Looking Ahead

As 2018 staggers to its conclusion I find myself feeling thoroughly refreshed after our brief stay at Mak's house. Had a fine old time with the family and am actually looking forward to the drive back to our usual Far Place since I've decided it will feature quite a bit of Dylan (Bob, not Thomas.) Not sure that Noi will approve, but she's likely to be asleep as I do driving duty. She's got a bit of a cold and didn't sleep terribly well last night in contrast to Yours Truly who effortlessly packed in the zzzzzzs. Not too sure if we might meet with a jam or two on the way back, but I'll be practising patience and singing along with the Bobster if we do.

Now considering the most important business of this time of year: carving out a meaningful resolution for the year ahead. Funnily enough, I never took this seriously in my youth. I'm not terribly sure I take it all that seriously now, actually. But it's fun to fantasise.

With Enthusiasm

The one thing I missed when we were in New Zealand was a ready supply of music. I thought of taking the iPod along to supply the necessary, but decided in the end to travel light. I think that was the right decision since I rarely, happily had a spare moment in our sojourn on South Island. And now I'm very ready indeed to engage in some attentive listening.

The one exception to the general lack of sweet sounds on the trip was the opportunity to listen to music on the plane journeys. The ear-phones on the various flights weren't up to much but I managed to enjoy a fair amount of Dylan on the ways there and back. On the journey out, flying British Airways, I found an odd, highly eclectic selection of various offerings from the great man. Not exactly a greatest hits collection, it seemed more like a grab-bag of someone's particular favourites, but not in any obvious chronological order. The effect of this was to create some very striking contrasts between individual songs, serving as a reminder of just how extraordinarily varied Dylan's oeuvre is, and also to jar me into giving old favourites a fresh listen. For example, I've heard the live version of Idiot Wind, from the Hard Rain album, at least fifty times. But this time round the ferocity of the performance was startling having accessed the track between calmer pieces. The anguish of the singer became more obvious than ever and, for the first time ever, I felt something like genuine pity for him rather than just revelling in the sonic glory of the event.

Ironically on the way back I found myself listening to a very different version of the song. The Singapore Airlines flight we took from Auckland offered a selection from the recently released More Blood, More Tracks featuring the slower, gentler, essentially acoustic version originally intended for Blood on the Tracks. It was a revelation. I've never thought of the song as essentially tender, almost wistful, but that's how it was in this incarnation. And twice as moving as a result. Genius.

And it's the genius of the Bobster that is conveyed so convincingly in Richard F. Thomas's Why Dylan Matters. I'd heard the prof (of the Classics at Harvard) speaking before (on youtube somewhere) of the connection of Dylan's work to the great writers of antiquity, but never quite bought the argument. However, the accumulated detail of Thomas's book on the connection(s) is generally convincing, and even when you think he's pushing it a bit far the sheer excitement and fun of the writing carries you with it. It's wonderful also that real attention is paid to the greatness of the later albums, post Time Out Of Mind, and Dylan as performer in the final glorious phase of his work. Plus you get the clearest argument so far for the genius of Dylan as a master thief. Finally someone who understands the nature of inter-textuality as real creativity.

With all that in mind I'm about to put the ear-phones on and lose myself for a couple of hours. Bye!

Coming Alive

At Mak's house in Meleka. Attended a kenduri for Mak this afternoon. We read Surah Yasin for her.

The house has come to life again, busy as in the old days. Gosh, can't small kids make a lot of noise? And isn't that splendid?

Down To Earth

A day of meetings. Something of a reality check. Though, ironically, the kind of meetings I attend often don't seem quite real.

At An End

07.45 (New Zealand Time)
Now enveloped in the gentle frenzy of getting ourselves to Queenstown Airport to fly back to our Far Place of residence. Will need to adapt routines accordingly. No need for masses of sun block this morning, for example, which is something of a relief. Intending to enjoy the routineless limbo of the in-flight world, as much as I can.

23.35
A very jolly flight indeed, featuring a good deal of Dylan, both in listening and reading terms, and an excellent movie. More anon. Tired. Very.

A Bit Odd

Talk about a packed day! This being our last full day in New Zealand, we've been on the go since 7.00 am trying to get as much done as possible. This has resulted in a number of highlights, too many to count, though I'll just mention Fafa's first bungy jump and my first ever sighting of a real life kiwi (the actual bird, that is) as an indication of the sheer range of our undertakings

The day also featured one of the oddest works of art I've encountered: a version of the classic painting American Gothic rendered entirely in gourmet jelly beans - some 20,000 of them, in 32 different colours. Beyond strange.

