Getting Going

The resumption of 'ordinary' post-Ramadhan reading has proved slower and less steady this year than usual. Probably a sign of aging - a general slowing down. Fortunately I have got going largely as intended (these days I plan my reading ahead, strange as that may sound), so it hasn't been a complete disaster. However, I now find myself still engaging with material I thought I'd have put aside once Syawal arrived - most specifically, the reading of some of the later, shorter surahs from The Holy Qur'an in the translation provided in The Study Qur'an supplemented by another commentary. Actually I find the slow pace of this reading extremely conducive and have half-decided that I might make this activity (confined to an hour or so in the mornings at weekends and holidays) a permanent feature of life in general. We'll see.

The 'big' work of fiction now claiming my attention is Junichiro Tanizaki's The Makioka Sisters. The colleague who provided me with the translation said she thought there were shades of Jane Austen involved in the writing - always a good thing - and after a halting start I'm starting to feel that. Plenty of pages ahead, by the way, and I've a feeling I'm going to relish them. I started the novel after Raya, but I've been rereading Declan Kiberd's commentary on Joyce's great epic Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Living since the last week of Fasting Month. Not sure why. A feeling that I needed to get connected with Joyce again, which has certainly worked for me. Lots of wisdom from Messers Kiberd and Joyce which somehow tied in with key ideas in my mind as Ramadan reached its conclusion and remain pressing in their way as life moves on.

And then there's (still) Finnegans Wake. More than 100 pages on and gloriously, comically, baffled by it all. Plus the great Henry Vaughan read-through wobbles on. Now dealing with various (late?) translations and (gasp!) love poems by the Welsh Wizard and, for the most part, thoroughly enjoying doing so, even if this kind of verse doesn't exactly set my world on fire.

That's all for now, I think. (Believe it or not, I have a list of what I'm supposed to reading somewhere, but I can't be bothered to check.) Oh, am also rereading and rewatching Pinter's The Birthday Party, but that's not exactly reading, is it? Or is it??

Mixing Around

Paid our first real post-Raya family visit just now. Good to have a public holiday to make visiting seem just that bit more relaxed. I can recall years in the past when getting out and about seemed quite an exertion, even if a necessary one. Perhaps I've mellowed with age: these days I quite look forward to the free munching involved.

Moonmadness

Completely, foolishly, forgot to celebrate yesterday's Great Day of Fools. So as a poor second best today I'm attaching two photos of yesterday's fabulous moon. Hope all who are invested in their folly can happily meet me on the dark side of the moon whence a rather famous bass-playing madman once invited us all.

(Apologies to all for failing to do justice to our lunar chum in my amateurish fashion, but nothing in a mere two dimensions could come close to doing so. Do look up, everyone!)

It's Only Words

I know the Brothers Gibb had a point when they warbled It's only words so tunefully, but words have an odd heft & weight beyond their mere utterance. Today I got to thinking of two words that, through no fault of their own, really get my goat*. 

The first is flourishing (which I even have problems spelling.) And the second is alignment.

To balance things up I'm really rather keen on plurality. And divergence hits the sweet spot.

Not sure what all this says about me, Gentle Reader, but if you happen to figure it out don't feel obliged to share your insight. So often Things are better left unsaid (a phrase which I just goggled to see if anyone has used in a song lyric. It seems that some lass going by the unlikely name Ariane Grande has informed her listeners of such in one of her songs. And good for her, I say!)

*Manchester talk = bother me.

Performance Art

A former colleague from my previous school once told me he couldn't understand how I managed to look so calm and unflustered when talking to a largish audience of parents about the school's programme for its first year students. I'd sort of been selected as the spokesperson for the school in my third and final year there since it was generally agreed that I looked calm in pretty much every public situation, almost as if I was enjoying myself and this would go down well with what nowadays gets termed 'stakeholders'. My answer seemed to take the questioner by surprise, and took me a moment or two to figure out myself since I'd not really ever asked that question of myself at the time in question.

I'm just pretending to be calm. I'm a pretty good actor and it seems to work. (Not sure that that's exactly what I said, but it's close.)

What I didn't get into is the weirdness of acting and the way you (well, me, anyway) start to feel exactly what you are pretending to feel. To this day my pulse races - I think - before speaking in public (except in front of a class) so the nervousness, the being flustered, is real. But it disappears once the act begins.

I sometimes wonder if physical fear might disappear if one pretends to be brave. But I'm too much of a coward to try that one out.

A Matter Of Disagreement

The desire of my colleagues to avoid any real disagreement over various aspects of teaching strikes me as very odd. There's so much to heartily disagree on that it seems a wasted opportunity not to explore necessary and helpful differences of practice and opinion. To tell the truth, I'm not too sure I've ever really agreed with myself on some fundamentals of the trade.

Over the weekend I experienced a distinct shift in opinion with regard to the brave new world of AI, and I'm still not sure I'm comfortable with what I now think I think. It would be nice to feel certain over these matters, I suppose, but not terribly exciting.

The Old Normal

It seems a long time since Fasting Month concluded. The tiny miracle of eating & drinking at any time of day is now taken for granted. And we've done particularly well for ourselves this weekend with a lunch at Ismail's place yesterday and baked potatoes with tuna & corn & salad just now, resulting in my feeling distinctly full. (I resisted the temptation of embracing a second helping on the grounds that I can no longer deal with being bloated in the manner my younger self could just about cope with.)

So there we have it - one of the unexpected benefits of the fast: it becomes difficult to take the simple joys of the everyday for granted. Thus intensifying those joys.

Not a bad pay-off in its way.

Extreme Gratitude

I think that keeping a Gratitude Journal is a jolly good idea. I don't do so myself - not exactly sure why not, probably lack of time rather than lack of gratitude - but if I did today's entry would read: I feel profoundly grateful for the accident of living my life at broadly the same time as that of Sir Paul McCartney.

This thought came upon me (and I suspect lots of other folks) yesterday when the lyric video for Days We Left Behind made it to YouTube. Ironically the line No one needs to cry made me do precisely the opposite to what it enjoins.

Thinking It Out

Not sure that this thought from yesterday was in any way original for me, but it felt newly minted. And here it comes: Joyce represents three entirely distinct modes of consciousness for the key characters in Ulysses, yet they are all versions of himself - Poldy, Stephen and Molly. (Yes, I know Molly is Nora, but Jim inhabits his long-suffering Wife & Muse.)

How did he do it? Genius, yes, but a kind of absolute honesty about the nature of the self helped.

I can't aspire to that. But I can offer a rapidly written list of modes of thought - knocked off in ten minutes - that seem to me so individual as to hardly overlap. And here it comes: relaxed day dreaming of the wish fulfilment variety; sexual fantasizing; figuring out a schedule when impossibly busy; reading fiction and responding; reading non-fiction and responding; listening to poetry that works; listening to poetry that doesn't work; remembering stuff that happened in childhood; listening to a friend; listening to criticism of oneself; listening to something you're not listening to.

In Thought

Managed to find some time today to think about thinking. Was basically playing around with thoughts I've experienced many times before when it occurred to me that the thoughts were not exactly mine but thoughts I'd somehow picked up from others and, in some surreptitious way, made my own. Except I had no sense that they in any way belonged to me. In fact, I was distantly aware that I was just a vehicle for the thoughts and belonged to them.

Now, there's a thought.