We're going over to see her tomorrow, taking one or two of the family with us. Noi's brother Khir gets married next week so the complications of all this are steadily mounting. And at the centre of it all is Mak, frailly ill.
This is not good. This is what must be dealt with. And that's what my remarkable wife is doing.
In attributing potential greatness to people who're notable for great stupidity we are in danger of devaluing not just money but language itself. How can we ever recognise the real thing when just getting yourself on prime-time is enough to be assured you've got it?
Now reading Alex Ross's The Rest Is Noise which has finally come out in paperback and made it to the shores of this far place. Now this is a book that might well deserve to be described as great, centering on music whose greatness is slowly coming to be recognised. It takes time and sometimes a century is not enough.
I remember once listening to a conversation between two perfectly average young women in which being hit by a boyfriend was discussed as if it were somehow a normal part of existence. Years later I remain bewildered by that, and deeply disturbed. I'm hoping this doesn't sound self-righteous - it's surely the way things should be, the sense of horror at such enormities I mean; but having spent the best part of an afternoon in a world suspiciously like the one the women mentally inhabited, in which things are simply not this way, it feels hard to be sure anymore.
Surfaced for the dawn prayer at 6.35-ish and went back to sleep after completion thereof. Enjoying the glories of a long weekend (tomorrow is a public holiday for Deepavali) involves catching up on lost sleep. Now gearing up for some marking but thinking of a cup of milo before I start. I'd prefer a cup of tea but Noi is the expert on putting together the cup that cheers and she's still in the land of nod, having stayed up a good deal later than me last night to watch one of her Malay 'dramas'.
10.00
Marking ongoing. Thought of stopping to watch some football highlights, having missed the games last night - we were out with Boon & Mei down Bussorah Street enjoying Indonesian/Thai food - but not that keen on watching Everton equalise. At one time a draw away from home would have been seen as a good result. Not any more. Not even playing any music yet, just trying to get through today's quota of scripts as quickly as possible.
11.00
The missus is now up and I'm about to get some breakfast. It's a good time to break from the marking which has featured a run of rather frustrating scripts. Odd idea: there are students who, consciously or unconsciously, create barriers in their written work to make it difficult for teachers to make helpful corrections, or even to actually read what's there. One such barrier is simply at the level of handwriting. The script is designed not to communicate as it has little of value to say.
12.00
Now fed and watered, I've also been listening to the first music of the day, but with a significant degree of irritation. The irritation has not in any way been related to the music in itself, the rather jolly Il Sogno Suite by Elvis Costello performed by the London Symphony, but to the erratic mode of its delivery. Our ancient stereo system now has reached the point of total unreliability and seems to take a wicked joy in pretending to play a CD then suddenly skipping all over the place. Yesterday Noi and I went to Marina Square to a shop that dealt in Bose systems to see if there was something cheap enough that would suit our needs. The salesman pointed us fruitlessly towards some home theatre type stuff saying they didn't do stereo systems as such, but according to the catalogue they've got some CD players that look pretty good to me. Still thinking about this one.
In the meantime fans of Bernstein's West Side Story, especially the dance sequences, would find lots to admire in Elvis's groovy piece. Is there no end to the man's talents?
And now I've got two essays to clear before I can shut up shop for the day and get down to some real living. I may even fall asleep again.
13.00
Just completed the marking for today. Odd fact: I've been marking essays for some thirty years and I still wonder as I'm going through each one, whether my comments, emendations, etc, are doing any good at all. That's why I'm baffled by all these chaps who are so sure how to go about teaching others. It remains a mystery to me.
Now thinking about what to read for the next half an hour or so in order to wind down. It's either Doyle's The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, which I started last night, or something from The New York Review of Books.
14.00
Noi has just gone off to some wedding, taking Rozita and the girls with her. They intend to go jalan jalan at Suntec City afterwards so my presence is not required. I'm home alone until the evening. Noi seems to think I'll use this opportunity to play loud music, which goes to show how well she knows me.
Fifi and Fafa are both up for going to see Cinderella, the Rogers & Hammerstein musical on at the Esplanade, in January. It's good to know that Fifi doesn't yet regard herself as too old for such treats. As far as I understand it, this was the musical they did originally for television and I'm interested to see how it translates to the stage. Having 'done' Carousel and Flower Drum Song (and seen South Pacific, The King and I and Oklahoma in good productions) it's difficult to be other than an admirer of the dynamic duo, especially of Richard Rogers's contribution. I suspect I'd even enjoy The Sound of Music on stage and, no matter how sugary they'd got by then, can you imagine better tunes? These guys really knew their craft.
Reading update - thanks to The New York Review of Books I'm now just that little bit better informed on: bipolar disorder, Emily Dickinson and hummingbirds, the exploitation of low-wage workers in the US, and how the English are viewed by American foreign correspondents (not well), or one of them at least.
15.00
Sleep update - no extra zzzz's yet, but could be on their way. Reading The Woman Who Walked Into Doors. Note perfect, but I've come to expect that of Doyle. I'm a bit puzzled over Paula's utterly negative experiences at the beginning of secondary school though. The disenchantment is convincing and moving, but I can't figure if there's an implication of a somewhat distorted view of the school. Is Paula reflecting something about herself, her disillusion? Could the teachers really have been that bad? I mean, I was aware of bad teaching back at Rawmarsh, and being in one of the bottom classes I suppose you were more likely to get that, but there were a fair number of excellent teachers and even the most hopeless of the kids seemed to recognise that. Were things worse back in the early seventies, in Ireland? I can't see it, somehow, and I've just realised that I was teaching by 1977. But Doyle was a teacher (pretty much exactly contemporary with myself), so he should know.
