A Little Bit Of Heaven

Wednesday is generally a busy day for me, and quite enjoyably so since much of the afternoon consists of getting dramatic. Today was typically frantic around 7-ish as I rushed to complete the transition between my day-time job and my duties on this particular evening, also incorporating prayers along the way. However, one glorious moment of stillness surfaced in the headlong rush, involving a cup of tea and a muffin, courtesy of the Missus. Gentle Reader, let me tell you that said muffin not only saved the day, it illuminated it with a rare and precious radiance. And, boy, did it taste good.

Peace

 

Not quite sure why, but this evening I found myself thinking of those moments of peace that, if we're lucky, sometimes mysteriously descend upon us and remind us that, despite appearances, everything's really okay. Sometimes being exposed to something or someone or somewhere exceptionally beautiful helps precipitate that kind of experience. The shot above is of the interior of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul and I took it just after performing the Isha' Prayer there, on the last night of our December holiday in the mythical city. I felt sensationally privileged to be praying there and perhaps the picture might help you understand why.

Missing Out

Saw a news item the other day about the low percentages of small children in the UK whose parents read to them at bedtime (and other moments in the day, I suppose.) Found myself completely unbothered by the figures, I suppose for the simple reason that no one ever read anything to me as a kid and I can't honestly say I regard this as a terrible deprivation. Come to think of it, we never had books in the house.

I suppose what might be regarded as somewhat unfortunate circumstances were more than adequately balanced by a wonderful public library system and the spirited encouragement of reading I encountered at school and on the telly (through children's programmes, particularly on the BBC, that promoted books with gusto.) I'm pretty sure that lots of energy still goes into the promotion of reading, in the UK, and decent resources remain available to the vast majority of children. So if kids choose to miss out I'm sorry to say it seems to me a choice, rather than something that can be blamed on negligent parents or social inequality.

Do I sound uncaring? Probably, since I find it very difficult to care about this. Now tell me that access to books is deliberately restricted for certain children and I'll have something to genuinely care about and deeply so.

Extremes

Saw Osman this morning. We were able to enjoy a cuppa with Rohana & Man ahead of his admission to NUH for another round of chemotherapy. He remains in amazingly good spirits. Funnily enough I'd been talking about how just how positive he is last night to Boon & Mei over dinner. They'd asked me about Maureen's health and I was attempting to describe the strange sense of hopelessness that seems to wrap itself around her. We were all aware of the dangers of being inappropriately and harshly judgemental in the face of depression and addiction and I'm not at all sure I really avoided that trap. But comparing the different attitudes involved in these cases came from a desire to try and understand the range of human reactions to adversity.

That range is bewilderingly wide. I know which side I'd like to think I'd find myself on in a test - but I also know I'm not at all sure which way things would drop for me.

Not Too Hurried

Gosh, James Merrill is such a demanding poet. I've just finished the first of the sequences in the Collected Poems, First Poems from 1951, and it's amazingly confident and assured for the young writer he was then. Each poem has a kind of certainty in the way the thoughts weave in and out of the often very obviously formally complex choices of verse such that you can't help but feel inadequate at those moments when the subtlety of those thoughts leaves you trailing behind, which for me is often, I'm afraid. But not so often that the work is inaccessible.

I'm more than happy to read on, but with more that 800 pages to go I can't see finishing the full volume any time soon.

Not Exactly Real

Just back from watching Haresh Sharma's Those Who Can't Teach as performed by a very young, very enthusiastic cast. Highly enjoyable and unexpectedly thought-provoking, for this member of the audience, that is. I suppose it was watching a play about something I've actually done for a lot of my life that made me think about the nature of dramatic mimesis. Why is it that I can't think of any play or tv series or film that has come anywhere close to conveying the reality of being a teacher? This isn't to say that there aren't fine dramas and films dealing with the idea (including the play I watched tonight) but these can only point in the direction of what it means to teach; they never capture the texture of the experience. 

Could it be that any drama dealing with any form of work can only gesture towards what that work is really like as a lived experience?

A Legal High

Posted reasonably good numbers on the elliptical trainer today, the first time I've been able to make such a claim in 2018. Not quite approaching the highs I achieved pre-Istanbul, but enough to feel satisfied. A faint echo of how a serious run would make me feel in my younger days. A week or so ago I observed to a class that I have a distinctly addictive element to my personality. Thank goodness I discovered at a fairly early age the joys of addiction to stuff that's actually good for me.

