time [of Oliver Cromwell - this is his first or so parliament as Protector, roundabout 1653] to change their names from Henry, Edward, Anthony, William, which they regarded as heathenish, into others more sanctified and godly: Even the New Testament names, James, Andrew, John, Peter, were not held in such regard as those which were borrowed from the Old Testament, Hezekiah, Habbakuk, Joshua, Zerobabel. Sometimes a whole godly sentence was adopted as a name.

Here are the names of a jury said to be enclosed in the county of Sussex about that time.

Accepted, Trevor of Northam.
Redeemed, Compton of Battle.

Faint not, Hewit of Heathfield. 

Make Peace, Heaton of Hare. 

God Reward, Smart of Fivehurst. 

Standfast on High, Stringer of Crowhurst. 

Earth, Adams of Warbleton. 

Called, Lower of the same. 

Kill Sin, Pimple of Witham. 

Return, Spelman of Watling.

Be Faithful, Joiner of Britling.

Fly Debate, Roberts of the same.
Fight the good Fight of Faith, White of Emer.
More Fruit, Fowler of East Hadley.
Hope for, Bending of the same.
Graceful, Harding of Lewes.

Weep not, Biling of the same.

Meek, Brewer of Okeham.

See Brome’s Travels into England, p. 279. “Cromwell,” says Cleveland, “hath beat up his drums clean through the Old Testament. You may learn the genealogy of our Saviour by the names of his regiment. The muster-master has no other list, than the first chapter of St. Matthew.” The brother of this Praise-god Barebone had for name, If Christ had not died for you, you had been damned Barebone. But the people, tired of this long name, retained only the last word, and commonly gave him the appellation of Damn’d Barebone."

From Hume's History of England, Vol 6, a footnote somewhere.

Lent

So Lent term is almost over, or possibly over already; they do time differently here, the week starts on a Thursday and ends whenever, and anyway we don't quite follow the undergraduate timetable. I've finished my second essay and it's not 6 a.m. the day it's due, which is a first for me. It's a much better essay than the first one, which is not saying that much, and the surprised relief with which my supervisor concurs with this assessment would be humbling if I hadn't already reached bottom. This term was better, I'm really enjoying it now, I can see the road from here, and those stone marker things that tell you how far you've run, and it's not unimaginably far away. The first term was so demoralising I didn't apply for a PhD - I wouldn't have had a snowball's chance in hell of funding anyway, it's based on the department's ranking, which is more or less based on the grade of your first essay - doesn't this sound familiar? - so I'll be home, at least for a year, and then, and then I really don't know. One tends to get enmeshed in things. I want to be home. I want to stay here. There was a talk last Thursday by John Pocock, a professor at Johns Hopkins I think, who did his doctorate here but didn't teach here, who more or less set the agenda for the "Cambridge School" of the history of political thought. His thing is the history of historiography - he may have invented the field - the history of how societies understand themselves and in time, which is part of the history of political discourse, itself recursive and reflexive (if that's what I mean) - a historian's historian. I'm coming round to the idea that history, done right, is the hardest discipline of all the humanities, including the social sciences for the sake of argument. Pocock's topic is the history of Western society, the history of the grand narratives used to describe historical change from the ancients to the moderns, a history he summarises in two arcs: from libertas to imperium, and something about revelation which I didn't understand. The Enlightenment, which is where he stops, is the replacement of the sacred with commerce. Roughly. There was a talk just now, organised by the Jewish Society, by Steve Pinker and Rebecca Goldstein. As a talk it was entertaining and not much more; there are few truly interesting general things to say about religion by sympathetic atheists and non-religious Jews; their books are better. Their books are very good, from what little I've read of them, and Rebecca Goldstein makes me want to read Spinoza. The thing though, is their marriage. Did you not want that? A marriage of true minds? The scientist and the philosopher/novelist? Though he is a cognitive psychologist and she comes out of the analytic philosophy tradition, before she was converted by Spinoza, so they're not that far apart. What I have here is not the life of the mind, but it makes the life of the mind thinkable. I don't want it, I'm not good enough, I'm not good enough to really enjoy it. I want it. It's humbling to come up against my limits where they matter - limits don't matter in so many things, I'll never climb Everest, never learn to tango, never walk without stumbling over my own feet - but they matter here. Reading and writing and thinking, if you can't do these things properly, what can you do? I don't want the arguments one has in class or in the pub, or even the late-night conversations over wine or tea on the floor of someone's dorm room; I want the conversations I can't yet have, perhaps can't have. How much raw intelligence do you have, and how hard will you work for it, and what will you give up while you're finding out? More than ever I feel I'm running out of time, it's too late, this is the cost of the scholarship and it's too high now.

