Taking Stock

As January staggers to its conclusion it's a good time for me to assess the success, or otherwise, of my somewhat foolhardy resolution for the New Year, which is no longer quite so new. Feeling quite beat-up as I am at this moment, it's difficult to convince myself that I'm any fitter than I was as 2019 began. But I'm happy to record the fact I managed to hit my target of visiting the gym and kept myself moving on almost every day of the month.

Mind you, there's no shortage of months to negotiate before the year's end. So, as ever, there can be nothing definite about this assessment - which is part of the fun of it all.

Going Cheap

Now watching Eat Well For Less, a programme that combines two of our favourite topics: food and doing things on the cheap. No wonder it's compulsive viewing in this household.


Afterword: I'd written the above before the end of the episode in question. It seemed fairly typical of the series: a very ordinary, likeable family - mum, dad, two youngish daughters - adjusting their domestic arrangements to include more home cooking and a number of alterations to what they might routinely buy from the supermarket to feed themselves. They managed to save more than sixty quid a week with the new stuff and were eating more healthily - so all well and good. Like most of the families featured they were keen to save money, in this case for medical treatment for the mother, for her chemotherapy. Then, at the conclusion of the credits, came a picture of the mum, who'd passed away some time in the year or so after the making of the programme. It was a genuinely powerfully sad moment, and entirely unexpected. I assume the family had approved the airing of the episode as a kind of tribute to her. If so, it was a lovely one in its unaffected, touching simplicity. A reminder of the preciousness of the absolutely ordinary.

Folie A Deux?

Noi is talking about selling one of her rather delightful bone china (a.k.a. china bone) tea sets. She reckons it doesn't speak to her. The funny thing is, I think I know exactly what she means.

The High Life

Found myself in a swanky hotel this afternoon, being treated to and enjoying a High Tea of potentially epic proportions. Fortunately I've learned over the years to restrain myself in such situations and avoid the misery that can ensue from over-estimating the capacity of my stomach. Still I managed to put away a more than reasonable amount.

Yet even whilst doing so I had a distinct awareness that it was the novelty of it all that made it so enjoyable. In a way I pity those for whom such luxury is routine. What do they have to look forward to?

Extremes

I'm pleased that, quite some time ago now, I bought the big box of the Complete Piano Sonatas of Beethoven with Daniel Barenboim tickling the ivories. It's a treasury of extraordinary riches, so much so that I haven't come close to doing justice to listening to the contents, despite giving the CDs therein pretty regular spins.

Just lately I've developed a different way of approaching the sonatas having decided that just spinning a CD when I felt like it didn't really work. I now decide on a specific sonata, quite at random actually, and arrange to listen when I can concentrate fully. I don't let the CD in question run on to material that follows, but ensure I'm fully focused up to the last notes. This way I find I can just about cope with the extravagance of it all.

Earlier this evening, for example, Noi had popped out to see one of her chums for a bit of exercise at a pool somewhere so I banged on the No 7 in D, Opus 10, No 3 and, my goodness, it was a reminder of just how varied a single sonata can be. To be honest, I usually can't figure out at all for most of the sonatas how the various movements are supposed to comprise a unitary whole. In this case, it began with what struck me as a close to manic Presto opening, incredibly virtuosic, and quite lovely in little bits, and then abruptly switched to a slow movement that started as if directly referencing the depths of depression. The full twelve minutes of it was spell-binding, and the Minuetto following was also lovely in its own way. But the last movement was, again, oddly disconnected from what had just preceded it, to these poor ears at least.

What I am sure of, though, is that the strange bi-polarity of the first two movements wasn't just in my imagination. Brilliant certainly, but disturbingly so.