Illuminations

I took along a nice little cache of CDs to KL on our recent visit intending to luxuriate in sweet sounds. Sadly, this was not to be. The main stereo system suddenly decided not to play CDs and I had no back-up. So I was reduced to groovy listening in the car only. Fortunately I now know how to play my iPod stuff through the car's system so was able to appreciate just how good Bill Frisell's Disframer is as driving music in addition to simply being great music.

Also it was my good fortune to have plenty to read including the December 21 holiday issue of The New York Review of Books, which was something of a bumper issue. I'm still only halfway through it, but the quotient of deeply rewarding articles is already extremely high. My two favourites so far were a fascinating article on Goethe, the one obviously great classic writer whom I seem to know next to nothing about, and a very moving piece by Pakhaj Mishra concerning the plight of the Dalit caste in India. Both articles illuminated some dark places.

Floored

We've spent the last two nights in Melaka, travelling down on Sunday evening when we able to admire the vast amount of traffic flooding into the Malaysian capital at the end of the Chinese New Year weekend whilst we were able to drive unhindered south. We're hoping for similarly unencumbered roads later today when we travel even further south to our usual Far Place.

I decided to switch things round a bit from our usual practice when resident at Mak's house. Bearing in mind the aches and pains manifesting in my back the last time we were here at the New Year, I opted to kip on the floor, hoping a hard surface would give my spine the necessary support that a soft bed just doesn't. It seems to have worked. Although I found myself aching considerably doing the Dawn Prayer, later in the day I've felt reasonably normal - a very happy place to be indeed.

This all serves as a reminder that I'm not exactly a stranger to sleeping on floors. I spent a fair amount of time at university and the years immediately following finding ways of getting comfortable on a hard surface. It's a skill well worth practising.

Wandering

Found ourselves a bit lost but mostly found in the centre of Melaka in the afternoon. We were attempting to let those good people at Astro know of a change of credit card number, which means we’ve not paid any bills so far this year. Fortunately they’ve not cut off our service. Unfortunately they seem to want to make it as difficult as possible to actually pay them, being reluctant to accept my trusty credit card, despite it, in a previous incarnation, having provided them the necessary shekels for a number of years. Somehow we managed to give them the money they so richly deserve, though a trip to a small 7-Eleven store was necessary to actually get the cash into their hands.

But aside from this adventure we found ourselves loosely exploring Noi’s sort of hometown, which has changed considerably from the days we frequented Mahkota Parade on a regular basis. There are a lot more shops now, but that seems to be an inevitable feature of modernity. On the whole I’d say it’s a cheerful sort of place, despite the commerce. And I even managed to post today's update from there, using my phone. In itself, a bit of a first.

Children's Voices

Noi and I have been trying to think back to the last time Maison KL echoed to the sound of children's play and clatter and chatter. Looking at Fifi, Fafa & Ayu now it's difficult to place them as the little girls who entertained us with their Abba-themed concerts so long ago. In fact, we met up with Fuad and family yesterday evening at KLCC and it was entertaining to watch the very grown-up Fifi & Fafa dealing with Rozaidah's children - the triple A of Afnan, Akmar & Aishah - who were also noisily, ever so, in attendance.

Triple A & their poor parents came to stay the night, the catalyst for Noi and I thinking back to less peaceful pasts. What strange joy is it that kids find in running pointlessly around in large circles? Whatever it is, we could all do with some of it.

Of Sleep, No Shortage

I can't honestly say I was feeling particularly tired at work as the Chinese New Year came upon us, but I must say I managed to sleep more than well yesterday and today. I nodded off several times on Friday, even before attending Prayers, yet had no problem at all crashing out as soon as I went to bed at night, which was by no means at a late hour. And today I've successfully re-visited the land of nod a couple of times since getting up, despite not really intending to. This is all highly satisfactory even though it does interfere with my reading.

Still I managed to finish all the stories in Idries Shah's highly enjoyable Tales of the Dervishes. There's a fair amount of controversy regarding Mr Shah's standing as a kind of spokesperson for Sufism (assuming there is such a thing in a simple sense) but that doesn't detract from the obvious value of the teaching stories in the volume. Most have the simplicity of the great fairy tales combined with the depth of the great parables in a manner that's utterly beguiling. I'm also pressing on with Joseph Campbell's Primitive Mythology, the first in his four volumes in The Masks of God sequence. Again, beguiling stuff. We all need some enchantment in our lives.

And to balance the enchantment I thought I'd reread a battered paperback I've got of Hobbes's Leviathan. It's an abridged version but comes with an excellent introduction by its editor, John Plamenatz. A cheap Fontana from the mid-seventies, it's a reminder of a time when you could get hold of philosophical classics in well-edited popular paperbacks. TH has little time for enchantment, of course, but there's a kind of magic in connecting with one of the great minds of the seventeenth century making sense of the chaos of civil war and man's capacity for brutishness. Plenty to keep me awake here.

