Exciting Times

Lots of excitement - the hubbly, bubbly variety - in this vicinity regarding the once in a lifetime appearance of a Super Blue Blood Moon. (Hope I got that right.) I think some of the kids here just see it as an excellent excuse for a sort of party - and quite right too. But quite a few are obviously genuinely into the astronomical awesomeness of it all. Wonder if some of them will remember this night in their old age. Hope so.

The View From My Bedroom Window

 

 

 

When I was just a little lad - eleven years old and in the first year of my secondary school - our English teacher set the title of this post as our first essay. I really struggled with it. We were living in the sweet shop on Guide Lane, Audenshaw, and the view over the main road wasn't all that promising. At least, that's the way it seemed to me then since I remember getting stuck after a couple of very mundane paragraphs. I kept looking out but struggled to find anything to say.

This came back to me this evening when I happened to glance out of the window just before praying the Maghrib Prayer (that's the evening one) and was stunned by the sheer beauty of the sun painting the sky behind the tree we look out onto. (One of my favourite trees, by the way.) Doing the prayer took priority, of course, so it was a few minutes before I could grab the camera and try and capture some of the transient glory of it all, as recorded above. It's not quite as intense as what was taking place in those eight minutes or so earlier, but it does give some impression of the original. 

It occurs to me now that I'm very glad I don't need to write a two-side essay about the view since I'm as stuck for words now as when I was a youngster. It also occurs to me that I'd give a lot to see that view over Guide Lane again.

 

More Than A Bit Magical

Noi saw off our guests today, helping them get the airport after guiding them around Chinatown and fixing a boat trip on the Singapore River. Her services as a tour guide throughout the weekend were outstanding in the eyes of her driver, me, with Fafa also providing expert assistance yesterday when we found ourselves at Marina Bay Sands and the Gardens by the Bay. We also took in a wander round the school premises, an hour or so at Holland Village and a gloriously wet afternoon at the Botanical Gardens - all capped off with a late dinner at the hawker centre at East Coast Park. Blimey: I feel tired just writing it all down. By Saturday night John & Jeanette were saying they felt they'd been with us for a week, we'd packed so much in.

And it was all wonderful. Our guests were exceedingly impressed by many aspects of life on our small island, and rightly so. It has its magical features, easily overlooked as one pursues one's usual routine. But I was reminded of just how much magic there is readily available everywhere when Jeanette ruefully remarked that the canal walk she'd taken us all on the last time we were at her place, culminating in coffee in Romiley, didn't seem up to much compared to the sky-line of the brightly-lit city at night. Actually that walk still glows in my memory. And the fun of showing our guests around - and incidentally celebrating Fafa's birthday along the way - was a reminder of how much magic resides in people as well as places.

The Days Are Just Packed

We've had a day and a half and even a bit more. Non-stop. Did the whole tourist thing around the Singapore River and Serangoon Road, including getting sun-burn. Then dined not wisely but too well at a mega-buffet. Now about to stop - but looking forward to the morrow. Just pass me some sun-block, please.

Providing Guidance

John & Jeanette arrived from the UK this morning, travelling with a couple of their friends, Di & Ray. They're on their way to New Zealand, but are happily staying with us for the weekend. So Noi and I are attempting to play the role of tour guides to this Far Place.

As always there's the fascination of seeing the familiar through the eyes of strangers. And, as always, there's the fascination of realising afresh, almost every time you answer a question, how complicated this society is - as is any society, of course. Isn't the world an astonishingly unlikely place?

A State Of Uncertainty

Got to the gym this evening. This means I've managed five sessions in ten days. A record. On the down side my numbers, not great in the first place, have slipped over that period. Partly this is because, given the state of my back and a distinctly iffy right knee, I'm none too sure I should be going there at all. I think it's doing me good, but I wouldn't be overly surprised to suddenly find myself unable to walk at all.

Living dangerously, eh?

Funny how your body sort of belongs to you, in some sense is you, but has an unfathomable agenda all its own.

But Is This Art?

 

 

I have zero pretensions to being any kind of visual artist. But I created the two pieces above, and I think they're genuinely striking and have an odd kind of beauty. So are they art? And are they good art?




