'A design for life The concept is simple (if somewhat prescriptive): here I keep track of my encounters with words, music, images (moving and otherwise) and associated pleasures, as they occur.
Things that will only be incidentally present in this chronicle: fancy writing; underlying themes; pretension; metafiction; etc.
Also: no self-examination; no personal revelations; no existential crises; no unnecessary sturm und drang; no catharsis.
Well, maybe a little catharsis, a la Aristotle.
We are, after all, writing about Art here.'
From one of the few blogs I still bother to read. Light of padding, high in quality, and where the time comes from, no body knows.
And while I'm on the point of awesome things to read: the Christian Science Monitor, which I am told is the most impartial, comprehensive online news periodical out there. Not updated as often as the New York Times, but far more comprehensive and satisfying. Supplements the New York Times and The Age nicely. And finally, this Ceylonese Community blog, which includes this insightful piece on the recent Bombay attack.
I had the most amazing coffee the other day. I suspect it's the same all over Singapore but anyway. It cost SGD0.80, a third to a fourth of what you would pay for coffee in Australia. Best thing I've had since I discovered the hot chocolate affogato at Koko Black. At this place called Sabar Menati II, which apparently has been open since 1920. I had breakfast there, then came back for lunch. One coffee in the morning, two at lunch. Largely because I don't speak Singaporean (Malay?) and two of the staff members there didn't speak English. So we struggled with much attempted sign language and pointing. Until they found some member of their staff who could speak English. I had two goes at it. First a coffee only because I didn't manage to communicate that I also wanted lunch. Then lunch with coffee. Because I liked the coffee so much.
And on the way back home, there were a couple of signs. With sentences in English, Malay, Mandarin (or Cantonese?). And Tamil. Kinda cool. Never knew Tamil was so big in Singapore, even if I do have quite a bit of family down here.
Also rocked up to a friend's place today, from Uni. Pretty, pretty house, and much diversity in family. English, Francais, Tamil, Indonesian, Malaysian, Singaporean. Must be kinda cool. Also two hens, and two dogs. Including a Rhodesian Ridgeback. And I suspect they could both smell the waves of fear rolling off me.
So I stayed the two nights (including the night I first got here), at Fragrance Hotel Emerald, in Geylang. A friend of mine told me that this is apparently the Singaporean red light district. Funnily enough, the place doesn't really start up in most places till about 10 or 11, and it's well and truly awake at 2 or 3 am (the time I first got in on the first night). And last night, when I went off to have dinner, and walked through Geylang, I had two sets of two girls tag team me twice. The first time, one girl asked me something incomprehensible in Malay, and I just gave her a blank look and kept walking. Her friend and she both then grabbed my elbow and asked me something, again incomprehensible. I shook them off and kept walking. The second time one of the girls asked me if 'you want some'. Which has to be one of the most vulgar things I have ever been asked. Not quite the romantic types, these girls. As I shook my head (in the negative. Just so we're clear :P) and walked past, her friend stroked my waist and asked me something, that was again incomprehensible. And then this morning, at about 11am, some woman on the road snapped her fingers when she realised I'd walked past and asked something which I didn't bother to listen for, turning only enough to shake my head. Which makes one wonder: do they never stop?! Nevertheless, it is somewhat hilariously humbling to watch your wallet being propositioned ahead of you, even though it's hidden in your backpack, and you aren't. Curious place, Geylang.
My cab driver to the airport tells me they also gamble in the back alleys, in total darkness, lit only by torchlights. And signal to each other when the police come by. Apparently it's near impossible to win in these games, but you won't be assaulted if you just concede your losses and leave without kicking up a fuss. Never quite caught sight of that. He seemed to think that was scandalous, and quite a great nuisance (though he did say it with that admiration that people occasionally reserve for something they consider illegal but not immoral). No mention of the girls.
Hmm. This may be the last time I blog in a very long time depending on internet etc. So. First thing to note: I left Melbourne via terminal 9, the same terminal I left by on my way to Geneva a year and a half ago. Secondly, the free wireless in Singapore. Is much. Faster. Than the cable net we pay for back in Australia. Which will be annoying when I get back to Australia. Thirdly, I hate flying. No matter how great the destination - those few hours in the plane are so annoying. Sore back. Sore bum. Sore neck. Can't get to sleep because it's too uncomfortable. Only thing you can do is watch the in-flight movies. The guy next to me was listening to the Rihanna channel - like, each of her songs. One after the other. Uncool, man.
So I ended up watching Iron Man, Get Smart, and Hulk. Iron Man was a bit annoying. Robert Downey Jr is no where near as smooth as I'm guessing they intended Stark to be, and the attempted romanticism between him and Gwynneth Paltrow's Pepper Potts (funky name though) was just annoying. And the bad guy got next to no air time for his villainy. Get Smart though, was hilarious in most part. I'd initially refused to watch it because I'd thought Steve Carrell's slightly neurotic, hyper-tense attitude to comedy would ruin the laid-back incompetence of the titular character. But it actually works perfectly. Hilarious. As was the Rock, and the big, massive Russian guy. And Hathaway as 99. Ah screw it. They were all hilarious.
And my god but the food here is cheap. And plenty. The breeze is cool. None of the humidity I remembered from last time. Once you get out of the immediate vicinity of the hotel, anyway.
I was supposed to stop over in Bombay on the way over from this Saturday onwards for two nights. Right near the Taj Hotel that was subject to the hostage taking (I think, from memory). Didn't quite manage it. I called up the Indian embassy recently to ask them to grant the transit visa to India.
Says embassy guy: sure thing, can be done - just fill in the form, pay the money, bring it all in, and we'll do it in 5 days. Says me: can you do it any quicker? - I, like, leave in less than a week. Says embassy guy: ummmm... - what country are you a national of? Australia. Always been a national of Australia? - weellll, I was born in Sri Lanka, so I was a national of Sri Lanka for a couple of years. But never had a passport, and I've been an Australian citizen for ages. Says embassy guy: oh. well. it'll actually take you 4 weeks.
All of which is to say that it ended up costing some more dosh to get my flights changed to spend more time in Singapore and not leave the terminal at the Bombay airport. And not commute to the hotel that was near the recent massive violence thing. Or stay there for a night. Or tour through Bombay. Probably not so bad a thing. Hmm. Touch wood.
First stop, the Melb Uni gym, where I had an appointment with some of the instructors so I could ask them about stuff that might keep me in some sort of shape overseas. The guy wanted to know if I was Sri Lankan or Indian (just introductory banter to build rapport, so perfectly cool). Which of course led inevitably to the recent India-Australia cricket series. And a discussion of long Asian names. (and incidentally, to those Indians out there: that series was a whole heap of boulderdash. The entire Indian team gets thrashed by one great Sri Lankan spinner in his debut series, and then have a decent series against one not so great Australian spinner (or the entire Australian attack, for that matter), and all of a sudden they're the best team in the world?! If only teams forewent the money and played Sri Lanka more often. They should be #1 today. And how good is Mendis? Bwa.). And then they sort of assumed I'd never seen the inside of a gym before, so they figured they ought to start me off light (I'm quite lanky, so fair call). Like, 15kgs on the lat pull-down. And then increased it in like 10kg increments until they got to 55kgs. At which point I just gave up and said yup, cool, you got me, can't do much more. But apparently I've a pretty big engine. Whatever that means. And I only start jogging on a treadmill at like after 10km/hr. Which is pretty cool to know. For the old ego. But weak hammy's...
