In Extra Time

Having one more day is quite handy, I suppose, as long it's not too much of a busy one. Then it can be a bit much. But it's always good to have a bit more time to live through, eh?

Still Rising

I wonder why Susan Cooper's The Grey King won the Newbury Medal in 1975. In case you don't know, the Newbury was (and probably still is) a pretty prestigious award in the world of children's fiction. I'm not implying that the fourth novel in her The Dark is Rising sequence didn't deserve the prize, but I would have thought the second titular novel would have been the more obvious contender simply because the later book is so strange - and so sort of grown up. Compellingly so, for me.

I'm getting close to the end and wishing I had time to finish it, but I don't want to rush. There's so much to enjoy in the quality of the prose. (I suppose that might explain the award, since I can't honestly describe the plot as gripping.) So it looks like the novel will accompany us on our journey north over an extended weekend break.

More anon. Probably.

Time To Spit Out

The main characteristic of my day at work? Having no time to spit out, as Mum would have said. In its way exciting, and time certainly passes quickly, having no choice. But I'm hoping tomorrow will see some let-up in the pace. I don't mind going with the flow, as long as it slows down.

On The Record

Greatly enjoying reading Pat Gilbert's highly informative, well written and fair-minded account of the only band that really matter (or used to, that is): Passion is a Fashion - The Real Story of The Clash. Never realised that Joe Strummer was actually some four years older than me, vaguely assuming that I was bit older than any of the punks of the late 70s. Now I realise they were very much my generation. It was just that I was in a small way respectable and they weren't.

Much as I admired (and still admire) The Clash I thought there were elements of iffiness in how they went about some things and the book confirms this, but brings with it the requisite understanding of what it's like to be in your early twenties and both inspired and silly at one and the same time. Thank goodness that no one would dream of writing anything about me at that age. Or any age, for that matter.

Still Counting

Just back from the gym where I found myself counting out time and numbers, in a similar manner to what I referenced a few days back. But I must say I'm less conscious than I used to be of measuring my progress. On the previous elliptical trainer - the one that eventually fell apart - I was always aware of the read-out related to calories used up and generally used that as the best measure of an individual work-out since it was an obvious constant. The odd thing is that when I had to switch to the 'other' elliptical trainer the new calorie count was considerably lower for the same sort of time & distance so I gave up bothering to take note of it. (The difference being something like 170 cals burnt in an hour versus 600 - 700 cals.)

But I decided recently to take note of a couple of key numbers to try and make sure I don't get overly relaxed in the course of my 60 minutes of punishment. These relate to distance travelled and calories burned and I actually wrote both numbers down in recording my efforts just now. Hope I don't get overly obsessed trying to out-perform myself - but a bit of obsessiveness could prove useful in its way. 

The Damage Done

Watched a couple of short documentaries on YouTube about fentanyl and the havoc it's wreaking in American cities. Depressing. Suppose I saw this coming with the death of Prince (the first time I'd heard of the stuff) when I picked up on just how strong it is in comparison to heroin, and how deadly. Can't understand why anyone would want to get involved with it, but have to accept the fact they do.

Now my YouTube feed seems flooded with stuff about the drug and other horrendous variations on it. (Tranq, anyone?) Not sure I want to watch further. Sort of overwhelming and inescapable. But most of what I've seen seems restricted to the Americas, so perhaps there's hope for other further places.

Foundational

Fabulously busy day, inclusive of a wonderful forty minutes or so of deep stillness during Friday Prayers. These days prayers at the masjid have a meditative quality for me that feels just right, simply appropriate somehow.

I suppose it was in line with this sense of being at the centre of things that got me thinking for a few minutes or so of Prof Ed Feser recent excellent post on the argument (for the existence of a divine being) from contingency. My own reversion to a theistic belief system didn't actually begin with consideration of logical argumentation to be honest, but in recent years I've become increasingly convinced of the validity of 'proofs' I'd sort of dismissed in my time at university as a student of the Philosophy of Religion, largely through the help of real thinkers like Prof Feser and their explication of the classic (and sadly disregarded) proofs.

Before I came away from prayers I'd decided to add deeper consideration of the fine details of the arguments offered by Ibn Sina, Aquinas and Leibniz to my reading for the Holy Month of Ramadhan. Looking forward to it, but I'll need to step up in terms of my capacity for hard, focused thought.