(Okay, I'll fess up. I hardly 'created' them at all. They're pictures I took in Turkey, coming down the cable car on the mountain we went up near Bursa, to get the snowy shots in an earlier post. The slight distortion in the pictures relates to the fact they were taken through the misted-up windows of the cable car. But I still like them and would hang enlarged versions on a wall, assuming I had a spare wall to put them on. Banksy, look out.)

Dawn Over The Bosphorus

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes the beautiful is not encapsulated in a single moment. For the awed, privileged observer it's a process, somehow moving through things, the natural and the man-made. It cannot be captured, only experienced.

The Last Time I Wore Glasses

Here's a bit of an odd thing. Today I remembered a little, not terribly important detail of my life, and wondered how I had forgotten it.

It relates, very directly indeed, to Dad's death, and it was thinking about Dad on the anniversary of his death that brought on the memory. I'd hazard a guess that I think fairly often of Mum & Dad, but I make a conscious effort to think of them on these anniversaries, partly because it feels like the right thing to do, but mainly because I enjoy it.

Today I happened to think back to my journey home from university on the day after his death. Maureen and her then husband Colin had got in touch with me somehow in my hall of residence in the morning - not an easy thing to do in the days before everyone owned their own mobile phone - we certainly didn't have the luxury of phones in our rooms - and I went back to Manchester by train, arriving at Gresham Street in the afternoon. They didn't tell me he had already died, just that I had to come home right away, and I know I was thinking of the worst as I went back. Dad had been seriously ill with emphysema, amongst other things, for quite a while, so the idea of a crisis didn't completely surprise me.

Looking back now I realise how young he actually was when the crisis happened. Even given his poor state of health he might have expected a good five to ten years more. But at the time I sort of accepted it as inevitable. Anyway, I was prepared for the worst when I went in the door and the worst is what I got. I guess the grief really hit me suddenly, especially with the accumulated tension of suspecting throughout the journey that the news would be bad. I cried for what must have been a good fifteen minutes, probably more, at the end of which my spectacles, which I'd kept on for some reason, were a complete stained and blurry mess.

I never wore them again. This wasn't out of some weird sense of the devastation of it all, or a peculiar version of remembrance. I'd been thinking of abandoning them for some time. I had, and have, a 'lazy' eye, my left, through which I see precious little. But the other eye somehow compensates and my normal eyesight is, well, reasonably normal. I'd discovered through many misspent evenings at the university that I played snooker a lot better without the glasses than with them and had an intuition that they weren't doing me much good. So I ditched them and, forty-something years later, I suppose the decision has been vindicated.

But I'd entirely forgotten the exact day I gave them up. And I'm sure I was wearing them regularly for 'ordinary' life until that day. I must have worn them on the train to get them all messed up when Maureen broke the news. I reckon a psychoanalyst would make something of the day I came out from behind my glasses, and perhaps the psych would be right to do so. I didn't cry again, by the way, after that initial outburst. I suppose I was too busy trying to do everything in the right way and, as I say, I sort of accepted it all. Still do, except for the obvious truth that the dead never die at all in memory.

In Praise Of The Fridge Magnet - 6

 

 

It's always good to be reminded where you've been, even if you're happy where you are.

 

Especially when at least one of the details of the location as memorialised is uncannily true to life.

Comfort Levels

Finished Derek Walcott: Collected Poems 1948 - 1984 today, and found myself completely beguiled by the final pieces from Midsummer. I've had this experience before, finding that my appreciation of a poet's work seems to deepen as I move in sequence through his or her works, so that by the end of a volume I get a sense of everything coming together. The poems from Midsummer appear to be bound together by each evoking a distinct sense of place through which the poet's frequent concerns about race, empire, cruelty and whatnot wind insidiously, resonantly, usually painfully. The double whammy of XXXIX / The grey English road hissed emptily under the tires... followed by XLI / The camps hold their distance - brown chestnuts and grey smoke... stunned me, as did several other juxtapositions. But then I realised the original sequence could not have had the poems adjacent to each other, which made me keen to get hold of the actual collection. This Collected actually isn't, of course.

After closing the volume I immediately went to pick up Collected Poems: James Merrill. I've come to realise I have to have poetry in my life, and I mean the on-going discovery of such. The Merrill Collected really is one, I think. I bought it after reading his brilliant sort-of-long-narrative poem The Changing Light at Sandover some years back - I think around 2002 - but have never really done it justice. Oddly enough the first poem in the volume, The Black Swan, which is one of Merrill's earliest, from a privately printed volume, hit me with the force of the best poems from Midsummer. It seemed fully-achieved, somehow, absolutely right. Maybe I'm still on a kind of high from what I've learned from reading Walcott?