Then as I was sitting by a tram stop along Swanston St trying to figure out where I could go to get free wireless in the city, a little old lady wanted to know if I could help her get her little trolley on to the tram. She then wanted to know how long I'd been in Australia, if my parents were happy with Sri Lanka, if my brother and sister were happy with Australia, why I don't want to go back to Sri Lanka (which she apparently can't understand - why people from overseas think their home country not worth going back to), and how her daughter is apparently going back to Sri Lanka. And how it's good for 'us' if people like me stick around to contribute to the Australian economy. And all of it said in the most condescending tone imaginable. In fact, the little old lady was so surprised that my brother, sister and I are a) happy with Australian society, and b) don't care to go back, and c) are studying decent degrees at University, that she paused with shock on her face and looked away each time before resuming her side of the conversation. All of which I thought was hilarious. So I gave up accuracy after pweettty much the first question and just said whatever I thought would bring about the most amusing response.
I just found the place I want to go to next next! The Trans-Siberian Railway. Sounds pretty funky. Of course, I'm off to Africa this Nov-Jan next year. Bits of Asia too on the way there and back. And hopefully Eastern Europe next year. Which means I won't be able to do the railway till the year after. Hmm. Annoying. But still! It sounds pretty cool.
Also went passed the old old school today, Maribyrnong SC, which I went to before MHS. Quite liked the place. Open, good friends, much environment, friendly teachers. Not the greatest school academically. But can't complain much. They tried to convince me not to go to MHS a few times after I got in. I remember one particularly unfortunate attempt. My PE teacher, who I quite liked asked me about the sports facilities at MHS. And I of course that she was just interested and started describing the gym and all to her (which were of course infinitely better than Maribyrnong SC's more modest facilities - MHS does afterall raise more money than any other school in the country from the local community), but anyway...it was only a few minutes into my big spiel that I realised - oh wait. She's not that interested in your life story. This is just part of the school's attempt to stop you going, you idiot. Stop rambling like a small child with a new toy and give her some space to move in. That was awkward. Still, I quite missed the place.
And on the 4th of November, when Barack Obama was declared the 44th President of the US of A, as the exit polls, the pre-polling polls, and everyone bar the pessimistic naysayers had predicted he would, I was at home eating lunch, eagerly awaiting his speech. And he didn't let down! Made up mucho for his lacklustre Convention speech of a few months ago.
Yet I remain annoyed with the euphoria surrounding the man. Euphoria over the ideas of any man are dangerous. We need accountability. But not pressure. Or expectation. And his blackness is truly irrelevant, surely. He walks in a different sphere to the ordinary black man. No ordinary black man can rise to the position of ruler of the free world - only a black man blessed with the charisma, intellect, and wit of Obama, and his ability to make friends of those who are useful to a run at being President. Just as no ordinary white man can rise to the position of ruler of the free world - only one blessed with the wit and charm of Clinton, or the wealth and established support of Bush. Just as no ordinary woman can rise to the position of ruler of the free world - only one blessed with even more charm and charisma than Hillary Clinton, may she hopefully become the first woman judge of the US Supreme Court instead. This much has not changed. To reduce it to the issue of race is to ignore the plethora of things that go into making Barrack Hussein Obama. And there's too much there to ignore.
I just finished reading Zadie Smith's On Beauty, which I had once dismissed as far too boring to bother reading. It is, instead, quite a marvellous book, very much full of the essence of life, very attentive, yet flowing and lacking the tedium of encyclopedic guide to the lives of the characters. For instance, Smith's description of the family's excursion to hear Mozart's Requiem:
'The experience of listening to an hour's music you barely know in a dead language you do not understand is a strange falling and rising experience. For minutes at a time you are walking deep into it, you seem to understand. Then, without knowing how or when exactly, you discover you have wandered away, bored or tired from the effort, and now you are nowhere near the music. You refer to the programme notes. The notes reveal that the past fifteen minutes of wrangling over your sould have been merely the repetition of a single inconsequentiial line...Howard...was asleep. A glimpse to her right reveaaled Zora concentrating on her Discman, throough which a recording of the voice of a Professor NRA Gould carefully guided her through each movement. Poor Zora - she lived through footnotes...Jerome, who Kiki now noticed, was cryng. She opened her mouth with genuine surprise and then, fearful of breaking some spell, closed it again. The tears were silent and plentiful. Kiki felt moved, and then another feeling interceded pride. I don't understand, she thought, but he does.'
I must admit with not a small degree of shame, that when I attended a performance of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl on a fine Summer afternoon with a few friends over a few glasses of wine and an assortment of cheeses and dips, my response to the music was more akin to that of Kiki than Jerome, philistine that I am. And certainly not Zora's, who is quite pitiable throughout the novel, so unaware of the world around her, cocooned as she is, in her constrained, artificial, constructed, pseudo-intellectual reality.
And then there is Carlene Kipps' oft quoted line of poetry: 'there is such a shelter in each other'. Typically postcolonial, oriental sentiment. A meaningless and vacuous phrase, but soothing nonetheless.
Or Zora Belsey's parody of her father's students:
'Zora laughed. "You should hear my dad's freshmen. I was like", she said, pitching her voice high and across the country to the opposite coast, "and then she was like, and then he was like, and I was like, oh, my God. Repeat ad infinitum"'.
Which of course still happens in University. I have been guilty of it on far too many ocassions to count.
I particularly like the descriptive passages of the book, when Smith's attentive, eloquent imagination paints such a clear picture in your mind's eye it's quite like watching a movie. For instance, in Howard's first class:
'Howard indulged in a quick visual catalogue of their interesting bits, knowing that this would very likely be the last time he saw them. The punk boy with black-painted fingernails, the Indian girl with the disproportionate eyes of a Disney character, another girl who looked no older than fourteen with a railroad on her teeth [I quite like this metaphor]. And then, spread across the room: big nose, small ears, obese, on crutches, hair red as rust, wheelchair, six foot five, short skirt, pointy breasts, iPod still on, anorexic with that light downy hair on her cheeks, bow-tie, another bow-tie, football hero, white boy with dreads, long fingernails like a New Jersey housewife, already losing hhis hair, striped tights - there were so many of them'.
Or Carlene Kipps' description of Jerome:
"You mistake what I'm saying. I saw when he was with us. He was so focused on my daughter, he almost couldn't let her live. I suppose you call it obsession. When he has an idea, your son, he holds it very tight. My husband is like that - I recognise it. Jerome's a very absolute young man".
I wonder what she means by absolute? Because the boy seems quite capable of seeing in shades, and he certainly is domineering in the way Zora Belsey is, though his ideas seem to be quite fixed.
On a point of philosophy, I quite liked Carlene Kipps response in this exchange:
'"I mean, your husband, Monty, for example", said Kiki, boldly. "He writes a lot about - I mean, I've read his articles - about what a perfect mother you are, and he...you know, often uses you as an example of the ideal - I guess, the ideal "stay-at-home" Christian Mom - which is amazing of course - but there must also be things you...maybe things you wanted to do that...maybe you wish..."
Carlene smiled. Her teeth were the only non-regal thing about her, raggedy and uneven with large childish gaps. "I wanted to love and to be loved."'
Which reminds me of that favourite passage of mine from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. It is also a somewhat sad passage when viewed with the benefit of hindsight, since though Carlene is grateful for her lack of visual glamour because it allowed Kipps to pursue his academic career without needing to fear that she might be the subject of other men's attentions, and while she was happy to remain at home and mother her children in her plain-ness, thinking she was loved, Kipps did in fact, have affairs on the side, with women who were not so plain, that she is never aware of. Sad. That he had both the stay-at-home, plain mother of children to care for him, and then the attractive young women to compensate for the very plainess that made her attractive to him in the first place. And as she says: '"I don't ask myself what did I live for", said Carlene strongly. "That's a man's question. I ask whom did I live for"'. I suppose that in the end, her feelings were purely selfish, so though the sentiments were felt by her alone, she does not require the love of her husband to have lived a fulfilling life for him...it is still sad though.
