Alarmed

An alarm went off well over an hour ago from somewhere in the vicinity, I think from the main building opposite, and has been remorselessly disturbing the evening peace ever since. I'm not sure that our security people are doing anything to attend to this, but it doesn't seem likely as presumably that would have entailed the alarm being switched off some time ago. It's an oddly modern sound. Relentless and insistent, unvarying in its electronic obsessiveness. A sort of manic, mindless pulse.

Fifi has just asked the obvious question, one full of foreboding: What if it goes on all night?

As I prepare for bed, I must say I'd really rather not consider that.

Carrying On

Still without Noi, but coping manfully. Took a walk to Clementi Mall and back for some air and a coffee and to buy some grub in the afternoon after a heavy load of marking and related stuff. Got stuck in one script and almost lost the will to live, but got to the bitter end - manfully, again. 

More essays to mark tomorrow, and more lack of Noi. Onwards! (Having no choice.) 

Over and definitely out. 

Going To Extremes

Noi has gone up to Mak's house at Alor Gajah for the weekend along with Rozita. They are intending to sort out various items in one of the store rooms there, distributing them amongst the family, as far as I can gather. To be honest, I'm not at all sure what the items are and have only a vague sense of exactly where the room is located, so I'm not exactly involved - and have a stack of marking to do anyway, which means I couldn't travel up with them.

I'm missing Noi already, but at least I can comfort myself by playing what she generally refers to as 'loud' music. Must say, it doesn't sound loud to me. In fact, the volume I favour strikes me as perfectly measured, just right. Have just listened to Vital, the live Van der Graaf album from 1978. It has a reputation for being 'extreme', and well deserves it as the band seem to be flirting with one sort of disaster or another on pretty much every track. Astonishingly they never quite go over the top and the whole thing somehow holds together. It's the antithesis of quantized, autotuned, safely anodyne muzak. A welcome reminder of the invigorating danger of being fully alive.

Really must listen again soon. Possibly playing it just a bit louder?

History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake - 4

As a teenager reading the Penguin anthology Poetry of the Thirties I had a vaguely romantic view of the Spanish Republic at the time of the Civil War. Oh for such innocence again. 

Reading Antony Beevor's brutally incisive The Battle for Spain would cure any teenager of such a delusion, even though I sense that Beevor's essential sympathies lie far from the nationalist cause. The chapter on the Battle of the Ebro alone is devastating in its analysis of republican stupidity. Here's its last sentence, reflecting on the republican military leadership after their sacrifice of pretty much an entire army for a pointless thrust across the river into the belly of a superior enemy: It was beyond military stupidity, it was the mad delusion of propaganda. Ouch.  

Sort Of Progress

Got to the gym again this evening and it felt easier than on Sunday evening. Unfortunately whilst it felt easier it still wasn't easy. But, then, it never is.

Highly Recommended

It would be fair to say that I'm quite a fan of the Minimalist movement in music, especially its American strand. This goes all the way back to thinking that Terry Riley's In C was the bees' knees as a callow teenager, and then discovering the joys of Philip Glass's operas in the early eighties - notably Satyagraha which I thought of as a particularly precious object in its vinyl incarnation. Later came Reich and Adams, whom I now regard as the greater composers.

But I remain startlingly ignorant with regard to the sheer range of works these guys produced and one of the pleasures of my old age is discovering pieces that I really should know but for some reason managed to miss at the time I should have been listening to them. One such, which I chanced upon only yesterday, is John Adams's piece for two pianos Hallelujah Junction. I'm ashamed to admit I'd never even heard of this one before, yet I now realise just how well known and highly regarded it is by admirers of the composer.

The link provided takes you to a live version, by the way, which is sort of astonishing in its own way in that the musicians involved manage to pull off what sounds impossible without a sequencer and frequent re-takes. There's a bit in it, towards the end of what I take to be the opening movement, with some crashing, clashing chords that reminds me very much of the double trio version of King Crimson in their Thrak period. Quite a recommendation in its own way.  

Going Back

Got back to the gym last night after a lay-off of slightly over a month. Whatever fitness I’d built up over the preceding months seemed to have disappeared. I managed my sixty minutes on the elliptical trainer, but it felt more like sixty years. And the weights afterwards were distinctly weighty. I found myself moving around today in a manner that might kindly be referred to as 'gingerly'.

In a strictly conceptual sense, it was good to get back to doing some real exercise. It just didn’t feel that way at all. At some point I’ll probably be happy I got going again, but that point was not today, nor the night before.

Vulnerabilities

Some worrying news this morning regarding Boon. He was looking well earlier in the week when he and Mei visited us at Sungai Petai, so we were very taken aback to hear that he's now in hospital again, in Woodlands (despite having seemingly recovered from his heart problem in late April.) He woke up in the early hours of the morning losing blood several times, and on the final occasion he blacked out in his bathroom, banging his head, creating a bad gash that needed 14 stitches to close it.