And, related to a different kind of reading entirely, I also found myself plodding on with Volume 2 of the Penguin Le Morte D'Arthur. I don't know how this happened, but I seem to have got comfortable with reading Malory, even though I'm still not sure why I'm doing so.

Good Blokes

Got a bit irritated in previous months at ex-Liverpool striker John Aldridge sounding off against Mourinho and United. So I was inclined to switch off the radio today when an item came on featuring him. Fortunately I was typically fair-minded and allowed myself a listen to the twerp from Liverpool. Turns out he's not a twerp at all. He was talking about his time at Real Sociedad, post-Pool, and he came across as a real salt-of-the-earth type. His affection for Spain was clear and I was struck by the openness of a working-class bloke from the rougher side of Liverpool fitting in so well in his European adventure. It was always obvious what an honest grafter he was on the field making the best of a limited, but still very distinct talent; but in the interview his intelligence shone through. And a real charm, which came through most powerfully in his warm comments on another great from his generation.

It was obvious for anyone with sense back then that Cyrille Regis was complete class. Again, not the most fabulously gifted front man, but an embodiment of all you wanted in a leader and spearhead. It's difficult to take in that he's dead at just 59 seeing what a force of nature he was on the field. And to think of the vile abuse he suffered week in and week out because of the colour of his skin. Imagine having the character to rise above that. The fact that things are a lot better these days in the EPL is down to guys like him and the example they set.

(Not The) Same As It Ever Was

When I suppose I should have been doing better things I've been goofing off listening to Talking Heads on Youtube quite a bit over the last twenty-four hours or so. Mind you, I'm stretched to think of what might be a better way to spend time than that.

Fascinating to compare DB with TH performing Once In A Lifetime in his highly limber prime with DB in a distinctly more mature manifestation performing that same classic. Sort of the same, but entirely different. A suggestion I'd venture is that it's that ability to reinvent the self that's a sign of a performer/artist of real worth.

Maybe the concept extends beyond that to Everyman. Could it be that our ability to reinvent ourselves whilst remaining the same is a useful marker of some kind of depth or worth?

Even Better Reasons To Be Cheerful

I'm not exactly sure when I first heard the brilliant Talking Heads. I've got a feeling it was before the release of Remain In Light, which I think was their best album, but I do know that seeing the video for Once In A Lifetime, the single released from that album in the UK was one of those rare moments when a kind of new paradigm for how you might 'do' music lodged in my grey cortex. David Byrne's kooky, manic, preacher-man delivery made me rethink how I'd conceived of the role of the front-man of a rock band (if a rock band is what Talking Heads were, or was.) (Another such moment was Bowie's Top of the Pops performance of Starman, which shocked and delighted and made me reconsider some of my most basic prejudices, all in 3 minutes, but that's another story.)

David Byrne has been a bit of hero of mine since rewiring a few of my synapses on that occasion, and has grown in my estimation over time, despite no longer enjoying, perhaps, the bit of celebrity he cornered way back when. Today he went up another notch or two when, via the inestimable Open Culture I got to know of his latest online venture, a site cheerfully entitled Reasons To Be Cheerful. This was a bit of a coincidence considering yesterday's post, but I'm always up for a bit of spooky serendipity.

Anyway, I managed to explore some of the items Mr Byrne has posted and found myself feeling a whole lot better about the world and what goes on in it as a result. There's a part of me that still harbours a certain scepticism about the notion of positive thinking, and I think it's a healthy, necessary scepticism. But Reasons To Be Cheerful embodies the kind of intelligent positivity that I'm coming to believe can change, if not the world, then at least a little bit of it. And that's good enough for me.

2 Reasons To Be Cheerful

Went to visit Osman this evening and he was looking a good deal better than a week ago. The treatment of his shoulder is going well and it looks like he'll resume chemo after another week or so. I suppose the purpose of our visit was to cheer him up, but since he's so cheerful and positive the effect of a couple of hours in his company is to make me feel a whole lot better about just about everything.