Dropping In

Now resident at Maison KL for Chinese New Year we managed to drop in on two of our neighbours on the first day of the festival and got treated to some splendid festive goodies in the process. Reports on events at our Taman from Susan & Mike and Mr Lian were essentially positive with membership of the association for the residents here picking up. We also got some background on our animal neighbours. It seems that wild deer have been spotted on the hillside nearby. Hooray.

To be honest we were not exactly delighted to find a heap of animal droppings on our balcony on arrival, which we initially ascribed to the monkey, or one of his simian chums, who'd so nonchalantly climbed up there when we were last here. Mike suggested that the more likely culprit was musang and after Susan & Mike described the smell said musang leave behind once they've been up on your roof I'm inclined to agree. When we arrived here late last night there was a strong, though not unpleasant, odour in our bedroom. I thought it might have something to do with a glade air-freshener we'd installed in the attached bathroom, but it sounded just like the smell left behind by a musang as described by our neighbours.

This doesn't make us any happier about the droppings, I'm afraid. One of life's great lessons: Neighbours who regard your balcony as a toilet are not to be encouraged. (As opposed to neighbours who have endless supplies of biscuits and goodies and are ever so ready to share them at CNY.)

In Contrast

Odd morning. I happened to glance at the on-line edition of The Guardian a few minutes before things at work got really started and saw, with a familiar, sickening sense of horrified inevitability, the breaking news about the latest mass shooting in a US school. Then I moved on to a happy hour or so with the main class I'm assigned to followed by a very jolly celebration of the imminent Chinese New Year. Just before the celebration concert got started I updated myself on the latest on the shooting. It wasn't good.

I tried to process the two different worlds in which I found myself engaged. Couldn't. Felt very thankful indeed to be in the world I was.

Highs And Lows

Quite a few contenders for the high spot of the day. The award goes to the early morning exchange of slushy cards with you-know-who.

And, ironically, quite a few serious contenders for the low point. After painful consideration this goes to the moment when my laptop told me I couldn't unplug it because it was downloading something I hadn't asked for, and I desperately needed to pack it away and move on to an important duty that needed to begin in the next five minutes.

I remain baffled as to why I'm frequently told that this mysterious thing called IT facilitates my work when it has made my work far more complicated and taxing than it was some 25 to 30 years ago.

Hard Lessons

I thought there was little that could surprise me regarding the darker side of our nature. But the scandal emerging around the misdeeds of various people involved in the charity Oxfam has taken me aback. The revelations about young volunteer workers for the charity in their high street shops being abused particularly.

Something I know now that I didn't just ten years ago: Any organisation at all, regardless of its background, in the private or public sphere, needs necessarily to be monitored, indeed policed, as a likely location for abuse - whether psychological or physical. This sounds cynical, I suppose. But I don't think it is. It's just an acknowledgement of what we now know for sure about the way things are, the way we are.

And acknowledgement of the way things are is the beginning of a way forward.

Losing Touch

It's almost 30 years since I taught in the U.K. and I haven't much of a clue now as to the school system over there and how it functions today.  What I can say is that essentially I enjoyed my 10 years of teaching in South Yorkshire in the last century, remembering it as a time when I enjoyed a reasonable degree of autonomy as to what went on in my classroom. Having said that, I can also recall the irritation of being forced into a fair number of time-consuming pointless activities despite my relative freedom.

It was soon after I left that the system underwent dramatic changes related to central government taking a greater degree of control over pretty much every aspect of school life. At least, that's the general impression I got from a distance, and from my very, very occasional encounters with teachers from over there. Since I was teaching myself in a highly centralised system I can't say I felt any deep sympathy for folks caught up in those changes, already having wasted most of my sympathy on my poor self.

But over the last 8 or so years I've slowly formed the impression that in many ways things are now far worse for the ordinary classroom teacher in British schools than for most of us labouring at the whiteboard in this Far Place. This impression was dramatically reinforced for me today on reading an article in the online edition of The Guardian from the Secret Teacher files, not so subtly headlined, I feel stuck in a profession that's making me ill. It wasn't so much the story itself that had an impact, though the piece in itself made for sobering reading, as the narrative that emerged from my perusal of some of the 1535 comments at the bottom of the page.

How did things get so obviously crazy? It's a question worth asking of many an organisation, of course, and not just in the field of education. The funny thing is that I think I know a large part of the answer, though it would take a long time to explain this. I reckon it boils down to a single development, one that affects the modern world in all manner of ways. Once the discovery was made of the supposed need for managers and the curious science of management we were doomed ,no matter where we made our home or whatever trade we plied.

