Dramatic Developments

15 Ramadhan 1430

Enjoyed a busy evening yesterday at our Drama Camp. We were working on some movement routines and it was interesting to be witness to the distinct development in skills of particular individuals. I'm not sure of the degree to which students recognise this in themselves. I suppose there's a sense in which it must seem to them to come naturally, but this is by no mean necessarily the case.

Meanwhile I'm managing to keep up some kind of routine of prayer and fasting around and inbetween our activities. But it felt odd breaking the fast last night - not quite the usual joy of doing it at home - and despite all my best efforts to remember everything I need to take account of, my poor old memory is being distinctly stretched. This morning I managed to forget to take my medication, only realising the blunder just before the prayer when it was too late. Doh!

Not Quite Routine

14 Ramadhan 1430

10.40

Since my school granted itself an extra holiday today, extending slightly the one week break we will now enjoy between terms, I enjoyed a bit of a lie-in after sahur and the swubuh prayer. Now up and running, and having got a bit of marking done, and listened to a bit of Mozart, and read a bit more of The Holy Qur'an, and bought the newspapers, I'm considering the logistics of breaking the fast this evening at said school - for I will be there and staying overnight for our annual Drama Camp.

The degree to which I become dependent on tried and tested routines in this month of fasting is striking. There are, for example, two morning routines, depending on whether it's a working day or not, each involving its own auto-pilot. At five o'clock it's all down to the brain stem, I'm afraid. Since breaking the fast in the middle of the camp is unusual, to say the least, it's taking a little bit of figuring out.

12.00

Now considering which mosque to go to for Friday Prayers, another change in routine, and how to get there. Originally I was intending to walk to Mesjid Abdul Aleem Siddique, about ten minutes away, but it's been raining and I'm not sure I'll be able to get there in a reasonably dry state. But the parking on the narrow street the mosque is on is dreadful so I don't fancy trying to get a place - unless I set off really early. Mind you, there's still time for the rain to ease.

14.25

Lucky, lucky, lucky. There I was, plodding my way to prayers, and the drizzle had begun. I'd miscalculated just how long it would take to get there - more like a good fifteen minutes - and I still had at least eight minutes to go and there was a distinct sense that the heavens were about to open. A young lady pedestrian, like myself without umbrella, actually started to sprint to get to wherever it was she was going. I began to picture myself arriving at the mosque looking like a drowned rat. And the rain eased. In fact, by the time I went through the gates there was no sign of rain at all. And coming back I enjoyed the bright sunshine.

15.05

Just completed my reading of The Holy Qur'an in Abdullah Yusuf Ali's version. This reading was one that gave me more of an overview of the scripture than I've achieved before, but in other ways it wasn't a great reading. I was going too fast, which goes directly against what The Qur'an instructs you to do in terms of how it needs to be read - essentially slowly and meditatively.

So I'm not going on to the Arberry translation just yet. Rather I'm turning to an interesting little book I got some three years ago entitled Approaching The Qur'an: The Early Revelations. This is by Michael Sells, a professor of religion at a college in Pennsylvania, and it gives very close readings of some of the shorter suras with lots of information about the Arabic. It's really intended as an introduction to Islam for western readers but it's so well done there's lots to gain from it. Close and slow reading is what I need now.

Oh, and I'm also reading Farid Ud-Din Attar's The Conference of the Birds in the very fine Penguin translation, so there's lots to be getting on with. Now I've got to decide what to take along with me for the camp as I usually have the chance to get at least a little bit of reading done. Noi is planning a flask of tea for me, amongst other goodies, so it looks like I won't starve.

Influences

13 Ramadhan 1430

In that back issue of Rolling Stone I mentioned getting cheap in KL there's a great article on Dylan (who features on the cover - wonderful mugshot) entitled Bob Dylan's America. It's by a professor at some university in Houston called Doug Brinkley and it's both well-written and neatly constructed. Of course, with a centre based on the wit and wisdom of the Bobster it has a head start over most other subjects.

