Hermitologies

A Trivial Sidenote

2012-01-18T16:52:00.005-08:00

Today I was looking for the piece of paper on which I had written the caramel brownies recipe, and found on its reverse the answers which I had scribbled down (based on what I know without looking things up, though looking things up is really the crux of the quiz) for this year's [Link in PDF] King William's College Quiz. Of course I mentioned having looked up the solutions for the quiz in the last post, since they have come out already, but hadn't known what my precise 'score' was.

Here are the questions which happened to coincide with my (sometimes peripheral, having only perused roughly a solitary page each of 1.9. and 4.1.) book-reading over the years:

1.9. In the year 1911: who silently portrayed Marguerite Gauthier?

4.Which tale or tales:
1. is all about Hester's badge of shame?
8. tells of how Dick and the outlaw dress up as friars?

7.7. in which Study did Sir James, disappointingly, marry Celia
instead of her sister?

8.10. what is essentially cheese on toast?

11.4. who received details of the School of Pain from her invalid
cousin?

12. Unmask:
5. Alexander Thomson
9. Newsom

The answers may be found here.

The Asinine Eyewitness

2012-01-17T09:55:00.009-08:00

This morning Greek was a little boring, except perhaps to a person who considers the replacement of proper nouns as indirect objects by pronouns, and the conjugation of irregular verbs in their 3rd person plural active forms, wildly stimulating. I also came, er, a trifle late.

In the Islamic Studies lecture, the professor went through the divisions of the Muslim religio-polity into the (I may have invented some of these names) Hassanids, Ismailites, Nizarites, Idrissids, Qaramites, etc., which was like a laundry list. He runs through the groups so evenhandedly and factually that just when I have come to think, yes, that sect sounds like a right crowd of crazypantses, a moment later he mentions something about the group that sounds reasonable. Besides, from one end of a sentence to another, I've mostly already forgotten which imam they believed was the last legitimate one, who was descended from which uncle or cousin or associate of Muhammad, whether they leaned toward the Sunni or Shi'ite, who was the de facto leader of the group, and where the group lived. And I still don't know the difference between Sunni and Shi'a!

A bright spot were the Suetoniusesque antics of Al Hakim, caliph of Egypt when the Fatimids were governing it in opposition to the caliphate in Baghdad. (Apparently the Fatimids did not use that name to refer to themselves; it was bestowed upon them by outsiders whose reference to the Fatimids' veneration of Fatima — a woman! — was intended to approximate the label of "Girlie Men.") The Wikipedia page is comparatively dull. As the professor summed it up, this gentleman was rather a hardliner but in a flip-flopping manner, in that he forbade things and then un-forbade them. He forbade wine, which is not so abstruse given the Quranic traditions; but also forbade trade between Christians and Jews with Muslims, women from going out at all (but the Wiki only mentions that they weren't allowed to go out uncovered), and men from going out at night so as to prevent nocturnal hijinks, besides which he burned down a church or temple but then felt sorry and tried in vain to rebuild it. Thanks perhaps to the bad offices of his elder sister, he went out for one of his nighttime strolls in the desert one night and didn't come back; all that was found later were pieces of his bloody clothes. I thought the professor said that pieces of the caliph were found too, but may have misremembered that; at any rate, Wiki also places an abandoned donkey at the sanguinary scene.

The hashish-fuelled Assassins sounded interesting, too, but I'll presumably read up on them some other time. The Crusades are coming up in the lectures, and I admit that I'm looking forward to hearing about them, though most of the other warfare mentioned in this course has been hugely depressing.

Over the weekend I played the piano a lot and watched bits of the Golden Globe awards and even a crime show or two (not German, but American, since I like my crime unrealistic and full of shiny high technical production values), and checked my partially (3?) correct answers for this year's King William's College quiz, much to my content.

By the way, I have my Blackboard password now and everything's fine. Regarding the post below.)

In Which The Student Throws A Tantrum

2012-01-07T10:43:00.008-08:00

N.B.: The following is rather self-absorbed and correspondingly boring.

On Wednesday evening I attended the philosophy lecture, which was about the question of what constitutes Self. What the lecture and the two others have proven is that I do explain the cosmos to myself in religious terms — which is comforting because I haven't been too stalwart of a defender either of religion or of agnosticism when I thought I was agnostic — and that it feels comfortable and, I guess, elastic enough to embrace all sorts of explanations.