Was also very pleased to get to the gym late in the afternoon and not do myself too much harm. My back still feels vulnerable. I even got a slight twinge this morning doing the prayer and I was comfortably seated at the time. (In Islam you're allowed to pray seated if it's difficult to carry out the prayer in the usual fashion.) So I was slightly doubtful about getting back to the gym. But I also have an instinctive sense that exercising the muscles is the way to go when problems present themselves; being over-protective doesn't seem to pay off, just resulting in an even greater sense of weakness and incapacity. Anyway, I took a chance, but also took it reasonably easy, not seeking to perform at anything close to my pre-Istanbul levels. So far it seems to be a case of so good, and that's very fine indeed by me.

Very Hard Going

I somehow got to the end of the first volume of the two volume Penguin edition of Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur. It doesn't get any better, I'm afraid, not for this reader that is. Books 8 and 9, just completed, have chiefly concerned Sir Tristram de Liones and I'd be hard pressed to recall what he's actually done, other than defeated an awful lot of other knights, usually killing them in the process. I've just started Book 10, in the second volume, and he's still at it.

I'm seriously considering taking a break and reading a couple of novels or something before continuing. Let's face it, I won't lose track of the plot or lose touch with any subtleties of characterisation because there aren't any.

On the bright side, reading my Collected Poems of Derek Walcott is always rewarding, even when the poems are difficult (as they often are.) Just finished The Spoiler's Return a wonderfully satirical piece in glorious rhyming (and off-rhyming) couplets in which the Nobel laureate skewers one V.S. Nightfall among less elevated targets. Hilarious and bilious in equal measures - a combination that guarantees readability.

Easy On The Eye

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Was thinking today of some of the sights we enjoyed in December in Istanbul. Not every building was easy on the eye by any means. But those that were somehow dominate memory.

Wouldn't it be useful for every architect when designing a building, even the most monumental, to aim to create a photo opportunity for any random passer-by?

Cooling Off

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the first time ever since I've been living on this island I actually felt uncomfortably cold this afternoon as I was sitting in the living room, and it had nothing to do with over-assertive air-conditioning. We've had a few rainy days here and today the temperature went down to around 24 degrees. With the windows open and the wind blowing there was no need at all for a fan or air-conditioning. Quite the opposite. I wouldn't have minded a heater.

I decided to walk up to Holland Village to warm myself up a little. For once the trek there and back didn't result in me working up any kind of sweat.

Mind you, none of this comes close to the discomfort of the cold we experienced on some of the days we were in Turkey, especially when we visited Bursa. Noi, as ever, enjoyed the snow. It did nothing for me, pretty as it might look in the pictures above.

Higher Ground

Came home to listen to Haydn's Die Schopfung (The Creation.) The most sensible thing I've done this week. Highly recommended.

Wellness

Still trying to deal with what feels like a strained muscle in my back. Not in pain exactly, but in a disconcerting state of vulnerability. Isn't it a wonderful privilege to feel perfectly well? It's almost worth the travails of being physically troubled to be reminded of that great truth.

Wecome To The Machine

Recently got hold of a cheapo cheapo 4 CD set of albums by Jethro Tull from the 80's. Found one of the set, Under Wraps, entirely, bleakly unlistenable. Surely someone somewhere should be prosecuted for the damage inflicted by drum machines. And how was it that some highly talented musicians seemed to think they were a good idea?

Hard Going

I made reference to my reading of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur back in December, and not in any terribly enthusiastic way. I've now finished Book 7, and am approaching the end of the first volume in the two volume Penguin edition, and I can't honestly say I feel any more enthusiastic now. Time was when I would have abandoned a reading that's proved so unrewarding, but in my dotage I somehow feel obliged to actually read from cover to cover works that I've embarked on. I suppose this has something to do with trying to do justice to the work or writer rather than taking the easy way out, but I'm sorely tempted to give up on matters Arthurian.
 
The problem is that, as far as I can tell, Malory is all surface. His characters don't have character. They simply do stuff, much of it violent, for no particular reason other than because that's what they're in the stories to do. So what you get is a lot of baldly narrated action, often repetitive in nature, to no obvious end. A bit like an Avengers movie in which lots of sort of impossibly heroic stuff is going on for no good rhyme or reason.
 