And that made me think of something that seems oddly characteristic of Dylan at most of the stages of his career. He's one of those artists who seems to exude a (mostly) benign general influence over all sorts of people around him. Consider The Byrds, The Band. I'm not claiming that the influence goes only one way and that Mr Zimmerman is somehow a superior model for all those him. Rather he sits at the centre of something that both draws in others and by a mysterious alchemy unleashes something in them.

I read something somewhere recently from a critic claiming that Dylan is and always has been overrated, but that he's brilliant at selling versions of himself. I think there's a degree of truth there, except that the whole idea of rating his special kind of greatness just is inappropriate. You don't rate artists who are simply forces of nature in and of themselves.

In the same issue there was an oddly contrasting article about some girl who is a star, or so they say, of pornographic movies. (I'd have preferred a bit more about music in the issue I must say.) I found this piece disturbing in a number of ways, but primarily because of its insistence on being non-judgmental about the kid's chosen profession, as if it were just another option in the great supermarket of modern careers. The problem inherent in the article is that this girl is obviously deeply angry, deeply hurt about something, yet speaks as if from some kind of wisdom.

She's obviously in need of some kind of therapy, but appears to be held up as someone who might reasonably be emulated. The writer, a female, seems to recognise this, but is way too cool to spell out the obvious. And so we get writing that is fundamentally deceptive, rather than pushing forward to some kind of truth or insight. It is also strikingly without any sense of compassion. The 'actress' is simply an interesting case, in a way that's reminiscent of pornography itself - the individual being stripped of what makes them human and reduced to a kind of parodic puppet strung on one essential desire, all other strings being cut away.

It's this sort of thing that makes many Muslims puzzled that they are the targets of a critique over the position of women in Islam from those whose treatment and view of women seem deeply irrational. This is not to say that the Islamic world should not open itself to criticism on this issue (generally it can and does) but its critics would do well to turn their gaze upon themselves.

Shingled

12 Ramadhan 1430

Brother-in-law John rang last night with the news that Mum has got shingles. Since she sounded hunky dory on Sunday, when I last rang, this came as quite a surprise, a very unwelcome one.

I think it's floored me, she said just now, when I phoned her. Hardly surprisingly, shingles can bring even a big chap right down to earth - and these are clearly extremely nasty ones, wrapping themselves round her right shoulder. I don't think she's really slept for a couple of nights. She's also having problems remembering when to take the tablets the doctor prescribed. (The doctor was round right away - thank goodness for the National Health!)

So it's bad. But it could be worse. And she's an incredibly resilient lady. Not on the floor yet, by any means.

A Kind of Perfection

11 Ramadhan 1430

In accounts of recent reading I keep forgetting to mention Martin Lings's Collected Poems, a lovely little book I bought at Wardah Books the last time we were there. There are only some twenty poems all told, and I've been deliberately eking them out since the beginning of Ramadhan, savouring each with plentiful re-readings. I've still got about eight to go.

This is the sort of stuff that's not likely to get into an anthology of twentieth century poetry. It reads more like something from the nineteenth I suppose, with its deliberate archaisms and lack of the slightest attempt to be in any sense modern, yet I think there's a muscularity to the verse that makes it of its time. The opening sonnets are beautifully crafted and one of the pleasures of the whole collection is one's sense that this is consciously finely wrought stuff, deliberately beautiful for its own sake - or rather that of the Creator who is so often invoked. This is a writer so utterly certain of what he is about that the reader feels a kind of confidence in entering into the poems as places to feel at home in. The familiar world of disturbance and doubt appears banished in a kind of perfect garden.

One thing I've learnt in the last few years is not to care or pay any real attention to the notion of reputation or ranking where poetry is concerned. All that matters is the depth of experience of the poem, and I've found that in some unlikely places. And this seems to apply to this collection particularly. A few years ago I don't think I would have considered it worth my attention simply because it doesn't seem to have had that of too many others.

I must say I was sorely tempted to buy, when in Wardah Books, a CD set of a reading of Lings's biography of the Prophet, peace be upon him, Muhammad, his life based on the earliest sources. Now I'm wondering why I didn't.

