translation

Voltaire translates Hamlet's soliloquy:

Demeure, il faut choisir, & passer à l’instant
De la vie à la mort, ou de l’être au néant.
Dieux justes, s’il en est, éclairez mon courage.
Faut–il vieillir courbé sous la main qui m’outrage,
Supporter, ou finir mon malheur & mon sort?
Qui suis–je? Que m’arrête? Et qu’est–ce que la mort?
C’est la fin de nos maux, c’est mon unique asile;
Après de longs transports, c’est un sommeil tranquille.
On s’endort, & tout meurt; mais un affreux réveil
Doit succéder peut–être aux douceurs du sommeil.
On nous menace, on dit, que cette courte vie
De tourmens éternels est aussitôt suivie.
O mort!
O mort! moment fatal! affreuse éternité!
Tout coeur à ton seul nom se glace épouvanté.
Eh! qui pourrait sans toi supporter cette vie?
De nos Prêtres menteurs bénir l’hypocrisie?
D’une indigne maîtresse encenser les erreurs?
Ramper sous un Ministre, adorer ses hauteurs?
Et montrer les langueurs de son ame abattue,
A des amis ingrats, qui détournent la vue?
La mort serait trop douce en ses extrémités.
Mais le scrupule parle, & nous crie, Arrêtez.
Il défend à nos mains cet heureux homicide,
Et d’un Héros guerrier, fait un Chrétien timide.

From "English Tragedy", in Philosophical Letters (1733)

bits

On the way back - a guy cycling down Trinity Lane drinking a half-pint of milk.

in consequence

In my borrowed copy of Albert O. Hirschman's The Passions and the Interests - which I've only read a third of but recommend unreservedly - a previous reader has pencilled helpful comments in the margin.

This is the bit on Montesquieu, and Hirschman quotes Montesquieu as saying that "the natural effect of commerce is to lead to peace."

The marginalia writer's gloss: natural but unintended

Hirschman: But Montesquieu's praise for commerce is not entirely without reservations - Montesquieu worries about the monetisation of human relations and the loss of hospitality and other moral virtues.

Gloss: the unintended consequence of the CONSEQUENCE

Heh.

On rule

There is rule of the sort which is exercised by a master; and by this we mean the sort of rule connected with the necessary functions of life. Here it is not necessary for the ruler to know how to do the task himself, but only to know how to use those who do: indeed the former kind of knowledge (by which we mean an ability to do menial services personally) has a servile character.

- Aristotle, Politics, III.4

on the English

Nor was the Sun King aware of any other reason why the English should deserve attention or respect. He is said once to have asked an English ambassador whether, in his country, there had ever been any writers of note. Of Shakespeare and Milton he had apparently never even heard, and he was by no means peculiar in this regard. When Corneille was sent an English translation of Le Cid, he is said to have shelved it in his cabinet between the work's translations into such barbaric languages as Slavonic and Turkish.

- Paul Rahe, Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty

Ah, education

My notes say that I've read Rousseau's Second Discourse before, but I couldn't have gotten very much out of it.

Page 30: =)

Page 43: that's cos sick animals DIE

Page 53: yarrite

Page 54: =} (with eye roll)

Page 56: lurve...

Page 74: ?

Page 81: hungry

Better than a commencement address

Go forward, then, in virtue, beloved young men, the hope of this generation and the glory, I trust, of the generation to come. Take nature and God as your guide, apply your minds to liberal studies, and lay down a varied store of useful knowledge which you may bring forth one day in all honorable, temperate, modest, and courageous service to our country and the human race. And even at this time, with hope and courage, take to yourselves the joyous sense of a mind conscious of its own integrity, the true dignity of life, the esteem [of others], the most honorable kind of fame, and the highest pleasures of life.

- Francis Hutcheson, "On the Natural Sociability of Mankind", Inaugural Oration, 1730

like a gift

There were fireworks! Unexpectedly. Flashes through the leaves of the very large tree outside my window - pigeons always almost fly in - and crackles from afar.

M&P

To encourage more marriages and births in Rome, Caesar "forbade women under forty-five and who had neither husbands nor children to wear precious stones or to use litters, an excellent method of attacking celibacy through vanity."

- Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws

At the Fishhouses

I am starting to read again - I am always starting to read again, it feels like - and it seems to me, this is what poetry is about, what it is to read a poem. That movement, from the evening at the fishhouse, the old man netting, scales on his vest, to the silver tree trunks, the seal, the clear imperceptible inevitable movement to the water's edge, the water lifting over the stones, the fierce joy at the end of the poem. What it feels like. Dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free.


At the Fishhouses

Although it is a cold evening,
down by one of the fishhouses
an old man sits netting,
his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,
a dark purple-brown,
and his shuttle worn and polished.
The air smells so strong of codfish
it makes one's nose run and one's eyes water.
The five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs
and narrow, cleated gangplanks slant up
to storerooms in the gables
for the wheelbarrows to be pushed up and down on.
All is silver: the heavy surface of the sea,
swelling slowly as if considering spilling over,
is opaque, but the silver of the benches,
the lobster pots, and masts, scattered
among the wild jagged rocks,
is of an apparent translucence
like the small old buildings with an emerald moss
growing on their shoreward walls.
The big fish tubs are completely lined
with layers of beautiful herring scales
and the wheelbarrows are similarly plastered
with creamy iridescent coats of mail,
with small iridescent flies crawling on them.
Up on the little slope behind the houses,
set in the sparse bright sprinkle of grass,
is an ancient wooden capstan,
cracked, with two long bleached handles
and some melancholy stains, like dried blood,
where the ironwork has rusted.
The old man accepts a Lucky Strike.
He was a friend of my grandfather.
We talk of the decline in the population
and of codfish and herring
while he waits for a herring boat to come in.
There are sequins on his vest and on his thumb.
He has scraped the scales, the principal beauty,
from unnumbered fish with that black old knife,
the blade of which is almost worn away.

Down at the water's edge, at the place
where they haul up the boats, up the long ramp
descending into the water, thin silver
tree trunks are laid horizontally
across the gray stones, down and down
at intervals of four or five feet.

Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
element bearable to no mortal,
to fish and to seals . . . One seal particularly
I have seen here evening after evening.
He was curious about me. He was interested in music;
like me a believer in total immersion,
so I used to sing him Baptist hymns.
I also sang "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God."
He stood up in the water and regarded me
steadily, moving his head a little.
Then he would disappear, then suddenly emerge
almost in the same spot, with a sort of shrug
as if it were against his better judgment.
Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
the clear gray icy water . . . Back, behind us,
the dignified tall firs begin.
Bluish, associating with their shadows,
a million Christmas trees stand
waiting for Christmas. The water seems suspended
above the rounded gray and blue-gray stones.
I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,
slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,
icily free above the stones,
above the stones and then the world.
If you should dip your hand in,
your wrist would ache immediately,
your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn
as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.
If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue.
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.

- Elizabeth Bishop

Whiling away time on the net, I find

A clock tower penthouse in Brooklyn.

Free fonts.

A really cool office in the woods.

An online invitation service at Paperless Post.

An attitude chair.

And a delusional paper towel tube.

So

V says, there is the safe choice, the right choice, the right choice for all time. This wouldn't be the safe choice. Not just probably not the right choice for all time; more likely the absolutely wrong choice. Which leaves us with?

Reading lists

Googling, I find Clifton Fadiman's reading lists - by type and with Eastern works too.

Reading Guy Davenport, 2

In moments of sweet clarity, said Hugo, I doubt if we can communicate at all. You mean one thing, I hear another, benignly in banter, violently in an argument. But, said Mariana, we've never had an argument. Of course not, Hugo said, and don't intend to. I mean that human beings probably can't make each other understand what they mean. We have to get our meaning from art, from writing. That's awful, Mariana said.

The Bicycle Rider

Reading Guy Davenport

Archaic Torso of Apollo

Even though we can never see the head that sang, with its deer's eyes staring at infinity, we have the strong torso from whose animal grace we can imagine the hot summer clarity of its gaze. If the gone head is still not there, in light, why then does the proud chest disturb your looking, or the sweet shift of the hips, slight as a smile, that takes our eyes down the cunning body, to its cluster of seeds? Otherwise this stone would stand senseless under the polished slope of its shoulders, without its wild balance, and would not be as rich with light as the sky with stars. The world sees you, too. You must change your life.

The Jules Verne Steam Balloon

Words, falling

From Swiss Miss

No thought you've thunk before

Something I came across at the Marginal Revolution blog:

Sometime in the next week - January 1st if you have that available, or maybe January 3rd or 4th if the weekend is more convenient - I suggest you hold a New Day, where you don't do anything old.