The Real Thing

I've been making slow progress in The Collected Poems: Sylvia Plath, and most happily so. I thought I was reasonably familiar with her earlier stuff but now realise I've encountered hardly anything from 1956 - 57 in any kind of intense reading before, and since this is where this Collected begins, shoving the pre-1956 Juvenilia to the back of the text, this is where I am, and in no hurry to move on any time soon. The verse here is knotty, gnarled, packed with meaning, and very obviously influenced by Ted Hughes. At times it sounds so like Hughes it forces a kind of double-take, but it's also very obviously not just imitation. Plath seems to possess and be possessed by TH, yet there's something so assured in the poems, and something so prescient, that it's as if her voice is whispering behind it.

It's impossible to read a line like, One day I'll have my death of him (from Pursuit) without a bit of a shudder. Amazing, also, the speed with which she picks up northern idioms and wrestles them into new shapes.

Unreal

I remember as a kid reading Orwell's 1984 and experiencing a powerful sense of something approaching panic, reading about the idea of the Party altering history to suit its own agenda. Today I felt an echo of that anxiety reading an article about the victims of on-line conspiracy theorists, folk who've had their lives ruined as a result of entirely, and very obviously, false stories. The segment about the parent of a six-year-old victim of the Sandy Hook massacre being hounded as a hoaxer actually came close to provoking tears of sadness, and a kind of rage. 

'There is just no more truth, there is just what’s trending on Twitter,' he says. Stop the world, please, I want to get off.

A Small Mystery

Noi is still dealing with an unpleasant cough that started back in New Zealand. It seems viral in origin and I'm surprised that somehow or other I haven't succumbed. I suppose that once upon a time I took good health for granted, but that's certainly not the case these days. The happy fact that I've not been in any real sense ill for quite some time and I've been free of aches and pains for some months is cause enough for mild celebration and distinct thankfulness on a daily basis.

So I make note of some recent problems with cramp in my legs in no spirit of complaint, but rather as a reminder of my good luck. If this is all I have to deal with, then I'm happy with the occasional few minutes of discomfort. Must say though, I wish I could figure out what causes my nether regions to stir themselves to revolt in this manner as I can't pin down any kind of obvious pattern.

Uncertainties

After we got back from New Zealand I put the Collected Fiction of Lu Xun to one side for a while. Partly this was due to suddenly having more stuff to deal with and partly because I wasn't so familiar with the stories from the second short story collection Lu Xun published, Hesitation I think it's called, and began to find them slightly harder going than the earlier better-known classics, despite their obvious excellence. However, I've regained more momentum in the last few days and am now approaching the end of this collection.

The story I've just read, In Memoriam, seems to me to some degree typical of this period of the writer's work. Very downbeat, to the point of real despair. Painful to read, in the best sense. In some ways obvious in its effects - an in-your-face portrait of a failing marriage - yet in some respects puzzling, at least for this reader. I know that something is being said relating to gender within Chinese culture, or at least that culture as it manifested itself to LX at the time of writing, and I know that in some ways this is a story about Romantic possibilities. But I can't quite grasp where those ways lead.

I love being in this state of sort-of-confusion over a text. Being knocked sideways, but not being quite sure why. There's the pleasure of positively wanting to reread the story and the exciting uncertainty that a rereading won't prove illuminating allied to the certainty that the impact will be as strong, if not stronger, than the first time round. Of course, it's satisfying to feel one has grasped the essentials of a poem or play, or novel, or story, but that's so often accompanied by an odd sense of diminishment.

Remembrance

Today marks the anniversary of Dad's death. Unfortunately the day has been mildly soured by the on-going saga of my fraught relations with Singtel. Fortunately for us all I haven't the energy to go into any details as to what transpired between myself and that remarkable organisation in the late afternoon. And with even greater fortune, thinking of Dad inevitably reminded me of a depth of decency and calm I can only aspire to, but that very aspiration helped lead me to some kind of equilibrium. For now, at least.