The doctors are now reassessing the medication that Boon is on. I know he's been taking some potent blood thinners, because he told me so, and he was also telling me about the problems he has controlling his cholesterol levels as he's allergic to statins, so conventional treatment just doesn't cut it for him. It sounds like whatever unconventional treatment he's receiving is a good deal less than optimal. I think his drug cocktail stretches to at least seven pills daily, so there's obviously a lot of room for experimentation. 

It would be easy to make the entirely false assumption that Boon is the kind of guy who hasn't really looked after himself, but nothing could be further from the truth. He's extremely savvy as to issues of medication and has been super-fit for most of his years, working out regularly. His lifestyle has always been supremely sober, so his recent travails on the heart front can only be due to the sheer bad luck of inheriting the wrong sort of genes. Which is a sobering reminder of just how vulnerable we all are.

I can't help but think of the breakdown that afflicted me in September 2022 which just came out of nowhere, for no reason. And I can't help but be aware that my recovery was due to luck and getting the right treatment somehow or other from the team at the National University Hospital. I suppose I showed some resilience, but that was a minor factor in circumstances that went well beyond my control. 

Anyway, the good news is that Boon has resilience and good sense in abundance and if anyone can bounce back from all this, he is the man to do it.

Up Close And Personal

Spent the better part of four hours this afternoon giving the bookshelves and their contents a good going-over. Reinforced my awareness that I wouldn't feel short of something to read if I never bought a book again.

It's strange just how personal books are, I suppose because we spend so much time intensely inside them.

All Very Familiar

Now uneventfully back in our usual base of operations. Gearing up for the usual routine. How fortunate we are to have the foundation of the reassuringly normal to build on.

Quietude

Went to the little cemetery at Sungai Petai this morning, to pay our respects to those family who occupy their long homes therein. It's located just off the main highway running to Melaka, but somehow manages to assimilate the roar of the traffic into its enveloping birdsong achieving a lively, fractured peace.

Praying over Mak's grave I was struck by the abundance of life in and around it: the foliage keen to push itself forward, the tiny flowers picking their spots amongst the greenery, and the insects scurrying non-stop, seemingly going nowhere, but no doubt purposeful in their way. So much going on. So much life in the deceiving stillness.

Nothing really ends, eh?

The Mess Of History

I listened to quite a few chunks of Antony Beevor's The Battle for Spain through an audiobook recording last year and thought it would be a good idea to read the book as a follow-up, assuming that all the confusing details would fall into place through a slow, sequenced reading. That hasn't happened. If anything, I found the sheer amount of detail Beevor provides harder to follow when reading it directly off the page, being forced to provide the 'voice' of the text myself. But in a way this seems appropriate to the subject. The early part of the twentieth century was a deeply confusing time for the Spanish people and the events of the 1930s seem like a dark conclusion to decades of bitter divisions on all sides.

Beevor is brilliantly even-handed in his sober account of it all, out of which hardly anyone emerges with any sort of credit. The pages covering the outbreak of the conflict with the nationalist coup d'état make for particularly uncomfortable reading as all sides seem terribly enthusiastic to kill off their opponents simply, I suppose, out of a deep sense of hatred tempered with a big helping of simple fear as to what the other side would happily do to them if given the chance. Human life becomes cheap indeed under such circumstances.

Can't help but wonder if we're seeing a similarly toxic climate being created these days in parts of the world that seemed comfortably stable just a couple of decades back.

Busy Doing Nothing

An excellent day spent doing not very much of anything. We spent it in company with Boon & Mei, who arrived here yesterday, driving down from KL, which made doing very little entirely worthwhile.

In The Right Place

Eid al-Adha, 1445

Crowded at Prayers this morning. I thought I got there reasonably early but found myself on the outer fringes, quite a way outside the little masjid down the road. Enjoyed being out in the open, but it was a bit hard underfoot, in contrast to the somewhat luxuriant carpet I've been enjoying at Friday Prayers back at the taman.

Interesting to think of the various places I've had the privilege of praying congregational payers in over the years. A reminder of the incorrigible plurality of the world. Good to find a place in all its messiness.

Blooming Fast

Bloomsday

Fasting today ahead of Eid al-Adha, on the morrow.

Also thinking today of Joyce's work and the place of Exiles, his play, within it. As a follow-up to my puzzled reading of said play a few days back.

And reading today - ongoing with Antony Beevor's The Battle for Spain. And a page or three from Finnegans Wake, to observe the literary anniversary as noted at the top of this post.