Don't read any book you've read before. Don't read any author you've read before. Don't visit any website you've visited before. Don't play any game you've played before. Don't listen to familiar music that you already know you'll like. If you go on a walk, walk along a new path even if you have to drive to a different part of the city for your walk. Don't go to any restaurant you've been to before, order a dish that you haven't had before. Talk to new people (even if you have to find them in an IRC channel) about something you don't spend much time discussing.

And most of all, if you become aware of yourself musing on any thought you've thunk before, then muse on something else. Rehearse no old grievances, replay no old fantasies.

Happy New Year everyone!

New Year Resolution?

Via Vaughn

Words from a Totem Animal

Distance
is where we were
but empty of us and ahead of
me lying out in the rushes thinking
even the nights cannot come back to their hill
any time

I would rather the wind came from outside
from mountains anywhere
from the stars from other
worlds even as
cold as it is this
ghost of mine passing
through me

I know your silence
and the repetition
like that of a word in the ear of death
teaching
itself
itself
that is the sound of my running
the plea
plea that it makes
which you will never hear
oh god of beginnings
immortal

I might have been right
not who I am
but all right
among the walls among the reasons
not even waiting
not seen
but now I am out in my feet
and they on their way
the old trees jump up again and again
strangers
there are no names for the rivers
for the days for the nights
I am who I am
oh lord cold as the thoughts of birds
and everyone can see me

Caught again and held again
again I am not a blessing
they bring me
names
that would fit anything
they bring them to me
they bring me hopes
all day I turn
making ropes
helping

My eyes are waiting for me
in the dusk
they are still closed
they have been waiting a long time
and I am feeling my way toward them

I am going up stream
taking to the water from time to time
my marks dry off the stones before morning
the dark surface
strokes the night
above its way
There are no stars
there is no grief
I will never arrive
I stumble when I remember how it was
with one foot
one foot still in a name

I can turn myself toward the other joys and their lights
but not find them
I can put my words into the mouths
of spirits
but they will not say them
I can run all night and win
and win

Dead leaves crushed grasses fallen limbs
the world is full of prayers
arrived at from
afterwards
a voice full of breaking
heard from afterwards
through all
the length of the night

I am never all of me
unto myself
and sometimes I go slowly
knowing that a sound one sound
is following me from world
to world
and that I die each time
before it reaches me

When I stop I am alone
at night sometimes it is almost good
as though I were almost there
sometimes then I see there is
in a bush beside me the same question
why are you
on this way
I said I will ask the stars
why are you falling and they answered
which of us

I dreamed I had no nails
no hair
I had lost one of the senses
not sure which
the soles peeled from my feet and
drifted away
clouds
It's all one
feet
stay mine
hold the world lightly

Stars even you
have been used
but not you
silence
blessing
calling me when I am lost

Maybe I will come
to where I am one
and find
I have been waiting there
as a new
year finds the song of the nuthatch

Send me out into another life
lord because this one is growing faint
I do not think it goes all the way

- W. S. Merwin

repulsive theory

by Kay Ryan

Little has been made
of the soft, skirting action
of magnets reversed,
while much has been
made of attraction.
But is it not this pillowy
principle of repulsion
that produces the
doily edges of oceans
or the arabesques of thought?
And do these cutout coasts
and incurved rhetorical beaches
not baffle the onslaught
of the sea or objectionable people
and give private life
what small protection it's got?
Praise then the oiled motions
of avoidance, the pearly
convolutions of all that
slides off or takes a
wide berth; praise every
eddying vacancy of Earth,
all the dimpled depths
of pooling space, the whole
swirl set up by fending-off —
extending far beyond the personal,
I'm convinced —
immense and good
in a cosmological sense:
unpressing us against
each other, lending
the necessary never
to never-ending.

Not that I could tell quantum teleportation from the other kind

From Chris Moriarty's SF blog:

"I cannot count the number of recent SF novels I've read in which writers got quantum teleportation wrong. And I don't mean sort of wrong. I mean totally, unmistakably, irredeemably, inexcusably, unfudgeably wrong. The kind of wrong that no amount of goodwill or benefit of the doubt can help a writer out of. The kind of wrong that once caused a college friend of mine to get a mathematics exam handed back to him with the following sentence written on it in lieu of a grade: How did you become so terribly lost?"

mm

The Moon on the Crest of New-Fallen Snow

Pain

Has its place—and pity, too—but it is not here.
Here all is calm and cold and luminous.
The snow has smoothed over the tracks of the deer.

- Thomas Disch

How To Pack Books (When Moving After 18 Years)

What my sister and I pack, in order of importance:
1. Books we have read and remember fondly;
2. Books we read in childhood;
3. Books we remember seeing on the shelves for so long a time we might as well have read them;
4. Books we might read some day, maybe;
5. Books that would be cool to keep - history, philosophy, poetry, novels by authors who seem vaguely familiar, and anything that looks old;
6. Books by the same author (either someone in the house must like the author or the library had a lot of surplus books by that author at the sale);
7. Books we feel sorry for.

What my father packs:
1. Everything we didn't.

Play it as it lays

Not just because I like Joan Didion's writing voice, but because this is something in the neighbourhood of what what I imagined it would be like. And because I've read The Year of Magical Thinking.

Right after I meant not to write

but something reminded me of Frank O'Hara:

...I want my feet to be bare,
I want my face to be shaven, and my heart --
you can't plan on the heart, but
the better part of it, my poetry, is open.

And then a line from Audre Lourde, which I think I first saw in something of Yisheng's:

love is a word, another kind of open.

And Larkin:

On me your love falls like an enormous yes

And some times, other times, I am afraid. For what that might mean, for both and either of us.

Another kind of explanation

From Joan Didion's collected essays, I find this:

I remember one trip home, when I sat alone on a night jet from New York and read over and over some lines from a W. S. Merwin poem I had come across in a magazine, a poem about a man who had been a long time in another country and knew that he must go home:

...But it should be
Soon. Already I defend hotly
Certain of our indefensible faults,
Resent being reminded; already in my mind
Our language becomes freighted with a richness
No common tongue could offer, while the mountains
Are like nowhere on earth, and the wide rivers.

- From "Notes from a Native Daughter", in Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

If anyone can find the Merwin poem, I would be grateful.

One kind of explanation

I meant not to write publicly, not until I felt that I had made enough of a start at writing again, so I didn't sound like a parody of myself - doesn't it feel like one is always starting again? without having gone anywhere, and yet starting again - but an essay by Susan Sontag reminded me of this passage from Iris Murdoch.

The love which brings the right answer is an exercise of justice and realism and really looking. The difficulty is to keep the attention fixed upon the real situation and to prevent it from returning surreptitiously to the self with consolations of self-pity, resentment, fantasy and despair.

What I hadn't remembered was how the passage continued:

The refusal to attend may even induce a fictitious sense of freedom: I may as well toss a coin. Of course virtue is good habit and dutiful action. But the background condition of such habit and such action, in human beings, is a just mode of vision and a good quality of consciousness. It is a task to come to see the world as it is. A philosophy which leaves duty without a context and exalts the idea of freedom and power as a separate top level value ignores this task and obscures the relation between virtue and reality. We act rightly ‘when the time comes’ not out of strength of will but out of the quality of our usual attachments and with the kind of energy and discernment which we have available.

It's not even a question of fear, or of desire, or at least not foremost a question of fear or desire. But - which way does courage lie? An exercise of justice and realism and really looking.

Gone fishing

to Shanghai. Back in a week.

A live viper, or a fistful of dust

D sends a book by Jack Hitt on walking the road to Santiago, which is part history and part journal and makes the Spanish pilgrimage sound like nothing so much as a very long and very grubby college holiday. Hitt intersperses his travelogue with bits of historical commentary, including this lovely snippet:

Jean Bonnecaze, a pilgrim in 1748, wrote in his journal the recipe for a remedy said to cure a host of pilgrim ailments:

"Take a cleaned chicken, some pimpernel, chicory, chervil, and lettuce - a fistful of each. Clean it well, wash it, and dice into some pieces. Add a viper flayed alive which you will cut into little pieces after removing the head, the tail, and the entrails, keeping only the body, the heart, and the liver. Boil it all in three quarts of water, until it is reduced to three half-quarts. Remove it from the fire, strain it through a colander, and ladle it out into two soups to take one on the morning of a fast. Continue its use for fifteen days, purging before and after the fortnight....If you cannot find a live viper, substitute for it a fistful of dust."

this weekend

1. Julian is back!

2. Great bbq at XW's place on Saturnight. I think the surroundings - the cool stone patio, the long narrow pool reflecting the streetlight, the quality of the food and drink - brought out the civilised part in us - no-one did anything that would necessitate some karmic payback down the road (with the possible exception of Wii boxing).