Thursday was very long, with over three hours of Greek and one hour and forty-five minutes of my History and Culture of the Near East seminar and one hour and forty-five minutes of Latin. At the end of the seminar I asked the professor for the password to the online course material, which was evidently a faux pas, since I should have asked for it far earlier. He said that I should ask a fellow student for the password. Anyway, I summed this up as petty obstructionism and, interesting though I find the class, if it is even more difficult to do what I have to do to prepare for a presentation, catch up on readings which I hadn't figured out until that day that we had to do, and then put together material for a ten-to-fifteen page take-home assignment due at the end of February which I found out about by overhearing a classmate mention it to someone else who also didn't know about it, it won't work out. So I scheduled an appointment during the professor's office hours and will put forward the possibility of my dropping the seminar. Partly I am doing this to make it easier on the professor (certainly not for me, because the bureaucracy will most likely be a headache), and partly I admit I feel irritated and inclined to flounce.

In my defense, I had several courses at UBC which had online course materials, and often they were the professor's PowerPoint slides which I was there to see in person at the lecture often enough, and when they held important information this was explicitly brought up in class; so there was some reason for me to think that the maledicted Blackboard access was not such a big deal. As for asking a fellow student for the password, I think I will; but the atmosphere in the seminar itself would seem to indicate that they would be annoyed at me for accosting them and asking them the question — as I mentioned to my parents during my interminable complaints over the past few days, we wouldn't even know each others' names if they weren't written on the handouts which every presenter must distribute to the class in conjunction with their presentations. (And some students have another class together.)

On Friday evening I was still scourging myself with this tempest-in-a-teapot, so I dove into a sea of research for my presentation subject, and kept at it so steadily that, as the French (as far as I remember) say 'I did not see the hour pass,' and then I came late to Latin. (On the other hand, such lateness is not unprecedented, and was in this case exacerbated by the quick consumption of an extraneous bowl of yoghurt before I left, so it can't be blame entirely on scholarly vigour.)

But in the end it is unreasonable for me to expect to be happy at university every single hour of every single academic day, and my grumpiness and infantile impulses to dissolve into a burst of tears and so on are a rather 'clean' form of unhappiness — nothing depressive or guilty (I feel in the end that I might have done something unwise but not wrong). And as far as the seminar goes, even if I drop out on Tuesday, it and the accompanying lecture have given me precisely the kind of detailed material I can use to set forth medieval Islamic society in a future story and to provide a context which could be useful if I set a story in Europe (or Byzantium or Iran) at the same epoch. Which is part of the reason why I want to go to university: to learn to do good research so that I can use it to learn history out of curiosity, find material for stories, better understand the origins of things, and to write thorough and accurate non-fiction. So in the end I think I have it pretty good.

The Return of the Slog

2012-01-02T13:31:00.003-08:00

This evening the academic week began again with one hour and forty-twoish minutes of Latin. Normally, in school and even in university, I spend the entire pedagogical session after the Christmas holidays mentally howling a dirge — of ennui and of fear of being despised by my fellow students and of discomfiture at the impending essay and project deadlines — as the deprived trees outside weep rain and hail and snow in sympathy. But this year I feel surprisingly unanxious and unbothered in face of the resumption of classes.

On the other hand much of the Latin class today whooshed over my head. As long as the Future I form looks like amabo I know where I'm at, but the passive forms and infinitive moods and the sinister transformation of ferre into tollere or whatever are an ineffable nuisance. Fortunately the verb tollere is at least familiar from the Lord's Prayer, where I always thought at first glimpse that it meant tolling of a bell somehow until I realized that no bell pops up in the text, and that I have never heard of a ringing lamb or of resonating sins of the world. We finished translating a truly gripping account wherein the Roman sheeple are confident at last that they will be saved from Catiline's vile and predatory schemes for the seizure of the reins of state.

Then the professor dismissed the class after we had completed what she considered a very apposite exercise, wherein we had to identify the future verb forms within a list of words, and determine a saying of Cicero's which was spelled out by the first letters of the verbs. The answer: Nihil agere delectat, which roughly translates to "It is enjoyable to do nothing."