Suspending Judgement

Am uneasily aware that in the course of the day I expressed a couple of harsh judgements regarding folks who've crossed my path recently. They were genuine, honest, and reasonably considered judgements, but I need to remind myself that, for all that, they may be wrong-headed.

The first thing to do with a mind is to open it, as a wise man said. Actually, I wish I'd had the wit to say this, but I picked it up from Richard Williams's excellent blog over at thebluemovement.com, it being the final line in a particularly strong piece on the art and thought of Yoko Ono. 

I've pretty much always been entirely dismissive of her work. It looks like I might well have been wrong.

Keeping It Real

One very odd feature of my relationship with my smart phone is that I'm generally reluctant to leave home without it, something I thought could never happen to me before I was forced to use the thing by the exigencies of work (and life in general.) But this isn't because I can't do without the device, though not having it with me at work can be mildly problematic on some occasions. No, the reason I want it on my person is because it counts my steps and I like to check the data.

I realised this with even greater force than usual yesterday morning when I went off to work. I had taken the unusual step (for me) of charging the phone whilst I was drinking my routine milo and forgot it wasn't in my pocket when I went downstairs. Now on this particular morning I had a duty to do before getting to the staffroom which was to deliver an in-person wake-up call for some of our students boarding in a hall adjacent to my own. Before I reached the door of their hall I realised I didn't have the phone. So, no big deal, you might think. Just do the duty then pop back upstairs to pick up the phone before walking across to my desk.

But it was a significantly big deal. I spent almost a minute thinking hard about going to get the phone right away, which was in any practical terms quite unnecessary, since counting all my steps going up and down various stair cases as I roused the kids from their dogmatic slumbers just didn't matter at all in the grand scheme of things. Fortunately I forced myself to behave sensibly and go about the business that needed to be done without undue fuss. But, even now, I irrationally miss those steps turning into real numbers, despite getting all the actual benefit of making this old body do some mild early morning exercise.

The numbers have somehow become more real than the actual steps, and this despite the fact that I don't exactly trust the processes through which the numbers are delivered to me.

People are strange. Especially me.

Me, Me, Me

As I astutely pointed out, a week or so ago, this Place is in sore need of more pictures. So I thought I'd provide a few culled over the last year. The common theme is that they features various versions of yours truly. But fortunately there are other luminaries involved to break the monotony of the egotistical sublime.

Giving Notice

The other day when The Missus and I were dining in an excellent prata shop, I looked down at the table to read the following on a little notice on the table: We have contactless ordering. I was not impressed on the grounds I like contactful ordering. Oddly enough, we did get a guy to take our order and he was typically personable and helpful. Were the shop sort of trying to get rid of him?

And another thing. On the screen that comes up on my laptop before I actually get into this Far Place to type whatever it is is on my mind there now appears this message: Google is improving its sign-in page with a more modern look and feel. A new look is coming soon. Must say, I have no idea why anyone wants to change what already looks fine and signs me in easily enough. What is a more modern look and feel anyway? And why would anyone want to have one? I like the way things look as they are, or, failing that, why not be really creative and go for a less modern look and feel? I'm sure we'd all feel a lot better for that.

Going Green

Greatly enjoyed Susan Cooper's Greenwitch, the third novel in her The Dark is Rising sequence, which I'm continuing to read despite doubts about the portentous nature of the enterprise. Happily novel number three generally escapes from this aspect of Cooper's saga, due in part to a shift in point of view. 

The shortest novel in the series goes back to having the Drew children from Over Sea, Under Stone at its centre, though still featuring Will Stanton, the protagonist of the second novel. However, it's much more sophisticated than the first novel and the children gain greater depth, especially Jane, through whose eyes much of the action is seen. She and her two brothers are entirely unaware of the 'specialness' of Will (established as the newest of the 'Old Ones' in the previous book), though they are to some degree aware that there is something odd about him - especially so for Jane. Since the children are so ordinary there's a lot less of the 'other-worldly' than there was in The Dark is Rising, but at the same time the strangeness of Will is convincingly rendered.