16.00
Dozed briefly whilst listening to the opening of Tippett's The Ice Break (not a good choice as the need to follow the libretto prevents uncluttered attention) but woke to welcome back the ladies who've decided to change out of their finery into civilian garb before going on their shopping expedition.
17.00
Without really intending to I just watched a bit of tv. I was setting up a recording of something for Noi, who's now out again, when I caught a little bit of Jon Stewart on The Daily Show skewering the loony right of America with a trenchant bit of schtick on the Real America vs the Fake America. It was hilarious and angry at the one and the same time. But I do wonder if ten years from now we'll see the rise of fascism in the US as quite so funny.
18.00
Have made significant progress with Doyle and wondering about picking up something else by way of secondary reading. The immediate intention is to play some music though. Loud.
19.00
Revisited the past just now with a bit of prog rock, namely Gentle Giant's Octopus from the halcyon days of 1972. Actually the only Gentle Giant album I owned in their heydays was their first, Acquiring The Taste, which I vaguely liked but wasn't exactly in love with. After that I didn't bother. Big mistake. They had greater range and more genuine imagination than people like ELP who I was listening to, though with increasing disaffection, up to the great punk breakthrough.
Now sort of reading Terry Eagleton's Literary Theory: An Introduction which I bought last week. My copy went missing when I left it in the UK. It's the only book related to literary theory that I ever felt was genuinely worth reading. He genuinely clarifies where others gleefully obfuscate (he manages to be funny in places!) and there's a real feeling for some kind of democratic value in the reading of literature that I can warm to. I've got the anniversary edition, it now being a quarter of a century since it was first published, which has a readable preface pointing out that fashions have moved on beyond theory. Oh joy.
I'm sort of reading it in the sense that I'm taking it very slowly indeed, not exactly to savour the contents, simply to ensure I understand at least half of what's going on.
Also dipping into my new Collected Poems of Robert Lowell which I bought at the same time as Literary Theory. I have a selected in KL from years ago which did survive its sojourn in the UK but this is the first time I've realised the full range of a poet who became a central figure in my reading in my early twenties. I was introduced to him via Mailer's portrait in the early chapters of Armies of the Night which is a great, if in some ways unreliable, place to start. The Collected is fabulously chunky and clunky and comes with an excellent notes at the back.
20.00
The missus is back and we're off out soon to eat yong tau fu at Geylang. Hoping to be back in time to catch some of The Simpsons Movie which is showing in an hour. Have decided not to watch the big game tonight. I'll watch the replay tomorrow.
21.00
Now couch potatoing to the best of America. You elected me to lead, not to read. How can a nation capable of producing The Simpsons be serious over Ms Palin as a candidate for high office?
22.20
Monitoring the hours finally broke down due to the surpassing excellence of The Simpsons Movie. Many laughs, loud and long. Now about to wind up the day with a good murder (Midsomer, recorded) still resisting the temptation to watch the footie, though I know that at this point in time Liverpool are up 0 - 1. Also about to phone Mum.
Great day.
This week being in the company of the various damaged souls inhabiting Craiglockhart War Hospital in Pat Barker's Regeneration has done me a tremendous amount of good. At the simplest level it's been a reminder that the pressures I face are of utter insignificance compared with those extremes of human experience I was born, luckily, not to face (well, so far, at least.)
Oddly and appropriately it's the kind of novel that works well when read in a fragmented fashion. To some degree it's built out of intense cameos, underpinned with strong thematic links, particularly the metaphor of the pain of 'regeneration', so, though it hangs together with assurance, it invites a kind of dipping into. I finished it this morning, finding myself surprised (and horrified) by the scenes of Yealland's electrical treatment of the soldiers in the final segment simply on the level of not seeing anything like this coming. But I did have a problem with the use of real life people as characters. (I can't imagine the descendants of Dr Yealland have been too thrilled by his portrayal in the novel.) This is not so much on moral grounds as on the simple fact that no matter how powerful the insights of the writer are they cannot possibly do justice to the complexities of what really did take place, yet the frame is that of the traditional novel with an omniscient narrator. It's almost as if too much is being claimed. For example, the scenes between Owen and Sassoon have an odd charm and powerful readability, but there's the ghost of a bad Hallmark movie lurking around them.
What works brilliantly is the slantwise approach to the central concern of the war and war in general. Detachment and intensity. Sometimes distance is the only way to get close enough to say something worth saying.
I'd like to have uploaded a couple of pictures of the nosh in all its splendour, but Blogger isn't obliging. Maybe next time.
I feel intensely vulnerable and keep thinking I don't think I could cope if I were in a fight. This is odd since it's quite some years since I fought anyone. I'm also aware of how easily irritated I feel once I've crossed the ten-minute standing barrier.
I am recognising an old companion - this is the chronic pain that dogged me relentlessly for some five or six years. I'm hoping this time it's here on a fleeting visit, but aware there's some possibility my optimism may be unfounded. But that's not too bad - this is a faint shadow of the real suffering that dogs so many unfortunates and I cannot count myself amongst their number. So this is by way of an acknowledgement and greeting, old friend.
There's a kind of quiet heroism in just keeping going. And imagine how that translates for those who have so little to keep going for.
