Sheer Goodness

As March trudges to its weary conclusion I'm brought to life by the smell of the Missus's patented Oxtail Soup wafting outside our apartment and circulating to the staircase. I'm outside now, but I'll be inside and dealing with the said soup in around about an hour. Which means that all is good in this little corner of the world.

On The Edge

Nearly suffered a major attack of cramp just now as I was doing my bit on the trainer in the gym. Fortunately I was able to ease the muscle in my left leg as I was pedalling enough to avoid what would have been a bit of a catastrophe. Never had this problem before - but I suspect I'll have it again at some point, and might not be so lucky. Such is progress.

In Tune

Time spent with the Maestro Ennio Morricone is time well spent. The six minutes plus of Una Lucertola Con La Pelle Di Donna (La Lucertola) were the highlight of the day for me, and I haven't even a clue what the title means.

When I first started really getting into Morricone I thought the recording techniques available to him back in the day put some kind of limitation on his work. I've come to understand how his extraordinary musical imagination exploited the constraints such that he created a wonderfully flexible language out of them.

More Than Strictly Necessary

Got myself to the gym this evening to do the necessary. The necessary, by the way, comprises three visits a week, completing a 50 minute session each time. This is based on a recommendation I read somewhere, sometime that 150 minutes of exercise per week is the basis of good health. Of course, I have no idea if this is really the case, but a target is a useful thing, especially when you feel very lazy indeed, as I did earlier. Dragging oneself to the gym isn't pleasant, but it's better than just sitting around - at least in retrospect.

And there can be unexpected advantages in getting moving. On the way this evening I was treated to an extraordinarily beautiful moon, just above the horizon. It looked twice as big as usual, though one corner was slightly obscured by a bank of cloud. It's a pity that Noi wasn't around to share the sight: the odd thing about seeing something as beautiful as this when she's with me is the sense that sharing the sight makes it ten times as gorgeous. The maths of this is a bit odd, and I've learnt not to question it.

By the time I was making my way back the moon had risen in the sky and was smaller though brighter. Not quite full, I thought. That was when it struck me that all this beauty, splendid as it was, seemed somehow in excess of what was strictly necessary. But I'll happily take what's so generously on offer.

Discarded

There are few sights sadder than that of a face-mask left lying on a restaurant table. With the crumbs and drink stains.

Just saying. (Not so hygienic, either.)

Planning

It's just over two weeks to the beginning of the fasting month and I've just listed the Islamic-themed reading I intend to carry out in Ramadhan. That might seem a bit of an odd thing to do, but I've come to understand the profound importance of intentionality, especially in relation to my experience of the holy month. Writing the titles of the various texts - all re-reads, by the way - certainly served to whet my appetite, but I'm not intending to jump the gun. Actually, I'm keen to complete Jan Montefiore's cunning compilation of Kipling's short stories before fasting begins, but progress is slow in that direction.

As a kid I used to race through the four books my library ticket entitled me to take out. Those days are long gone, I'm afraid. Which makes me wonder whether listing four books for Ramadhan was such a good idea. Well, we'll see.

No Jacket Required

It occurred to me just now, as I was hanging a pair of trousers ahead of work tomorrow, that it's been 36 years since I last purchased a jacket. A happy thought, eh?

Something Found

Got back into the swing of things today by devoting a good (very good!) 45 minutes or so to highly devoted listening to sweet sounds. First up, I revisited Crimso's brilliant Larks Tongues in Aspic - Part IV which I haven't listened to in yonks. I suppose this neglect is related to the fact that I'm not exactly comfortable with the production on The Construkction of Light even though I love the material therein. But the strange thing was that this time I found the electronic drums enhanced the track for me. The mechanical, industrial quality felt exactly right. (I suspect I'll change my mind next time round and find myself yearning to get hold of the re-mixed The Reconstrukction of Light which I'm told features Pat Mastelotto on real drums, replacing his earlier electronic set.) (Actually, I love Pat's drumming no matter what he's using.)

It strikes me as a good notion, by the by, to break any musical fast with something from the mighty Crim. So that stands as my wise advice for today, Gentle Reader.

Something Missing

I was vaguely aware of something about today that didn't feel quite right. Then I realised: it's been a day without music, and there isn't enough time to rectify the situation. Pretty bleak, eh? It's a good job that there'll be a tomorrow, God willing.