parcels

I have pineapple tarts!

on moderation

"This enterprise [of creating a language of interest to reinforce the language of rights used by Whig thinkers to explain and legitimise the Revolution] hinged on the cultivation of moderation in the use of political and religious language; but that, [Charles] Leslie remarked caustically, was simply to encourage hypocrisy:

'It is a Catholicon, and Cures all Diseases! Take but a Dose of this and thou mays't Drink Poison, and Break all the Ten Commandments without any Offence! It Reconciles Churches, or No Churches, Christ and Belial, Light and Darkness! It can Transform a Rebel into a Saint, and Satan to an Angel of Light! It can make a Schismatick, a true Friend of the Church; and a Whore an Honest Woman!' "


- From Nicholas Phillipson, "Propriety, property and prudence: David Hume and the defence of the Revolution"

simple as that

from wondermark

It snowed overnight! Ah, England.

Salinger

My minute of silence.

Barricades

What goes through my mind, every now and again, is the Joan Didion piece about being a child of the 50s, though that's not, I don't think, the way she put it - about making a private peace, a little town, a house by the beach, rather than cutting oneself into history; about not going to the barricades. (It was "The Morning After the Sixties", or a title much like.)

That and Lyra and the aleiometer in Phillip Pullman's Northern Lights trilogy - not by grace but by learning.

Cambridge

So I'm in Cambridge, or perhaps at Cambridge, more accurately; I should be here until June; I'm reading for an MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual History. I may have mentioned this.

Cambridge is too familiar in many ways, and extremely strange in others. Too familiar not so much in its architecture - geography? (the best part of Cambridge, though I miss the great public set-pieces of Oxford - Radcliffe Square; the sweep of Broad Street, with the Clarendon and the Sheldonian on one side; the University Parks; Cambridge is too college-dominated) but in oh the awkwardness and tentativeness of undergraduate life. There are people I would have loved to meet, or to be able to meet, six, seven years ago; conversations I wanted to have; a kind of student life I wanted to have; but not any more, or not quite in the same way, or not with the mentality of a twenty-three-year-old. This has nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with age; I find myself reverting to my undergraduate self in an older shell, as if the experience and confidence of the last six years, such as they were, have all but evaporated. And extremely strange in that - oh but it's hard now. Harder than it used to be, for all kinds of reasons - I'm not used to academic reading and writing; or to working hard, for that matter; the standard's higher; I'm just not good enough; it's real now. This is what academic research is, or should be, or what it needs. Which is a deep, abiding and compulsive love of one's research, if only because that might be its only reward. (In the arts, at least. The sciences have the consolation of utility.) And whatever else I came here for, it was for a room of my own - a way of finding the energy and compulsion and desire that I thought I had, or wanted, or was nostalgic for. Some jobs, I think, are callings; not all are; this is probably one of them.

So. What next?

Matteo Ricci's world map, with China at its centre.

Marginalia

First writer: Abandon faith all those who enter here! Start at page 17!
Second: All ye who enter here, I think, sweetie.
Third: Who gives a flying fuck?

(The book in question: J. C. D. Clark's English Society 1660-1832)

One of the best things about England

is the radio. Terry Pratchett's Mort on Radio 7!

[Interlude 2]

David Tennant on BBC Radio 4: said that the West Wing was the best drama series after Doctor Who.

[interlude]

One of the best footnotes I've seen: "[Josiah Tucker] was one of those insignificant Englishmen of whom the history of political thought so largely consists. This remark is dedicated with irritated affection to Judith N. Shklar." (From Pocock, "Mobility of property", in Virtue, Commerce, and History.)