I should say, though, that I quite disliked Zora. She annoyed me. With her systematic, technicality, her know-it-all superiority, her obstinate lack of self-awareness. But most of all, her pedantry:
'She didn't feel that she had any real opinions, or at least not in the way other people seemed to have them. Once the class was finished she saw at once how she might have argued the thing just as viciously and successfully the other way round; defended Flaubert over Foucault; rescued Austen from insult instead of Adorno. Was anyone ever genuinely attached to anything? She had no idea. It was either oonly Zora who experienced this odd impersonality or it was everybody, and they were all play-acting, as she was. She presumed that this was the revelationi college would bring her, at some point. In the meantime, waiting like this, waiting to be come up on by real people, she felt herself to be light, existentially light, and nervously rumbled through possible topics of conversation, a ragbag of weighty ideas she carried around her brain to lend herself the appearance of substance. Even on this short trip to the bohemian end of Wellington - a journey that, having been traversed by car, offered no opportunity whatsoever for reading - she had brought along, in her knapsack, three novels and a short tract by De Beauvoir on ambiguity - so much ballast to stop her floating away, up and over the flood, into the night sky'.
I quite liked the vacuity of opinionlessness though - a necessary period before one grasps what their identity is. From which point onwards, I suppose, the personal ideas and visions kind of form themselves around that. On the point of vague, youngness, there is Howard's observation that 'he had underestimated the strangeness of talking about the future of his life with someone for whom the future still seemed unbounded: a pleasure palace of choices, with infinite doors, in which only a fool would spend his time trapped in one room'. Ah what one would not give to be so young again!
And I quite disliked Howard. As Kiki observes:
"you're terrified of anyone who believes in anything - look how you treat Jerome - you can't even look at him, because you know he's a Christian now - we both know it - we never talk about it. Why? You just make jokes about it...we can't talk aboutt anything seriuosly, everything's ironic, nothing's seriuos - everyone's scared to speak in case you think it's cliched or dull - you're like the thought police. And you don't care about anything, you don't care about us - you know, I was sitting there listening to Kipps - OK, so he's a nutcase half the time, but he's standing up there talking about something he believes in"
A vacuous shell of simplified philosophical beliefs. I suppose it is from here that the significance of the ending derives from - where Howard stands before the picture of Rembrandt's love, Hendrickje, as though the essence of his work is self-explainable, because the only substance in his life derived from his love of his ex-wife.
And I also quite disliked Levi. The boy was a lazy, unintellectual lout, who has too great an opinion of his own abilities, and the inability to understand quite what he likes. Also a very selfish young man in the sense that he only understands things as they effect him. So for example, in relation to his father's affair:
'he had felt quite reasonable about it. He felt bad for his mom, obviously, but he also understood his father's position. Levi too had loved girls dearly in the past and then played away with other girls for less than ho0nourable reasons and saw nothing heinously wrong with the separation of sex and love into two different categories. But, looking at Claire Malcolm now, he found himself confused. It was yet anothyer example of his father's bizarre tastes. Where was the booty on that? Where was the raack? He felt the unfairness and illogic of this substitution. He made a decision to cut the confersation short as a sign of solidarity with his mother's more generous proportions'.
Charming :P
I still wonder why Smith wrote so little about Claire Malcolm. She seemed a fascinating person, and one I related to. A genuinely original person too. A lot of her observations were quite thought provoking. And it didn't feel as though Smith was making fun of her, as she was with many of the other characters, because Claire wasn't really hypocritical, and because she was aware of her problems, and was struggling against them. I liked this thought from her, for example, that followed her discussion of her own insecurities:
'And were they still like that, she wondered - these new girls, this new generation? Did they still feel one thing and do another? Did they still only want to be wanted? Were they still objects of desire instead of - as Howard might put it - desiring subjects? Thinking of the girls sat cross-legged with her in this basement, of Zora in front of her, of the angry girls who shouted their poetry from the stage - no, she could see no serious change. Still starving themselves, still reading women's magazines that explicitly hate women, still cutting themselves with little knives in places they think can't be seen, still faking their orgasms with men they dislike, still lying to everybody about everything. Strangely, Kiki Belsey had always struck Claire as a wonderful anomaly in exactly this sense. Claire remembered when Howard first met his wife, back when Kiki was a nursing student in New York. At that time her beauty was awesome, almost unspeakable, but more than this she radiated an essential female nature Claire had already imagined in her poetry - natural, honest, powerful, unmediated, full of something like genuine desire.'
Which segues nicely into a real cool statement from Kiki Belsey about precisely what Claire was talking about:
'I haven't had my period in three months - did you even know that? I'm acting crazy and emotional all the time. My body's telling me the show's over. That's real. And I'm not going to be getting any thinner or any younger, my ass is gonna hit the ground, if it hasn't already - and I want to be with somebody who can still see me in here. I'm still in here. And I don't want to be resented or despised for changing...I'd rather be alone. I don't want someone to have contempt for who I've become. I've watched you become too. And I feel like I've done my best to honour the past, and what you were and what you are now - but you want something more than that, something new. I can't be new. Baby, we had a good run.'
Just two more things I wanted to say. First up, I found this passage from Jerome interesting: 'It was a surprise to Jerome how happy he was to be back. Three years ago he had thought he hated Wellington: an unreal protectorate; high income, morally complacent; full of spiritually inert hypocrites. But now his adolescent zeal faded. Weellington became a comforting dreamscape he felt grateful and fortunate to call home. It was certainly true that this was an unreal place where nothing ever changed. But Jerome - on the brink of his final college year and he knew not what - had begun to appreciate exactly this quality. As long as Wellington stayed Wellington, he could risk all manner of change himself'. But if Wellington hadn't changed from the Wellington he had once hated, does that mean Jerome had grown more alike Wellington to appreciate it more?
The other passage I really liked was this one by Carl the rapper: 'I'm just some experiement for you to play with. You people aren't even black any more, man - I don't know what you are. You think you're too good for your own people. You got your college degrees, but you don't even live right. You people are all the same...I need to be with my people, man - I can't do this no more'. Which raises the question: what is it to be black? And is it so static a concept that one man can deny it of another? Is it not merely a signifier of oppression the world over, a concept so universal and undefinable that the Irish were capable of appreciating the truth of Michael Luther King Jr's dreams?
I took out the old car for what will most likely be it's last ride ever. Driving down to that BBQ again that I help out with for that NGO. A friend from University was volunteering today as well, so I agreed to pick him up from the local train station. We managed to get there in one piece, I parked the car, turned off everything, locked everything, then hear Jim say: 'Ah, I think your front bonnet is on fire...'. And it was smoking pretty badly. We pretended to check the bonnet and fiddled around a bit. But it looked like there was enough water in all the right places. And enough oil. Nothing was on fire. I called home. Apparently that's pretty normal at the moment. Some of the oil in the engine escapes to top, where it gets burnt off by the heat from the engine. What could be more natural?
So anyway. Last time I get into that car. It smoked all the way home, at all the traffic lights I had to stop at, which was somewhat embarrassing. Been with us since 1993, and it's a 1986 model. But possibly time for it to be put out to pasture. In a scrap-heap place.
I shall go to Africa over November-January. And I got back to reading a book a friend recommended several months back, Zadie Smith's On Beauty, and I'm regretting ever putting it down now, because it is quite an exceptional novel. Here's a qoute I like quite much from it: 'And I was in this beautiful country, in this exceptional landscape, and the truth is land like that is what fills you up, it's what nourishes you as an artist...I'd get involved with a cornflower, for days...I mean with its actual, essential blueness...'.
I saw Pirates: Dead Man's Chest for the second time last week-end. A moment at the start of the film caught my eye. It's that scene where the British Naval Commander asks Wil Turner to pass on a message to Captain Sparrow: do as the British Navy want, and you get your freedom - the chance to work for the British Navy. Turner reponds: Somehow, I don't think Jack will think of that as freedom. Working for the Navy that is. Or for anyone else. For some time now, that thought has occurred to me. To work is to be defined. Just as to do anything that isn't temporary, is to be defined. University is not a bad life in truth. A lot of those I know are in their mid-twenties, and only now finishing their law degrees, after deferring to travel or work elsewhere for a time, or transferring in from previously completed degrees. Ah well. I shall have to convince the parents to let me travel to Africa first for the Summer. Baby steps. Perhaps by then, I shall have worked up the courage to appreciate the next step.