Another Happy Day

 

Started the day in Te Anau, popping into the centre of town to see if anywhere was open (we weren't entirely sure, it being Christmas) before moving on to Queenstown. In the event we enjoyed a happily active morning, finding a few places open and quite a few folk around. I managed to read a few of Thom Gunn's poems, having now reached my favourite collection, Jack Straw's Castle. The ones that I remembered as magical were exactly that, and there were several more that spoke to me this time around in ways they'd never done in the past.

The last time we were in New Zealand we'd spent Christmas Day moving north from South Island all the way to Auckland, if memory serves me right. It had been extremely quiet all the way, with almost everywhere shut down, so I vaguely wondered if Queenstown might be much the same. I couldn't have been more wrong. The place was and is happening, in the happier sense of the idiom. I've never seen a beach, and it's a very small one, quite so crowded. It's a tad overwhelming considering how delightfully quiet our holiday has been so far. In fact, it put me in mind of the bustling Blackpool of my childhood. But with the sun shining and ourselves established in a very cosy apartment and very much at ease that's not a cause for any kind of complaint.

Hope you're having as happy a Christmas Day as we are, especially those who keep the season.

A Bitter Pill

As far as I can tell Julia Lovell's translations of Lu Xun's short stories are excellent. I say this based on the sheer power of the stories I've read so far from the Penguin Classics edition, those that appeared in his first collection Outcry. The ironic harshness, often bitterness, of the tales is extraordinary, and so economically conveyed. It's easy to imagine how their first readers must have felt something close to despair with regard to what is being said about China in the early twentieth century. Yet the fundamental honesty and clear-sightedness of the fiction carries with it a sense of hope.

A bit odd to be reading these vignettes of pain at a time of deep satisfaction and enjoyment. But perhaps it helps create a balance of sorts.

Going Sane

 

Words of wisdom just before our arrival at Monkey Creek, on the road to Milford Sound, with regard to the landscape we were about to step into: It will make you feel small and insignificant. Our excellent guide for the day's tour to the Sound was correct. It did. The walls of granite put things into perspective in a big way, as it were.

Aside from feeling small and insignificant I felt hugely privileged to be there, and in all the other locations which engendered such a salutary sense of wonder. Talk about lucky! It struck me, even as I was feeling these feelings, that these feelings felt enormously sane, genuinely healthy.

Ever Changing Moods

Drove south today from Lake Tekapo to Te Anau. Started in bright sunshine and finished ditto, but encountered a number of varieties of rain in between. Fifi tells me that one of her friends who visited South Island told her that the landscapes become rather boring due to their sameness. Does she (the friend in question) have eyes? I experienced a number of feelings during the drive, but boredom didn't feature amongst them.

In Association

 

I will forever associate Thom Gunn's excellent extended poem sequence Misanthropos with the equally excellent Lake Tekapo - though, as you may have guessed, they are excellent for very different reasons. I'm guessing that Misanthropos concerns the thoughts and experiences of the survivor of some cataclysmic war, probably nuclear. All very 60s, which is when it was written. And, let's face it, deeply clichéd. Yet Gunn's poem is never less than fascinating, and technically virtuosic, though not believable in the story-telling sense. But no one ever believes poetry, so it works in ways that a novel or play featuring the same material wouldn't. In contrast, the lake, if it's about anything, is about peace - or at least it was today.

In case you're wondering about the link between the lake and the poem, I read much of Gunn's assured and often biting verse whilst keeping guard of the bags and devices of my companions as they kayaked upon the lake. A most fulfilling way of occupying guard duty.

Obscured By Clouds

 

 

 

Despite still feeling the aches and pains brought on by our ascent of Roy's Peak, we spent most of the day engaged in one of the walks available at the base of Mount Cook. The track in question took us along Hooker's Creek and served as a reminder of the sheer joy of ambling along in a landscape comprising a continual photo opportunity. Mind you, the great mountain remained enigmatically shrouded in mist - which means, I suppose, that we'll have to come back one day to see it properly. Which is fine by me.