On the way home the sky gave way for a gauzy glimpse of the moon (in an awkward transitional phase) and a star, like a mole, beside it; and a presumptive helicopter. On the ground I much admired the dark shapes of the mistletoe in the trees, the puddles, and the Christmas decorations which had been set up around the houses since I last visited. Somehow it made the houses seem like stations along the face of an Advent calendar, with the house numbers as the dates. There was a bang or wheeeeee of firecracker or firework here and there, too.

On the news ticker in the U-Bahn it was proudly announced that Berlin has 30,000 more tourist beds than New York. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, one of the major cultural centres of the world!!!

New Year's in Truly Exhausting Detail

2012-01-01T05:03:00.014-08:00

For New Year's Eve we had wieners, potato salad emulating my godmother's recipe (potatoes, pickles, bacon, green apple, parsley, and this year fried onion), divers pickles on the side, two bowls of punch (mineral water, canned mandarin slices and peach pieces, Sekt, white wine and tonic water), and a bottle of Sekt to open at the turn of midnight.

This year the fireworks and firecrackers seemed more subdued and the streets emptier than ordinary. Besides the usual taxis and the lone car and a bus which ran the gauntlet of the artillery in the sulfurous haze, the passage of firetrucks and police cars seemed more noticeable. So it was a strangely sad New Year's.

I stayed up late into the night and woke up again after eleven, in time for the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Concert on television.

***

This year the conductor is Mariss Jansons, and I had the impression that, coming hypothetically from Amsterdam and moving toward Vienna, he landed somewhere in mid-Germany with the programming and the style in which he rendered Strauss. There was besides less Strauss than in some years; even Tchaikovsky made an appearance. There were many medleys — later also of Carmen — and I was inclined to be rather frowny-faced about those, especially since though I may have been too sleepy to identify it correctly I thought I heard in one of them that string opus of Haydn's which became Our national anthem, reinforcing what I thought were Anschluss-y associations.

As for the concert hall, the moderator informed us that the old wall paintings have been uncovered and, whether unrelatedly or not, their dark brown and cream were theme tones this year. The lighting seemed less severe than in past years, not as glitzily gold. The flowers were red and white this year, white lilies and red roses and white Gerbera daisies, with variations into orangey and yellowy ranunculus. On the one hand I detest the pink and red combination of past years and so am glad to have been spared it, presume that more intricate colour combinations might not appear well on film and that perhaps the range of flowers which could stand up to the physical demands of the role is limited, rather like the starry effect which intensely coloured flowers can have against an indeterminate background of almost black evergreens, and besides have never had anything nice to say about the flower arrangements at these concerts. On the other hand I dislike asparagus fern extremely, there was an anthurium which fortunately appeared only briefly and though it had a white base and a blush-red stamen looked surprisingly more tasteful than the commoner tints, and the red and white had a mediocre wedding banquet effect.

But the true horror of this year's concert was in subverting it into an unsubtle and unoriginal, romance-themed commercial for the Vienna tourist board.

***

I missed the opening of the concert, since during that interval I was still thinking of nobly forgoing the usual course of watching the gimmickry, taking notes, sharpening a quill into a deadly point and dipping it in bile, and then rendering the spectacle in print for the cruel amusement of others — and instead concentrating on listening to the music. That noble resolve did not last long.

During the first half of the concert, we were introduced to the Vienna Boys' Choir, who were participating for I think the announcer said the fifth time and who seemed to have to scream-sing to be heard in the hall. Besides Austria's president Heinz Fischer and Horst Seehofer (a right-wing German politician, who looks in my lefty opinion like a smug overgrown college football player), one was relieved to glimpse the actress Julie Andrews in fine Queen-of-Genovia fettle in a balcony-box in the audience.

***

I WAS especially grateful, however, for my two or three matutinal glasses of punch when we were subjected to The Intermission. It began subtly enough with a cheesy scene of musicians from the Philharmonic fake-playing a series of music from different classical composers in the bright sun in front of (or on top of, etc., in all of the permutations of the pedagogical French ditty "Sur, sous, dans") a series of tourist lodestones. Then there was a little girl who was awkwardly being 'pulled up' into the air by a red balloon above them (N.B.: profound metaphor expressing something something inspiriting and elevating, indeed ebullient, effect of music and culture and Viennesedom upon the psyche), never truly soaring due to obligatory safety harness in which the child actress was presumably anticking on a soundstage in front of a green screen, so that the range of motion stayed well within children's pop-up book pull-tab capacities.