So. It turns out my weakness on Monday wasn't the product of a 7 hr barbeque, but rather bacterial bronchitis, brought on by the barbeque. And after spending much of Monday afternoon in bed in the fetal position, I managed to get out to Melbourne University to see the doctors and get medicine, which hasn't helped as quickly as I would have liked. As in, my temperature has fluctuated (as in, it's generally fluctuated upwards) between 38.5 degrees Celsius and 39.6 degrees Celsius. That peak I finally climbed last night and sat there wondering - wait a minute. Don't my organs like stop working at 40?! And this annoying cough has yet to cease. Annoying, annoying bronchitis.
Yesterday, I helped out at a BBQ for a NGO I'm working with at the moment, to help raise funds to run projects for women and children living at the margins of Thai and Burmese society. For 7 hours, including set-up and clean-up. The pain in my legs, my lower back, arms, everything from the hair down, is not so much unimaginable intense - the pain has no definable locus, nor is it particularly intense in any one location - it's just always, unbearably, at the same, unbearably, monotonous, aching intensity. I can't walk without pain, I can't even sit without pain. So rather than take it like a man, I'm here whinging. But hey - you cant judge until you've had to do it. Damn you all! I better have got some karma out of this.
And then on the way home, the car (this is the old one the old folks bought when they first got to Australia, a 1986 model Toyota Cressida, started making funny noises whenever the speed went below 10km/hr (which it does when you're slowing to a halt before a traffic light) and then the engine would stall, of course. Which happened for the first time after the exit out of Ring Road on to whatever street leads in to Main Road. It managed to stall a few more times before I got home, and made those popping noises throughout the journey (kind of like something was tapping the engine the entire time) so that I was never sure if the car wouldn't just explode with me in it.
But anyway, I managed to get home, and saw Wanted at my cousin's birthday afterwards. Which was just as well, because I was far too exhausted to actually talk to people. But this movie was kind of pointless. Slick and easy enough on the eye, but kind of superficial; the plot was nothing more than a mix of Matrix and Minority Report, and the twists weren't particularly exciting. Still, a decent time-filler, and one can't expect a great deal from modern blockbusters.
Yesterday, a colony of bees flew in across the neighbours house and decided to set up camp around the trunk of our infant orange tree. Literally hundreds. They've all left by now (the wind was pretty strong this morning, I suspect it may have blown them away) but fascinating. Never seen so many bees in any one place in my life. Apparently if they'd stayed, and we hadn't called pest control, they would have made honey in 6 months.
I've been meaning to post this for quite a while, but the internet is down at home on account of the fact that the wireless router we use to convert the cable signals to wireless, just recently died. But anyway! I got around to finally reading Kafka's The Trial, which I've wanted to read for a while on account of Kafka's reputation, and also because I was somewhat fascinated by the Orson Welles adaptation of the work. It wasn't quite as good as I'd hoped Kafka would be and I no longer understand where the 'Kafka-esque' references derive from, but it did have some quite fascinating critiques of the legal system, that is particularly pertinent to this anti-terror-law obsessed world which we now all inhabit.
So, basically, the protagonist K, is charged by the court (which is different to the normal courts) of a crime of which he is unaware, and which he is never to be aware of, and must defend his offence through the allowed avenues. As his lawyer informs him,
proceedings are not public, they can be made public if the court considers it necessary, but the Law does not insist upon it. As a result, the court records, and above all the writ of indictment, are not available to the accused and his defense lawyers, so that in general it's not known, or not known precisely, what the first petition should be directed against, and for that reason it can only be by chance that it contains something of importance to the case. Truly pertinent and reasoned petitions can be devised later, when, in the course of the defendant's interrogations, the individual points of the indictment and its basis emerge more clearly, or may be surmised. Under these conditions the defense is naturally placed in a very unfavourable and difficult position. But that too is intentional. For the defense is not actually countenanced by the Law, but only tolderated, and there is even some controversy as to whether the relevant passages of the law can truly be construed to include even such tolerance. In the strict sense, therefore, there are no court-recognised lawyers; all those who appear before the court as lawyers are basically shysters...But there's a reason they treat lawyers this way. They want to eliminate the defense as far as possible; everything is to be laid upon the defendant himself.
Perfectly adaptable to the modern anti-terror law environment in which one can be apprehended and held without being provided with a reason, and provided with information concerning one's own trial only under the strictest security clearances; where security organisations can ask courts for permission to do things they care not to justify.
Then of course, the painter to the lower court judges in this warped secondary judicial system offers K three options: actual acquitalls (which apparently he has never witnessed, and which are rumoured to never have happened), apparent acquittals (which provides a temporary respite, until a higher court judge realises that the trial has not yet occurred, and orders the defendant to be arrested and tried), and protractions (whereby, the defendant, through constant contact with the relevant Judge, influences them to keep the trial 'spinning within the tight circle to which it's artificially restricted' - i.e. by keeping the trial at the one stage for an indefinite period of time). I never actually understood what this was a parody of. The protraction stage obviously, but actual acquittals never occurring?
This reminded me of the Michael Jackson trial, after which an American juror suggested that the victim's mother was unreliable because she pointed her finger at the jury while speaking (which is a sign of rudeness, and therefore, of poor character):
Merchant to K: many people believe they can predict the outcome of the trial from the face of the defendant, and in particular from the lines of the lips. Now these people claimed that according to your lips, you were certain to be convicted soon...Just think how strong the effect of such a supervision can be. You spoke to someone there, didn't you? But he could hardly answer you. Of course there are all sorts of reasons for getting confused there, but one was the sight of your lips. He told us later that he thought he'd seen the sign of his own conviction on your lips as well (note: they were right, K was convicted soon after)
And here's the Merchant's amusing assessment of lawyers' court submissions:
It was scholarly all right, but in fact contained nothing of substance. A lot of Latin for the most part, which I don't understand, then several pages of general appeals to the court, then flattery of certain individual officials, who weren't in fact named but could have been deduced by anyone familiar with the court, then self-praise on the lawyer's part, combined with an almost canine servility before the court, and finally analyses of legal cases from ancient times that are supposedly similar to mine'
Then, K observes the effect the Merchant's own case has had on him, the 'learned dependence' of relying on another for specialised knowledge:
the client finally forgot the entire world, desiring only to trudge along this mistaken path to the end of his trial. He was no longer a client, he was the lawyer's dog. If the lawyer had ordered him to crawl under the bed, as into the kennel, and bark, he would have done so gladly
And, finally, K's Outsider like scene with the Court priest (though the analogy ends there - K does not triumph over the system that condemns him, as Meursault does, instead walking timidly to his doom). This is the priest's final tale to K:
Before the Law stands a doorkeeper. A man from the country comes to this doorkeeper and requests admittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says that he can't grant him admittance now. The man thinks it over and then asks if he'll be allowed to enter later. "It's possible," says the doorkeeper, "but not now". Since the gate to the Law stands open as always, and the doorkeeper steps aside, the man bends down to look through the gate into the interior. When the doorkeeper sees this he laughs and says: "If you're so drawn to it, go ahead and try to enter, even though I've forbidden it. But bear this in mind: I'm powerful. And I'm only the lowest doorkeeper. From hall to hall, however, stand doorkeepers each more powerful than the one before. The mere sight of the third is more than even I can bear". The man from the country has not anticipated such difficulties; the Law should be accessible to anyone at any time, he thinks, but as he now examines the doorkeeper in his fur coat more closely, his large, sharply pointed nose, his long, thin, black tartar's beard, he decides that he would prefer to wait until he receives permission to enter. The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit down at the side of the door. He sits there for days and years. He asks time and again to be admitted and wearies the doorkeeper with his entreaties. the doorkeeper often conducts brief interrogations, inquiring about his home and many other matters, but he asks such questions indifferently, as great men do, and in the end he always tells him he still can't admit him. The man, who has equipped himself well for his journey, uses everything he has, no matter how valuable, to bribe the doorkeeper. And the doorkeeper accepts everything, but as he does so he says: "I'm taking this just so you won't think you've neglected something". Over the many years, the man observes the doorkeeper almost incessantly. He forgets the other doorkeepers and this first one seems to him the only obstacle to his admittance to the Law. He curses his unhappy fate, loudly during the first years, later, as he grows older, merely grumbling to himself. He turns childish, and since he has come to know even the fleas in the doorkeeper's collar over his years of study, he asks the fleas too [a reference to the lawyers?] to help him change the doorkeeper's mind. Finally his eyes grow dim and he no longer knows whether it's really getting darker around him or if his eyes are merely deceiving him. And yet in the darkness he now sees a radiance that streams forth inextinguishable from the door of the Law. He doesn't have much longer to live now. Before he dies, everything he has experienced over the years coalesces in his mind into a single question he has never asked the doorkeeper. He motions to him, since he can no longer straighten his stiffening body. The doorkeeper has to bend down to him, for the difference in size between them has altered greatly to the man's disadvantage [a reference to the learned dependance that strikes down a man's stature among men?]. "What do you want to know now", asks the doorkeeper, "you're insatiable". "Everyone strives to reach the Law", says the man, "how does it happen, then, that in all these years no one but me has requested admittance". The doorkeeper sees that the man is nearing his end, and in order to reach his failing hearing, he roars at him: "No one else could gain admittance here, because this entrance was meant solely for you. I'm going to go and shut it now".