Overrun

Of late we've been happily overrun by various colourful cats, of the Missus's concoction. They feature on a bedspread she's making for Fafa and the sight of them makes me unaccountably cheerful.

Observing the careful assembling of the feline bedspread has made me hyper-aware of just how much creative juice goes into fabrics, and the beauty of the results. I don't think I've ever been quite so aware of what can be done with combinations of colour and how glorious it is when the combinations turn out to be just perfect.

Off The Beaten Track

The last two stories I've read by Rudyard Kipling surely massively stand in the way of any attempt to reduce him to a simplistic laureate of empire. And the fact the stories are so different in every way is a sign of his genius. I did not expect the simple unironic tenderness of the account of the marriage of Holden and Ameera in Without Benefit of Clergy or the surreal power of the conference of the Hindu gods in The Bridge-Builders and it seems to me that any attempt to interpret the stories in the light of Kipling's undoubted admiration of the ideal of Empire is doomed to fail.

Kipling's fiction is a triumph of waywardness in conservative clothing. 

Together

22.25

Watching Mak Ndak and various family members in action at the bowling alley. A good time being enjoyed by all, which is as it should be.

Postscript: I might have added to my quick note above that we'd just enjoyed a monstrously excellent steamboat, Thai-style, and I was enjoying my own satisfied inaction as much as the excitement of the others. I suppose I've always known that simple things are the best, but it's useful to have that insight confirmed.

Labouring

It's funny how much the body knows about itself. Before going to the gym this evening I thought I might be in good form, having posted good numbers on my visit on Tuesday. Since I've been resting much of the time since then I honestly wondered if a slight improvement might be the order of the day. Just how wrong I was became apparent in the first ten minutes on the elliptical trainer.

It wasn't that I was doing terribly badly. But my body just didn't want to move into the highest gear and I knew there was no way to overcome this. Actually I'd been feeling mildly thick-headed all day without feeling in any way unwell. This became obvious to me at the masjid for Friday Prayers where I became aware of being slightly out of things, despite the enjoyment of being back in the mosque. Similarly when we went to Arab Street in the late afternoon with Zahira, who's currently staying with us, the happiness of being out and about was real but sluggish rather than enthusiastic, if you see what I mean.

I did complete my fifty minutes just now, though, despite not really wanting to. So all was not lost. Indeed, I came away thinking I'd behaved sensibly in not trying to push it and in listening to what my body had to say, mysterious as it was.

Worrying

Phoned John last night to check on how things are in Gee Cross. Not good, I'm afraid. Maureen has notably deteriorated, judging from some of the details I picked up. It's always a bit tricky getting a clear picture of affairs from John as he's prone to put the best light on their situation, but everything I picked up last night points to things falling apart at speed. There really isn't much else to say about the situation. Wish there were.

An Anniversary, Sort Of

It's a year since we were panicked into rushing back to these shores by the sudden lockdown in Malaysia. It's salutary to recall just how much uncertainty we faced then, not knowing when we woke up on that Tuesday that we'd need to get moving, and moving fast, by the early afternoon. I wonder how other folk in that monumental jam at Tuas fared in the days that followed - I hope they've done as well as we have.

There's a general sense that the worst is over for this Far Place. Indeed, a sense that most people here managed without facing the worst. It's good that so many are optimistic as to what the future will bring. But the truth is that we're not out of this yet. A degree of uncertainty is a very useful thing for keeping one on one's toes. Not an entirely comfortable place to be, but you can get a bit too comfortable sometimes.

Not Quite Perfect

I was going to score our afternoon outing for a cuppa and a quick bit of shopping as a perfect 10 when we realised we could have bought the 3-in-1 coffee bags we got at the supermarket for 2 dollars less at the shop just a bit further down the corridor. In a year when we're trying to live out the adage Let other people spend their money this came as a bit of blow. However, the tea was lovely, the curry puffs delicious, the sun not too sunny, and the living was easy: so I'll award a 9.5 and hope for more such afternoons. Can't say fairer than that.

Seeking Balance

Without actually planning to do such, I'm in the happy position of reading the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself alongside the short stories of Kipling. It's sort of comforting to escape from the racial (racist?) confusions of RK into the moral certainties of Douglass's compelling narrative, despite the horrors unfolded therein.