3. Yoga, as I know it, from my grand total of three classes, runs up against all my instincts - the hippy-dippy part of me is attracted to the eastern mysticism that informs the practice, the yuppie bit tempted by the studios in orchard road, and what I think of as the sane part cynical of the enterprise of yoga - the pretty studios, the motivation for physical exercise*, the gym wear sold out in the reception area, the modern interpretations (where are the ashrams and the Hindu gods?).

* to be fair to this particular studio, there's breathing too.

FYIP

1. I've read Harry Potter 7.

2. It must be awfully difficult to pull Lear off - to have enough of a remnant of greatness in him to sustain the tragedy. I rather enjoyed the RSC Lear, despite Cordelia, who I guess was trying to be feisty and spirited but unfortunately came across as shrill and shrewish, and Edmund, who was a little too much the storybook villain.

3. I did think it was a triumph - that the energy level stayed high, the actors looked like they were really into the play, and pulled off the difficult bits with some success, and that the spear-carriers were aesthetically pleasing.

4. Somehow we seem have produced - neither the richness that a freer society might produce, where artists may have licence to experiment with thought and range and form, and political concerns do not deafen artistic concerns, nor the depth that a more oppressive society might produce, where artists may be able to bring the political cliches and distortions of the day into more human relief, and forge gold from suffering.

5. I've just finished re-reading, and marvelling at, the Northern Lights series, which is rich and complex and inventive.

"Why -" Lyra began, and found her voice weak and trembling - "Why can't I read the alethiometer anymore? Why can't I even do that? That was the one thing I could do really well, and it's just not there anymore - it just vanished as if it had never come..."

"You read it by grace," said Xaphania, looking at her, "and you can regain it by work."

"How long will that take?"

"A lifetime."

"That long..."

"But your reading will be even better then, after a lifetime of thought and effort, because it will come from conscious understanding. Grace attained like that is deeper and fuller than grace that comes freely, and furthermore, once you've gained it, it will never leave you."

Normal service will be resumed

when I've finished Harry Potter.

Talk to you then.

Counting

My brother came into my room as I was reading xkcd and said, have you seen the latest one? I showed that to my girlfriend today. (How sweet, I said.) She got upset with me.

He said

he went down to the beach, and let the shallow waves roll over him, and there was gold all over the place, and he missed me.

[Because I often forget.]

Chacun à son goût

From the BBC:

Now, though, after years of applying myself to the Chinese arts of eating, I understand the pleasure of having something slithery and bouncy in my mouth.

Bells, belated

Best wishes to Syn and Bear! And all the happiness that their (new!) house can hold.

4

you're soaking in it.

3

For Sidney Bechet
by Philip Larkin

That note you hold, narrowing and rising, shakes
Like New Orleans reflected on the water,
And in all ears appropriate falsehood wakes,

Building for some a legendary Quarter
Of balconies, flower-baskets and quadrilles,
Everyone making love and going shares --

Oh, play that thing! Mute glorious Storyvilles
Others may license, grouping around their chairs
Sporting-house girls like circus tigers (priced

Far above rubies) to pretend their fads,
While scholars manques nod around unnoticed
Wrapped up in personnels like old plaids.

On me your voice falls as they say love should,
Like an enormous yes. My Crescent City
Is where your speech alone is understood,

And greeted as the natural noise of good,
Scattering long-haired grief and scored pity.

2

Language
by W. S. Merwin

Certain words now in our knowledge we will not use again, and we will never forget them. We need them. Like the back of the picture. Like our marrow, and the color in our veins. We shine the lantern of our sleep on them, to make sure, and there they are, trembling already for the day of witness. They will be buried with us, and rise with the rest.

1

What would you say the pertinent facts were, after so long an absence?

Archie

If you too read the Archie comics as a kid:

The Vanity Fair article
The slide show of Archie art through the years
The intro to the show
And Sugar, Sugar!

Dang1 ping1

My brother just called home. From the army. At the pay phone (they give army boys free phone cards; they should really just give them spare handphone batteries). Last Thursday my whole family went with him to Tekong (where all the other boys were accompanied by hordes of family too). At Tekong, after the ferry ride, the parents and assorted relatives have to go one way, to tour the premises, and the boys another, to get their kits and a pep talk. The tour of the bunks and recreation room is conducted by a rather cute army boy, very much like the smiling Sarayon. There is an air-conditioned recreation room decorated with army propaganda and equipped with a TV, some chairs, a fooze-ball table. The guide explains that it's for rest, but since there's one room for each company, 200 boys, the boys will have to ask their commanding officers for permission to use the room. The commanding officers (the guide hastens to say) will generally agree, but sometimes they won't, for example if there's some tough training the next day, and the boys should sleep instead. Not that the training's tough; ok it is tough (tough is good, says a parent), but these boys have all passed their IPPT, so they will be ok, and if they do very well they can win the company awards. (Our guide was the best recruit, or best something, of his platoon.) Then there is a guide to army gear, with a different and less smiling host. He (the different host) has dissected a pack or whatever it's called and pinned its entrails to some billboards. He has also dug up a demonstrator dressed in full battle order (I presume; war paint on his face and unconvincing rag leaves on his helment and the new load-something-something vest on this, though not hung with grenades). Someone asks about the weight of all that gear, and is told that that varies with weapons and the amount of food the boy chooses to bring along (which seems odd). We troop into the canteen to wait (there are many groups of eager relatives shuttling into Tekong). We are called to the auditorium. The commanding officer is a middle-aged man running to fat who takes some pains to explain the training architecture of the army to the parents. An army, he says, marches on its stomach, and so we have improved the army food. The boys sit together in the middle of the auditorium; they all look small and skinny and slight. Too small to wear the army pack and carry 20kg of weapons and ammunition (my father says), to small to be away from home. The commanding officer calls the boys to take the oath, which is flashed on powerpoint (of course). He starts the oath, I, Name, NRIC number, and there is a moment of confusion as every boy speaks his own name and NRIC number, loudly of course, because they've all been told to talk the army way now. I suppose the scene is meant to be touching, and it is a little, because they're so painfully young, but mostly it brings to mind the City Watch taking their oath (I comma square bracket insert name here square bracket comma do swear by square bracket insert deity's name here square bracket...). Then he says to the boys, I want you to promise to call your parents tonight, after 9.30 pm, can you do that? YES SIR! (Their training must have already started.) Now you've promised, you must call your parents first, not your girlfriends, ok? YES SIR! The girlfriends in the audience (not that many of them) shift in their seats. The boys leave first, line up in the corridor. The parents troop out row by row and claim their son. We all go to the dining hall to taste the SAF food. The boys are restless; perhaps a little eager; perhaps a little apprehensive, but not really by much; it's probably all a little unreal at this point, like a massive school camp; there isn't much to do after we've eaten lunch (which was edible); this is just waiting time, like the time in an airport before boarding the plane. We look for the bus back to the ferry. My brother walks us there, and there are hugs all around - my father shakes his hand instead, because he is all grown up now - and last minute instructions on washing clothes, sleeping early, not exhausting the handphone battery the first day. Other boys are hugging their assorted relatives, all a little sheepishly. Call us! we say. And then we board the ferry back.

A Map of Disappointments

There's a Zadie Smith article on why writers often betray themselves in aldaily.com.

The few things I've written have felt like betrayals when I was writing them - felt like I let truth slide away in favour of more familiar phrase or thought, some word or thought that came (too) readily to hand. And after writing whatever it was I was just glad to have written something, and ready to believe that it said whatever I meant to say.

I used to think that what one really required for a great novel, or poem, or any piece of writing, was courage. Throw away the lights and the definitions, and say what you see in the dark.

This follows a dinner conversation with xz when he said, I don't think you're happy at your job. What I said then, what I say to these things - I'm not unhappy. It's still interesting. There are good points. If I were better at it I would like it more; it's just a question of working harder. I have to do this, and being unhappy would just make it harder. (The last one on grimmer days.) And I thought this was a sign of growing up, of some kind of maturity; after all, being an adult is all about being sensible and letting go (even of things that used to define you) and doing things you don't want to do, isn't it? But I generally write even less when I'm fooling myself, and I haven't been able to write anything for a while now.

Which disappointments would you put into your map?

Placeholders for memory

1. Christmas was a family affair - I think the first time in 6 years that we were all together for Christmas. We had candles, and flowers, and turkey. (I stuffed it! And cut/chopped stuff and stitched up the turkey and peered anxiously at it and all the things that kitchen helpers do.) Turkey is over-rated; next year we'll do some other meat.