And for this reader this time round the mythos of the titular Greenwitch worked to great effect, especially in terms of Jane's compassion for this creature of the Wild Magic. Cooper taking a slantwise approach to her binary opposition of the Light and Dark shows her at her considerable best.

In The Dark

Our dark world just got a little darker.

Great Expectations

It's a little less than a month before Fasting Month begins - and so a good time to look ahead to the hardships and blessings in store. Today I fixed on my Islamic-themed reading for Ramadhan which, other than consideration of the Noble Qur'an itself, will centre on books by Martin Lings and Gai Eaton. I've read the works in question before, but rereading changes anything worth reading. Which is a bit like observing the fast. It's always the same, yet always with differences.

Last year I was plenty nervous about fasting, wondering whether I could manage when still feeling somewhat less than one hundred percent after recovering from the travails of late 2022. In the event, all went smoothly, almost easily, though it's never easy. This year I'm feeling something in the region of one hundred and ten percent (and extremely grateful for that) and hardly nervous at all - which, I suspect, means I'll pay quite a price for my hubris.

But the price is always worth paying.

On A High

A very jolly day all round hit its highest point around 3.45 pm with an exchange of slushy cards. You'd think at our age(s) we'd have grown out of this, but fortunately maturity has not taken hold of us yet. A romantic cup of tea at Ya Kun followed, by the way. It really doesn't get much better, eh?

Sort Of Colourful

When I picked out Allie Brosh's Hyperbole and a Half from the library at work I was expecting something in the way of a cheerful read. A bright yellow cover with flamboyantly colourful cartoon figures appeared to promise a light read with a few good laughs. In the event, I couldn't have been more wrong - except for the fact that there were quite a number of laugh-out-load moments involved in my reading. The thing is though that there were equally as many, if not more, very jarring, harsh, edgy moments. Now I'm not someone who shies away from life's dark corners as rendered in various kinds of text, but I honestly thought of closing the comic/graphic novel/visual memoir at one point (in a sequence dealing with its creator's experience of depression). It was that bleak. However, I went on reading (in between well-being breaks) and I'm glad I did as it served to honour Ms Brosh's work, and over the full length of the work there was plenty to enjoy both visually and in the accompanying prose.

Can't say I'd recommend this to my students though, apart from the fact it's a bit sweary (though in a lively, entertaining manner.) It's the sheer hopelessness of its bleakest pages that are the sticking point. But they ring horribly true. Trying to look on the bright side, it made me realise that the worst of my very occasional slumps don't come anywhere close to genuine depression.

Another Green World

We got ourselves out to West Coast Park this morning as part of our on-going celebrations for CNY. Decided to commemorate this through a few photos, which have been sorely lacking of late in this Far Place. I'm distinctly lacking in the visual department, I'm afraid. But perhaps my first ever selfies - featured above - will help me break through to that which lies beyond words.

On The Box

Hey Fithri, it's Aunty Tina on the TV! I found myself shouting in the late afternoon. And so it was: Noi's younger sister Rozanah expounding on her techniques for producing high quality ceramics in the factory across the road from Mak's house, on the site where Nenek's old house used to be. So there were the three of us, Noi herself rushing in from our bedroom, admiring the poise of Rozanah as interlocuter and just how nice all her bowls and stuff looked.

And all this quite by accident. We've been without our Mio tv for a few months, the previous box having given up the ghost late last year. Finally we went to the trouble of picking up a new one, or, rather, Rozita did that for us, and even more finally Fifi and I rigged it up this afternoon to link it to Hakim's super-size telly currently occupying our living room. So now we've got rather more than 57 channels (and nothing on, as The Boss had it back in the 90s when I didn't actually really understand his mordant criticism of modern culture.)

Nice to see someone familiar on the box, but hope this doesn't happen too regularly. It takes all the magic out of the silver screen somehow. Not that it's silver now, or ever was, of course.

Alive

Finished Suze Rotolo's memoir of Greenwich Village in the early 60's, A Freewheelin' Time, and was very impressed by every aspect of it. I suppose as a Dylan fanboy of the worst order the main draw for me was the portrait of the Great Man, but the great thing about Ms Rotolo's take on him is that he isn't yet the legendary Dylan, just an extraordinarily gifted very young man, often somewhat gauche, but impressively himself, as she makes abundantly clear. She seems to me to be extremely fair and perspicacious in her judgements upon him. As she is on her younger self, and that's the remarkable thing: she, and Dylan, are so young in the period she covers. It's quite something that she remembers so much (and something similar can be said about the Bobster's own powers of recall in Chronicles, Volume 1. I suspect this is partly due to the fact that both were so intelligent and observant, filled with a hungry curiosity about everything.)