The rhetorical power of the narrative still holds a certain exhilaration despite what might be regarded as its dated qualities. It's easy to see how so many of its pages had their origins in the writer's speech-making and easy to understand just how powerful those speeches must have been. And all this from a man denied a formal education. Astonishing.

A Singular Vision

Read a couple of Kipling's military-themed stories today. Both set during the 2nd Afghan War and deeply offensive in their politics. Yet both are brilliant evocations of the lives of the ordinary soldiers of the period. Not a hint of sentimentality in either and an intense awareness of the manifold faults of the hierarchies holding the colonial project together.

What an extraordinary writer and strange man he was! How fortunate we are to read him afresh in an age that is deeply unsympathetic to all that he believed in. We have the benefit of hindsight - but he had the benefit of a singular, unflinching grasp of detail.

A Theory Of Everything

I completed my re-reading of Iain McGilchrist's The Master and his Emissary last week finding, to my surprise, that the second half took more concentrated reading in general than the first. I undertook a second reading of the whole thing based on a feeling that I hadn't really done justice to the more scientific first half of the book in which the author outlines his thesis with regard to the functioning of the hemispheres of the brain based on a very wide range of data from a number of fields of expertise. In fact, this time I found it fairly easy to follow this material. I suspect this was because I was very familiar with the thesis, so all the details fell into place, whereas the first time round I was somewhat in the dark as to where all the details were leading such that some of the points made seemed rather opaque.

However, on my first reading I'd raced through McGilchrist's treatment of the key stages in western civilisation's oscillation between the influence of the hemispheres, partly as a result of the excitement of seeing just how illuminating the thesis was. This time around I found myself lingering over quite a number of the insights, trying to digest their implications as thoroughly as possible. A couple of paragraphs on the nature of Beauty late in the text, for example, found me reflecting upon why it is that as I've grown older my sense of the beautiful in visual art, music, poetry and dance has grown so much more definite.

When I was listening to Ligeti's The Devil's Staircase the other day I was doing so with McGilchrist's comments on modernism in music very much in mind. The strange thing was, though, that I'm not sure McGilchrist would be all that sympathetic to the composer and his work, yet all I can hear in the piece is validation of all he says about the nature of music and the insights into the nature of things it offers.

An Ending

Happy to get to the end of the day, at the end of the week, and end of the term, in one piece. I think.

Crashing

Managed to lose myself to the land of nod for a good ninety minutes in the late afternoon. A fine place to visit. Not a lot to recall about my stay there - which is the way I like it.

Class

Yesterday I scribbled a note to myself during the day about needing to really listen to something sweet in the evening, as soon as I had a spare moment. When the time came I suddenly felt the need to track down something new, something to clean my ears out with. The name Ligeti sprung to mind, partly because everything I've heard from the great composer has hit me powerfully, even at his most experimental (which gets pretty out there, believe me), and partly because when I'd been listening to a CD of the brilliant Pierre-Laurent Aimard playing Bach's Art of the Fugue over the weekend I'd noticed a reference to him (Monsieur Aimard, that is) being something of a Ligeti specialist which I'd found intriguing.

I duly went on a YouTube search for both names and to my delight immediately came up with a link to the pianist lecturing on a piano piece by Ligeti with the funky title The Devil's Staircase (which is even funkier in the French, of course: L'escalier du diable.) It's a brilliant little talk about the etude, full of illuminating detail, and fired me up for listening to the actual number itself which has now become a firm favourite. (Played five times since.)

I'm now happily trying to figure out what makes this music so sweet to these ears when I'm aware that not all would react that way. I suppose I'm just lucky in that regard, and luckier still to live in a time when stuff this classy is so readily available.

Just Enough

I was sorely tempted to put in an order for the Library of America's edition of the Tales of H. P. Lovecraft, edited by Peter Straub towards the end of last year. I'm now glad I didn't. Luckily I opted for the less substantial Penguin edition, edited by S.T. Joshi, which I finished over the weekend, and that was just perfect for my needs. The notes were excellent and the range of stories proved enough to satisfy my appetite without overdoing things.

