Switching Gears

How good it felt after completing the Dawn Prayer at 6.30 am to get back into bed and nod off for another two hours and some minutes. And how good it felt to arrive here at Sungai Petai yesterday leaving enough time to iron out the creases before taking to our bed. And how good it felt to wander just now along the road side up to the little mosque for an unhurried Friday Prayers.

It even feels reasonably okay to get with some unhurried marking, listening to Dylan sing of paying dues just getting through, thinking that if this is how I need to pay my dues I'll settle for it.

And some time later, in the capital: How bad it felt stuck in a 1 hour, 20 minute jam, hardly moving, just beyond the Sungai Best toll into Kuala Lumpur. I suppose this sort of thing has a flavour of natural justice about it. In its way, balancing the day out.

Fullness

A full stomach is a blessing, but one that's a bit too full is a reminder of the need for moderation in all things. Fortunately the time for feasting is at an end, at least for the moment. And whilst I'm on the topic of filling up, unfortunately those good people running the exams for IB seem to enjoy filling my inbox with emails regarding scripts that require re-marking on appeal. Just when I thought it was all over...

Feeding Time

Now facing the not unwelcome prospect of consuming a great deal of grub over the next couple of days. This evening we're off on our annual Hall Outing, cunningly going back to the stellar buffet at Swensen's. (There's one just up the road now.) And tomorrow it's going to be the Teachers' Day lunch at some hotel or other.

This is in addition to the fact that the last few days have seen a proliferation of snacky items arriving at our place: some brought back by Noi from her Indonesian jaunt; other bits & pieces arriving as the advance guard of the goodies that come my way for Teachers' Day. Chances are that the numbers of such will increase tomorrow and it's likely we'll be taking a fair amount north of the border, assuming we get time to pack it away before setting off.

As I said, not unwelcome. But I'm keenly aware of the need to put the brakes on and not to give too much room to the gods of gluttony. Back in the long-ago days of my early manhood I certainly had that capacity, evidenced by a waist that demanded trousers a few sizes up from those I now fill out. I really don't want to need to have to move up a size or two in my dotage.

Energised

Made a conscious attempt to throw off yesterday's creeping lethargy. I was keenly aware from early on this morning how easy it would have been to surrender and allow for a gradual winding down of all systems ahead of the holiday break - which will kick-in when we take off to Alor Gajah this coming Thursday. I was powerfully tempted to abandon any kind of target for the marking of scripts for the day, especially when I suddenly realised just ahead of setting off for work that I'd forgotten about some checking of submissions for IB and would need a couple of hours just to get that done. In the event I did the checking and marked my quota of scripts and got a few minor but necessary tasks out of the way. And it's still relatively early in the day, so I can easily manage a session in the gym this evening. Must say, I'm unreasonably pleased with myself for my discovery of the energy needed to get it all done.

Funnily enough I'd been thinking of the virtues of energy over the weekend, after viewing Christopher Nolan's excellent film on Friday evening. It struck me that what I'd found so engaging about The Odyssey, above its obvious technical qualities, was its sheer oomph in terms of telling a good tale. The film-maker had somehow managed to string together all the great little bits into one pulsating whole, and had done so through a obvious determination to make it all cohere, even in its contradictions. The whole point of his Odysseus, it seems to me, was the lack of any consistency in the great hero - except for consistently being heroic in some broad sense in the many and varied situations he had no choice but to deal with. And I must say that I reckon this is true to Homer's original, a character possessed of the many-sidedness you'd expect in a figure dreamed up by the fertile imaginations of many and varied bards, fascinatingly coalesced into the 'official' version that maintains unity through the kind of imaginative generosity we allow ourselves when we know we're making it up as we go along.

Above all I thought that Nolan's re-telling of the discursive epic worked wonderfully well in the way he managed to jump - with relentless energy - from narrative to narrative: from Telemachus's tale, to the fall and sacking of the great city, to our hero canoodling with the lovely Calypso, to the monstrous Cyclops (and subsequent encounters of Odysseus and his crew in their peregrinations on whatever sea they are sailing), and back to the bloody reckoning in Ithaca. Maybe I had a bit of an advantage in having been soaked in the stories from being a kid, as I found it easy and enjoyable to follow, but from what a few of my students have said of the movie I get the feeling that contemporary film-goers have enjoyed the weaving of it all into a master design.

Oh, and one other thing. It struck me that the director had elicited great performances from pretty much everyone in his film, something that isn't the result of just sitting around to see what happens. If I ever have to cite an example of perfect casting, this would be it.