Of Concern

Just finished a chat on the phone with brother-in-law John. The news isn't great with regard to Maureen, I'm afraid. Her most recent bout of rehab sounds like it's not led anywhere very constructive. John seems to be managing to hold things together, but a recent bout of flu has left him feeling weak and he was telling me about a fall he'd had when last out that hasn't done much for his confidence.

Fortunately his litany of complaint was laced with the usual dark humour and dryly sardonic observations on life as it is lived in his household. There's a sense of things falling apart, yes, but also of something there to hold them together.

The Nightmare Of History

Just read this in my journal from February 2003:

A war against Iraq looks imminent. I am genuinely baffled by the logic of this, or lack of logic. It seems so clear that the U.S. is acting out of bad faith. I heard a touching item on the World Service: Rageh Omar, the BBC's correspondent in Baghdad saying he had never in six years in Iraq faced any problems over being British; then talking to some young Iraqis playing football who were keen on naming players from the Premier League and predicting who would win the championship. They bore no animosity to the British people though they hated the British Government. I wonder how many of those youngsters might lose their lives in the next few months?

I can actually recall listening to the programme I referred to back then. Wonder how many of the young men who lived through the invasion might have been drawn into ISIS and their like?

When Knights Were Bold

To my gratified surprise I've been making good progress on Le Morte D'Arthur and should be able to put Sir T. Malory to rest over the weekend. Now on Book XIX and the last three books are fairly short. I've definitely enjoyed Volume 2 in the Penguin edition a good deal more than the first volume, largely due to the distinctly allegorical turn taken by Malory once the saga of Sir Tristram was done with. It isn't great allegory, being of the generally obvious Christian variety (we're not talking the subtlety of Dante Alighieri by some distance) but it's enjoyable in its way and makes a welcome change from the tiresome, pointlessly violent jousting. In fact, the violence gets somewhat more interesting in places with a sense of real pain and oddity, as when Sir Launcelot gets what sounds like a genuinely unpleasant injury in one of his buttocks in Book XVIII.

I must admit, though, I still can't find anything of genuine literary value in all this. I keep thinking how much more I'd rather be reading Chaucer, and I'm not necessarily talking about the obviously brilliant Chaucer of the Tales, but just his early stuff. I must have a look at least a couple of academic essays on Sir T. once I'm done and see whether there's something here I'm failing to respond to. Always good to try and keep an open mind even when the mind wants to tightly close itself.

An Odd Encounter

Very strange. I'm walking into one of the offices at work to talk to a colleague and as I enter a young lady, I'd guess around twenty years old, is coming in the opposite direction. She is dressed in civilian clothes, so not one of our students, as far as I can tell. I don't recognise her at all. Seeing me she looks stunned. There's an awkward pause as our paths almost cross and I pull back to open the door for her to exit. She says, quite loudly, and very distinctly, Oh my God!

I'm half-tempted to reply, No, it's just me, but something tells me this is not a time for witty repartee. She then moves at high speed through the door I'm holding open for her and disappears into the distance with no further comment.

Gentle Reader, I need to tell you that the tone in which she uttered her brief observation was not one of admiration or happiness at my appearance, but expressive of very clear shock and horror. As I said, very strange. And really quite funny.

The Ends Of Innocence

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The whole Manifesto for the actual Museum of Innocence in Istanbul is excellent, but I particularly like Orhan Pamuk's summary at the end:
 

The picture is, in fact, very simple;

WE HAD	WE NEED
EPICS	NOVELS
REPRESENTATION	EXPRESSION
MONUMENTS	HOMES
HISTORIES	STORIES
NATIONS	PERSONS
GROUPS AND TEAMS	INDIVIDUALS
LARGE AND EXPENSIVE	SMALL AND CHEAP

Isn't that a finely sane list?

Indeed, everything about the place struck me as deeply sane, as well as deeply thought-provoking. Wandering around the house I felt genuinely in touch with another way of life even as I recognised features of my own history in there.

In the sort of guest book, a copy of the novel The Museum of Innocence in English translation I wrote: 'Magically real; really magical'. But nothing I can say can do justice to the genuine magic of the place.

In Praise Of The Fridge Magnet - 7

 

It's lazy to assume we must settle for the generic, whether we're talking about fridge magnets, or museums. More anon.

On The Record

There being no chance of exposing myself to any live music today, I fell back on the recorded variety. Since Noi is in Melaka for the weekend, checking on how Mak is doing and helping her out, I was able to play a few things at a satisfyingly reasonable volume.