But the heroine of the monstrosity was an enthusiastic young Tourist Everywoman with bounding antigravitational hair, glaringly pink top and a similarly skintight white skirt which curved well in at the bottom-cheeks. Since I am firstly oblivious to clothes in ordinary contexts, secondly oblivious to people's physiques, and thirdly straight, the fact that I noticed the skirt says a good deal about this style of sartorial architecture. After being ferried around a weirdly overlit and empty Vienna on the open-air top of a bus alongside possibly Japanese tourists wearing schoolgirl uniforms and making cute gestures with their fingers for the camera (a leap of imagination which does the film production proud), and taking to the air as awkwardly as the Little Girl, she arrives at her hotel at last.

Having checked into a very chic hotel lobby, despite the impediment of nil luggage and ninguno identification, she throws herself upon the mercy of the forthcoming receptionist and on some smartphone or whatever (the director is really "with it"!) displays a photo of a smiling young man, evidently her lost belovèd. The receptionist has sadly not seen this well-groomed individual. So she goes up to her very large and well-furnished and luxurious room, full of self-pity and still devoid of luggage; and to the tune of Débussy's "Claire de lune" (argh) assumes actorly howly-face No. 22 and drags herself around the floor a little. The director industriously demonstrates his incredible contempt for the television viewer by cutting to a shot of the full moon, thereby hitting us over the head with the musical reference with the finesse of a twenty-tonne asteroid crashing into the Mare Orientale. At some point there is also a heart-shaped locket with photos of the heroine's lost belovèd.

The thing is that I have seen one too many teeny romance films involving travel, and can confirm that the Brief (Tourist) Encounter and the Search in a City of Hundreds of Thousands or Millions Plus Tourists For One Person are an incredible cliché. The heroine's bobbing about with an umbrella might be a subtle reference to Mary Poppins, but ends up looking similarly like intellectual property theft, and a later scene in which lots of amateur aeronauts speckle the canopy over a strangely overlit touristy part of Vienna is cribbed from René Magritte. There is also some children's film about a red balloon or something which I never watched, and that song about 99 Luftballons, and an illustration in Winnie the Pooh — in short, there are too many people who have done this balloon or umbrella aloft thing, more sympathetically.

One redeeming aspect of The Monstrosity was a brief (though in its insights not particularly novel) excursion to the Middle East in terms of the music, and to the immigrant population of Vienna in terms of showing street markets, jars of olives, and such. Another redeeming aspect of the Monstrosity was the way the music was played, though I wondered why the musicians who had been hooked into the affair didn't run away screaming from the production; and I thought that it would have been more interesting to hear good folk music performers from the Middle East play the Middle Eastern music, since though the lilt and other characteristic effects were faithfully rendered, it sounded dampened. Besides I was wondering whether this was genuine in its motivations or an attempt to seem more tourist-friendly to the UAE, Qatar, etc.

***

AFTER the intermission came the dancing interludes. It seemed freer and more fluent than ordinary, since I don't like the stiff costumes, doll-like gestures, and the makeup-up-the-wazoo of most years, and the dichotomy of male and female dancers and pairs was not so severe; but the choreography was at times frankly pretty crummy. The costumes the first time around were a caramel colour, or at least the colour of caramel wrappers, and together with the tight pants of the men Papa remarked that they looked quite Bollywood. I thought, not nearly enough. For some reason the main pair of dancers was sniffing each other and I wondered aloud whether the choreographer by any chance bore the surname of St. Bernard (or Basset, or Schnauzer, etc.).

For the Blue Danube waltz (since it's the traditional encore, I anticipate, but still) the costumes were in shades of blue from turquoise through to purple. Ge. astutely observed that it must be in hommage to the waters of the Danube, I thought that the waters are probably not blue but that the title of the waltz indicates that they once were, and Papa and Mama were both underwhelmed and in favour of the monochromatic designs and the less shiny fabrics for instance of Valentino for 2010. What bothered me more was that it was framed as the fantasy of a Young Tourist Couple.

IN "Mac Flecknoe," Dryden's nod to his nemesis and so full of broad insults that I sort of wish that had I known it existed as a child, he writes:

All human things are subject to decay,

And, when Fate summons, monarchs must obey:

This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young

Was call'd to empire, and had govern'd long:

In prose and verse, was own'd, without dispute

Through all the realms of Non-sense, absolute.