Going Bad

I've been reading the first couple of acts of Hamlet in the newish Arden edition, the 2nd Quarto version. Apart from being a supremely satisfying way of passing the time, it's served as a reminder of my propensity for imagining which part I'd like to play on stage (apart, that is, from all the roles, Hamlet's mum and girlfriend excepted.) I suppose it doesn't say much for my character that above all I'd love to play the bad guy, Claudius. In fact, a worrying feature of this little mental exercise is that it's the duplicitous bad guy role I fantasise myself into in a fair few of the plays: Richard III, Iago, Edmund - though I'm more than a bit over the hill for young Edmund.

And whilst considering just how far over the hill I am, I reckon I'd make a great Capulet in R&J. Every time I've taught the play I've somehow come to the conclusion that Juliet's dad is the only one with any sense on stage. As I say, it really doesn't speak well for my character, I'm afraid.

On The Mekong

I picked up a publication quite new to me in November last year, from Wardah Books. Entitled Mekong Review it's handsome looking in its way, modelled to some degree, I'd guess, on The New York Review of Books. It certainly seems to aspire to some level of academic credibility, successfully I'd say, based on what I've read.  I'm not sure how many issues there have been, but mine was Volume 4, Number 1, which suggests a fair few.

It took me a little while to get down to reading the issue I picked up. Initially I found the focus on East Asia and its affairs mildly forbidding, although I immediately enjoyed Anjan Sundaram's penetrating essay on V.S. Naipaul, I suppose because that was familiar enough territory. But over the last month and a half I warmed up to the contents, feeling more than a little guilty at my initial lack of interest over what is, after all, on my doorstep. Having just completed the issue in question I find myself reflecting on a number of striking articles, with a particularly outstanding piece from Kim Cheng Boey on war graves in Vietnam reminding me of how just limited my perspective on the region is and how desperately it needs widening. (When I think of the war in Vietnam I primarily think of the Americans who died. How oddly blinkered that is.)

Funnily enough, on the same weekend I finished my issue of Mekong Review I picked up an issue of Prog for the first time in quite a while. At one point I assumed it had gone out of print, but it looks as if problems of distribution took it off the shelves over here. However, after reading just a couple of articles I've decided this is probably the last time I'll buy it. It strikes me as being a bit tired, a lot over-written and more than a bit narrow in what it covers. Not terribly challenging, but expensively so. And I need challenges, and reasonably cheap ones at that.

An Odd Couple

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Noi has popped up to Melaka for the weekend, with me electing to remain behind and deal with on-going work-related stuff. No need to worry for me though, she's left a fair amount of cake and a big bowl of her patented-to-succeed oxtail soup. Also I've got quite a few shots of us together on our recent NZ bash to help negotiate the mild emptiness of not having her around.

Making Connections

I'm not exactly sure when I got hold of my copy of Connections 2014: New Plays for Young People - I think it was in late 2017 - but I'm glad I did. It took me the best part of a year to read all the ten plays featured, but I found something enjoyable in every one, and some have really lingered in my mind. I'd pick out Matt Hartley's Heritage, Sam Holcroft's Wardrobe, Sabrina Mahfouz's A Shop Selling Speech and Pronoun by Evan Pacey as the ones that made the greatest impact, possibly because they were the easiest to visualise working on a stage. The volume also provides genuinely interesting, often valuable, follow-up material on each play, with director's notes and the like. Great value.

Since all the plays really do deal with the concerns of youngsters around their late teens, I found reading the plays an educational experience for myself in terms of learning about those concerns. I think I shared some as a kid, but there were issues dealt with that I've never given that much attention to, from a position, I suppose, of comfortable adult complacency.

I think that most of all I was struck by the verve of the dialogue in so many of the pieces. Quite a number of unhappy characters featured and they had vivid ways of letting you know how unhappy they felt. I don't remember feeling quite so much angst back in the days, but I didn't doubt the authenticity of the feelings so expressively on display.

A False Assumption?

