Amazing Weariness

I've been sleeping well recently, and especially in the last few days. So how is that my weariness sometimes amazes me? Further evidence, if it were needed, of the depredations of old age. For some reason my left knee has decided not to function adding to my general sense of all not being terribly well. Oh, and I'm sort of sniffling with a semi-sore throat that's been around for over a week now. But apart from that, I'm pretty well, thanks.

Devastating

We decided to enjoy a Chinese New Year afternoon at downtown KLCC and it looked like the rest of KL elected to follow suit. It was crowded to the point that we couldn't even get parking on our usual level (where we've had no trouble finding a place for twelve years or so.) I spent an hour or so fairly fruitlessly in the big Kinokuniya there and Noi went jalan jalan solo, as is her wont.

The big mistake I made was in exiting the bookstore a little earlier than I'd intended and completing The Road, which I just happened to be carrying with me in case of such an emergency, whilst awaiting The Missus. The ending of McCarthy's novel is just as devastating as everything else in it, only more so. It sort of took the top of my head off, taking me to anywhere but where I was. This was not wise, considering the hyper-public nature of the location. I felt like I'd had an out-of-body experience of the most disturbing kind. Fortunately I'd regained equilibrium by the time Noi arrived, but I'm not going to try that again.

A Bit Of A Contrast

Just finished the Elvis Costello memoir that looked so beguiling when I first spotted it in hardback. A great helter-skelter of a read. The best memoir from a musician I've read so far, excepting, of course, the Bobster's Chronicles which seems to me on quite a different level from anything else in the genre. Mind you, I've not read the stuff from Neil Young, Keith Richard and Bruce Springsteen yet, so maybe Elvis will have some competition there. It'll take a lot to beat the depth of the material on his family, though, especially his extraordinary dad. I vaguely knew about him, the father that is, performing with the Joe Loss Orchestra, but never realised the depth of involvement that implied with the making of music and the impact of this on his son.

I recently made a start on Cormac McCarthy's The Road. A strange contrast to the muso memoir. One with the words and memories pouring out, generally with unstoppably garrulous enthusiasm - especially when it dealt with music and musicians; the other with words harshly chiselled from a place of utter bleakness. Not for the faint-hearted, but then McCarthy never is.

On Not Stopping

We arrived in KL yesterday just before midnight, having survived an epic jam on the Malaysian side of Tuas. After that things were reasonably plain sailing, with nary a jam in sight on arrival in the capital. Opening our door we were treated to an unreasonably but seasonably loud barrage of fire-crackers from the valley below, and from somewhere on our hill itself. Not the sort of thing you get exposed to in well-regulated Singapore.

And with the new year - or one of the three new years I get to enjoy these days - comes the question of the renewal of this blog which began just ten years ago, on 27 January 2007. I thought of it then as a ten-year project with three aims in mind, the first being to act as a quick way of letting friends in their own far places know I was still alive and kicking and give a rough idea of what I was up to if they happened to drop by. Sadly at least two folks who did so have gone to their long homes in that time - a sort of reminder of the relevance of my intention.

The second aim was to see what happened to my voice when it sounded not in pages intended for my own perusal but was unleashed on the wider world. Well, it changed, in marked and interesting ways. Funnily enough I much prefer the public voice of this space to the private version; and, equally strangely, I suppose, I generally find it oddly unfamiliar when I look back over what I've posted.

My third aim was related to my work. It has always seemed odd to me that English teachers are not seen as being required to practise a crucial aspect of their craft in the same way that we expect music teachers to make music, and dance teachers to themselves dance. The on-line public context affords some opportunity for students to read the matter herein expressed, if they find out where it is, and a chance to read what I produce with the same critical eye I bring to their own efforts. Fair's fair, after all.

Anyway, ten years is a quite a long time, and it was vaguely always my intention to let this project run for a decade and then see if it was worth continuing. In that time we've been told the Conversation (whatever that is) has moved on from the on-line blog to Facebook (now equally passé, I'm guessing) and instagram and twitter and other platforms I've never heard of (I'm pleased to say.) I can't say I've ever built up a sizable audience, and have precious few 'followers' - for which I am deeply thankful. And it's the almost complete irrelevance of this Place to the bigger world which has convinced me to have a go at keeping it going for another decade, if the mercy of time allows. Plus, I suppose the original aims are still valid.

To be honest, I enjoy writing it too much to stop.

An Anniversary

Odd coincidence. Today auspiciously marks the eve of the Lunar New Year, and we'll be on the road to the deep north to enjoy the break in Maison KL. At the same time it happens to mark a full ten years since In A Far Place had its Beginnings. Now considering what lies on the road ahead, and if any ending is in sight.

The Relevance Of Irrelevance

When you weigh it all up, this world, and all the others, visible and invisible, are all connected, one way or another. A conspiracy theory on the grandest scale possible. And with that somewhat weighty thought I'm now off to connect with my bed. Good night, all!

The Irrelevance Of Relevance

Just adding on a bit to yesterday's post. After writing it I found myself thinking back to when I first began teaching, some time in the last century, long ago in the last millennium, and how I used to get the heebie-jeebies when various worthies in the world of education told me that I needed to teach books in the classroom - novels and short stories they meant - that kids found relevant to their own lives, which they could relate to. Basically the idea was that if you were a working class kid from Manchester you only wanted to read about other working class kids from Manchester, and anything else was so outside your experience that you'd never be able to make sense of it so it would bore you.

Now I suppose this sounds vaguely plausible and has a primitive logic about it. Except if you happened to be a working class kid from Manchester, as I was, and knew it wasn't true. Actually I wanted to read about pretty anywhere else than Manchester, finding it, and myself as part of it, pretty dull generally and very much worth escaping from. It was only when I got a lot older and a good deal more sophisticated that I realised that even the most quotidian of existences is utterly fascinating. (I need to thank James Joyce for that lesson.)

As a young teacher when I read novels with kids in classrooms my prime aim was to take them somewhere else other than where they were to escape the prisons of place and self. I like to think it usually worked. It certainly helped me survive in the classroom since it invariably kept everyone quiet.

Something Relevant

Am thinking about a lecture I'll need to give in May at a Language & Literature Seminar we're arranging. Have got a title: The Textuality of Bob Dylan, which I really like. The problem now is that I'm not sure what I mean by textuality. But it should be fun finding out.

It seems that a key theme of the whole seminar is the notion of 'staying relevant'. Since I have a horror of the very notion of relevance, having a taste for the mightily irrelevant, it's going to be tricky to make anything I say fit in. Dylan, I reckon, has stayed relevant through a mixture of being splendidly himself and continually trying to find out who he is. But I'm not sure that's going to go down well with folk yearning to discover what it takes to  find out what everyone wants in order to be the same as everyone else.

In Error

What was I thinking a few posts ago when I renamed the esteemed film director Roman Polanski? Not very much, I suppose is the answer. I spotted the error just now and supplied the necessary correction, but left the original moment of stupidity (with a line through it) for all to admire (and because it amused me as well as worrying me.)

Mistakes are fascinating, aren't they? Today I've not felt well so the whole day has felt like one big mistake, but some days just do. Still, things got done which is just about as much as anyone can hope for, even on the best of days.

Catching A Breath

On this, the anniversary of Dad's death, I've been thinking of how fortunate it is to be able to breathe easy - something denied to Jack Connor for the final years of his life. I suppose that's why I half-thought of Dad's leaving us as a kind of release, despite how relatively young he was.

This isn't something to dwell on, but it's something to remember.