This aged prince now flourishing in peace,

And blest with issue of a large increase,

Worn out with business, did at length debate

To settle the succession of the State:

And pond'ring which of all his sons was fit

To reign, and wage immortal war with wit;

Cry'd, 'tis resolv'd; for nature pleads that he

Should only rule, who most resembles me:

Shadwell alone my perfect image bears,

Mature in dullness from his tender years.

Shadwell alone, of all my sons, is he

Who stands confirm'd in full stupidity.

The rest to some faint meaning make pretence,

But Shadwell never deviates into sense.

Some beams of wit on other souls may fall,

Strike through and make a lucid interval

[From Representative Poetry Online, U of Toronto]

If the tourist film at the intermission is Shadwell, the third dance interlude is surely Flecknoe. Inspired by a painting of Gustav Klimt (whose 150th birthday is this year), a pair of ballet dancers begins embraced in a tableau, shrouded in a gilt sleeping bag like a Snuggie. It then parts to dance in a utilitarian white shirt and tan leggings for the gentleman, and the offspring of a brownish medical bandage and of a figure skating costume with a swirl of glitter for the lady. There were several rock-dumb moves in this pas de deux or whatever it is termed — one where the male dancer had to rest on the floor on all fours like a three-toed sloth, one where the dancer would turn the partner's head by grasping their skulls and dishevelling their hair, and others which I have thankfully forgotten. By the end the pair was shrouded in their blankie again for the final tableau; and in the most horrendously cheesy effect ever, the film production faded in a reddish frame to the top and right so that the resemblance to Klimt's red-framed painting was as plain as the nose on one's face. In any case I find the inspiration mildly dubious, since Klimt tip-toes rather close to kitsch.

***

For the Delirium waltz I paid more attention to the music and quite liked it — the Blue Danube Waltz was also a relief to hear since it was unselfconsciously gentle. The piece with the train effects was I thought far too literal. I rather liked it in a later piece when Jansons contributed to the percussion section by having two metal dealies propped up on either side of his podium, which he hit vigorously in tune to the music, looking like he was living out every essentially infantile dictator's dream.

As for the Radetzky March, which is my bugbear, I survived it — in spite of my loving family's decision to join in the clapping just to see me pull my blanket tighter over my head and hear me groan like one of the damned.

At the end of the caboodle, a little sentence at the top of the screen informed us that this programme had contained product placement. . . . No. Kidding.

***

The foregoing text may have contained inaccuracies. Please to forgive.

The Oak Tree, The Holly, and Company

2011-12-26T22:06:00.006-08:00

THOUGH given the last post, one might well expect to hear of one all too well-fed blogger, lying torpid, immobile and generally stretched out (like the boa constrictor in Swiss Family Robinson) in some less frequented corner of our apartment, I have in fact been reasonably much and well employed.

YESTERDAY afternoon uncle N. took the train back to his home, and the rest of the day was exceedingly quiet. I slept into the evening and feasted on turkey and chicken carcass, along with the remaining cranberry sauce; there is plenty of other food, too, so entering the kitchen is still like walking into an idyllic pays de Cocagne (or Schlaraffenland).

AMONG other things, I looked through the repository of writing on my laptop and found rather a lot of nice things, not only poems but also bits of screenplays and the like.

For one thing I wanted to concoct a musical for home performances based on Lord of the Rings; so I wrote a few rhymes to set to preexisting tunes. The fruits of the endeavour are below, and I hope it is all right that I am posting so much of it.

***

I'll sing a lay of the Shire-land
'Midst the calm rolling hillsides of Middle-Earth
Where all the view that one could command
Spoke of peace and of plenty — no sorrow; much mirth.

For hobbits are a tranquil folk,
Smallish and roundish and fond of a joke,
And near their green subterranean abodes
Not warfare nor danger have made much inroads.

Come, ye comrades, pluck your bow-strings,
Whet the blade of your dwarvish axe
Sing of hope until the wood rings,
For of hope the world now lacks.

Ride against the Eye of Mordor,
Ride against the fiendish orcs,
Ride against the goblins with ardour,
Ride 'gainst Sauron's evil works.

Come, ye comrades, swing your sword-blades
Big and small -- little hobbits, too,
So to fight the menace of the Ring-Lords
So to win our peace anew.