Grey Skies

Drove up to Lake Tekapo today on a grey, rainy day, our first such day in NZ. Didn't detract from the beauty of the countryside, though added a little to my sense of melancholy at events unfolding on the other side of the globe. I'm referring, of course, to the sacking of the Not-So-Special-One at Old Trafford. I'm neither a hater nor a major fan, but I don't think it makes any sense at all to get rid of a manager so early in a season when there are still things to play for, or to lose faith when things don't go well. I'm also deeply suspicious as to what's going on behind the scenes. The great puzzle for me this season began pre-season when everything surrounding the club seemed fractious before anything really got started, and this when they'd finished second the previous season and you'd have thought were ready to move up a notch.

Football, eh? Bloody hell, as a wise man said.

At Random

Decided to minimise the number of books brought to NZ knowing that we'd keep ourselves busy, thus reducing reading time. So I've got just my Thom Gunn Collected and The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China: The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun to dip into. Much enjoying the Gunn, having completed the first three individual collections and looking forward to the middle period of the 70s, which I'm generally more familiar with. Reread Lu Xun's Nostalgia today, with much greater understanding than on my first encounter, mainly due to the excellent introduction to this edition (in the Penguin Classics) of his work. Not sure that any of this has any connection at all with our little holiday, but suspect that I'll forever connect them.

The arbitrary nature of one's reading has an odd charm of its own.

Better Quality

 

We are now very tired but rather pleased with ourselves for having ascended Roy's Peak today and, even more importantly, having got back down again. It was, as old chum Tony would have said when he was alive, a bit of a pull. Fortunately we had enough basic fitness to achieve the pull, despite a few moments of uncertainty.

It was wonderful, by the way, to take note of the large numbers of obviously very fit people accompanying us (mainly in the way of over-taking.) It was especially edifying to see a significant number of young ladies out on the hills, possibly out-numbering the men. I was struck by the contrast between the sorts of values that seemed to be manifested through the various walkers and recent things I'd been reading about various health crises in places like the UK and USA. Eventually I found myself pontificating to Fifi regarding the varieties of unhealthy lifestyles I'd been reading about and how wise it was to develop the kinds of habits that might well lead to an excellent quality of life for those in their 60s, 70s and 80s (assuming one were lucky enough to avoid the various random ways in which it's possible to die in one's early or middle years.)

I reckon it would be useful to focus rather more on issues of the quality of life likely to be enjoyed by those in their 50s if they avoid smoking, excessive drinking, poor diet rather than linking everything to life expectancy. And promote the idea of exercising as a way to secure a better future - not just for its immediate benefits, real as these are. I suppose the difficulty lies in the fact that no one really thinks they're going to get old until they do.

Take Nothing For Granted

 

 

 

 

On our first full day in New Zealand we popped up by Lake Hawea and Lake Wanaka to the Blue Pools Walk. The usual astonishing amounts of beautiful scenery which I suppose I'll soon take for granted. But not for now, I'm happy to say. Every view a reason to celebrate.

Something Great

Now occupying a most comfortable, albeit temporary, residence in Wanaka, New Zealand. Quite a comfortable journey all told, made especially memorable by being given the opportunity to watch the BBC series about the downfall of Jeremy Thorpe featuring an astonishingly good Hugh Grant, A Very English Scandal. In fact, everything about the three episodes was astonishingly good - the acting, the writing, the directing, the music. If this isn't great art I don't know what is.

Taking Off

Now occupying that anticipatory space that comes prior to getting on the plane to get well away from it all. But still quite a few things to get done before we can relax and let the cabin crew take over dealing with all our concerns. Have already decided which books I'm taking to occupy any spare moments in NZ, so that's one crucial aspect of the trip out of the way.

Seasonal Sounds

I was slightly nervous this evening as I gave a spin, my annual airing, to Bob Dylan's Christmas In The Heart. After all, I was expecting magic and, as we all know, magic has a way of wearing off eventually. Fortunately the magic worked and for forty or so glorious minutes I relived Christmas as it used to be, the innocent one of the heart.

Why and how the magic works is beyond analysis - and, though it seems strange to me, I'm very much aware of being in a fairly small minority of even Dylan fans for whom it does. But it does so, completely. I suppose it's partly to do with the playing - impeccable - and partly the imaginative arrangements. This time round though I was more aware than ever of the extraordinary quality of Dylan's voice on this material. He sounds like he's having great fun, and feeling great joy and, in the traditional carols, a nostalgic kind of reverence.

It also helps that this is not overplayed Christmas music, though I suspect it might survive a mall or two.

