Beguiled

I started reading Stendhal's The Red and the Black back in early September and have only got as far as page 140 in the Penguin Classics edition. Quite embarrassingly slow progress I suppose, but only for someone capable of embarrassment. For my shameless self it's a matter of some amusement - as is the novel so far.

I thought that reading a 19C French classic would bear some resemblance to reading other classic novels of the century, whether they be French, Russian, German, American or British. This is not the case with Stendhal. He's not outrageously experimental in the vein of chaps like Sterne & Rabelais, who are sort of creating the form of the novel as a genre as they go along. But, as far as I can tell, he is doing something very different from all his contemporaries and doing it with extraordinary panache. So our hero, Julien Sorel - if he is a hero in any meaningful sense - is clearly going to have his story told a la David Copperfield, Maggie Tulliver, Rastignac, and Emma Bovary. But it's being told very differently and I can't articulate what the difference is. 

This reflects badly on me, I know, and possibly it's just a case of me being very slow and missing the point. But I'm having a fine old time doing so and am happily beguiled by every page. (I burst out laughing twice on page 138 and I'm not at all sure there are meant to be jokes in the text.)

Anyway, I'll probably try and write a bit more about this when (and if) I sort my confusions out. In the meantime I'll just crack on and pretend I know exactly what's happening.

Hardly Funny At All

I've enjoyed many a chuckle and quite a few giggles courtesy of the wit and wisdom of the estimable First Dog in the Moon. But today's cartoon just didn't do it for me, for some reason. Most likely because it wasn't supposed to.

No wonder I find it difficult to watch the news these days. Stop the world, please; I want to get off.

Not So Funny Anymore

Officially completed my rereading of Gazzaniga's Human this afternoon. Much to enjoy here & there, but I can't honestly say it deepened my knowledge of people's cognitive faculties in a systematic way. (My fault, not the writer's, I hasten to add.) Will probably go back a final time to the pages devoted to the nature of the arts, and to the segment on how we create a sense of the self from the various bits & pieces that arrive at our grey matter.

Realised that the last part of the book - looking to the future of our potential cognitive development as matters stood in the early 2000s - has very much dated. The segment on Artificial Intelligence especially seems from long, long ago. It also struck me that this is the place where the writer's propensity for wittily frivolous humour becomes distinctly tiresome. Now the future is upon us it seems anything but laughable. 

To Rest In Peace

We were at the Pusara Abadi Muslim Cemetery this afternoon for the burial of Sanusi, Kak Kiah's son-in-law, who died quite unexpectedly this morning. We'd last seen him in the middle of the week on a visit to see his mother-in-law at NUH. He hadn't looked well then, being very thin and obviously under the weather, complaining of the flu; nothing like his usual cheerful self. But there was nothing to suggest what happened today. He collapsed this morning, dying, I assume, of a heart attack.

Can't imagine the degree of grief felt by Aida, his wife. First her mother's dreadful stroke and now this loss. Good to see the family gathering around in necessary support.

It's difficult to see anything at all positive in all this. But Noi rightfully pointed out to me as we were exiting the cemetery, having visited the graves of Nosiah's father & brother before leaving, that it's a place of deep calm and peace. I always feel a strange kind of hopefulness there.

Peace In Our Time

A happily rambunctious morning today, nicely contrasted by a richly peaceful Friday Prayers at the masjid on the hill. 

Learned a new Arab saying from the khutbah: One who does not possess something cannot give it to others. The implication is that if we lack peace in our hearts it's impossible to offer it to others. That's pretty wise, I reckon, and meditating upon the insight in itself contributed to the richness of the experience. And the silences between words of weight helped.

(The teh tarik & vadai that followed provided a slightly different kind of peace.)

(And just to get a bit more rambunctious about all this, for anyone who disagrees with the above I can assure you there is nothing at all funny about peace, love & understanding.)

Embracing Uncertainties

It's that time of year when some people in my line of work start planning in earnest, whilst the remainder stay fixed in the unforgiving present. As ever, I find myself on the wrong side of the divide. Or possibly the right side. You never really know, do you?

Time For A Moan

Today's been a day about me, me, me to an even greater extent than usual. Let me tell you why. I woke up around the dead centre of the night with a pretty bad ache running down the left side of my neck. It felt like the sciatic pain I sometimes have to deal with on my left leg and lower back had decided to migrate upwards. (Complete nonsense medically, of course, but it felt that way.) I thought the ache might subside. But it didn't. It evolved over the course of a restless hour or so into a grimace-inducing genuine pain, until I just had to get up and find some Panadol, with Noi supplying the necessary water. It was about two hours to dawn and I lay just about coping with a slightly subsiding ache. And then day officially arrived.

I'll not say anymore - because it's so boring - but I got through the necessary with the assistance of further pain-killers - the ones in the extra strong red packet. And now my neck feels a bit better, thanks.

Shakespeare has a great line about toothache in Much Ado, but I'm struggling to remember it. Not the bit where Benedick makes an excuse of having the toothache. I mean the For there was never yet philosopher that could endure the toothache patiently. (Just googled it.) Well, it's even more true about a pain in the neck.

Sort Of Heartbroken

When the story finally broke big about what Man City had really been up to and the cheating was obvious to all, I suppose I was a bit amused, and thought about posting something suitably cutting and sardonic. I didn't think about taunting City fans at work because there aren't any, but I'm pretty sure I would have done if there were. But something stopped me from gloating and I'm glad it did.

This wasn't out of a due sense of pity, I'm afraid. I'm just not that nice. I think what made me hesitate was a vague feeing of unease that what I was reading pointed to a degree of corruption that could make me fall completely out of love with the beautiful game now it's been ruined through egregious but inevitable greed. And the more material I've read and listened to since has served to add to my discomfiture. 

Case in point: an excellent podcast from the the Sports Agents concerning whether the Premier League is about to eat itself deeply depressed me when I gave it an ear today. Aside from the excellent journalism of Christoph Winterbach and the team at Der Spiegel I heard no positives. All's bleak & comfortless, I'm afraid.

Just Listening

I was talking to a colleague last week about music, and for some reason started to expound some of my ideas about the nature of listening to it. Even as I was talking it struck me how odd my ideas must have sounded, especially to someone not particularly interested in music. At one point I referenced just how much my thoughts were not exactly my own and how grateful I was for being influenced at a formative period in my life by those of Robert Fripp on all this.

I mention this today in relation to my stumbling across a striking version of his soundscape Pie Jesu this morning. I'm not sure how exactly the original has been cunningly mixed in with an orchestral arrangement of the original improvisation played by the brilliant Metropole Orkest, but the results are stunning. I'd melted entirely by the end.

Plus the music on this recording is preceded by some fascinating comments by Robert himself on the nature of listening from his own experience. Next time I feel I need to explain myself on this topic I'll just direct them to this and a man who really knows what he is talking about. 

In Extremis

It looks like there's no hope of any form of recovery for Kak Kiah. She's in a small room now, on a very strong painkiller, allowed 24-hour visiting. If she makes it back home she will be in a vegetative state. The family are likely to need to make big decisions in the next two days or so.

Very sad. And we got news today that our friend Norharyati's father died yesterday - in a hospice, not unexpectedly.

The comfort is that these have been long lives, well led. Ultimately the best any of us can hope will be granted.