*

and:

Ring gently, o Elf-harp;
I bid thee to sing
Of elf-lore so old
Of our great elven-king,
When with his tall warriors
He went through the land
To counter the goblins
With his mighty band.
The sunshine was bright
Though the Mirkwood was deep
And sentries at nighttime
Made safe their sweet sleep;[*]
And one foggy morning
They made taut their bows
And with them they vanquished
Their fell mountain foes.

[A fairly direct quotation from "Away in a Manger," I think.]

***

PROBABLY after that effort had waned, I started this grumpy parody undertaking, with a reckless disregard for due rhyme and rhythm. Whether the fragments are intelligible to anyone who has not seen the film or read the books may well be doubted:

LORD OF THE RINGS
(Set to tunes of well-known Christmas carols)

ACT ONE

Scene One
Bilbo’s birthday party

Divers Hobbits: [To the tune of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”]
"We wish you a happy birthday,
we wish you a happy birthday,
we wish you a happy birthday
and a happy eleventy-twelfth year.

"Good brewings we bring;
We love our drinking.
Let's toast to your birthday
and a happy eleventy-twelfth year!"

Speech, speech!

Bilbo: Thank you, thank you, my friends. This has been a memorable feast, and (he starts fumbling in his vest pocket) memorability has always been one of my favourite virtues, and I do enjoy your company . . . (Drat it, where is it?) . . . I have never been happier to be a hobbit living in this fine land of the Shire. Home, sweet home, and all that. . . . So, farewell, and . . . (He slips the ring on his finger and disappears. This can be represented by cloaking him in a black cloth and then making him exit the stage.)

Everyone in an uproar.

Frodo: Noooooo! (Sheds girly tears. Then finally has an idea, dignifiedly waves off the condolences of his neighbours, and prepares to leave the scene. Before he vanishes offstage, he pauses to say, sotto voce) If I know Bilbo well, this may just be another adventure of his. I shall head home and see if he has left a note behind.

Scene Two

In the hobbit-hole. Bilbo is stuffing his belongings into a bindle. Frodo enters, sees him, then fixes a look of reproach on him.

Frodo: [To the tune of "What Child is This?"]
Alas, dear Bilbo, you do me wrong
By thus discourteously vanishing.
You made me cry; I don't know why;
I had rather not do that again.

Bilbo: Shush, Frodo; it's no big deal
I'm bored and tired; I need a trip
Out into the world beyond
The Shire, which makes me sick.

*

Gandalf: (knocks on door, then opens it and strides in with bent head because of the low ceiling.) [To the tune of "Joy to the World"]
Joy to the world!
So you're not dead
As everyone has said!
I never thought you'd really croaked
But still I am a bit provoked
That you made me quite sad
Till I knew that we'd been had;
What is it that you have really been about?

Why, what's this ring?

Bilbo: Oh, that old thing.

****

["Little Drummer Boy":]

Legolas:
I have a bow to bring
pa-rum-pum-pum-pum
Gimli:
And I have an axe to swing
pa-rum-pum-pum-pum.
etc.

["Holy Night":]

Gollum:
Oh, precious ring
Your flanks are brightly shining,
You are the ring of my dear Sauron-lord . . .

*

["The Holly and the Ivy"]

The oak tree and the holly
When they are really mad
Go stampeding off to find Saruman
And to trample down his home.

["Up on the Housetop"]

Out at the seashore the big ships pause,
Out jumps good old Aragorn
With a large army of vicious ghouls
Hewing and hacking the hapless orcs.

Ho, ho, ho, look at them go,
Ho, ho, ho, look at them go,
Hewing and hacking, quick, quick, quick;
Don’t watch the corpses or you’ll be sick.

*

["I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In"]

Sam:

I saw a ship come sailing in
Just yesterday, just yesterday;
I saw a ship come sailing in
Just yesterday in the morning.

Oh why is Frodo stepping in
And looking sad, and looking sad;
Oh why is Frodo stepping in
So early in the morning?

He’s going off to paradise
or some Tolkeinish equivalent
He’s going off to paradise
or what the heck in the morning.

Oh why, oh why, can’t you stay here
Oh Frodo, dear, oh Frodo, dear;
Oh why, oh why, can’t you stay here
Oh Frodo, dear, this morning?