In Action

Now back in our usual quarters, I got to the gym earlier this evening, most likely for the last time this year. We're off to New Zealand this Friday, and for the New Year we'll be popping across to Melaka, so I can't see any window of opportunity to get any further intense exercise in December. One thing I've realised this year is just how useful it is to plan ahead in figuring when it might be possible to get myself onto my chosen instrument of torture. You can't just wait for opportunities to present themselves; you've got to force them to happen in a slightly obsessive manner. And by the way, the result of all my planning hasn't been me getting anywhere close to what I would regard as optimal performance. That would be to get to the gym on an average of three times a week and I'm well short of that. But I do feel I can reasonably claim to exercise regularly.

It was some years back that I was startled into action when I recognised the eminent good sense of a speaker pointing out that not looking after one's body and health in any way but focusing solely on getting through the working day was an insane way to behave. Crazy as I may be in other ways, I think I'm rising above my usual levels of folly in this aspect of my life.

At Rest

Just visited the cemetery at Sungai Petai. It's less than a two minute drive up the road. An immense sense of peace there, like any final place of rest, I suppose. Kak Kiah's brother, who used to do jobs about the place, is buried there, next to Mak. He died in an accident just a month or so ago. Strange yet fitting that he lies next to her.

Some tears shed at Mak's grave. For all the dead.

Seasonal Weather

Everywhere wet, commented Noi, with pithy accuracy, as we wended our evening way south to Melaka. It's rained every day we've been in Malaysia, and often rained hard, as it did in occasional patches on the highway just now. But this is the rainy season, so there's nothing untoward here. Indeed, our repairing of the roof to Maison KL in November was predicated on the notion that it needed to be done before the leaks that were appearing were tested again. So we've been mildly congratulating ourselves on our timing - though the workmanship has yet to be thoroughly tested.

And this is not the chilly, soggy, rain of Manchester or Edinburgh. No matter how melancholy it gets, we never really quite enter Lear on the blasted heath territory. For which relief much thanks, as someone in another of the Bard's more melancholy efforts put it.

Not Quite Resolved

Looking back on the declaration of my New Year's Resolution for 2018 I'm agreeably surprised at how sane and apposite it was: When the bad times come, keep a sense of proportion, and remember all the good ones. For once I seem to have been thinking clearly.

The problem lies, I'm afraid, in several failures in the course of the year to live up to my own good sense. The last few days, for example, have been somewhat tarnished by my irritation with Astro, the so-called service providers for satellite television in this nation. The on-going saga of my unfortunate relations with them uncannily parallels the on-going saga of my equally unfortunate relations with Singtel Ltd in another Far Place.

Now you may be thinking at this point that since I've been having an equally fraught time with companies operating either side of the Causeway that there must be some fault in how I've been conducting myself. But all I can say is that I'm only too ready to pay what it takes to get the various channels both companies seek to provide their viewers - and this despite the fact that I'm not all that bothered about watching the telly. The problem is that I'm just not designed for modernity. Or perhaps it's the other way around.

However, none of this provides any kind of good reason for getting hot under the collar. So I won't. Or at least I'll try not to.

Another Country

Made our way to a somewhat out of the way kampong in the Gombak area this afternoon to attend a wedding. Our GPS didn't recognise the address so we needed directions from Noi's brother Yazzir to get there. Slightly to my surprise we managed quite well, getting a bit lost, but nothing overly traumatic. The final leg of the journey featured narrow winding roads in what felt like the middle of nowhere, but quite a well-populated nowhere with all sorts of fascinating houses and a wonderful lack of uniformity. And, as ever, once we arrived we enjoyed the typical unforced hospitality native to these parts.

In contrast to our comfortable little adventure we were vaguely aware of some kind of political rally taking place in the centre of KL. We caught wind of this when we heard a travel advisory for Singaporean citizens to avoid heading for the capital over the weekend, ironically as we were crossing into Malaysia. We took it that there were some worries that things might turn violent - the word 'skirmishes' was used in the warning. Happily we were heading in a completely different direction, and even more happily it turned out that the demonstration was peaceful and went off without incident.

We're still not entirely sure what prompted it, though, despite me buying a newspaper yesterday that featured some coverage. Another example of just how little I really understand these parts, fascinating as they are. But I suppose that's true of anywhere in this strange world into which we find ourselves thrown.