So here's my problem with The Trial: why does K not have any knowledge of this mysterious court system, and why does he not challenge it's jurisdiction over him? Surely there must be some realm beyond this shadowy court system. We find out later in the collection of miscellaneous chapters in the appendix that K was good friends with the Chief Prosecutor - surely he has sufficient contacts to have 1) a comprehensive knowledge of the judicial system, and 2) access to quality lawyers? I realise that Kafka has superimposed a wierd, chaotic realm over K's world, in which K is powerless both to understand this wierd judicial system, and in which he knows no one, but surely there is some clash between his old and new worlds? This book makes no sense! But the above were still amusing, I suppose. 2/5 for me.
Apparently consolidations aren't merely the product of companies seeking to expand during boom periods. Or, at least, the lion of Wall Street, Merrill, has already been consumed by Bank of America, Lehman Brothers by the Credit Crunch, Bear Sterns by JP Morgan, AIG by the US Government, and Morgan Stanley, the second largest securities firm in the US, is considering merging with Wachovia. So now a massive amount of physical and human capital is being sold off at record prices as banks try to find some means of guaranteeing their survival. I suppose that no matter how deregulated the markets become, there's no substitute for ensuring quality and competence in financial advice, and preserving long-term good will over short-term opportunism. The accounting firms didn't quite figure that one while the accounting standards were lax in the late 1990's. Seems the banks aren't much smarter.
I found the most amazing cafe the other day, while waiting with one friend for another. Called Brother Baba Budan. Never a big diva when it came to coffee, I can pretty much drink anything, but this stuff is somehow indescribably different. More substance? Hmm. Apparently it's named after a man who brought coffee to India from Yemen when this was illegal.
I just finished reading the lowest brow book I've read in a long time, The Shadow in the North. I discovered it entirely inadvertently on an ABC commercial for a TV adaptation of the book. Rather predictable, entirely unplausible, full of massive, horse-sized dogs, people who can read things from focusing on objects, and telepaths. And not even written about in a credible way either. Less sophisticated than the Harry Potter series, an ending that made very little sense, and amateurishly depicted characters. Made-for-television junk. Je deteste. Should have just rented out the TV version.
I'm about to return Marina Warner's Indigo unread. I'm fifty pages through. And I actually liked novel at the beginning. The descriptive narrative, the pleasant mood, the serene atmosphere. The writing convenys a sense of nature and peace and everything flows. Beautifully written book. - But it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. And Warner is starting to annoy me with all of these references of things that will one day come to pass; 'Miranda would one day find out x', or 'Xanthe would one day be doing Y'. Blah. So I shall come back to it some day, when I have acquired a better appreciation for Postcolonial literature.
Still, there were two passages I wanted to note, because I liked them so much.
This is part of Serafine's (pretty name) story (of King Midas and his greed-begotten golden touch, which I believe actually featured in Ovid's Metamorpheses - a gift of Bacchus for saving his disciple if memory serves me well?) to Miranda in the opening chapter:
-Then the fat man leans over to slap the king on the thigh: "Wouldn't you like to be there, dear boy? What?" You see when people hear about such things, they always want to have them for themselves. Human beings can't leave well alone, they go leave dirty marks on evertything. Like you messing those poor daisies. The king nods, he wants to go there and take it for himself. To the fat an he says, "You're always exaggeraating." "By no means," he answers him. -The king's dreaming of being king there as well, and, by his side, his daughter's got a dream too - a new world, a new life. You know, people often dream of being different. Never content with what we are. No, no. She longs - (And Seraphine tapped her chest.) - In here, the princess feels a hole she wants to fill all up with something, she doesn't yet know what it might be.
See what I mean about the writing? Beautifully lethargic.
Or this one, which describess Miranda's disquiet at her cousin Xanthe's baptism in which the guardians of her soul promise to protect her from, among others, evil and corrupt affections:
Elsewhere, the promises had been made for her. She could not understand. She took fright and cried, and then cried louder when the resonance in the church's recesses startled her and intensified the disapproval of the grownups she'd disturbed. She could not ask herself then, in so many words, could this be true, that affections might be evil, corrupt? She denied it, her heart beat against it; she rebelled with that first fright at the christening, and she would continue to do so. She did not want to be defended against affections; she wanted to live by faith in their strong armour. But later, when the love that Xanthe inspired in so many people around her from the moment she was born - in herself, her father Kit, and, especiallly, in Xanthe's own father, Anthony - had changed all their lives so profoundly, Miranda would have no doubt and answer, Why yes, all our evil and corrupt affections.
After the Dark Knight a few Fridays ago, I went to see the Bell Shakespeare company's Hamlet. This is as painful as it sounds. My contacts had dried by the time Dark Knight finished, and the pain in my eyes slowly transferred to the rest of my head over the course of Hamlet, so that turning my head on my neck to speak with my neighbour was rather painful. The play itself was quite good though, especially the music, the humour, and the acting. I especially liked Polonius' comic timing, and Claudius had the right mix of nerdish, arrogance and extreme elitism mixed with a darkness, and the smooth, Machiavellian air that I associated with him when I read the play. And Orphelia's angelic voice matched her virginal white robes and naive, innocence. The sword fighting at the end was also a treat (and apparently quite realistic).
There are also some things that must be seen to be understood - thus, for instance, I only realised while watching the play, that Hamlet was mocking Polonius when he reads out to Polonius the lines that I found so amusing relating to aging (obviously made up by Hamlet), about how the old could age as well as the young should they age backwards; also when he refers to Polonius as an interfering "snitch" - which he also accuses his friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, of being (and note that he causes the untimely end of all three). And finally, I was told by mine neighbour that apparently Hamlet is known for its streak of Oedipal tension. Here, Hamlet did berate his mother for her infidelity to the memory of his father - but when he berates her in the flesh before Polonius' hidden form, his anger at her incestuous conduct showed more than anger on his father's behalf - and, in fact, he thrust his hip towards her seated person, and then cast her upon the ground, and things just got wierder from there...so that his digust at her incestuous conduct was given an incestuous expression?!