But the great thing about her book is that it encompasses so much more than just a recap of their doomed relationship. She evokes an entire era, and is by no means limited to New York as a location. There are segments dealing with her experiences in London (briefly) and Italy, especially Perugia (at some length) and Cuba (surprisingly) that help the reader grasp the reach of individual consciousness at a time of rapid development.

She's also insightfully intelligent on the place of women in that world in the pre-feminist era. Indeed, her evocation of her own creativity and that of many of the young women she encountered in the period covered by the memoir foreshadow the happy changing of the times.

All in all a great read and I'd really like to learn more about Ms Rotolo's later life. I suspect it has proved a rich and rewarding one.

On The Buses

I'm doing my man of the people thing again, now resorting regularly to public transport since Noi is busy with the car. Last night I took the bus to a Boyos' Nite get-together at the bottom of Clementi Road and came back the same way. And today I bussed it to Masjid Darussalam for Friday Prayers, after which I walked up to Clementi Mall to put some money on my ez link card.

The Mall was fairly crowded, it being the eve of the Chinese New Year, and I was surprised to find the vast majority of shops there open. I grabbed a kopi susu at the Kopitiam place just outside to maintain my working class credentials - and actually felt quite pleased to meditate on just how much cheaper the drink was compared to its equivalent in the Starbucks near-by whilst watching the holiday crowd rushing around for their last minute purchases.

There's a lot to be said for playing the populist card.

Reason Enough

Not sure why I enjoy cleaning my bookshelves so much, but I do, which was reason enough to see me vacuuming those in the front room once I got back from work today. 

It helps that just rediscovering what's easily at hand here reinforces a happy desire for rereading. Case in point: the other day I was extolling the virtues of John Carey as a critic to one of my classes, citing his book on William Makepeace Thackery as being illuminating in the extreme on a writer who now seems almost entirely out of fashion. This, in turn, put it into my mind that I really should reread his book on John Donne (who, surely, can never go out of fashion) which I think is the better book. And just now I realised the tome in question is in this very room when I thought I'd have to wait for a trip up north to get hold of it.

Just remembered, by the by, that I bought John Donne: Life, Mind and Art from the upmarket Hatchards bookshop in London back in the early 1980s, the only book I ever got from there. I wonder if the shop is still around?

Most Appealing

Got completely hooked by Robert Galbraith's murder mystery The Cuckoo Calling. Unputdownable - except when I had no choice. It seems it's the first in a series featuring the sleuth Cormoran Strike (great name) and his assistant Robin Ellacut, with whom he teams up in the opening pages. It's very derivative and formulaic in the best possible sense: a writer who knows how to tell a story and create characters that you can't help but root for (the good guys) or thoroughly detest (most everybody else.)

By the way, Galbraith is a pseudonym for the entirely wonderful J.K. Rowling. I was never an out and out Harry Potter fan, but I was a great admirer of the craft of the first three novels in the saga (which I read) and only gave up at number four (which I didn't) because of its length and my understanding that I wasn't the intended audience. But the Strike series is intended to appeal to me, or, rather, the side of me that loves a good story, especially a good murder.

(And also by the way, the word sleuth originally meant a track or trail, deriving from an Old Norse word. It then found itself transformed from its use in the term sleuth-hound, meaning a bloodhound that could track fugitives on a trail, into a term for a detective by our Yankee cousins.)

On The Surface

I've sometimes lamented here in the past over the boring nature of my dreams. It all seems a bit odd for a sort of imaginative chap like me. Case in point: After doing the dawn prayer on Saturday I went back to sleep and managed to have a mild nightmare about losing some kind of travel ticket. One minute it was in my hands, then I placed it into a bag I was holding, a sort of briefcase, and then it just vanished. Basically the dream involved me looking everywhere for the ticket, with increasing panic, and then I woke up, mildly relieved. Not exactly deep, eh? I'm not sure that even Freud on a good day would have made much of it all (though I suspect he would have come up with some embarrassing stuff about the bag.)