Not So Obvious

Read Shakespeare's Pericles over the last few days. It's got some good publicity of late and is reckoned by those who know about these things to work well in the theatre. Impossible to tell from the page, though the Act 4 brothel scenes are obviously excellent. The problem lies in the early acts, though nobody seems to think these actually come from Shakespeare himself. Very wooden stuff. I'm not convinced by those who rate Pericles as some kind of masterpiece, but I'd love to see a production to get a better sense of the impact of the drama as a whole.

What Dreams May Come

I've had occasion to make note here in the past of the mundane quality of my dreams - those that I recall, that is. I suppose that in some vague way I consider myself an imaginative sort of cove. After all, I teach Literature which if it's about anything is concerned with the workings of imagination, and I sometimes direct plays, an activity which would seem to demand some kind of imaginative output. Yet my infrequent dreams are pretty much uniformly ordinary to the point that they can seem like tepid replays of a rather tepid life.

With one exception, which I experienced in the early hours of this morning: around 09.00. I woke up genuinely shaken from a dream featuring at least two massive aircraft crashing in the distance ahead of me, followed by various rocks, or blocks of something like concrete rather, hurtling down from the sky with me below skipping around hoping to avoid them. It was all very apocalyptic and even as it was happening I had an awareness that I've experienced this before in dreamland.

I suppose it's a kind of anxiety dream, though I'm not exactly sure why I feel anxious about aircraft landing on my head. And it's really quite spectacular. But I'm also aware it's very derivative of disaster movies and the like, so even in this respect I seem cursed with a lack of individually creative imagination. The most worrying feature of all is just how much of a coward I am in these dreams. I never feel the slightest concern for anyone around me, though there are others with me, in the sense of an anonymous crowd. I'm entirely focused on self-preservation. So it's all very down-heartening, despite the special effects.

Much The Same

Spent a not unpleasant evening in the new mall at Melawati, coincidentally named Melawati Mall. It's much like any other mall, which makes it a huge improvement in terms of basic hygiene on the streets outside. The downside is that whereas the streets evoke some sense of identity the mall has none, being, as noted previously, much like any other mall.

I am conflicted. In some ways this represents progress. And there's a lot to be said for cleanliness. But it's a progress towards a kind of wasteful uniformity. And cleanliness can easily become a sterile blandness.

Weighing It Up

Now resident in Maison KL, and set to be so for the week ahead.

And the journey? The negatives: Slow-moving traffic in the capitol, whence we arrived just in time for the evening rush hour, so to be expected, even if irritating. And more than a few aches and pains driving, just from the five and a half hours of it all. The positives: Excellent tea and toast at the Arab Café, and a scrumptious Noi-baked chocolate muffin just after getting through Malaysian Immigration. Plus music from The Strawbs, Van Morrison, Bill Frisell and Walter Becker. So, on balance, an excellent journey!

Left Wanting

It's that time of year when I set about doing a bit of cleaning - essentially involving books on various shelves, and other inter-connected bits and pieces. This is quite hard work, but curiously satisfying, helping create the useful illusion that I'm in control of things. The only problem is that as a soon as I pick up a book for vacuuming (that's how it's done, Gentle Reader) I find myself wanting to read it, and since I vacuum every book that's a lot of wanting.

Another One

 

 

We celebrated another birthday for the Missus today in reasonable style. The strange thing is that no matter how many birthdays she has, she remains enviously younger than myself.

A Very Good Dinner

Was reading an article on Casanova's memoirs in the late September issue of The New York Review of Books (print edition) and discovered he writes about no fewer than 200 meals he ate as well the 122 - 136 women he is estimated to have slept with. It struck me that I'd much rather read about the dinners than the women. Not sure what this says about me, but I think it says a lot about the Great Lover that he valued his dinners so highly. Makes him a lot more human somehow.

You may be wondering why I'm still reading an obviously out-dated NYRB and so am I. I've actually only managed to read 3 print editions in the whole of the year. In some ways I'm pleased that I'm holding to the discipline of not buying another copy until I've read the on-going issue from cover to cover. But I'm also uneasily aware of how reading stuff on-line seems to be taking up more and more of my time. For reasons I can't quite articulate such reading seems shallow somehow.

You also may be wondering what I had for dinner myself this evening - though most likely you're not. But sticking to the food theme I'll tell you anyway. The meal went by the somewhat improvisational title Crème Salmon a la Yati and it was sensationally good. Better than anything Casanova ever set about, I reckon, and definitely eaten in better company.