In the interest of full disclosure, here's the list of what made it to the turntable (actually in order of appearance):

CD5 from the box of Beethoven's Complete Piano Sonatas, as hammered out by the excellent Daniel Barenboim. This happened to be the one with the most well-known 'named' sonatas - i.e., the Pathetique, the Moonlight and the Appassionata, and the only CD in the set that I really know myself from previous listening. But it was just a coincidence of my own sequencing that I put it on as I'm playing the full box in order for the second time and this is the point I'd reached;

Steven Wilson's Hand. Cannot. Erase. Tuneful & heartfelt - not terms one generally associates with the Prog community;

Bowie's Outsider, which is, I reckon, one of his most under-rated albums. Eno is all over it, always a good thing, and there's lots of Mick Garson's weird piano - ditto;

CD3 in Dylan's Triplicate - cunningly entitled Comin' Home Late. Even if you don't care for Dylan's voice - and I do! - the band and arrangements are just exceptionally exceptional (an example of my superlatives failing, but it's been a long day);

David Sylvian and Robert Fripp's The First Day. Actually the live album Damage is superior to the studio stuff, but this still cooks. On one of my early trips back to the UK, in the 1990s, I saw a Sylvian/Fripp concert advertised at the Manchester Apollo, and didn't think of going. Don't know why. Stupidity, I guess;

Peter Hammill's Singularity, P.H.'s post-heart attack and consequent near death experience album, and doesn't it show? Wonderfully, of course. Thank goodness he's still with us, not least for all the late Van der Graff albums.

And since the day is not yet over (though I'm thinking of an early night, what with work tomorrow) I reckon CD6 from the Beethoven box might just get a spin. I'd better prepare for a bit of a battering.

Alive

Happily attended my first Singapore Symphony Orchestra concert of 2018 this evening. Enjoyed the whole evening, with the first half of the concert being a particular joy. For openers was a piece by a Thai composer I'd never heard of, Narong Pragcharoen, and it was a blast (almost literally so.) Entitled Phenomenon it evoked, in part, a Buddhist ceremony that takes place annually on the Mekong involving Naga Fireballs. If the sheer gloriously manic energy of the music is anything to go by, the ceremony must be utterly captivating.

Following that came Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No 2. Fortunately I managed to attend the pre-concert talk in the Library at Esplanade just before the concert so was well primed for a bit of the Master at his most glum and sardonic (and wonderfully theatrical.) The soloist was Jan Vogler and he didn't disappoint.

Actually I attended the concert essentially for those two pieces, being no great fan of Dvorak whose Symphony No 6 comprised the second half of the evening. I can't say I really got into the symphony but there was much pleasure to be had from simply enjoying the beautiful textures of sound. So, all in all a very jolly evening and a reminder that, when it comes to music, live is best. (That's probably true of most things, I suppose, apart from a good meal.)

Staying Flexible

Used one of the chairs in the mosque for Friday Prayers. My back is okay but my right knee was giving me trouble all morning, at times forcing me to walk with a limp, before abruptly righting itself. I decided to take no chances. A sudden inability to bend one's leg properly in the middle of prayers would be highly embarrassing.

It's strange, by the way, how often when you explain to non-Muslims the various compromises we're allowed to make in matters of prayer, or pretty much any aspect of life, they express surprise. Assumptions about the rigidity of the faith abound yet are fundamentally mistaken.

Isn't it strange how often people assume that the more extreme a particular manifestation of faith is, the more authentic it must be?

Slowing Down

Got back to the gym this evening after an absence of a week. This was partly due to the presence of our guests over the weekend acting as a break on my physical endeavours, but in the main because my right knee has been more than a bit iffy of late. As was the case for my last few visits, I didn't push myself too hard, so again I fell well short of reasonable expectations. But at least I was back in action.

In an echo of the slowing of my body I'm not exactly speed-reading the second volume in the Penguin edition of Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur. I'm vaguely hoping to complete it by the time we find ourselves in Kuala Lumpur for the Chinese New Year break, but I wouldn't be surprised if I didn't manage it. It isn't that I don't keep picking it up; rather it's because I keep putting it down. Four pages is my limit, after which I just can't keep track of the repetitive action. A man can only take so much jousting - though Malory's knights seem to be able to take day after repetitive day of it.

It would be nice to be able to blame the slow pace of my reading on the busyness of work, but it would be dishonest to do so. Yes, it's busy, but not super-busy, as it will certainly be after CNY, and nowhere near the impossibly-busy, the dreaded state we'll enter into in May, the cruellest month.