Togetherness

10 Ramadhan 1430

Hakim, Intan and their rapidly sprouting daughter, Zahira, came round to break the fast with us yesterday. They'd bought with them some particularly tasty satay from a stall at Marine Parade and this supplemented a sumptuous repast prepared by the missus (yes, the language is cliched, but it sort of does justice to the occasion) made up of stuff we got at the new Geylang Market earlier in the afternoon. A quick list: sea bass (too much, so we gave a whole cooked one to our guests); crabs; epok epok; some layered kueh and the ricey green one; brinjal in a sort of red chillie sauce; a mix of green beans, carrot bits with the odd little prawn, done in garlic, I think; plain rice; and lashings of hot, sweet tea. As far as I remember. We did justice to it all, I assure you.

There was so much, I neglected to put on the table the nice little chocolates one of my students had given me ahead of Teachers' Day, which was actually today.

And that was another opportunity for a kind of togetherness. A quirkily Singaporean occasion it's difficult to imagine it taking off in an English school. I'm now loaded with little (and some not- so-little) gifts and cards and goodies. Enough calories for the remainder of fasting month certainly. The trouble so many students go to is very touching - their generosity deep and real. As an aspect of the on-going War on Capitalism I might add that I'd rather get the contents of the table top in the living room (where I temporarily put today's booty) than a banker's bonus for wrecking the economy.

Extended Reading

9 Ramadhan 1430

Spent a small part of the day reading one of the back issues of The Word, the magazine, well two actually, I bought cheap when we were last in KL. This, my reading thereof, was prompted in part by the fact that on a visit to Parkway Parade yesterday evening, the first time we've eaten out this Ramadhan, I bought the latest copy of The New York Review of Books, laving me a little backed up as I've not yet completed the previous July edition. The material accumulating is not exactly threatening, it's all very readable stuff, but I don't want to fall too behind and feel like I'm throwing money away for the sake of it.

I realised when I read what I'd written in This Place last year about the edition of The Word I picked up then that I hadn't been terribly impressed, and I feel something similar today. To some degree the magazine is informative, particularly with regard to certain kinds of music I enjoy, but I'm not sure I need to know all this stuff. I get enough hot recommendations from the limited sources I browse to have more than enough ideas for what to listen to and who needs much more than that? The rest is just talk. Mind you, having said that, the free CD that comes with each magazine is a pleasure to listen to, and I now find myself set on getting hold of The Decembrists's last album as a result of enjoying The Rake's Song, and the article on the band in the magazine.

I also greatly enjoyed the series of short articles on bands associated with the Island record label, which was undoubtedly my favourite label as a kid. That turned into a bit of a nostalgia fest for me, but I rarely indulge in that regard so I don't think any great harm was done.

But it's the numerous articles that try to be funny about stuff that's current that tend to wear me down. I'm not terribly interested in what folk deem to be the latest thing to watch or listen to, and find it difficult to see the point of a piece that reviews dull documentaries in order to show how incisive the writer can be about other people's dull documentaries.

Mind you, this may also simply reflect my middle-aged lack of any sense of humour whatsoever.

Bookish

8 Ramadhan 1430

0840

I'm off to do a workshop for gifted kids who are interested in Literature, I think aged 15 - 16, at a different school from my usual. Did something similar this time last year and got a heap of book tokens for my trouble and, it seems, will receive the same today. Intending to share them with Fifi (who says she doesn't have time to read) and Fafa.

The preparation has involved dipping into Lawrence's Collected Poems and Hughes's Collected Poems For Children, a highly satisfactory way to spend one's time.

13.50

Now back from my workshop having had a thoroughly good time. When work isn't work it can be very pleasant indeed. One of the kids pointed out something about the end of one of Hughes's poems on weasels I'd not noticed before. A little bit more light entered the world.

Is there another body of work in English to equal the sheer verve, variety and charm of Hughes's animal poems, especially those written overtly for children?

17.35

Reading the poetry mentioned above has been a delightful diversion from my main, Islamic-themed reading of the month. I'm now just over half-way through The Holy Qur'an in Abdullah Yusuf Ali's version. In this quick reading I'm getting a sense of the overwhelming, relentless, pounding power of the scripture. I suppose I'd say a sense of its momentum, except that it has none, being essentially meditative, unmoving. It leads nowhere save to itself, yet again. Repetition is not so much a device as an essential, yet in subtle ways it doesn't quite repeat. New contexts give lines new shades of meaning. Abdullah Yusuf Ali's notes are extraordinarily useful in this respect. He picks up beautifully on new contexts.