2. New Year's Eve was at Changi Village - Steve reached Singapore very, very early in the morning on the last day of last year; in the afternoon, we took a bus to Changi Village, stopping some way before to peer at the military buildings (where the Changi Murals short film was shot) and walk through the old hospital. Leaving the place later on the first day of the year, we went past another film site - an old, abandoned, army building; probably a training school of some sort - with high archways and long corridors and "for glory and honour" in faded paint in what must have been the hall or assembly room. Steve said, wouldn't this be a good place for a Yo La Tengo music video?

3. Does anyone want to watch Yo La Tengo in March?

4. Dinner at S's place on the day itself, with M and R.

5. My family was in China the week just before Christmas, so I took a lot of time off from work and spent it mostly in bed reading WN's Lucifers, and not thinking.

6. When you were in the States I practised not missing you. I miss you now. (It hasn't yet sunk in that I'm not going to see you any more.)

7. This is what I used to mock: the HDB flat, the 1.25 kids, 0.25 car (or whatever the national figure is). Whether it's the recent spate of engagements and weddings (because I'm at that age now), whether it's my biological clock betraying anything I've learnt over the last 26 years and I'm reverting to type - I do want to move on to a new phase of life. (It's a terrible thing to learn about myself, that love's not enough. Enough for what?)

8. There was something, I think in aldaily.com, a while ago about how nice a person Leonard Woolf (husband of Virgina) was. It quoted a researcher on Virginia Woolf who had Leonard Woolf's photograph on her bedside table and used to write to him, especially when her research was going badly - used to write him "letters for healing, not for reading". Thank you for the letters and the photographs. That I can write to you (though my letters are tardy and uninformed) is healing enough; that you write to me is a gift.

2007

Hope it turns out better than we expect, and better than we deserve.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Two English teachers are walking in the woods

I found a primer on writing poetry, on metre and rhyme and form, by Stephen Fry, of all people. In his foreword, Fry sympathises with anyone who has been traumatised by literature lessons in school:

"The way poetry was taught in school reminded W. H. Auden of a Punch cartoon composed, legend has it, by the poet A. E. Housman. Two English teachers are walking in the woods in springtime. The first, on hearing birdsong, is moved to quote William Wordsworth:

Teacher 1: Oh cuckoo, shall I call thee bird
                Or but a wandering voice?

Teacher 2: State the alternative preferred
                With reasons for your choice."

cp would probably approve - Fry quotes Auden again, this time on free verse:

"The poet who writes 'free' verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor - dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor."

Narrativium

I am avoiding work in all possible ways, including reading Wintersmith twice over in a weekend (the NLB came through) and half of Light in August - and fully intending to read the other half, which surprises me, having tried and failed to read Faulkner before (I think it was Sound and Fury - the one with all the different voices going round and round, unless that describes more than one novel). I am emboldened - I have also borrowed Absalom, Absalom (on the principle that once the first Faulkner is breached the second will be easier) and might actually try to read it.

Back from Viking land

A week and a half in Stockholm and Copenhagen, to study the Nordic social security system.

Stockholm. It gets dark here (and across the Strand) by 3 pm, which is invariably depressing, even with christmas lights sparkling over the street in the old city and from every christmas tree propped up against storefront or drainpipe. We have most of one day here, to walk around the charming and deeply-touristed medieval city (Gamla Stan), which offers candles, crystal ornaments, delicate wooden ships in a bottle, plastic horned helmets. We look in vain for a Swedish restaurant; evidently, when Swedes eat out, they eat Italian or Japanese. An ostensibly Italian restaurant has a Swedish special - fried potatoes with bacon and lingonberry sauce: breakfast tastes. We take a ferry across to the Viking Museum, where the Vasa ship is housed: built by Gustavus Adolphus in the midst of the Thirty Years' War to be the pride of his navy, sunk off the cost of Stockholm after a shamefully short period of sailing, dredged up in the 1960s. There was an inquiry after the sinking: the balance of evidence suggested that the King's ambitions were too much for the ship's design (two gun decks instead of one, too little ballast for so heavy a ship), but no blame was formally assigned.

Copenhagen. I guess the Swedes and Danes can tell the difference, but I can't really. More grime than Stockholm (or the part of Stockholm we saw), more neon, more rudeness, in consequence seemingly more interesting. We spend a good deal of time wandering, often inadvertently, up and down Strogen, the pedestrianised shopping street. A mandatory trip to the Little Mermaid, a surprisingly thoughtful statue posed on a rock, the waves breaking at her feet/flippers, juxtaposed against the powerhouses and chimneys on the other side of the shore. There is time to go to the Viking Museum at Roskilde, which houses five Viking ships salvaged in the 1950s/60s. The Museum staff have reconstructed the ships, using the same tools and materials the Vikings did, and will take the warship sailing (with a 120-man crew) to Dublin next year, after the winter. Imagine that heritage.

We go to Tivoli, which is a theme park right in the middle of the city and prettily, magically lit up at night (and not even the obvious Disney comparisons can spoil the mood). There are rides even in winter, perhaps because this is the warmest winter in 40, 50 years (above-zero temperatures). We ride the flying carousel, something Turkish; we get glogg (mulled wine), hot dogs; we take pictures of the light and sound show at the lake.

We go to Christiana, which is on the edge of the city and must be a relic of the 1960s - a small piece of land that claims to follow its own laws, primarily one that allows the sale and use of soft drugs (but not hard drubs). A wooden sign at the entrance says "Welcome to Christiana"; leaving, the same sign says "You are now entering the EU". The same trappings in every hippie or hippe-type place: cafes offering beer and hash, a "free Tibet" photographic exhibition, stalls selling Bob Marley posters, bongs, colourful striped made-in-Nepal scarves. A few grubby, sad-looking men in parkas in the backyard of a closed bar. A few dogs running with the bicycles. Mostly tourists here, though there are houses further back, away from the bars and cafes and shops (they say there are a hundred families living here). It feels like Camden Town, but on a much smaller scale. What one imagines the Village might have been like, but without the energy. You would recognise it if you were there.

The Nordic social security system. There is an aesthetically pleasing correlation between the policy and its price: high taxes to pay for comprehensive social security in case of unemployment, disability, illness, retirement...though this isn't something we didn't know before. The mystery, which no-one seems to be able to solve, is why the system works at all. Or perhaps we're asking the wrong questions? The Nordics seem to have made a necessity of virtue; perhaps that should not seem as odd as it is?

On poverty

In her latest collection Decreation, Anne Carson reproduces fragment 31 of Sappho:

He seems to me equal to gods that man
whoever he is who opposite you
sits and listens close
to your sweet speaking

and lovely laughing - oh it
puts the heart in my chest on wings
for when I look at you, even a moment, no speaking
is left in me

no: tongue breaks and thin
fire is racing under skin
and in eyes no sight and drumming
fills ears

and cold sweat holds me and shaking
grips me all, greener than grass
I am and dead - or almost
I seem to me.

But all is to be dared, because even a person of poverty...

After discussing the first four complete stanzas, Carson moves on to the last line, which seems to be the beginning of a fifth stanza:

"All is to be dared because even a person of poverty...," says the last verse. It is a new thought. The content of the thought is absolute daring. The condition of the thought is poverty. I don't want to give the impression that I know what this verse is saying or that I see where the poem is headed from here, I don't. Overall it leaves me wondering. Sappho stages an event of ecstasy but that's not what the poem is about either, ecstasy is just a means to an end. Unfortunately we don't reach the end, the poem breaks off. But we do see Sappho begin to turn towards it, towards this unreachable end. We see her senses empty themselves, we see her Being thrown outside its own centre where it stands observing her as if she were grass or dead. At which point a speculation occurs to me: granted this is a poem all about love, do we need to limit ourselves to a reading of it that is merely or conventionally erotic? After all, Sappho is believed by some historians to have been not just a poet of love and a worshipper of Aphrodite on Lesbos but also a priest of Aphrodite's cult and a teacher of her doctrines. Perhaps Sappho's poem wants to teach us something about the metaphysics or even the theology of love. Perhaps she is posing not the usual lovesong complaint, Why don't you love me? but a deeper spiritual question, What is it that love dares the self to do? Daring enters the poem in the last verse when Sappho uses the word tolmaton: "is to be dared." This word is a verbal adjective and expresses a mood of possibility or potential. Sappho says it is an absolute potential:

pan tolmaton: all is to be dared.

Moreover she consents to it - or seems to be on the point of consenting when the poem breaks off. Why does she consent? Her explanation no longer exists. So far as it goes, it leads us back to her ecstatic condition. For when an ecstatic is asked the question, What is it that love dares the self to do? she will answer:

Love dares the self to leave itself behind, to enter into poverty."