And here's another odd thing. Since my Delirium back in 2022 I haven't had a single genuinely disturbing dream. They've all been happily mediocre. Yet when I was in Fantasyland everything was extreme, with the violent stuff approaching levels of yuckiness that I still find a bit startling. So if all that was in my head back then, where exactly did it go? (Not that I want any of it to come back, of course.)

In a way it's sort of interesting to be a mystery to oneself - but it would be nice to be given some sort of solution.

Nearing The End Of History

Sorry to sound unnecessarily apocalyptic in the heading above, but I'm actually referring to Robert Lowell's collection of sonnets niftily entitled History which I've been ploughing through in my great read-through of the Collected Poems. To be honest, my reading has been less than great since, as regular visitors to this Far Place will have most likely noticed, I've struggled to get through the sequence and it's been quite an effort to keep going. Basically a lot of the sonnets have gone way over my head. Partly I blame Lowell for being so darn learned, patrician and generally high & mighty; but largely I blame myself for lacking the necessary. I mean, I'm supposed to be reasonably good at this culture thing so it's a bit of a downer to discover I'm not. Especially in relation to a writer whose considerable best I greatly admire.

It's a bit like not being able to listen to late-period John Coltrane.

But here's the good news. I've started to enjoy whole sonnets now I've reached the 60s. Perhaps it's just a matter of my reasonably close familiarity with the context, but the stuff written about the events of the later years of the decade seems to work for me. This came home strongly when I came upon a sequence of four poems across two pages all of which I felt I 'got' in a way I didn't in relation to any of the early stuff. For those interested, the four poems in question were: Monkeys, Churchill 1970 Retrospective, De Gaulle's Chienlit, and De Gaulle est Mort. Mind you, I needed the notes at the back of the edition to explain chienlit which my incredibly poor French didn't stretch to.

I'm now keen to check in my Faber Robert Lowell's Poems, A Selection, edited (I think) by Jonathan Raban, as to which of the poems were picked for the selection. I can't say I recognise more than three or four from memory. But since it's on the shelves at Maison KL I'll just have to hold on.

On A Roll

Received a couple of books as gifts early in the year, and they've gone down a treat. Read Yoko Ogawa's The Housekeeper and the Professor a week or so ago and greatly enjoyed it. Never thought a novel firmly centred on Mathematics (and Japanese baseball) would engage me, but this one did. And it was genuinely moving in its conclusion. Now reading a very fine murder by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling in drag) and it's a blast. Hoping to finish it soon to find out whodunnit, but don't want to rush.

And, not exactly a gift but free from the library, I dipped into the opening pages of Bob Dylan's Greenwich Village girlfriend Suze Rotolo's memoir A Freewheelin' Time and found myself fascinated by her life pre-Dylan, as it were. Obviously a strong character in her own right/write.

 And now it's back to Galbraith's engaging sleuth and a few more pages before hitting the pillow.

Left Undone

Two jobs left undone from today's to-do list. Displaced by a visit to the gym and a visit from family in the form of Rozita, Fuad, Fafa, Idham & adik, plus Fifi back from her duties. Rather pleased than otherwise at my prioritising. At one time leaving stuff unfinished sort of bothered me; now it sort of doesn't. Progress, I suppose. 

Just Getting Started

Must say, E.S. piles it on a bit at the outset of Februarie in The Shepheardes Calendar. How about this from the Argvment?: 

It specially conteyneth a discourse of old age, in the persone of Thenot an olde Shepheard, who for his crookednesse and vnlustiness is scorned of Cuddie an vnhappy Heardmans boye. The matter very well accordeth with the season of the moneth, the year now drouping, and as it were, drawing his last age. For as in this time of yeare, so then in our bodies there is a dry and withering cold, which congealeth the crudled blood, and frieseth the wetherbeaten flesh, with stormes of Fortune, and hoare frosts of Care. 

I get the point about the storms and care and the freezing flesh, especially having encountered some pretty fierce air-conditioning today, but happily my year doesn't seem to be drooping at all. Just revving up to full steam ahead, especially with a break for Chinese New Year lurking just around the corner.