Getting Angry

People, rightly, worry about being angry. It can be a perniciously debilitating state to be in. It can wear one down. But it can, properly channeled, kept within boundaries, galvanise.

I experienced the latter kind today. I wouldn't say I enjoyed it. But I was happy to embrace it. And the energy remains available to me.

Making Sacrifices

Eid al Adha, 1444

Attended prayers at Masjid Darussalam for Hari Raya Haji this morning and celebrated the occasion at home with family in the late afternoon in a suitably jolly fashion.

Tried to spend some time between these events meditating on the meaning of sacrifice, in keeping with the spirit of the day. The khutbah this morning had taken 'unity in diversity' as its paradoxical theme and I found a way of linking this to my scrambled thoughts on the need to make sacrifices for something other than ourselves. It's not so easy to recognise that we're not at the centre of the universe but acting on this truth allows a kind of freedom.

Finding Strength

Noi and I followed the voluntary fast for Hari Raya Haji today. She, as ever, took it in her stride. I struggled.

It isn't that I developed a terrible headache or anything of that nature. The problem was that I kept forgetting I was fasting whilst at work and on at least five occasions found myself relishing the thought of the cup of tea I intended to imbibe when I got back to my desk only to have to remind myself that that was just not about to happen. The sense of being let-down was considerable each and every time.

Yet, as always, the experience felt like a deeply useful one. Immediately following each let-down came that odd sense of assurance that I'd be able to cope - a reminder of a strange sort of unexpected strength. Almost empowering in its way, as if an awareness of vulnerability allowed the discovery of something not quite as fragile as one might have assumed.

Not All There

Read Ian McEwan's Black Dogs when I was in KL. As so often when I'm reading McEwan I was aware at one and the same time of how beautifully written the novel is and how contrived. That strong feeling of reading a kind of thesis never quite went away. But what an engaging thesis the novel presents - or, rather, involves us in. And great set pieces. Including the haunting appearance of the dogs themselves.

But they're not really dogs at all, somehow. They are so obviously symbolic it's almost painful. Unforgettable, nonetheless. Powerfully unreal.

A Bit Down

I knew it wasn't likely to be the happiest of days. The news of Aloy's sudden unexpected death was shocking enough when it came to us in Amsterdam, but I thought I'd gradually got my head around it over the last week and a half. However, I realised I hadn't genuinely taken it all in when Paul and myself tried to work through some of the stuff he'd left behind, figuring out what we needed to give to the family and what needed to be kept as belonging, in some sense, to the department. We did what was needed but it all felt unpleasantly intrusive, as if we were blundering into what had been, and should continue to be, private and personal. I felt uncomfortably close to someone impossibly far away.

And then there was the sadness of letting classes know I would no longer be able to teach them due to the need to re-cast the timetable to provide for Aloy's classes. I wasn't quite prepared for how bad it all made me feel.

But it's a necessary badness, and sadness, I suppose. The price needing to be paid for keeping things going when there's more than a bit of temptation to want to leave it all alone.

On The Road Again

Still very temporary, sort of reflecting the human condition, I suppose. Happy to report that we've had hardly any problems in terms of freedom of movement on the roads here. Hope this continues for our next journey later today, but not necessarily naively counting on this.

Not Sticking Around

As usual the Missus has done wonders sprucing the place up. Me, not so much, I'm afraid, but I have got a few things done for the week ahead.

We'll soon be setting off to spend the night at Mak's house in Melaka. So feeling very temporary at the moment.

A Good Soaking

One of the several blessings of life here in the taman is the proximity of the masjid. It's just a five minute walk up the road, so you can afford to leave setting off for Friday Prayers until the last possible moment, as the azan begins, knowing you will arrive comfortably in time to take your place without undue hassle. I did that earlier today and all went well. Until prayers were over and it was time to make my way back.

I had no choice but to do so in a torrential downpour. The experience served as a reminder of how incredibly, unforgivingly, disturbingly wet rain actually is. Put simply, it's just not pleasant stuff especially when it elects to soak through all your garments to make full-on contact with the skin beneath. Of course, I only needed to survive the discomfort for five to six minutes, but they were long minutes, trust me.

Working Order

Now resident at Maison KL after a fairly easy journey north yesterday. We're endeavouring to set things reasonably in order and I've just broken off from vacuuming the bookshelves as part of my contribution to that end. Fortunately most of the place is functioning to our satisfaction, including the refrigerator, which we've had to arrange the fixing of on our previous two visits here. I know we're fortunate to be home-owners, but that happy state brings along with it a fair number of anxieties and a fridge that refuses to function is high on the list of the causes of grey hair.

Found Wanting

Just a day or so back I was mildly bragging about how little tempted I was in Rome & Amsterdam by what was on offer in shops. It was just after recording this that I found myself in a small bookshop in the Dutch capital, exclusively selling books in English, gazing at a copy of Joyce's Finnegans Wake and gravely wishing to possess the tome. The slightly incongruous thing was that the famously unreadable text was published as part of the Wordsworth Classics series and finely so - on good quality paper with what looked like a genuinely informative introduction. Since I've already got a copy of the Faber edition it would have been the height of folly to buy yet another hardcopy version, but it was so satisfying holding the book that I was strongly tempted to do so. Indeed, it occurred to me that it might be quite a wheeze to make a gift of it to Boon since he seriously thinks the text at least partly responsible for my breakdown last August. It seems that ranting about JJ's off-beat masterpiece was somewhat characteristic of the early stages of my Delirium and whenever I refer to it Boon looks more than a little distressed - but since that distress is well-meant I decided not to go through with my off-colour notion of a joke.

And then at Schiphol Airport I again found myself more than a little inclined to buy copies of books I already own, including a very nice edition of W.B. Yeats' Collected Poems and Melville's Moby Dick. Again I manfully resisted the impulse on the grounds of its utter pointlessness. And this time I made a mental note to avoid frequenting any bookshops anywhere for the next year and a half or so.