There always must, though, be something irksome about a Shakespeare production. In Julius Caesar, I had no idea why, in the Bell Shakespeare Company's version, a lady sat looking bored, occassionally chewing on a nail indifferently by the side of the stage. I was later informed that she represented fate, overseeing the outcome of the battle between Brutus and Cassius and the triumvirate of Antony, Octavian, and Lepidus. Here, it was the immature, juvenile take on the eponymous protagonist. He expressed his anger in the opening scene featuring Claudius by taking off his shoes and throwing them on the ground, in the manner of a tantrum-throwing, angry juvenile (he is, in fact, thirty years old). He groped Ophelia in the scene where the actors put on their show for the King. He groped a chair shortly after Claudius called that same show to a premature end. He engaged in toilet humour with his friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in relation to which part of fate they are a part of (which admitedly is in the original Shakespearean script, but nevertheless, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were excessively juvenile themselves, and more so than I think ought to have been warranted). And he was overdramatic, shouting, gesticulating widly, and generally overemphasising as much as possible (there was no more ironic a scene than the one in which he counsels actors against this very sin). One review of the play that I've read describes this Hamlet as just an "angry dickhead". Is it so much to ask for Hamlet to be somewhat respectable, or at least likeable?
Runtagunga is already adding salt to the wounds by claiming that the Indian batsmen lack focus and are playing 20/20 style cricket, but let's focus on the fact we've got a brand new, shiny, spinner, who, together with Murali, left only one wicket for the pace ballers!
Thank god also, for the new technologically-enhanced umpiring system! Tendulkar and Dravid (neither walkers, unlike, say, a certain, great BC Lara) both given out correctly when they would not have been otherwise. Sehwag given out incorrectly because the technology and the umpire operating it forgot to account for the deflection off the front pad and assumed the ball hit the back pad on middle, and Tillakaratne Dilshan's dismissal reversed because the system showed sufficient doubt (though snickometer, which wasn't being used, indicated that there was a snick). New technology, 50% strike rate for accuracy - but hey, who's complainin? Mwahaha.
Saw Dark Knight at IMAX last Friday, where I haven’t been since I first got to Australia. The place has the seats all arranged in rows with no aisles to provide easy entry to and exit from the rows, so that once you’re in, there’s no escaping (possibly not even for fire?). Instead, the big-screen requests patrons to please move into the centre of the row, and the poorly animated, cartoonish image of a clown, shuffles disjointedly across the screen from both sides to draw the eye to the message.
Fascinating movie though. The sadistic, psychotic Joker with his Saw-like macho head-games, terrorising people just for the heck of it (which is quite scary, really. Infinitely scarier to think of someone killing for no better reason than pleasure and curiosity than even the scene where he kills the mob boss by ripping his jaw open with a knife). This was comically contrasted with the image of the other Gotham city mobsters who regulate their criminal activities to ensure there is enough order for them all to profit in the long-term. Who was it that said that the rule of war can apply to a dictatorial regime as well as to a democratic one? And this is why Socrates was wrong in The Democracy when he claimed that unjust enterprises could not succeed relative to just ones - they can where a "leader" (in the loose, morally unconstrained sense of the word) is able to establish an effective hierarchy. Even Two-face, with his symbolic reliance on chance did not quite match the Joker's command to 'introduce some chaos'; he at least gave people (in theory if not always in practice) a 50-50 chance, which nevertheless provides them with an orderly way of knowing their fate; there was no order whatsoever in the Joker's methods. Thus, for instance, though the Joker had in his possession the M&A lawyer who knew Batman's identity, (and a man who would have yielded up the name at the slightest invitation) he never seems to have sought to appropriate that particular piece of knowledge from him - instead, he seems to have wanted the game with Batman to never end. Incidentally, I really liked one aspect of the Joker's portrayal: the mouth was full of saliva, which occassionally overflowed - that surely is a near-universal calling card for the criminally insane.
And then, of course, there was the White Knight, Two-Face. He had a rather unexpected, sad, and speedy end, and they made much of the fact that he was Gotham's saviour, the man prepared to lend his noble visage to the fight for justice, unlike the brooding, unseen Batman. And of the need to rewrite history to deny the Joker the pleasure of knowing that history recorded that 'even the best of men' is corruptible. Fascinating that they related his tale at the same time that the boat situation unfolded - so that while the best of men lost his way and left the path of justice, the ordinary citizens of Gotham refused to yield to the Joker's invitation to base themselves. Quite interesting that it was the convicts who first decided not to follow the Joker, though I suspect that that was because they did not wish to stroke the ego of one who had violated their secret code among criminals, a matter of pride that they refused to succumb to his idle threats. Interesting also that the honest citizens felt that because the criminals had committed crimes, they had forfeited their lives and therefore, should be blown up first - though the act of blowing them up, would, itself, be an act of murder, which ought to mean that, having themselves thereby partaken in a criminal act, they too have, by logic, forfeited their lives.
I read a review of Dark Knight in last Sunday's Age, which suggested that the Batman movies dealt with contemporary, controversial themes. Batman Begins dealt with bourgesie America, wallowing in its capitalist corpulence. But Batman beat Ras and claimed that he would refashion Gotham into a better place. The implication was that irrespective of how far it had sunk, America was capable of reviving itself, the good was capable of coming through. Dark Knight deals with an unpredictable, post-modern villain who deals in chaos in a chaotic, meaningless world. The legacy of his terrorist actions is Two-face: the corruption of man. Batman became the villain to preserve Two-face's (man's) humanity, because he was the hero that Gotham deserved, but not the one it needed. Was this a message concerning the war on terror? That America is the hero we deserve, but not the one we need? Prepared to sacrifice its grand, noble image to preserve the greater good? To fight the war on terror?
Perhaps following on from that America theme was the spying thing - the part where Wayne mutates an idea that the CEO of his company had discovered, to allow him to spy on everyone using an electronic device capable of transmitting. I suppose it was trying to draw attention to the means-ends dichotomy: when does a means justify an ends? And it was quite contemporary, following as it does from the revelation a year or so ago that the Bush Administration had sanctioned spying on ordinary citizens to discover whether there was a terrorist threat in America. I got the feeling at the time, though, that it was an incidental feature in an already dense plot.
Still, can't wait for the next one. For all its greatness, Dark Knight was worse than Pirates - Dead Man's Chest - there was no ending, only the presage of a sequel. Hopefully they don't introduce Robin too soon. And it's a shame the Joker won't be making any reappearances. RIP dude.
***
One last note. I just realised that the 'you complete me' jibes of the Joker to Batman, seen in light of his desire to not discover Batman's identity, and to continue their fight for all eternity represents the first instance in this series of movies, of that homosexual theme that is said to pervade the Batman series. Also, apparently Johnny Depp is to star as Riddler in the next Batman.
I don't speak Polish, but it still preserves the alliteration of the three E's (possibly apart from the R, I don't know whether that's supposed to be there or not on the second word) and doesn't sound quite as uninspiring as 'Easy*Excellent*Exciting'. Plus they didn't put the dots in the middle. So anyway, I just remembered that I got my new Eee PC 901 two weeks ago. Apparently it's 'Fine Ebony, XP (though I really wanted the Linux version), 12GB SSD (I could have done with a bit more, but I suppose my ipod can cover me for now on the memory), 1GB DDR2, Intel ATOM, WiFi 802.11b/g/n, 1.3M Camera, Bluetooth, 10/100 Mbps Ethernet, YOStore', 1.6 GHz, and a 7 hour battery!
So, while it's annoying that Asus has since released the Eee PC 1000 & 1000H, both of which have something in the order of 80 or 100 GB of memory (why is it yet to be released in Aus?!); that I can't use Microsoft Office on this laptop (though, opensource Office is remarkably decent); and the keyboard is tiny; it's preettty hard to complain when you have a laptop you can fit into your old laptop bag along with lunch, some Uni books, and the gym gear! Plus it comes with a 7 hr battery life and more than enough speed for my wordprocessing needs.