Apples

I read a quarter of Michael Pollan's book, The Botany of Desire - it's about four domesticated species, the apple, the tulip, marijuana and the potato, and I have only read the bit on the apple - and while I don't much care for his style of writing, which is unnecessarily chatty, he does have an image of John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed) wearing a sack for a shirt and a tin pot for a hat, snoozing in one of two canoes lashed together, floating downriver, a mound of seed in the other canoe. Chapman would not graft trees; he would only grow trees from seed; and so his apples were hard and sour, and good only for cider. That's why everyone in the frontier towns welcomed Chapman: not because an apple a day kept the doctor away (a PR slogan thought up by the apple growers later), but because he brought alcohol. Pollan quotes Emerson: "man would be more solitary, less friended, less supported, if the land yielded only the useful maize and potato, [and] withheld this ornamental and social fruit". He quotes a speaker to the Massachusetts Horticultural Society in 1885: "The desire of the Puritan, distant from help and struggling for bare existence, to add the Pippin to his slender list of comforts, and the sour 'syder' to cheer his heart and liver, must be considered a fortunate circumstance". First found in the Kazakh forests. Each apple contains enough genetic material to be entirely unlike its parent, even more unlike than human beings are; but we have deliberately sweetened our apples (through grafting) and the legend of Johnny Appleseed. Pollan delights in the names of apples in the 19th century: the Bottle Greening, the Sheepnose, the Oxheart, the Yellow Bellflower, the Black Gilliflower, the Twenty-Ounce Pippin; the Westfield Seek-No-Further, the Hubbardston Nonesuch, the Rhode Island Greening, the Albemarle Pippin, the York Imperial, the Kentucky Red Streak, the Long Stem of Pennsylvania, the Ladies Favorite of Tennessee, the King of Tompkins County, the Peach of Kentucky, the American Nonpareille; the Baldwin, the Macintosh, the Jonathan, McAfee's Red, Norton's Melon, Moyer's Prize, Mezger's Calville, Kirke's Golden Reinette, Kelly's White, Walker's Beauty; Wismer's Dessert, Jacob's Sweet Winter, the Early Harvest and Cider Apple, the Clothes-Yard Apple, the Bread and Cheese, Cornell's Savewell and Putnam's Savewell, Paradise Winter, Payne's Late Keeper, and Hay's Winter Wine.

Apples remind me of an excerpt from a letter from John Szarkowski to Helmut Wohl, in a book of Szarkowski's letters and photographs, generously given by Dennis: "The apple book is a treasure, and demonstrates what I have long suspected - that the history of art is in fact a branch of pomology. ...There is of course one serious problem underlying the consideration of the apple in ancient times, which is that neither Greek nor Hebrew seems to have a specific word for 'apple', but generic words roughly translatable as 'an edible fruit approximately the size of a tennis ball'. This of course puts a very heavy load of responsibility on the visual record, which - frankly - is a poor place to put it. Those ancient sculptors who did the apples of the Hesperides, etc., felt that the difference between a peach and pomegranate was nothing to worry about, as along as one got the drapery right..." The facing page of the book has a photograph of a wooden wall with two windows (one with a reflection of leaves) and a tiny, brave, young Cox Pippin tree outside. C. 1983.

I haven't yet found a place to hang your gigantic black-and-white print of a hand holding three apples, though I asked for it as a gift.

The centre of the universe

I am going to bring you, Steve says, to the centre of the universe. The centre of universe is a little Hindu shine next to the railway tracks near Outram Park. The shrine has a tiled floor and roof, with no walls; the railway tracks end in grass and a wire fence and stacks of cargo; workers from the tracks cut across a corner of the shrine to climb up the stairs to the pavement ahead, removing their shoes as they cross the shrine. There is a tree at the entrance of the shrine, gnarled roots wrapped around in a white cloth; there are benches at the side, for old men and a cluster of women; there is a fire pit at the front of the shrine, beside the statue of Shiva and the golden feet on a pedestal, near a garbage container full of firewood. Devotional music fills the air. A friendly Indian woman tells us that today is the bathing of the god. This is the only shrine where the priest will have the bathing of the god for twenty-four hours, non-stop, all by himself. It is also the only shrine where the priest will let devotees bathe the god. We watch a devotee approach the little enclosure with the statue of Shiva and the feet. One of the priest's helpers keeps a bell ringing and the oil lamp lit for the appropriate parts of the ceremony when she has to wave smoke in the statue's face; the other helper hands her jars of water, henna, milk, honey, a white powder, a reddish-brown powder, which she pours nervously and solemnly over the statue and the feet. The helpers irreverentially remove blobs of paint or powder from the crooks of the statue. Then the bathing is over, and the Brahmin priest steps forward to dress the god in white cloth and flowers and give him a bindi. There are more oil lamps and smoke, and chanting; the devotee throws flowers at the statue, then walks around the shrine with a plate of fruit and flowers, leaving them at a different statue's feet (there are seven reincarnations of Shiva here, the friendly Indian woman says) and pressing her forehead to the ground. The sun is setting behind the shrine and the light cuts through the smoke from the fire pit, cuts through the devotional music and the ringing of the bell, the chanting of the priest in his green-and-gold sarong and string across his chest, the devotee pouring water, henna, milk, honey onto the statue. The friendly woman says that in times past there used to be five or six shrines along the tracks; the rest have gone off to be big temples elsewhere, and only this one is left.

Later, we head for the Roof Bar in Chinatown, which is as its name says (on a roof) but spoiled by loud radio music, and then the French Corner on Serangoon Road for fish and wine and dessert.

for Julian

My dear, we've been saying goodbye for a while now (all those cookouts!) and we've not really said goodbye, and perhaps that's a good way to have done it? After all, there's the road trip to plan, and the trip to China, or was it Tibet, or was it a beach somewhere, or someone's house, or any place with wine, or brownies, or potato in three different forms, or laughter, or books, or Stephen Fry, or whatever it is that our companionship does come from. Su-Lin said it first, but there doesn't seem anything else as apt - go well. When you come back we'll go looking for the Swedish restaurant at Clark Quay again.

Marking time

1. The day before National Day, we wandered to Home, wandered off to Lau Pa Sat for satay, back again for the S.A.D. show, which was remarkable chiefly for a video of one or other of the Little Red Dot posse wandering around Singapore with a huge white-faced paper mask over their head and your energetic dancing.

2. Last Thursday, we went to the Arts House to watch Philip Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which seemed to begin with the intention of showing the, well, unbearable lightness of being, but drifted despite its best intentions into sentimentality (if not kitsch) by the end.

3. There was a BBQ and housewarming at I and D's new place at Joo Chiat (a few sausages, lots of drink), which is exactly where you imagine it to be. Dinner and drinks and Little Britain at YS's place the day after. J's BBQ the next week - a BBQ! With chipolatas and hamburgers and satay and kebabs and potato salad (not grilled, though there were roast potatoes) and stingray and prawns (courtesy of SL's parents). And then QI, which only the British (and Stephen Fry) could do.

4. I have been falling into books lately, which is less pernicious a form of escapism than some I can think of, but no less escapist for that. One of them was John Gregory Dunne's Nothing Lost, the first John Gregory Dunne I've read; it's exactly right on the ways in which people use one another, and the real tenderness among people. Steve found a second-hand copy of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go and gave it to me; like all Ishiguros (or the few I've read, at least) it is very well done and faintly horrifying. Also We Need To Talk About Kevin, which is entirely horrifying but at the last shies away from concluding the discussion of evil.

5. The problem with code-switching is, of course, that after a while it isn't code-switching any more.

[to hold the title line thing in place]

At the end of the tax form, right after it tells you how much you have to pay and by what date, it says, "Thank you for your contribution towards nation building!".

So.

I'm up reading an article by the European Central Bank on labour productivity in the Nordic countries, and feeling like I'm back in school (to be precise - like I'm reading for Econs S - and a little glad to be able to recognise some of the technical terms still, and a little amazed that we learnt enough in Econs S to recognise these terms, and a little regretful that I never went on to be be able to do more than just recognise these terms) - and remembering that I did like this part of school, did like reading things beyond my knowledge or comprehension, did appreciate scholarly work, did like learning things. It's a strange thing to remember now - and a stranger thing to have forgotten.

Hobson's choice

I think the choice, such as it is, is between working a little harder and not catching up, or working a lot harder and possibly still not catching up, wherever "up" might be.

Best Behaviour

The more I hear about international protocol, the more it resembles nothing more than the rigidly and repressively circumscribed world of Edith Wharton's New York in House of Mirth or any account of the American aristocracy at the turn of the century (I think). I'm also reminded of Joan Didion's (not entirely convincing) essay on 1950s Hollywood as the "last stable society" in the West, with its definite and unquestioned patterns of behaviour. International protocol, as far as I can tell, is based on the distinction between things that are "nice" and things that are "not nice". Crossing your legs and pointing your toes at your counterpart at meetings is not nice. Leaving wine glasses around where devout Muslims might see them is not nice. Kissing or otherwise physically handling the wives of conservative Chinese statesmen is not nice. Not finding out where the toilets are beforehand is not nice. (It's harder to define what's nice.) I'm not often in a work situation where what's nice defines what's correct, but then again, it may be as good a measure as anything we've come up with.