The other book I've got going, now about two-thirds of the way through, is Annemarie Schimmel's Mystical Dimensions of Islam and I must say I can't praise it too highly. This one delivers in every way. It's comprehensive and scholarly without getting bogged down in its topic. The clarity and straightforwardness of the writing is exemplary. When she's enthusiastic over a certain character or idea she says so; when she has her doubts, which you sense are well-founded, then you get them. She celebrates, she criticises - with enough of the original sources usually to put the reader in a reasonable position to decide for themselves.

I've just finished the chapter on the Sufi brotherhoods and this is a good example of her sense of balance. It's touchingly sympathetic at the beginning, especially when she's looking at how fundamental the idea of simply helping others, being in community, putting their interests before your own has been in Sufi thought - not necessarily the most obvious development of a mystical view of things. Yet there's plenty of assured criticism of the degree of corruption, sometimes simply financial, that has bedeviled some of the Sufi orders over the centuries.

Dates

7 Ramadhan 1430

In keeping with tradition, when we break our fast there are always dates on the table. This is a recorded practice of the Prophet, peace be upon him, and a remarkably astute one. The dates provide the perfect natural sugar rush the body craves as well as being wonderfully tasty. Oddly, uncannily, so much associated with the Prophet regarding diet is in line with modern thought - his advice to eat to the point you were satisfied but not actually full being a case in point.

But back to the dates - a wonderful subject to consider in these last few minutes before actually breaking the fast. The ones we've started with this year are the Medjool variety, which seem to be quite well known. They are quite large, succulent and very meaty. The term meaty might seem a touch inappropriate but it really is the only way I can do justice to the full, heavy texture of the dates. A single date is quite a snack in itself. Three, my usual number, feels a bit over the top but they're essentially healthy so I feel I'm getting away with something.

I can hardly believe this of myself but there was a time I didn't eat dates at all. I can't recall ever having one before coming to Singapore, and I think I found them slightly off-putting when I first began to munch. Now I'd take them ahead of chocolate any day.

And it's nearly time. Yowzaa!

Excess

6 Ramadhan 1430

Recently we've been receiving another three channels on cable - all associated with the BBC. One of them, called BBC Lifestyle, has rapidly become something of a favourite with Noi. She's watching a programme called Masterchef at this very moment. The channel generally seems to run a number of entertaining series revolving around food and its preparation. And there's also a fair number of programmes featuring people who've messed up their health and homes and are seeking to put things right - the sort of thing when they get themselves another ten years of life by following a sensible health and fitness routine for eight weeks or so.

Although I can't say I avidly watch this stuff, I don't find it objectionable and can happily watch along with the missus. I suppose this is because such programmes are basically talking sense and their optimism that people can change for the better helps restore balance to the customary cynical blight that so often characterises modern life. The trouble is, I can't help but nurture the vague suspicion that the folk we see turning their lives around are the exception rather than the rule and many of those who would benefit from watching and imitating don't make this kind of thing their regular viewing, or, if they do, manage to watch without doing anything about it.

But what has struck me very forcibly of late has been the intimate connection between these lives gone wrong and the sheer excess in which our world invites us (almost too mild a word) to participate. Too much food, too much drink, too much stuff to buy and hoard. And how this, in turn, is connected to an obvious lack of discipline, usually a straightforward, painfully obvious laziness. Houses are left in a mess because it's just too much trouble to clean up and get things straight.

I'm sounding very strict and uncaring here, not to mention downright uncharitable, and I mean to sound that way. It's fascinating how much time is spent in such programmes affirming the good qualities of those involved as if the only way they can behave sensibly is by being told how wonderful they are for doing so. This is all very silly and I think it points to just how dangerous all the excess which undermines us is. It makes us lose sight of the fundamental and obvious.

I recommend fasting, but then I would say that, wouldn't I?