Au revoir, multiple bulky bags that got in the way so often on crowded buses, trams and trains! Adieu, anticipated future backpain!
I snapped the root in my left incisor one-and-a-half years ago when I fainted due to dehydration brought on partly by an illness I was suffering from, but after my (awesome) dentist pushed my tooth back into my gums and secured it with a metal wire that he soldered on to my teeth, it seemed to have pulled up ok. Today was my final check-up (not that I've been complaining about having to go to these - they've all been free, funnily enough - part of the same course of treatment).
I am told that since the ice test (put cold, cold CO2 on tooth and see if it hurts), the (I don't know the actual name, but this will do just as well) hammer test (hit tooth with metal instrument to see if it hurts) both cause me pain, the nerve is still alive. My (hopefully) final tooth x-ray shows that the root is roughly healing at its slow and steady pace, and certainly hasn't gotten any worse, and there's no infection.
So now, I am free to go, unless I see any graying of the tooth, or if it hurts, in which case, I am to report it immediately. Apparently after such trauma to the tooth, I am to beware for the next eight years. So yeh! I don't need root canal surgery. So I celebrated with some good ol' fashioned hot choc with marshmallows...mucho gracias amigas (see Ms Zipperfall - I remember my Yr 8 Spanish...) :)
I am shortly to attend my first Shakespeare play in quite some time this Friday, the Bell Shakespeare Companies rendition of Hamlet. I believe that I attended their performance of Julius Caesar some six (seven?) years ago, though my most vivid memory from that performance is of the lady who upon one end of the stage, sate, looking on with bored indifference at the happenings on-stage. My English teacher was good enough to cure my ignorance by informing me (not without some degree of mockery at my inability to grasp this from the first) that she symbolised fate (apparently indifferent to, and bored by, the happenings on Earth though Caesar's death was marked by many and varied superstitious happenings?).
And so, that I may have some understanding of the play, I undertook to, and in fact just finished reading, Shakespeare's Hamlet. Fascinating story, though quite dark and morose, full of incest, death, poisons, and brooding speeches. I thought that I might note some of it here that I may not forget it.
Things like, for example, Hamlet's sudden contempt for women brought about by his mother's incestuous union following so soon upon the death of his father, expressed so chauvenistically in the phrase 'Frailty, thy name is woman!'. Or Polonious' words, that Shakespeare never took up (and thankfully so) when writing Hamlet:
My leige, and madam, to expostulate, What magesty should be, what duty is, Why day is day, night night, and time is time, Were nothing but to waste night, day, and time. Therefore, since brevity is the sould of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief. Your noble son is mad: Mad call it I; for, to define true madness, What is 't but to be nothing else but mad?
I thought to include that last part because it reminded me of Foucault's argument that madness does not exist ipso facto, but rather is a construct of the Enlightened Age of Reason, and exists in opposition to reason.
Or Hamlet's somewhat amusing speech on ageing:
Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum, and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams: all which, sir, though I most potently and powerfully believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down; for your self, sir, shall grow old as I am, if, like a crab, you could go backward.
Grow backward indeed! And to follow the comedic theme,
Guildenstern. Happy in that we are not over-happy; On Fortune's cap we are not the very button. Hamlet. Nor the soles of her shoe? Rosencrantz. Neither, my lord. Hamlet. Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favours? Guildenstern. Faith, her privates we. Hamlet. In the secret parts of Fortune? O! most true; she is a strumpet. What news?
There is of course, Hamlet's most famous of speeches, on death as an escape from present misfortunes, balanced againt fear of unknown future misfortunes after death:
To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageus fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and, by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause. There's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips aand scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pitch and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action
And this speech of Hamlet's I just plain liked:
Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice And could of men distinguish, her election Hath seal'd thee for herself; for though hast been As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing, A man that fortune's buffets and rewards Hast ta'en with equal thanks; ahnd bless'd are those Whose blood and judgment are so well co-mingled That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger To sound what stop she please. Give me that man That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart, As I do thee.
And following Hamlet's play, when the King expresses guilt in private, and questions whether the Gods will forgive him his sins, even as he wallows in the effects of his sins, his cry of
What if this cursed hand Were thicker than itself with brother's blood, Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens To wash it white as snow?
which of course, is analogous to Macbeth's cry of
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red.
And here's another odd quote of Hamlet's that I quite liked: a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear. Or this of the grave-yard men:
First Clown. What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter? Second Clown. The gallows-maker; for that frame out- lives a thousand tenants. ... Second Clown. Who builds stronger than a mason, a shipwright, or a carpenter? ... First Clown...'a grave-maker:' the houses that he makes last till doomsday.
On the point of death, which permeates the play, here is Hamlet speculating on the identity of a skull that the grave-digger casually digs up and kicks away, and commenting on the fact that, as Meursault from The Outsider might say, 'there were only privileged people':
why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? why does he suffer this rude knave to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery? Hum! This fellow might be in 's time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognisances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries; is this the fine of his fines, and the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine pate full of fine dirt? will his vouchers vouch him no more of his purchases, and double ones too, than the length and breadth of a pair of indentures? The very conveyance of his lands will hardly lie in this box, and must the inheritor himself have no more, ha? ... Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alex- ander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam, and wwhy of that loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beeer-barrel? Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away; O! that that earth, which kept the world in awe, Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw.
And, finally, as Caesar felt a foreshadowing of his death, so too does Hamlet before his bout with Laertes, yet equally dismisses it as an inevitability, preferring to focus on the 'readiness' as all.:
Hamlet. Not a whit, we defy augury; there's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all. Since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is 't to leave betimes? Let be.
I happened on the Minnelli-Gershwin classic An American in Paris while lunching today, a movie about an American trying to succeed in the Parisian art-scene, relying on the benefaction of a rich but lonely lady, a poor and disturbed pianist, and a French girl betrothed to a man who (I think) saved her family and helped support her after World War 2. Fascinating film, though the ending was somewhat meek. I'm also totally a fan of musicals, and I can never get enough of the Gene Kelly tap dancing (which never fails to bring the words "penguin-waddle" into my mind, and I don't mean that unkindly - I'mmm jealous of Kelly) - consider for example, this - (though I always preferred Fred Astaire's somewhat whimsical arrogance). Buutt. There was relatively little French in the movie though it was set in Paris, and instead, the locals spoke perfect English (well, Lise's fiance spoke with a French accent, but even his English was quite good). And it possibly didn't help that the film starred Gene Kelly, in all his working-class American glory.
This week we were also blessed by the arrival of the Pope to Sydney, as part of the World Youth Day festivities, an event designed to engage young people to the Church's teachings. I actually went to a Church service several weeks ago. Well, I'd initially passed through one of the exhibits at the National Gallery. It took me all of ten minutes to confirm the fact that I have no appreciation for art whatsoever, especially abstract art, it just makes no sense whatsoever. I moved on to the Royal Botanical Gardens, but the inclement, freezing Melbourne weather and the gloomy, late evening-early night sky made a dalliance of any length, no matter how beautiful the park, somewhat inadvisable, especially given that my surtures had only been removed some four days previously.
Instead, I passed into St Paul's Cathedral, on the corner of Flinders and Swanston Streets, an old, beautiful Anglican Church, now in the final stages of its refurbishment. I never knew the Church bell ever rang, but apparently it does. I stayed for the Sunday evening service, a mix of haunting, operatic, soprano combined with the inimitable pipe organ - and my only regret was that I didn't participate in the singing, hypnotically beautiful that it was. But I did prefer to listen to the sound and ignore the words - the hymns were about the divine virtues of God, and how man should aspire to be so virtuous (which was fine by me), and about the slightly more self-flaggetory, sado-masochistic, need for man to inevitably base him- or her- self before God and wallow in their inherent, and incurable flaws (which I wasn't so up for).