One Art

I meant to do interesting and productive things, but have been looking for Elizabeth Bishop's letters online instead. Perhaps I'll buy her selected letters.

An excerpt of a letter to Robert Lowell:

March 30,1959

I have no news of any importance—but then, I don’t believe I ever have. We had a large dinner party for 20 on Lota’s birthday and it was quite successful, I think—dozens of Japanese lanterns and lots of plants and orchids our florist neighbor happened to give us at just the right moment. We set up five card tables in the “gallery”—all different colors, reflected in the rippled aluminum ceiling—very gay, if modest; and I produced an iced chestnut soufflé with fancy work in whipped cream, etc. It looked almost professional, by lantern light at least. . . .

During the ten weeks I read & read & read—the 3-volume life of Byron, Greville in 3 volumes, Lucan (didn’t you say you were reading that, too?), etc. etc.—and now am finishing the new edition of Keats’s letters—all to what purpose I’m not sure, but all fascinating. At the moment I find the Keats the best of the lot, though. Except for his unpleasant insistence on the palate, he strikes me as almost everything a poet should have been in his day. The class gulf between him and Byron is enormous. As Pascal says, if you can manage to be well-born it saves you thirty years.

inter alia

There are Hassan Massoudy postcards! I saw a copy of the "religion of love" one in the British Museum - it didn't have the bottom swirls and looked like billowing blue-black sails. The British Museum translation was slightly different (and superior): "I follow the religion of love: whatever way love's camels take, that is my religion and my faith."

Other postcards I have:
- Two bold, black strokes (rather like a swan) depicting the letter 'k'
- A fantastic collage entitled "Narkissos" and containing a little bit of all the world
- A row of cadets at the Virginia Military Institute, sporting identical crew-cuts and grey shirts, reading Howl, with their caps and notebooks laid out neatly in front of them
- Drawings of fossils.

This weekend I read, among other things, Caddy Ever After (using the first person singular doesn't work very well, but still a satisfying book) and Joan Didion's heartbreaking The Year of Magical Thinking, in which she talks about the sudden death of her husband and illness of her daughter - part personal memoir, part detached investigation into the aspects of grief (because we are taught, when confronted with the new or the harrowing, to read up, to go to the literature).

Recipe for Amelia Simmons's Independence Cake

Twenty pound flour, 15 pound sugar, 10 pound butter, 4 dozen eggs, one dozen eggs, 1 quart brandy, 1 ounce nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, mace, of each 3 ounces, two pound citron, currants and raisins 5 pound each, 1 quart yeast; when baked, frost with loaf sugar; dress with box and gold leaf.

From American Cookery, 1796; reproduced in Mark Kurlansky's Choice Cuts.

Shiny things

At the SF MOMA is a installation by Donald Judd, constructed of steel boxes painted white and stacked up at intervals to create a shelf. The museum's comment on the work: “Judd’s stacked boxes are often considered the epitome of minimalism, just as the artist is one of its foremost practitioners. Judd championed minimalist art for its clear, uncomplicated forms, unfettered by the emotive qualities of the abstract expressionist brushstroke. Over the years, however, other artists and critics have noted that Judd’s seemingly mute, rational and detached sculptures belie an alter ego obsessed with surface finish and reflectiveness.” This is clear evidence that conceptual art (or what I think of as conceptual art) has lost the point somewhere.

England and America

Notes in vaguely chronological order:

1. Graduation ceremonies. I don't remember much of my graduation ceremonies, and thought even less of them at the time (I skipped the massive Columbia one to go shopping), but my sister's graduation ceremonies moved me strangely. Not just because my little sister has graduated, which seems a very adult and grown-up thing to do though not when it happened to me, but because I took the words of congratulation and advice and benediction to heart. The Oxford ceremony spoke of intellectual honesty, of speaking truth at all cost. The Stanford one spoke of choosing one's ambitions (Vartan Gregorian gave the graduate commencement speech) and of public service; the President spoke of a former graduate (Alfred Manley?), who had told his first commencement class at Spellman College, after he became its president, never to let go of their self-respect, which he defined as "knowing the good, you did it; knowing the beautiful, you served it; knowing the truth, you spoke it". Not words I've not heard before, in other circumstances, other contexts; but that day, in the uncomfortable splendour of the Sheldonian, in the sun on the Stanford lawn, talk of speaking truth and the choice of one's ambitions and public service meant something to me; perhaps these things only take on concrete meaning after one has left school and all its concomitant values.

[I wonder whether Oxford, which has produced and continues to produce a good number of British civil servants and politicians, has stopped speaking of public service, or never did to start with, or because its paramount fear now is that its graduates will somehow find themselves unable to speak the truth, or simply because that's my paramount fear and what I seized upon. And if Americans talk about service because for them the good, the beautiful, the truth are still things which can be known and named and served.

I've been reading a good deal of Joan Didion lately - at her best she points out contradictory and illusionary fictions, narratives, stories that we tell ourselves; at her worst she is still interesting to read - and in a 1970 essay, "On the Morning After the Sixties", she talks about being at Berkeley in the 50s and how her generation never talked about changing the world; they didn't believe in grand theories or ideas or social programmes; they talked about finding peace within themselves; they talked about looking for a little town with a decent beach after graduation. The last generation to identify with adults and the moral ambiguity of adulthood:

"We were all very personal then, sometimes relentlessly, so, and, at that point where we either act or do not act, most of us are still. I suppose I am talking about just that: the ambiguity of belonging to a generation distrustful of political highs, the historical irrelevancy of growing up convinced that the heart of darkness lay not in some error of social organization but in man's own blood. If man was bound to err, then any social organization was bound to be in error. It was a premise which still seems to me accurate enough, but one which robbed us early of a certain capacity for surprise.

...We were that generation called "silent," but we were silent neither, as some thought, because we shared the period's official optimism nor, as others thought, because we feared its official repression. We were silent because the exhilaration of social action seemed to many of us just one more way of escaping the personal, of masking for a while that dread of the meaningless which was man's fate.

To have assumed that particular fate so early was the peculiarity of my generation. I think now that we were the last generation to identify with adults. That most of us have found adulthood just as morally ambiguous as we expected it to be falls perhaps into the category of prophecies self-fulfilled: I am simply not sure. I am telling you only how it was. The mood of Berkeley those years was one of mild but chronic "depression," against which I remember certain small things that seemed to me somehow explications, dazzling in their clarity, of the world I was about to enter: I remember a woman picking daffodils in the rain one day when I was walking in the hills. I remember a teacher who drank too much one night and revealed his fright and bitterness. I remember my real joy at discovering for the first time how language worked, at discovering, for example, that the central line of Heart of Darkness was a postscript. All such images were personal, and the personal was all that most of us expected to find. We would make a separate peace. We would do graduate work in Middle English, we would go abroad. We would make some money and live on a ranch. We would survive outside history, in a kind of idee fixe referred to always, during the years I spent at Berkeley, as "some little town with a decent beach."

...What I have made for myself is personal, but is not exactly peace. Only one person I knew at Berkeley later discovered an ideology, dealt himself into history, cut himself loose from both his own dread and his own time. A few of the people I knew at Berkeley killed themselves not long after. Another attempted suicide in Mexico and then, in a recovery which seemed in many ways a more advanced derangement, came home and joined the Bank of America's three-year executive-training program. Most of us live less theatrically, but remain the survivors of a peculiar and inward time. If I could believe that going to a barricade would affect man's fate in the slightest I would go to that barricade, and quite often I wish that I could, but it would be less than honest to say that I expect to happen upon such a happy ending."

I don't think we're much good at identifying with adults and the moral ambiguities of adulthood, but I wonder if we're relentlessly personal, if we're unsurprised by politics, if we think to live outside history, if we're unable to believe in the barricade - and if that's something common to most Singaporeans, wherever we end up, a consequence of where we grew up.]


2. Lyme-Regis. First mentioned (the plaque on the wall said) in the Domesday book of 1087. Mentioned in Jane Austen's Persusasion (with other important historical things happening in between). It is exactly as one would imagine a sleepy seaside town to be, with all the necessary accoutrements: seagulls perched on the rocks overlooking the pebble beach, children squatting half-naked on the beach digging ineffectually at the pebbles with a toy spade, visitors determinedly sun-bathing in the mild white light. There are tea-houses and beach cafes and fossil shops and a rather sad arcade with a few brightly blinking slot machines and old people clutching a paper bucket of pennies. Part of the beachfront is closed for renovation; the authories are importing sand from France for certain stretches of the beach.

