Apart

On a day when the Missus and I annually celebrate being together we find ourselves ironically apart. She's gone up north to oversee the beginning of our renovation work on Maison KL and I alone sit lingering here - fortunately with a well-stocked refrigerator.

At such times I have the oddest feeling of incompleteness.

Making A Noise

I grew up in the city and have lived in places close to busy main roads. I'm not someone who complains about noise. You learn to live with it.

The extent to which it's possible to filter noise out of consciousness was brought home forcibly to me earlier this evening when I standing around in one of this Place's ubiquitous shopping malls for twenty minutes or so waiting for Noi to get back to me. Lost in thought, I was completely unaware of the fact it was noisy until it suddenly occurred to me to listen (carrying out an exercise I get students to do in drama sometimes, just listening to ambient noise.) At that point I realised just how ferocious the noise was, and how curiously empty. This is not noise I would want to live with.

That put me in mind of something that happened to us over the weekend. We went to a branch of a bank in which I have an account in another mall in order to transfer some funds to Malaysia, for payment towards our soon-to-be-realised renovation work. To my astonishment whoever manages the branch had arranged for extra loud music to be played on a big sound system, as part of some kind of promotion, right next to the information desk. Oh, and there were balloons as well, as if to soften the pain.

Looking Ahead

Still paddling madly to stay afloat, but keeping my head above water just enough to catch sight of an island of rest about a week and a half away. Also being forced to think ahead anyway as Noi is going off to KL ahead of me at the end of the week. She'll be at Maison KL as our contractor starts the work we have planned to busybody around and make sure everything is in order. She's intending to take supplies with her which means I have to consider what reading and listening material to send on ahead.

This in turn leads me to the realisation that there remains an awful lot on the shelves, printed-word-wise, to which I've never really done justice. In truth, if I never purchased a book again I wouldn't run out of material to occupy myself with. This is simultaneously a comforting and daunting thought. If the shekels ever run out there'll be no need to panic on the bibliographic front; but it's difficult to imagine not being able to once again relish the smell of a new volume before taking the plunge.

Get Happy

When you weigh it up most of these writer johnnies are not terribly good on people being happy. I mean, you think of Literature with a capital 'L' and, let's face it, you're thinking immediately of misery, suffering, meaninglessness, and all that palaver (with the odd funny bit thrown in if you're lucky enough to be reading Dickens, Twain, Austen, or someone else with an actual sense of humour.) Now I know you're going to tell me that life is a pretty miserable business so these folk are only telling the truth, and, yes, you have a point, there's something in that. You get a bad roll of the dice - think Oedipus, think Lear - and there's not much to be chortling about. But the fact remains that there's still an awful lot of happiness around in reasonably sane societies, and, oddly enough, there are quite a few societies that might just pass the sanity test. So why is this so rarely reflected in Lit?

And here's a thought: could it be that the test of a truly great writer is to be all-inclusive enough to acknowledge, contain, celebrate that sense of ordinary happiness? Off-hand I can think of two undoubted greats who do it, yet both, paradoxically are responsible for some of the darkest pages you're ever likely to read.

Not Exactly Justice

It's difficult to do justice with regard to the absolute perfection of a full-force massage from Noi's surpassingly wonderful massage lady, Kak Sabariah. So I won't even try. I'll just say that the last two and a half hours counted as amongst the most relaxing of my life.

A Quick Good-Bye

Somehow I managed to forget the entire plot of Chandler's The Long Good-Bye since first reading it thirty-odd years ago. And I was pleased to have done so since I re-read the novel with a sense of increasing enjoyment purely on the level of story. And what a strange story it is!

At times it's as if Chandler has forgotten the first half of the novel, the Terry Lennox story, as we move into the equally troubled territory of the alcoholic writer Roger Wade. But there're always hints that somehow it will all cohere in the end, and, triumphantly, it does. Yet in certain ways the novel seems to be on the edge of exhaustion. It's a surprise that Marlowe keeps going, but he does.

And so does Chandler - somehow summoning up the energy for great set pieces and a gloriously bleak portrait of Los Angeles, indeed, America itself, when you get the distinct feeling he would rather go off somewhere with a bottle of the hard stuff and escape it all.

With impossible dialogue, an entirely unbelievable hero and whole paragraphs of sententious moralising surfacing when you least expect them, and from the unlikeliest characters, this novel really shouldn't work. But it does.

On The Small Screen

Now busy e-marking various examination scripts from all around the world. E-marking is another facet of the brave new world of education in which the scripts are put on-line for you to grade and annotate. Strangely I seem to have adjusted to all this in reasonably quick time, having dreaded making the transition - though these are early days.

The most obvious downside for me is that I'd developed a degree of mastery in being able to mark just about anywhere. But now it's not so easy to get on-line just about anywhere so it feels a bit restricted. The quite unexpected upside is that the whole experience feels 'cleaner' somehow - more elegant. I'm used to having packages of not necessarily well-packed scripts filling various spaces at home and at work. But now the full load is on one little machine. And the annotations look a lot neater using the software provided than in my scruffy handwriting - more convincing somehow.

And so far I've not had a single illegible script - the type in which the handwriting is designed to hide the fatuity of whatever's been written in it. But I'm sure I've got plenty of that to come.

Something

Enjoyed listening to some students expatiate on (what's) The Meaning of Life (?) today and was asked at one point what I thought the answer was. Was tempted to reply 42 (of course) but declined to answer, except to point out that I think it's very interesting indeed that there's something rather than nothing.

Went on to think about this for quite a bit of the afternoon, and it got even more interesting. Much ado about something, indeed.

And as a bit of a digression, Donne is very good on nothing: if I an ordinary nothing were...

Misery

Looking at the scenes of devastation from Oklahoma on the news this morning made me feel uneasy, especially when one astute commentator pointed out the danger of other people's misery turning into some kind of entertainment for those of us viewing from comfortable, safe surroundings. And, of course, these days there's plenty of misery available to any viewer with just a click or two.

I'm hopeful though. I think there's a fair chance our awareness of others' misfortunes makes us more human, or, rather, humane. The test I suppose is in how we respond. And there's a term that seems to have entered common usage to describe those who hurry in to a disaster area immediately to render some kind of assistance, sometimes at real risk to themselves: first responders. It seems there were lots of these in Oklahoma. Good.

On The Bright Side

With the Pythonic injunction in mind that one should always look on the bright side of life - the only inspirational song I know that actually manages to inspire - I sat down earlier to consider the various bright spots that illumine my darkness and it occurred to me that it's a rather wonderful thing that I don't own a jacket - not of the respectable variety that is - and have not done so since 1988. One day I'll throw away my ties and my illumination will be complete.