Still On Hold

We're off to Melaka soon having failed to deal with the problem of the popping tiles here at Maison KL. At one time we thought we'd deal with the issue in March this year, but that wasn't to be. This time round the untimely illness of our contractor Ah Seng has been to blame for the lack of action. In fact, we still haven't decided on what to replace the tiles with, though it looks certain that the whole of the floor will need re-laying as we can't find replacements for our current tiles anywhere. It's a headache.

But, happily, there's been no further damage to the floor and our stay here has been reasonably comfortable. Mind you, there're quite a few jobs around the homestead that will need attending to down the line. I've got a feeling that it's only going to be after I've retired and we make this our base of operations that we're going to see to all that needs seeing to.

Not Exactly Dramatic

A few weeks back I decided to stick James Joyce's play Exiles on a list of texts that were on my shelves, and which I had read, but felt, for one reason or another, to be honest not entirely clear, were deserving of a reread, and soon. In the case of the play the fact that it was short made a rereading attractive, plus the fact that I read it in my late teens and it didn't do anything for me, except puzzle me by its very ordinariness. Decades later, and having developed more than a passing acquaintance with Ibsen's dramas, he having been something of a literary model for the young Joyce, I wondered if I'd see Exiles in a radically different light from that shed on my first reading. Oh, and the fact that my only copy of the play is in my wonderfully battered The Essential James Joyce (edited by Harry Levin) meant I'd get to enjoy opening up that little trove again, confirming it as one of my best ever buys bookwise.

Despite its brevity it took me a full three days to read. And initially I was generally disappointed, feeling I was missing the point. But then I hit on a way of reading the text that managed to bring it to some kind of life for me. Initially I kept visualising the drama on stage and just couldn't see how it might work. Apart from anything else the potential for unintentional comedy, given the complete lack of any humour in this extremely emotionally intense play, was painfully obvious in any number of the exchanges on stage. When it occurred to me to read it as a drama for television, typical of 'serious' plays as done by the BBC in the 60s & 70s, something clicked. No inappropriate audience response to worry about. Just sensitive, serious reactions to a hyper-sensitive work.

I still don't rate Exiles as a work of literature. But I can now understand it as something Joyce had to write in order to distance himself from his oddly confused feelings centred around love, lust & betrayal. And it is possessed of a strange power in expressing those feelings, though I think fails in exploring them as the writer is too close to his other self, Richard Rowan. 

Others

Haven't seen any monkeys or even signs of monkeys on this stay at the taman. On the other hand have been made acutely aware of the two dogs that belong to our neighbours - two different houses nearby, one across the road at the front, one at the rear - due to their habit of barking together in the early hours of the morning. Entirely unreasonable of them, but I suppose there's just no reasoning with canines. Part of their charm.

Another way of creating a sense of proportion about one's own concerns.

Lying Beyond

Finished The Dolphin from Lowell's Collected Poems today. Some strikingly good poems in there, though generally hard & not terribly rewarding reading as a whole. But the final poem achieves a Shakespearian glory: my eyes have seen what my hand did. Astonishing final line. Guilt and pain, and something satanically beyond both.

Keeping A Distance

I'm lazily half-following the campaigning for the General Election now on-going in the nation of my birth. Am baffled as to the behaviour of the PM with regard to his early departure from the D Day Anniversary. I mean it's not exactly difficult to grasp that this was just plain wrong. I don't pretend to be a patriot of any sort, and even I know that.

Funnily enough it's quite heartening to pick up on the general outrage that has ensued. Obviously some of it is faked, but I get the impression that most is coming from folk on all sides of the political spectrum with a real sense of decency. It isn't what I feel, though. I'm simply baffled in a disappointed manner, not having the energy to rise to outrage.

One good thing about all this. Apart from the commemorations in themselves, the sour story helpfully reinforces the collective memory as to the extraordinary event of the D Day landings and all that hung upon the courage of those allied troops involved.

Keeping Warm

We were back at our old stomping grounds at Ampang Point this evening, and things were much the same, I'm happy to say. In fact, the car park, which was closed for renovations last time we were in the vicinity, is a lot brighter than it used to be. And I reckon the exterior of the old mall is less messy than it used to look, though it still appears cheerfully run-down. All this in stark contrast to the new mall we were exploring over the weekend. That one goes by the name KL East Mall and it was my first time there, though Noi has been there before with Rohana & chums some months back.

There was nothing exactly wrong with East Mall. It was pretty much like any new mall in KL and I could see why the average muslimah might be drawn there given the number of outlets selling very fashionable head-scarves. But, my goodness me, was it cold! I'm not sure who set the limit on the air-conditioning, but there was no escaping the chill.

My preference is simply stated. I'd rather feel that I'd stepped back to when I first arrived in this part of the world and enjoyed the warmth of buildings that weren't designed to be much other than well-ventilated semi-tropical warehouses than be shivering over my cup of tea, pleasant as that tea might be.