I was listening to the excellent podcast from BBC Radio 4's In Our Time series on Wordsworth's The Prelude today and found myself thinking about the claim that poetry functions as an education of feeling. At one time I brought into Wordsworth's seminal idea completely, seeing it as one of the many justifications I could think of for teaching poetry in the classroom. And I'm not surprised I bought into it then. After all, The Prelude does provide a wonderful, extraordinary education of feeling.

But now I'm not at all sure of the validity, or even value of the concept, despite Wordsworth's persuasiveness (and, I should add, the persuasiveness of many other fine writers following in his wake in reassertion of the concept.) What changed my mind? The recognition that across the years I've met an awful lot of readers of literature, especially poetry, who haven't exactly impressed me as representing some kind of superiority of feeling - not to mention a fair few writers. (Yes, Ezra Pound, I'm thinking of you.) Indeed, my general sense is that such folks have generally been pretty much the same as everyone else.

So I suppose that what The Prelude offers us is, I'm afraid, beyond most of us to grasp, no matter how clever we may think ourselves. Sad, but salutary.

(Must read the poem again soon, though. Gosh, the discussion really whetted my appetite!)

Into The Warm

Walked out of a ferociously chilly lecture theatre at 8.45 am and remarked to a colleague that escaping into the warm might prove to be the highlight of my day. It did. Now I suppose it's possible to interpret this as indicating the rather sad limits of accomplishment to which I aspire. But I'd suggest it points to a deep truth of human experience. And when I've figured out what that truth is, I'll let you know.

A Ready Solution

It seems there's a bit of a disagreement going on as to whether it's better to de-clutter by throwing away the unread books on one's shelves, or to embrace the whole tsundoku thing and live with them. Must say, unlike some current political disagreements (we're not mentioning the B-word in our house at the moment) which are fundamentally boring this is a profitably interesting dispute. My position is a usefully (or possibly uselessly) balanced one. Accumulate a load of unread books, and then read them. Problem solved.

Asserting Control

Saw Kate & Rob off to the Land of Oz this afternoon. After the jolliest of weekends it's time to get back to normal. For me that has involved getting to the gym this evening to try and check any tendency to enjoy my grub a little too much, an easy habit to develop with Rob around, since he is active enough to allow himself a considerable degree of over-indulgence without undue wear and tear. (He's taking a bicycle and surf board with him to the Land Down Under, by the way.) 

I learnt a long time ago that in a world of plenty it's useful to be a bit more obsessive over matters of weight than most people would deem strictly necessary.

A Packed Programme

13.15
We and our houseguests were roused from our slumbers in the very, very early morning by a cat outside the Hall doing whatever cats get up to the early hours in the noisiest fashion possible. I could have cheerfully strangled the moggy in question, let me tell you, and I regard myself as an animal lover of sorts. I'm hoping the interruption of our sleep does not have any ill effect on our packed programme for this afternoon and evening: Holland Village, the Botanical Gardens and the Gardens by the Bay, for starters. I'm excitedly tired just thinking about it.

22.55
Didn't manage the Botanical Gardens just now, but had a fine old time at the other spots, plus we discovered the delights of the Marina Barrage. That's the great thing about becoming a sort of tourist on your own territory. You see it with fresh eyes and discover delights you never bothered to check out because they were always there anyway.

Perfect weather as well. And after the luck we had with the weather in NZ we are counting multiplying blessings.

A Bit Annoyed

Astute readers may notice a double posting for this day, Saturday, 12 January. This being a rare occurrence at this Far Place, an explanation is in order - not that it bothers you, of course, but it mildly irritates me. And this is why. The ramblings below (enigmatically entitled Limitations) were recorded and posted yesterday evening, but we've been having our regular problems with our connection to the mighty WWW and somehow the posting failed - even though it looked like it was up there on my screen. In the great scheme of things this is insignificant, as are all our many problems with everything we do in relation to the cyber-world. Gentle Reader, I could list now, at this very moment, four further unresolved areas of irritation, but I will practise patience and seek not to bore you. And I will seek to restrain my mildly rising but sadly distinct sense of annoyance by thinking of something pleasant.