The End Of Something

The month reaches its close and I feel a bit like closing down myself. It's been one of those days when any effort has felt like an effort, if you know what I mean. I'm hoping that tomorrow's new month will feel like a refreshing new start; but I'm too wise, too old, too knowing to count on that.

Slow Reading

It took me just over a week to read Samantha Harvey's Orbital - which I completed this morning, having saved the final four pages for a leisurely read before getting on with my marking for the day. Since the whole novel (novella?) comprises just 136 pages I can't make up my mind whether I'm pleased or embarrassed that such a slight text took me so long. 

Pleased because: this is a work that in its sheer intensity cries out to be read slowly.

Embarrassed because: time was I would have read that number of pages in a day, or possibly two, and I'm really just making excuses for an old chap's lack of focus. 

Anyway, I reckon it's a brilliant book. In almost every way highly original. Gem-like in its beauty. And convincing in its often radiant picture of our poor planet in a similar light.

Found And Lost And Found

Noi has returned from her adventures in Surabaya and Malang, so life is returning to its usual satisfying routines here. I met her at the airport just now where she arrived happily on time after a smooth flight, but unhappily without her watch which she had taken off in the restroom at Terminal 2 before getting her luggage and left behind. When she tried to retrieve it, it had gone. I assumed for good, but we made a report at the info desk at Arrivals before grabbing a bite at the Cafe O upstairs at Departures.

Astonishingly we received a text there, telling us the timepiece had been found and handed in by the restroom attendant. And it was back on Noi's wrist by the time we set off back home.

Yet again the airport staff score maximum marks in this writer's unofficial title race for world's best staff at a great airport. Somebody here is definitely doing something right. 

The Days Are Packed

14.00

After a busy morning I still have a busy afternoon and evening ahead of me. Now in transit from Friday Prayers to receive an award I don't really want. (No money involved, I'm afraid. Yes, I'm really that calculating.) I'll be late for the event, but I quite enjoy being late for this kind of thing, so that adds to the fun. Then I'm off to the cinema to watch The Odyssey, having bowed to pressure from quite a few students to do so. Could be fun, but might not be. Watch this space for further details, as they say.

19.10

Briefly back at the ranch for a quick shave. Then it's onwards! (Again!)

23.55

Gosh, that was good. The film, I mean. I surrendered to the story-telling from the get-go - which was easy given the craftsmanship on display. In advance I did wonder whether I'd struggle with the sheer length of the movie, but it seemed pretty much perfectly paced for this viewer.

The Unexpected.

A good day - until a late-night case of students' items going missing took the final hours in a new, less positive, direction. Stuff happens, I'm afraid.

Feeling Obliged

Attended an interesting talk this afternoon delivered by three young ladies who recently directed a production of Medea. There's a video of this available to us in school, but I've not had the chance to watch it yet. From their account it sounds like quite an adventurous version of the tragedy with lots of inventive creativity involved.

Which got me thinking in broad terms of how much of an obligation a director owes to a text he or she is staging. I didn't want to put this directly to the three ladies this afternoon since it sounds a bit confrontational if you're not aware that my view is that if you're putting on a show your only obligation is to make it work for your audience and all other considerations come a long way after that. So the fact that their production features a deliberately individuated (if that's the right word) chorus doesn't worry me in the slightest - indeed, sounds exciting - but it's definitely not what Euripides intended, or how Greek drama works.

Actually a kind of answer did emerge when one of the directors said they didn't alter the sequence of events in any way. That seemed to point to some sense of the kind of obligation I had in mind. To be honest, I doubt the notion of 'obligation' had crossed their minds in any explicit sense, since thinking about this made me aware that in my days of putting on shows I never consciously took this into account. But I'm very sure I did have a kind of intuitive sense of the parametres I set for myself in terms of playing around with the script being worked on and how it was to be manifested on the stage.

Essentially I've only ever worked with material that I felt I wanted to deliver in something akin to the form originally intended. I was always in thrall to what I vaguely saw as the magic of the original. So I don't think I would have ever tried to do something with a chorus that the progenitor of the text would have found foreign to their understanding of what a chorus should do. The fascination for me lay in making whatever the writer wanted work - even if that meant an audience might struggle to 'relate' to what was on stage. Indeed, I suspect that the most exciting kind of shows are difficult in that sense.

Mind you, it's also the case that I'm not all that creative as an individual so maybe I was just taking the easy way out after all.