A Bit Shallow

I noticed a fair number of candidates using dive as a verb in the sense of conducting an analysis in the essays I recently marked for IB. I think I've seen this before, but not with this level of frequency. I'm guessing it's been picked up from podcast lingo, when presenters tell their audience they're about to take them on a deep dive into some issue or other. Ironically it usually turns out to be quite a shallow dive in my experience, but that's neither here nor there.

And I've recently picked up on the use of 'showrunner' as the title for whomever it is who's in overall charge of what goes on in a show on television. Picked this one up from nerdy podcasts saying unpleasant things about the latest incarnation of Doctor Who and then noticed it everywhere in relation to people being unhappy about spin-offs from Star Wars.

I'm not sure that my vocabulary has been expanded by these recent discoveries. Possibly it's just acquiring width at the expense of depth. But at least I'm allowed the illusion of being a little more in tune with the times.

Free As A Bird

The news out of Gaza and the West Bank has been difficult to read for decades, and especially so in recent months. But some reason a piece about Palestinian birdwatchers hit me harder than I might have expected it to. I suppose it's because of its very ordinariness amidst the horror. And there's an awful sense of hope about it.

That final paragraph, and the detail of the chiffchaff flying away And the joy of the children. Haunting.

A Tale Well Told

Finished Dune today. Sheer hokum - but of the very classy variety. Herbert does portentousness exceedingly well, I suspect because at some level he sort of believes it. I didn't believe it at any level, but that didn't stop me having a jolly good time.

Out Of Order

We've been in Maison KL now for some twenty-plus years, and there are very distinct signs of deterioration all around the place. Today the karang guni lorry was passing and we took the opportunity to unload two old television sets and our antique printer and computer onto it. Sad, in its way. I remember all of them new and full of promise. A bit like ourselves, I suppose.

Time passes slowly here. But it passes.

Making The Effort

Once I'd finished my stint of marking for the day I went off on an on-line journey (if there really can be such a thing) to find something to listen to that both sounded intelligent and dealt with a controversial issue of the day offering a reasonable range of perspectives. I suppose I wanted to reassure myself that such a combination might exist. And it did, or, rather does.

Actually I've listened in the past to Messers Glenn Loury and John McWhorter conversing in the kind of way I hope I'm capable of (on a good day, when all my faculties are firing.) So the journey didn't take too long. But it felt good to hear these gentlemen saying sensible, measured, reflective and open things about the George Floyd case, in a way that avoided taking sides but was clearly a genuine effort to move towards some kind of truth. I'm not sure they got there, but that's the point. The effort is the only way we have of paying homage to whatever truth there is, and if our thinking is effortless then something's going badly wrong with the way we see the world.

The Art Of The Deal

A generally dissatisfying day on-line. The marking, of which there was plenty, went well enough. But in my breaks from staring at essays on the screen I sort of randomly browsed stuff that had a mildly irritating air about it - like YouTubers I'd never really heard of fiercely disagreeing with each other over matters that didn't seem all important. For some reason I picked up on a debate over the latest incarnation of Dr Who that didn't do me, or anyone else as far as I can see, any good at all.

So it was with some relief that late on in the day I chanced upon an excellent piece about everyone's favourite Irish Modernist novelist and his oddly engaging relationship with the pugilist-cum-writer Ernest Hemingway. I'd heard the tale before and always assumed it was apocryphal and now I know it's not. As is invariably the case with Joyce, a story that on the surface makes him sound a bit of a ninny serves to add to his reputation - first of all because it's very funny and second of all because it's a reminder of his absolute honesty about what a physical coward he was which, in turn, is a reminder of his absolute moral courage.

Nice to think of a world big enough for two such strange characters who just happened to be touched by genius. 

At The Mall

After a day spent paying close attention to the efforts of various students around the world to communicate their ideas about equally various works of literature it was a relief to pay a different kind of attention at Melawati Mall in the evening. Mine centred largely on a charcoaled grilled beefburger which proved to be nicely filling and after that I pretty much zoned out, turning a blind eye and deaf ear to the blandishments of those trying to sell me something, which was almost everybody, other than the other shoppers, this being a mall. Fortunately for the world of capitalism Noi proved a better customer and far more attentive (but in a happily level-headed manner.)

Mind you, we did acquire some rather tasty-looking kerepok, and the packets thereof will be getting my further attention soon.

Sort Of Coping

Got some rest over the weekend, but will soon be on the way to KL, where I'll need to continue to make inroads into my marking for IB with a mid-week deadline looming. Can't remember marking feeling quite as demanding as it seems at the moment, but it probably has always been like this, and I've somehow found ways of coping. Looking for some of those ways now.

I suspect the only useful one is to keep going. And that's what I'm doing.