Admittedly, there is a certain pleasure to be gained at the level of style, if you like that sort of thing (and I do.) The convoluted syntax has a kind of poetry all of its own. Take the opening sentence of Book 8, the bit I'm up to: It was a king that hight Meliodas, and he was lord and king of the country of Liones, and this Meliodas was a likely knight as any that was living. There's something hypnotically rhythmic going on here and phrases like a likely knight have a kind of charm about them. But I'm wondering whether I couldn't just enjoy this in small doses. Page after page becomes somewhat wearing. Also the edition I'm reading employs modernised spelling and some alteration of archaic forms. It's a lot easier to read than the original, but some of the stylistic charm is lost.

Anyway, I've had my moan, so it's back to the book. I just remembered that I paid nearly fifty dollars for the two paperbacks way back when and I'm going to get my money's worth, even if it's not worth it.

In Recovery

Still trying to deal with what feels like a strained muscle in my back. I thought all was well by Saturday, but struggled on Sunday morning and throughout the day. In these circumstances my world view is reduced to just getting through the day, doing the necessary - an even more selfish attitude than usual, I'm ashamed to say.

It reminds me of how astonishing those folk are who deal with real disability on a daily basis and somehow rise above it to do more than simply cope. Real heroes.

The Best Of Times

A gently uneventful day on a gently uneventful weekend in our tiny corner of the world. How deeply fortunate we are.

Looking Up

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spent quite a bit of time in Istanbul gazing heavenwards. Definitely worth doing so for the many glorious views.

Something Positive

Visited Osman in NUH this evening. He's been in hospital since coming back from his umrah, and we've been intending to see him since we got back from Istanbul, but since we've both had lingering colds we haven't been able to. He's so vulnerable to infection that it wasn't worth the risk.

It was a relief to finally get to see him, especially to see him in amazingly high spirits, considering the gravity of his condition. He twice asked for my prayers, but really didn't need to since he's in them all the time.

More Stupidity

Reading the latest revelations regarding various conflicts and characters at the heart of American government, as practised over the last year or so, is entertaining, depressing, distressing and amusing in roughly equal measures. It's also dangerously addictive. I really must look for better ways to waste my time.

Stupid Stuff

Spent a few minutes today recalling some of the stupid things I've done in my life. Found myself acutely embarrassed, and felt a lot more forgiving of others doing equally stupid things. It's a salutary exercise, perhaps one that should be repeated at least once a day. Helps you keep a sense of proportion and ensures you'll never believe your own publicity. I recommend it.

(And, no, I'm not going to confess to the exact nature of any of the stupidities. It's just way too embarrassing to even think of doing so.)

Healing

One good thing about being ill is the pleasure of recovering and being reminded of wonderful it is to be fully functioning and healthy. But the sad truth is that we can't take recovery for granted - and as the years pass the certainty that we'll somehow be able to mend becomes increasingly and worryingly compromised.

I experienced a striking example of that uncertainty in the early hours of the morning. I'd gone to bed thinking that my back was on the mend. The doctor had given me one those magic injections of muscle relaxant yesterday and also a decent supply of painkillers, with which I'd dosed myself after a reasonably pain-free journey from Malaysia. So when I got out of bed to use the bathroom at 2.00 am I didn't expect the debilitating pain which assaulted me as I attempted to straighten up. I managed to keep moving, but came close to collapsing with the effort, which made me restless for the rest of the night as I wondered if things might get worse and whether I'd be able to get up at all in the morning. Frankly, I wasn't looking forward to feeling a pain of that magnitude again.

In the event whilst I didn't exactly spring out of bed when the time came, and I struggled with the effort of praying, showering and generally preparing for the day ahead, I quickly knew that I'd be able to cope with keeping moving. As the day went by things got a little bit easier and I'm now officially feeling a whole lot better than I was this morning. The question now is whether this gradual improvement is set to continue. I'm hopeful, which, when you get down to it, is all you really can be whatever the circumstances. And I'm grateful for the possibility that I might just get better.

Challenges Ahead

14.15
Sleepless night. Severe back pain.

It's good to face challenges in the new year, but this one I would rather have avoided.

21.00
Made it back to our usual Far Place, though the journey was uncomfortable to say the least. The Missus emerged as the Star of the day, as is so often the case, getting me to the doctor's for some much-needed pain-killers and driving back from Melaka with aplomb. Fortunately there wasn't much of a New Year jam.

Though any experience of severe discomfort amounting to pain is to be avoided, this one has provided fuel for a resolution for the year ahead: When the bad times come, keep a sense of proportion, and remember all the good ones.