And immediately I find myself looking forward to the arrival on these shores of none other than Kate & Rob, who're staying with us for a couple of nights before plying their way onward to Australia. We're off to pick them up at the airport in another hour. Cheerfulness sets in. Equilibrium restored.

Limitations

I've been reading Gerard Genette's Palimpsests for quite some time now, around a couple of months I think, and I'm finally in sight of the end with just some 40 pages left. I suppose it could be classified as essentially a work of that dreaded branch of human activity Literary Theory (dreaded by me, that is) so it's not exactly my cup of tea. I felt obliged to read it in a work-related context as we're sort of preparing for a new syllabus in my subject which will feature (we think, the details have not yet been published) some sort of focus on Intertextuality. One of my colleagues provided us some books on the subject and this is the one that came my way.

I don't think we really need to be reading all the theory on this since a fair amount of it is, as theory tends to be, impenetrable, but it's proven not quite as painful as I expected. Monsieur Genette has a sense of humour and though his obsessive classifying of various forms of literary influence (to put it in gentle terms) is more than a little over the top, I've generally enjoyed his enthusiastic and occasionally illuminating trawl through a wide range of texts. It's been particularly interesting to read a work which draws generally, though by no means exclusively, on the French literary tradition. In fact, I've been usefully reminded of just how narrow my scope is in terms of the literature I know reasonably well. Other than Flaubert & Proust I can't honestly say I've read in any sense widely in what is obviously an extraordinarily accomplished and rewarding field.

Must remember my own limitations when I complain to students about the narrowness of their exposure to good books.

No Answer

Retreated into the SAC at work earlier today to seek out my fellow Brit (and co-Cheekie Chappy (or should that be Cheeky Chappie?)) Peter to ask him how it could be that I'd just listened to a highly intelligent, insightful, well-informed and temperate, though entirely spontaneous, discussion of the nightmare known as Brexit with a group of 17- and 18-year-olds from this Far Place, yet was unable to recall any discussion of like quality involving any group of the politicos from our own Far Shores over the past few months. Alas, we had no answer.

A Matter Of Necessity

A long day. Feeling tired. Very. The great thing about a break is that it gives you a chance to forget just how tiring work can be. The great thing about work is the way it reminds you of fundamental, necessary truths.

The Calamity That Wasn't

The speed with which the new technology - which, of course, isn't anything like new to most people these days - comes to dominate the routines of one's existence is extraordinary. I haven't possessed a smart phone for very long, and I don't particularly like possessing one. It's sort of useful for accessing on-line news and the like quickly, but I could do without it for that purpose. The Google map has helped me a couple of times when I was lost, but I could always find my way around in the past eventually, and I don't terribly mind being lost anyway. I enjoy listening to music through it but, again, I don't see that as crucial to my life. Yet when I came close to losing my phone on the way back from New Zealand I suddenly realised I desperately need it now in terms of the various work-related message groups I belong to and all the contacts that have somehow found their way into it. There are a lot of these, despite me being essentially an anti-social being.

I'm not sure how all this happened, but it did and I, like everyone else, have to live with it.

Actually the story of the almost catastrophic loss of the phone serves as a useful reminder to me of how dependent on others we really are. I'd put the blighter in one of those trays that airport security demand we put our belongings in to scan them, or whatever they do to them when the stuff goes through that tunnel. The phone was in the same tray as my laptop going through the security to get into Auckland Airport on the way from Queenstown and I had other stuff in another tray. I contrived to pick everything up, except the phone and was happily walking away, congratulating myself on my efficiency in getting through fairly effortlessly when a guy, another passenger, not an official, rushed over to me and asked whether I'd left the phone behind, which he had somehow spotted. The fact that he charitably went to all that trouble to help me out still warms my heart.