Don't get me wrong. Lovecraft is a fine writer in his way and I've come to admire certain aspects of his art. But it's a narrow art, fuelled by obsessions that are better kept at a distance. And it's a repetitive art. I wouldn't like to claim that having read one story, you've read them all. But I think it's reasonable to say that having read eight you have.

There are twenty-two stories in the LOA edition, by the way; a few too many for me, I'm afraid.

Utterly Childish

Where are the Liverpool and Man City fans when you really need them? Well, today they were in hiding, as you might expect. Despite being busy with serious examination stuff I did go looking, but to no avail.

What is it about behaving in a reprehensibly childish, completely petty manner that is so freeing? I don't know but, frankly, I don't intend to think too deeply about this. I'm just living in the moment - and since the moment is by no means guaranteed to last, that will do for me.

Torn

I finished my read-through of the Ted Hughes: Collected Poems yesterday, which means I now need to choose the next chunky volume of poetry on my shelves to sequentially apply myself to. It had been my intention when embarking on the Hughes to get back to the 1939 - 1962 volume of William Carlos Williams, and I feel a bit of a yearning in that direction. But there's fierce competition from the two hefty volumes of The Complete Poems of A.R. Ammons exerting quite a siren call. In fact, I couldn't stop myself from reading Helen Vendler's introductory essay to the first volume of Archie's stuff, which makes it almost inevitable that the handsome Volume 1 will be occupying me soon.

I say 'soon' since I'm putting all new reading on hold until I've completed the books and magazines that I've been engaged with one way or another since the beginning of the year. This is my way of imposing some vague discipline on myself to combat my tendency to get overly interested in everything at once at the expense of some kind of reasonable focus.

Battling On

Happy with myself for managing to get to the gym last night. When things get a bit frantic vis-à-vis the Toad, Work, there's a certain comfort in the knowledge that I'm paying reasonable attention to matters of health despite the damage to my aging systems caused in the course of the day.

It's been a day or two over six years since I first plonked myself on my device of choice in the gym and according to the numbers generated by that device I'm fitter now than I was then. A very small victory, then, in the battle against entropy.

Unable

I'd intended to get to the gym this evening, based on my three-sessions-a-week grand plan. Alas, it was not to be on a day which found me without a spare moment (except for a welcome 30 minutes spent over a cuppa in the canteen some time around the middle of the day.) I'm trying to look on the bright side of this. The fact I genuinely wanted to get myself on the elliptical trainer suggests I shouldn't have much of a problem getting back to the grand plan when circumstances allow. And there's always tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...

Uninspired

I'm required to complete what I'm told is a course relating to cybersecurity. This is to be done online and I'm already baffled as to how I'm supposed to access the various pages. It seems I will receive some kind of 'badges' for my efforts when I finally figure out what I'm supposed to do. Now that's just the kind of motivation I need.

Unwired

Rather panicking at the moment over my handphone which refuses to recharge for some reason only known to itself. The bit that holds the wire that connects to the electricity supply no longer accepts the wire. Odd how gadgets decide to be so temperamental.

And odd how dependent we become upon those gadgets. I'm not remotely addicted to the phone, by the way. But it's become strangely integral to my work in terms of the number of urgent communications it delivers. And there are several on-line systems - email, banking - that I can't get into unless I get one of those numbers through it.

Progress, eh?

Postscript: It turns out that the phone's refusal to charge came as a result of all the gunk from my pocket that had somehow secreted itself over time in the bit at the bottom (of the phone, not my pocket) into which the charger thingy went. So I won't be suing Apple after all. My IT consultant (Fifi, unpaid) solved the problem, which was good, but seemed to find the whole situation amusing, as did her Mak Ndak, my Missus. Personally I can't see the humour in this at all, but then I was the one suffering the mental strain of it all.

Unfinished Business

I read the eleven poems comprising Howls & Whispers before we set off on our Sunday morning jaunt. Impossible not to read them rapidly in succession, yet they offer nothing in the way of a genuine resolution to the pain and loss that feeds them. I can't think of any sensible response to the tragedy of Sylvia Plath's life other than bewilderment - and a deep, deep sadness at what her tragedy did to all around her.

I suppose at some level we assume our lives will take on some kind of coherence when fully played out. It's salutary to be faced with the fact that we'll be lucky if we manage to make some kind of sense even to ourselves.