Lyme-Regis' present claim to fame is its fossils; its coast is some hundreds of millions years old (I believe from the Jurassic, and some 190 million years old), and for a few pounds a professional fossil-hunter will lead you out to the Black Vens when the tide is low, halfway to Charmouth, past the sun-bathers and the schoolchildren, to the edge of the rock pools and the seaweed exposed by the receding tide, and show you how to break open rocks with a hammer (he will provide hammers). You're not allowed to chip away at the cliffs, which in any case appear to be composed in part of black mud, but fossils found on the beach itself, little curls of ammonites lying on the beach or buried deep in chips of rock, are fair game, since they'll eventually be pounded by the waves and wind into pebbles. When the tide is low you can walk all the way to Charmouth.

We stayed at a B&B above a second-hand bookshop, the rooms decorated entirely in pink and white and floral trimmings. The B&B belongs to Bob, who is a retired professor of something scientific and once worked at Cape Canaveral, and Mariko, who is some 30 or 40 years younger. They met through the internet; she came to England to visit; she used to work at the Beach Cafe, which is run by Audrey, my sister's boyfriend's aunt; they were married within six months and now have two bonny sons. Audrey has in her employ another Japanese women, Yumi, who was a nun at a convent at Marble Arch for three months until she decided it wasn't her cup of tea, and is now going to study violin-making with someone up north and work summers at Audrey's. All this information is by way of Audrey, who gave us a wonderful roast dinner, and Hilary (my sister's boyfriend's mother and Audrey's sister). The other people at dinner were the boyfriend and the father, who is strong and silent and came in to dinner red-faced and wind-chapped from an 8-hour fishing trip and holding a bag of sea bass. If you came to visit us, Hilary said, we could give you fish for dinner.


3. Northern California. The first day I arrived in Stanford I contacted V, who brought me to his lovely house to see his lemon tree and almond tree and drink wine and tea (how very old! my sister said afterwards) and meet one of his roommates. The roommate's father had just bought some farmland in Missouri (?) to grow crops on, like corn and other crops I can't remember, to feed animals with. Wild animals, not his own; it's too much trouble to rear his own; he's just doing it for the fun of it. Every August, the roommate and his family and friends float down the Mississippi (?) in canoes and stop at someone's riverside house and have a lot of food and conversation and fun.

A couple of days in San Francisco - a day taking the cable car and attempting to bike over the Golden Gate Bridge (I gave up after falling off my bike somewhere after the bridge and decided to walk the bike downhill to Sausalito. At Sausalito we had hot chocolate and felt better and took the ferry back), and a day dragging the parents through the Haight, which on hindsight was not the best place to bring them, and City Lights, and looking at the sea-lions at Pier 39. The sea-lions appeared on the pier one day after the earthquake in the late 1980s (I think). The city organised it such that the pier was left for them (which I think a wonderful reaction to the sea-lions), and the sea-lions stayed - and grew. There were 10 sea-lions to begin with, and now there are about 300. Every summer they migrate somewhere (can't remember), but lately some have decided to stay in San Francisco. Which suggests something about the resilience and adaptability and sheer laziness of the sea-lions, which are very cute and mostly just lie on the pier basking in the sun and getting inquisitive looks from the seagulls.

I do like northern California, or what I've seen of it. My sister brought me up a small hill behind Stanford - there's a sign at the foot of the hill warning visitors of mountain lions and an installation art piece at the foot of the hill, featuring men made from spools of hay, um, making hay - from the top of which you can see all of Stanford, and the town, and the trees, and the bay, and the mountains beyond. My sister said she went jogging around the hill every week, because going there made her happy. We drove to the Napa Valley to visit the Mondavi winery (where they said that sales of merlot went up after doctors said that red wine was good for your heart and went down after Sideways) and V. Sattui, where my sister bought some sticky-sweet Gamay Rouge. We drove to Monterey Bay to take the 17-mile drive around Pebble Beach and then to Carmel-by-the-sea, which pretends to be a quaint English town. We didn't drive on to Big Sur, because my parents had had enough of driving and California by then; my father in particular doesn't like, is not comfortable with California: it was too expansive, too vast, too hot, too raw. Even the pinecones at Stanford were bigger than the pinecones in England! He grew up in confined spaces - the old RI, the old NUS campus; he was familiar and comfortable in cities like London and Paris, cities weighted down with history; in small, enclosed, compact spaces. His overriding image of America comes from the racial riots of the 60s. I thought of the flat, harsh light in L.A. when I visited it three years ago, and Joan Didion's early essays on Sacramento and quoting Bernard DeVoto on the West beginning where the average annual rainfall drops below twenty inches, and on the plane back I read Henry Miller's Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. I don't know if I would live there, but I can see, for the first time, why the empty spaces might attract one, how one might come to love the wide, straight roads and the mountains and the bay, the sense of possibility inherent in this spaces, the sense that here one may run away from oneself, find oneself, reinvent oneself.

Your bottom is a basket full of fruits and meat

The Peasant Declares His Love

High-yellow of my heart, with breasts like tangerines,
you taste better to me than eggplant stuffed with crab,
you are the tripe in my pepper-pot,
the dumpling in my peas, my tea of aromatic herbs.
You are the corned beef whose customhouse is my heart,
my mush with syrup that trickles down the throat.
You are a steaming dish, mushrooms cooked with rice,
crisp potato fries, and little fish fried brown....
My hankering for love follows you wherever you go.
Your bottom is a basket full of fruits and meat.

- Emile Roumer

From Mark Kurlansky's excellent compilation of food writing, Choice Cuts. Kurlansky has this to say about Emile Roumer: "Emile Roumer was born in Haiti in 1908. Educated in France, he wrote poetry in French from 1930 to 1935, and then stopped writing entirely."

Nourishment

On a Hay Dairies ad at a bus-stop: Goats' milk is more nutritious than cows' milk because what matters "is not what you swallow, but what you digest".

The thing about Singapore Idol

and the ones who can't sing:

(1) Why don't their friends stop them? and

(2) Especially the ones who go away sweetly and sadly - at least they're out there, and they're trying, and on national television. From where I stand, that must count for something.

Farm visits today!

First to Farmart, which is a kind of permanent farmers' market. Some of us bought quails' eggs; WN bought a pack (brace?) of quails. We weren't there at the right time, but on Sundays at about 1 pm the shop sells fried quail. Cab to Hay Dairies, a goat farm - the signboards at the farm said it used to be a pig farm, but converted to a goat farm with the help of the AVA (then PPD) when pig farms were phased out. Back in its pig farm days, it kept chickens and "a crocodile to dispose of chickens". Some very sweet baby goats, and some distinctly less sweet adult goats. The farm keeps different breeds of goats and has helpful signboards to elucidate on the distinctive characteristics of each breed: one tended to be high-strung, another tended to emit a distinctive complaining sound. There was one huge, hairy brute whose horn stumps glowed purple. Full of kids (of the human variety) offering the goats little plastic bags of hay. Then a trek to Bollywood Veggies (Ivy Singh-Lim's farm) and a wander into Green Circle, quite by accident. Green Circle is an organic vegetable farm, and would appeal to all the hippie yoghurt-loving tree-hugging East-Village-health-food people. We only stopped at Bollywood Veggies for lunch. Very yuppie - think of what a farm-themed restaurant would look like, and there you have it.

birthday greetings

Thank you, loves. Hot Russian sailors to you too, Fay. Mid twenties, late twenties; as JY said, at some point (quite soon), this will be a moot point and we will be indisputably in our late twenties.

My parents got me a fountain pen; my mother said that they figured that since I liked banging away on the old typewriter, I'd like a fountain pen. I am progressing backwards in technology.

flowers

To say that the orchids are opening up and my mom plucked away all the pollen - sacs? - from the lilies and I've converted my hookah into a vase for the ones which look like sunflowers but are not.

(To say, thank you.)

how Singapore prepares you for China

Daniel Bell on teaching political philosophy in Beijing. I didn't know he taught in NUS in the 1990s.

so

Steve is doing a visual arts/poem thing at the central library basement Thursday evening (7pm to 8.30 pm). There'll be words, and moving pictures, and music with rocks in it (probably). (This is the subtext time slot, but obviously something else and more fun.) Come by if you're in the neighbourhood.

I like this Edna St Vincent Millay

Since we were talking about sonnets. I'm sorry darling; I've got it straight now: Milton - epics; Shakespeare - sonnets (and never mind the plays?).


Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

In vaguely chronological but really no particular order

(1) Paul Theroux (at the NLB last Thursday) said that to be a writer, one must do two things: (i) leave home, and (ii) tell the truth.

You don't find it gets harder to tell truth to power in this line of work?

(2) Steve gave me a bar of green soap to carve.

(3) Wonderful dinner at J's place on Saturnight - we had roast lamb and poulet con leche and roast potatoes with onions and garlic and chipolatas and potato pancakes and corn muffins and spaghetti coated with butter and cheese and cream and a hint of lemon, and then molten chocolate babycakes (molten baby chocolate cakes? which is it which is tiny?) and pumpkin pie for dessert. All the major food groups: potato, meat and chocolate.

(4) My dad tells me that Low Thia Khiang spoke the purest teochew at the Hougang rally last night. Political rallies: does one vote as if for a local election (and may the best man win) or a national election (where - presumably - other considerations come in)?

(5) I appear to have been cross and out of joint for some two and a half years now.

(6) J lent me Richard Powers' Time of our Singing, which I really will read. Everyone seems to love Richard Powers (with the exception of jy, who doesn't read things that other people read on principle) and I have tried to read Galatea (can't spell it) but couldn't get past the first few chapters.

(7) I'm really not made for this job. Every time we're at the negotiating table I feel I'd rather be on the other side - rather be on the side of advocacy and passion than common sense and fiscal prudence. Better to sell a dream than to cut it down to size.

Nonetheless. The job that's in front of you, right?

(8) So was it Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil or Jane Eyre?

Consider all the relevant posts linked

I do still think we should have a book club. Not to improve literacy and not to read or refuse to read milton, but just to be able to read the same book at the same time (for once, excluding Pratchett, which is a constant) and talk about it. I'm thinking of the conversations between A. S. Byatt and Ignes Sodres on six books they liked (which I believed was called Interesting Conversations or something like) - that sort of thing. Everyone should get to pick something in turn, and yes I guess you can pick Paradise Lost and yes I guess you can refuse to read anyone who's still alive, who writes from a minority point of view and all the rest of the rules - but probably good to start with something we all wouldn't mind reading and which doesn't require three years of prior study and who can reasonably be read on the train and in bed and the odd moments of time we have entirely to ourselves.

Stuff

1. Did you know o.k. stands for oll korrect? (I still owe you ten minutes for that.)

2. Dinner on Friday with the usual crowd at Kalinka-Malinka, which has excellent shashlik and some unpronounceable cabbage roll thing (but avoid the dumplings), and later coffee and cake and Milton and Donne and the existence of free verse. Lunch on Saturday with WN and then dinner with S, SX and mf at a cosy little dim sum place in Tanjong Pagar where we ordered one of everything on the menu except the porridge. Then mf had to go off for a supper date so the rest of us ended up at Bakerzin talking about comfort books (children's books) and TV shows (anything written by Aaron Sorkin) and drinking milk. (I can't remember if I've said this here so I might as well say it again - watching Aaron Sorkin's TV shows is like reading Pratchett. It's not that he's the world's greatest writer exactly - it's that one buys into his moral vision. You watch the show/read the book and think yes that's how the world should be. And if you're me, you think it's how the world is, but that's a different story.)

I think this all the time but don't say it - it's so good to be with friends who will argue about poems and free verse (or the denial thereof) and the importance of children's books. And TV shows whose characters are involved and stimulated by their jobs and not willing to give anything less than their all and whatever else Dana said to Casey.

3. Sunday, sadly, was spent staring into space a lot and doing homework. I'm basically indifferent to a lot of what I'm supposed to be doing - in the sense that I've no emotional or ideological or philosophical (this one very rarely) preconceptions about these things - so it's mostly ok. I don't think one should work in (for?) the administration/regulation of something one really does love. I'm a little saddened every time we talk about schools, and especially universities, as a place to churn out workers. I guess that's the sensible way of thinking of it, but the part of me which values academic work can't help thinking about what Sayers had one of her characters say about Oxford - that Oxford has been called the home of lost causes; if the love of learning is a lost cause, then in Oxford at least it has found its abiding home.

4. Suyin - my dear, congratulations (very belatedly)! Hope you're feeling better.

5. My computer says it's eighteen minutes to Su-Lin's birthday. Happy birthday darling!

Google, or, A Remembered Conversation

My little brother took part in the Google worldwide programming competition (or something like). Anyone can take part. The top 500 in the world get through to the next round. The top 250 get a tee-shirt. The top 50 get to go to California for the final round.

Him: But I don't get to go.
Me: Why not?
Him: Because I'm not 21. So at best I get a tee-shirt.
Me: That's not a very balanced incentive structure.
Him: It's a cool tee-shirt. It's got "Google" on it.

Postcript: And so it does.

Well, was it untoward?

From one of the Sports Night transcripts:

Dan: Our anniversary. Today is our anniversary.
Casey: Jeez, Danny, that night in Minneapolis with the Jaegermeister, we didn't do anything untoward, did we?
Dan: You mean did we get married?
Casey: Yeah.
Dan: No.
Casey: (getting up and going backstage) Good.
Dan: (following) You recited the St. Crispin's Day speech from the lobby of the St. Paul Radisson.
Casey: (examining himself in the mirror) Well, was it untoward?
Dan: No, it was just embarrassing.

Do not depend on fairness of face, or why women always need new clothes

"[I]n Precepts for Women, written by the great woman historian, Pan Chao, the virtues and appearance of good women are described:

The virtues of women are not brilliant talent, nor distinction and elegance. The virtues of women are reserve, quiet, chastity, orderliness, governing herself to maintain a sense of shame, and conducting herself according to the rules of Confucian etiquette.

The appearance of a woman does not depend on fairness of face. The principles for a woman's appearance are to wash away dirt, wear clean and new clothing and ornaments, bathe often, and keep her body clean."

- From a brief survey of Chinese women and literature in Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung's Women Poets of China, which Yisheng pointed me to one day.

The other thing

is that I can't stop reading Sports Night transcripts.

When we grow up

I think we should have a bookshop, and I think it should be like Books Actually - except actually with books.

What I'd have (in addition to novels, I mean):
(1) A decent poetry section. Which means that twentieth-century poets cannot be limited to the collected poems of Yeats and Auden (separate collections, I mean).

(2) A decent non-fiction section. Why is it that Singaporean bookshops hardly ever carry non-academic non-fiction? Including personal essays, humour (I'm thinking of Thurber), travel, journalism with footnotes (I'm thinking of Eric Schlosser and Timothy Garton Ash), critical essays (I'm thinking of Northrop Frye's radio lectures? - The Education Imagination, and Anne Carson's wonderful book-length essays), political essays (but only if very good; can't think of an example), food, and so on. And some academic books (I'm thinking of Benedict Anderson).

(3) Children's books.

Catching up

I just started reading the blogs after a long absence and I am completely lost.

Random and less random thoughts:

There is no Swedish restaurant. It is a place of legend and myth and wishful thinking.

My dear, I had no idea his family were so horrible. How dare they? I can imagine being upset about a former lover's marriage, quite apart from what I thought about him. In this case, the man is clearly an idiot and a louse.

And if it's not too late to say my piece - I don't understand how you could have thought us smug and complacent and the other thing (there were three things, weren't there?). (From here I'll drop "we" and just speak of myself.) I do think of you and J as standard-bearers, and I am very proud of you, but I don't think that justifies my own laziness. I say "laziness" because it helps me to think that I could do anything I wanted to, if I just put my mind to it; but if I were honest I would admit that I don't think I could have got into grad school. What would I possibly study? Anything I enjoyed at undergraduate level (I realise now), I enjoyed on the level of emotion rather than intellect - I enjoyed reading Mill's "On Liberty" for the passion in it, rather than the argument (not that the argument was complicated - another reason in its favour). I'm afraid I can't think and I can't write; sometimes I'm afraid I couldn't think and couldn't write. How can it be that you don't think what you do is real work? I've always thought that scholarship was real, more real than the work I do. I remember being very lost and afraid and alone in Oxford; I also remember being in the Old Bodleian along one Saturday morning and reading (a translation of) the Phaedrus(?) and watching the sunlight slanting in and colouring the pale wooden desks a soft gold. At least teaching has some connection to language; I'm afraid I've lost all that.

What I mind about where I am is not the part about selling out but that I'm bad at it. I think it could be a worthy job and it could require a good deal of hard work and dedication; I'm unwilling to put in the hard work and dedication because that would only get me to average, and I'm unwilling to work at being average. I don't think much about it nowadays, and that worries me when I do think about it. I'm afraid not so much of losing desire but the desire for desire.

Common experiences and shared books are one thing (two things), but surely not all? Wouldn't we (all) be close anyway, whatever we did or did not choose to do?