Top Gunn

Finished Thom Gunn's Collected Poems yesterday. It concludes with his extraordinarily moving elegies on various of his friends and acquaintances who were victims of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, from his 1992 collection The Man with the Night Sweats, and if those brilliant poems don't put him in the top rank of poets from the second half of the twentieth century I don't know what would. Actually I'd already been classifying him as such from rereading Jack Straw's Castle onwards, a book I got hold of when it was first published as a review copy for a magazine (which I didn't pay for, but ironically never reviewed) and which sort of haunted me through its dizzying mixture of dinner jacket formal discipline and take-your-shirt-off looseness.

The Collected doesn't include his final book, Boss Cupid, which I don't know at all, but which I'm looking forward to getting hold of as soon as I allow myself a book-based buying spree. I now find myself a bit of a fanboy Gunn-wise, and very happy to be so.

Now it remains to decide whose chunky Collected residing on my shelves I intend to tackle next. I reckon it's likely to be Sylvia Plath's, partly based on the fact that I haven't read a woman's Collected cover to cover, which is a bit embarrassing, but mainly because she's brilliant and I'm in the mood to have the top of my head taken off yet again, following TG's ministrations in that direction.

In Praise Of The Fridge Magnet - 8

 

When spaces close in on you, it's good to be reminded of a bigger, wider, wilder, world.

Mind you, I'm sure the poor kiwi feels the need for a safer space. Every paradise is fallen.

Temporary States

Poor old Kipling doesn't get a good press these days. Odd for an obvious genius. Anyone who knows that Triumph and Disaster are two imposters is worth listening to. I very much enjoyed seeing some rightfully triumphant young people today and am hopeful that they continue to enjoy that feeling for some time to come; and was inevitably saddened by a few who felt they suffered a bit of a disaster and am hopeful they'll come to see that as an opportunity to grow. And I hope I have the wisdom to know that both states are illusory in the perspective of a rich and full life.

I'm not quite grown-up enough to treat both states in my own life as just the same, but I think I'm getting there.

Far Out

Not sure why, but seeing the images of Ultima Thule earlier today released by Nasa made me feel unaccountably cheerful. Talk about distance lending enchantment, eh?

Lesson Learnt

With my New Year's resolution in mind I got myself to the gym this evening with much enthusiasm - too much enthusiasm, in fact. Actually I went to the gym yesterday, but couldn't gain entry due to some odd behaviour on the part of the biometric system that should have let me in but decided not to. I think this was related to the fact it was a public holiday. Anyway, this simply added to my desire to hit the pedals hard, and that's what I did this evening, also spurred on by the fact that young Marcus was doing his thing on a treadmill to loud music when I arrived and I vaguely thought I could match his sheer oomph.

For twenty-five minutes my own oomph was considerable - and then abruptly vanished - oddly enough when Marcus left taking his music with him. I suddenly realised that I still had twenty minutes left to negotiate and almost nothing left in the tank to get through what now seemed like an awful long time.

Get through, I did, but in dismal style, with dismal numbers at the end. So I've learned a painful lesson about over-estimation of my abilities and how quickly I lose any kind of fitness when I'm not exercising regularly (even though we did a fair amount of walking, often uphill, in New Zealand.) The problem is, of course, that I will probably forget this lesson as quickly as I learned it.

Aiming High

We enjoyed the easiest possible journey south yesterday, with nary a jam in sight. I also rediscovered along the way what an absolutely phenomenal album 'Love and Theft' is. Surely this ranks in Dylan's top five - though attempting any sort of ranking of the greatest body of music recorded by a single individual in the twentieth century is entirely fatuous.

Noi spent most of the journey righteously asleep. I spent most of it refining my resolution for 2019. And here it is: I am resolved to end the year in better condition physically than I begin it. Daring, eh? I'm up against entropy and the slings & arrows of outrageous fortune. But it's good sometimes for an old man to aim high.