Shared Experience

An exchange of e-cards marked the beginning of this privately auspicious day - 'real' cards being hard to come by in our present circumstances.

Along the hours I got to thinking of those who're locked-in with nobody at this time, or locked-in with somebodies they'd rather not be sharing their space with. There are such radical differences between people's experiences of being forced to socially isolate that it's just impossible to generalise about those experiences.

To be sharing this time with the person I'm sharing it with transforms everything.

More Bad News

Having completed the March issue of the NYRB I've moved on to the February - April issue of the Mekong Review. The first few articles have been excellent, but generally make for depressing reading. The first, a coruscating account of the plastic soup that has engulfed the world, by Robert Templer, set the grim tone. He makes a convincing case for the idea that pervasive pollution through plastics is possibly an even greater problem for mankind than climate change. And he suggests, convincingly, I must say, that it may be a problem with no actual solution. Oh dear.

After a number of insightful but worrying articles on protests in Hong Kong, I've now got as far as Benjamin Zawacki's piece on the genocide of the Rohingya people starkly titled Humanitarian breakdown, and had to stop reading after three bleak paragraphs. Of course, I'll get back to it. There's a kind of moral imperative to bear witness. But I'm not sure that feeling entirely hopeless is helpful to anyone.

Plurality

I've run out of novels to read. Novels I've not read before, I mean. I've never got into extended reading on-line, so any kind of e-book is out, and the bookshops and libraries are all closed. I suppose I could order something from Amazon or the Book Depository or the like, but somehow I can't be bothered. Of course, I've got one or two unread tomes about the place - especially with regard to various Collecteds on the poetry front - but not the kind of thing I'd regard as 'bread and butter' reading.

Over the last three days I've been filling in with the March edition of The New York Review of Books, which I purchased from the magazine shop on the corner at Holland Village just before the big shut-down. Reading it I was reminded of a feeling I've had before when going cover-to-cover through an issue: a sense of the variousness of the world and how little I really know about it.

I found myself fascinated by most of the articles, including stuff on Elizabeth Warren, cartoonists in the great 'screwball' tradition, the life and novels of Madeleine L'Engle, the development of armour in medieval Europe, the reputation of Mao Zedong and various manifestations of Maoism around the world, the life and dramas of Dario Fo, various demagogues in America, various 'post-traumatic' novels, assassinations associated with Vladimir Putin, the earliest known cities, and the parlous situation of adjunct teachers in American universities. Oh, and I missed out the piece that had the most intense effect on me - an article by Bill McKibben on climate change that left me almost entirely woebegone.

Quite a list, eh? The world remains incorrigibly plural even when we are in danger of sinking into abject singularity.

Not Good News

In broad terms I'm sympathetic towards CNN. It's the channel Noi and I tend to first turn to when we're trying to follow events from the US, and I think they're at least trying to help us all keep a grip on the importance of facts in this weirdly post-modern phase of history. But there's one thing about the channel that really gets my goat, and that's the frequent ads they run praising their own journalists and commentators. It doesn't do anything for my appreciation of Christiane Amanpour to be told at fairly regular intervals how wonderful she is.

And whilst I'm letting off a small head of steam about this, I wish the anchors would stop telling the reporters in the field how excellent their reporting has been in those embarrassing sequences when they chat amongst themselves. If the reporting is good we are likely to recognise the fact, but the really important thing is that we get accurate and clear reporting - it doesn't need to be 'good' in any other sense. It isn't important that we listen to it being praised. It just needs to be done - to be there for us.

I suppose all this is part of the unhealthy concern with 'affirming' others, which as far as I can tell is an American thing. There's little or none of this on the main British news channels, thank goodness. Or perhaps there is, and I'm managing to tune it out.

Waste Not

Noi is something of an expert at ensuring we don't waste food. I'm not sure why it is, but we always seem to have more than enough to eat in the house, despite buying in moderation. I suppose the phenomenon is partly related to the generosity shown by people in this part of the world in relation to the sharing of eatables in all circumstances. And since we both hate any kind of wastage, the Missus devotes considerable thought and skill to making sure it all gets consumed.

In contrast I recall from my childhood the opposite problem: the constant danger of running out of anything to eat and having to put up with knowing the most you could fill yourself with was a bit of bread (or a biscuit if one was left.) Don't get me wrong, there's was always food on the table for meals - but that was it. And it was the same for all the neighbours.

Something changed along the way. And I'm not sure it was necessarily for the better.

Exercise, Lack Of

The Missus is now Zoom-ing (if there is such a word) in our living-room with a group of ladies (in a virtual sense) exercising together. How splendid, and good for her! say I. In sad contrast I've managed to engage in precisely zero exercise for a whole month. My excuse, a poor one, is that in the peculiar circumstances of life in, what is termed in these parts, the Circuit Breaker, combined with the special circumstances of the fasting month, I just couldn't figure out a way of getting anything worthwhile done - so I didn't do anything. Doh!

Today I found myself going up and down a few flights of stairs since I was back at work for part of the day to do some consultations. Sadly, pathetically, I felt the strain. But at least I was doing something. And I'm now planning to get out on the streets in the next few days in order to set this sad, old frame in some kind of motion.

I suppose there's a kind of weak integrity in the fact I feel embarrassed writing this.

Entertained

I finished A Gentleman in Moscow just before Hari Raya, distinctly speeding up in my reading of the second half of the novel. I notice there's quite a bit of buzz on-line for the novel with it featuring as one of Bill Gates's recommended reads for the summer. I can understand why. It's very well written and convincing in its evocation of Moscow, and Russia in general, after the Revolution and beyond, whilst somehow managing to tell a 'feel-good' story, unlikely as that may sound.

To be honest, I didn't entirely buy the character of the Count, but that didn't matter. I was happy to suspend my disbelief at the range of his accomplishments (and those of his sort-of daughter) just to enjoy the story. There's more than a suggestion of Amor Towles writing with the eventual movie in mind here and I suspect it will make an excellent and well-received film.

There's a kind of snobbery in literary studies about works that seek primarily, almost exclusively, to entertain that strikes me as being entirely misplaced. It's not easy to do, and it's rare that it's done as well as this.

Blessed, Again

Hari Raya Puasa, Eid ul-Fitr; 1 Syawal 1441

The fasting month accomplished, we are blessed with another Eid. If we are lucky, we'll be granted time in which to flower.

To all who are fortunate enough to celebrate this time: Eid Mubarak! 

Not Much Different

30 Ramadhan, 1441

Happy to have come through thirty days of fasting with reasonable success. In many ways a replay of Ramadhans past, but in other ways different. Of course, being involved in a lockdown meant that many of the expected features of the month were lacking, but the core of the experience didn't change, except it's an older version of myself fasting and at a somewhat different time of year than previously. In that sense there's always progression, always something unfamiliar to deal with.

I'm guessing that for Muslims worldwide the meaning inherent in the challenge of the fast will not have shifted much, if at all. Indeed, in a way it may have deepened as the challenges have been in some ways new ones, even as they haven't really changed much at all. It's salutary to bear in mind that this is the way things have been for centuries.

Taking Shape

29 Ramadhan,1441

A final day of fasting to fulfil tomorrow. Time was, I would have felt an enormous sense of well-being writing those words. Now I feel something closer to simple acceptance of the ways in which I am being shaped by this experience and have been shaped by those of the past. Just hope the shape emerging is a coherent, worthy one.