Time to focus solely on the football and Malcolm Blight's disgust at the questioning of his commitment, methinks, rather than distractedly warble out of tune.
I've finally got some awesome books on poetry that a friend found for me, and I haven't the faintest if my impressions of it are right or wrong, but I love the way this guy expresses himself, even if I don't so much like what he has to express. I've only read a few of his poems so far, but the dominant themes that seem to be running through his poems are a dislike of ageing, and evidence of a midlife crisis, and an aversion to science and technology coupled with a preference for nature.
So for example, in his first poem, Feet First, I really like the last line:
'to unravel the mystery time secretes in that trick of daylight coming after dark'
And perhaps as a follow on of that thought (dark meaning ageing and midlife? and daylight meaning knowledge, wisdom and certainty? - well, that's what it means to me), his first three lines:
'By some sleight-of-time the days return as if to prove that nothing changes but your growing interest in conclusions;'
And mid-way through the poem:
'You know how far your time has gone ... and by your slow return to silence, as if, after all, no question has been understood or even truly asked.'
Hope I don't get caught up in that search for truth and certainty as I get old. But here's the part of that poem that I reeeaaaaly liked:
'You know how far it is to the couch when it's your feet that need a lover's touch to trace the gothic architecture of their bones, the bends in your toes more solemn than any road or buckling roof, the twin skulls of your heels, their hard knowledge packed in, the tendons of your arches untied to release a weight of seasoned stone;'
Now thaaatt's poetry. Beautiful.
Or for further proof of his pessimism about ageing, take You can have faith in this:
'Open-mouthed as pockets, crumpled as handkerchiefs, old clouds are smoking in a laundromat. Cirrus-thin white hair burned by jet exhausts, gone in the limbs, torsoes pale and puffy, faces blank as concrete, they're watching two-dollar storms wash through thinning sheets [now why can't I come up with descriptions of what a washing machine does that sound anywhere near as eloquent as that? Or of the decrepit appearance of old people?] ... They rediscover holes in all their theories, remember sun-snow on their backs and the earth throwing shadows at their talk of being something else [this poem's too negatively realistic for me - why write about dreams being thrown back in people's faces?]. They want to be overhead again, pure as unfilled cartoon thoughts. [don't we all?] ... Once it was all medieval festivals, acting the shapes of predictable horses, lances, flags, trumpets and dragons-- and though those pantomimes were repetitive, shortlived and redeemed as aquarium fish, at least, they say, we were up there in the heavens. Who would believe it now? Their cloud souls cold and wet as bus stop benches, big and empty as country towns, too ready with tears, are full of answers you could drive a truck through. ... now their talk becomes a memory of storms.'
Fascinating parallel between the subjective search for certainty in the first poem, and the objectively flawed knowledge and the hole big enough to drive a truck through in this one.
And If I could tell you applies the above to mid-life crises. Here's the fourth line:
'Why is it three o'clock in the afternoon I panic?' which is just plain poignant in its imagery.
Or the second-last verse:
'Today we have it on our hands, while others must be doing it. Time gets away, drags, flies by, slips past, no matter how we watch. It's too late now to ask what time is and where we are in it.'
I assume the first line means some are watching the time go by (the watch on their hands) while others are making something of it before it's too late. But the last verse is the most evocative of the poem:
'This time through tears you ask, what is the point of being in it- [very postmodern...] in this standstorm of years, the brief colour in a garden patch. [very existential...] Waking from uneasy dreams [from his prior to midlife life and the realisation of ageing?] I ask aloud, what time is it, and is it too late now to learn where time is and what we are in it.'
Or how about this one about Turning fifty:
'Yes, the sea here still shakes sunlight off its back and muffles ears with all the wisdom of noise; ... and history. A fat butter sun finds a way through the mapless blue and yes, it is a miracle to be walking in sand, enough to be among dogs and rocks and foam, dumb markers of peace -
the hopeful end of all wars... kisses the sea; war is in another country and the clouds are in another sky.'
The century old sea that gets up and shakes the sunlight off its back but still has only the wisdom of noise! Beautifully dark! Walking in sand among dogs, rocks, foam marking the absence of war - but then, the selfish happiness in all of the stormy clouds being in another sky?
But then there's Foty-five years on a bicycle, which I just plain like! Especially:
'The bike beneath him is his insect-double humming plagues on cars and trucks. It is all spokes and handlebars, subtle brakes, an exoskeleton with silver guards and leather saddle; this insect takes the man above it through unlikely gaps sliding buoyant on the rim of death. ... The bike is a dream of low flying, deep diving in air against the bluff of wind, it teaches us hills and timing, slides us into curves like a poem that fits this world. ... A bird flew beside me keeping pace waiting for the lift from my handlebar-wings touching time with time, feather with frame, until it was satisfied I was no fish of air but a flightless bird or hapless insect overgrown, or a hallucinated memory of the nineteenth century and left me with this truth.'
But compare that with the poem about hangliders, When hangliders collide. Here's the second verse:
'When gliders collide and fall through the forest like a flawed idea others are still gliding round them braced on their own wings in holiday colours forbidden like time to look down or stop moving'
Wings in holiday colours juxtaposed with gliders crashing to the Earth. Holiday colours? Is that intended to add to the unreality of it? That people only go hang-gliding when they suspend real-life and move to the unreality of the holiday, rarely had? Forbidden like time to look down or stop moving - to not engage in consequentialist reflection but to live determinedly in the present?
Here's the sixth verse:
'When gliders collide all returns are decided the wind shakes the smallest of spiders from its hair with its fingers extended the fall is enacted but not with redemption'
Ouch. The contempt of the heavens, coupled with a refusal to allow any redemption to man for the arrogant presumption.
And the final line:
'I read a report of the accident as though flight all along had been what we expected'
That's about as anti-technology, anti-ambition as they come, I believe. Anti-progress. Why should not man strive against what we expected?
This is perhaps more evident still in What to do when you're told it's not cancer. Here's the line from the second verse:
'I bought books about cancer then, and went to a naturopath and an acupuncturist because cancer has something to do with faith as well as death. We all know that.'
(note also the certainty in that last phrase. the certainty of age perhaps? :P) Still. I really liked that poem. Personal, passionate, emotional.
Now here's some of his Haiku and Senryu (to be honest, I don't know what either of those are...):
'Shaking hands as if we agree on the rules of combat'
Stereotypically appropriate for law, I would have thought, whether negotiating contracts, or greeting an opposing attorney before a proceeding :P
'The cat shares its food with the pigeons and sparrows fattening them'
Lol. I just added that one in coz I thought it was kinda cute.
And here's one I just didn't plain understand - As they say:
'the older you get the more afraid of dictionaries [why dictionaries?] you become
the nearer it is [what is it?] the harder it is to find change in your pockets
the squarer the peg the rounder the squads of possums clocking laps on your roof at dawn
and the brigher the prospects the less grand are the eyebrows of statues [first one I actually understood]
the harder they [who's the they, who's mediocrity society rewards?] fall the softer the carpet in the waiting rooms of employment agencies
[these last two I just plain really like:]
the longer they dog you the more swimming makes sense
and like life, as they say, the more important the occasion the sillier the invitation'
A little boy, no more than 10, probably younger, in a gold and black hoodie lighting a cigarette to smoke, spitting occassionally but emphatically, and strutting on the platform opposite mine, once stopping to abuse a fellow commuter standing near him who'd been smiling glibly at him. Plenty in St Albans who do all of the above, but they're usually above 40.
Some weeks ago, I visited the Baillieu Library to borrow Goethe's Faust. I didn't of couse find Faust, because it's very difficult to navigate through the library, and because the books seem to be arranged somewhat haphazardly. Instead, I found another Goethe novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther. A somewhat depressing