Frodo:
I’m bored of life, it makes me ill;
Good luck to you, goodbye to you.
I’m bored of life, I’ve had my fill;
Goodbye to you this morning.

Sam:
At least the elves are with you now,
Oh Frodo, dear, oh Frodo, dear
And Galadriel and Celeborn and–
Nooooo! What a terrible morning.

Everyone:

No fear; we do not give a darn,
Oh Sam, m'dear, oh Sam m'dear
Good luck with wife and kids and such
Good rid. . . – we mean, have a good morning.

THE END

Christmas Eve and Morn in Truly Exhausting Detail

2011-12-25T02:59:00.007-08:00

For Christmas Eve we consumed turkey and chicken for dinner. The turkey was a seven-pounder, and something of a find since once we moved to Berlin we've encountered the beast far more often in piecemeal form. As far as its size goes, I did stare at it a little bemusedly, since the last time we had an entire turkey it must have been over 20 pounds as usual; and once we had a real leviathan. But even without the chicken there would already have been a heaping serving of meat for all, and in the inner cavity Papa crammed plenty of his delicious salty bread stuffing. On the side we ate mashed potatoes, the turkey and chicken jus, cranberry sauce, green peas, and Turkish flatbread, and we drank white wine.

During the following night I had a complex dream [Warning: almost certain to be terrifically boring; 'proper' blog post resumes beneath asterisk.] where T. and I roamed for interesting rocks on a low mountain on the Alps, where no trees but grass grew, and I turned over a coaly black boulder of sparkling-grained metamorphic rock to find mugs and other dishes in blue and white china. I thought it was an interesting archaeological find until I saw that one mug had the year "1937" written on it in the watery blue ink, and until the family which owned the land came wandering up for a picnic and reminded me that the terrain and by extension any objects in it were theirs. By that point the funicular which had brought T. and me up the slope had left for the valley again, and as the family informed me, it was the last of the evening. The stars came out and I even saw a meteor, but the rest of the dream took place in daylight; there was a modest beige palace of one or two levels which had been refurbished into a tourist centre and in whose colonnaded courtyard there was a garden, and I briefly peered inside it.

As we walked down to the family's home there was a deep turquoise lagoon among the cliffs which were the colour of dark clay, and one of the children lost his footing and fell off the clifftop into the water. Some of us dove in after him; I was closest but couldn't find him even in the crystal-clear water, since he had settled into the gravel at the bottom. Instead there were other men who had fallen into the lagoon and whose faces poked out from the gravel, as intact and immobile as those of the terra cotta soldiers in the Chinese emperor's grave; when we hauled them out of the gravel they became awake again. So I was reassured that the child was all right and that he would resurface in time. But then I was strangely pulled down into a clay element, to reemerge in a semimedieval kitchen, very dark and vaguely brown-walled, in the middle of a rectangular vat full of sluggishly boiling water, with a somewhat hasty cook flitting between her pots and stirring the water I was in with a big wooden spoon; and I felt doomed and damned.

I woke up in a much-perturbed and weighty frame of mind; and, to tie this all back into Christmas Eve dinner, came to the sleepy conclusion that if I wanted more lightsome dreams it would be better if I did not eat dinner so quickly and if, moreover, I had not eaten that additional slice of flatbread this particular time.

*

Besides we sang Christmas carols and in my case tried to sing bits of Bach's Christmas Oratorio, which I have YouTube'd frequently of late, before which I had nearly gone hoarse singing all twelve of the "Twelve Days of Christmas." Then J. and Ge. and I staged a dramatic reading of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "Adventure of the Three Garridebs." Around 2004 I rearranged the short story into a three-act play; we kept rehearsing it without much success, and after a while I refused even to try. It became rather a joke as Ge. would needle me at random moments by hailing me with Watson's first line of dialogue, and the scripts buried themselves amongst my other papers. But yesterday I fished them out again and it went reasonably well. Even my "received" British pronunciation was slightly better. Mama came by toward the conclusion of the proceedings, around the time when J. was overwhelmed with giggles at a rather untimely juncture shortly before his character pops a cap at Watson, and critiqued us here and there. Earlier Uncle N. and I hung up ornaments on our Christmas tree; this year we went with straw stars and angels and other figures, brightly painted wooden figurines, gilt-painted stars, three or so metallic balls, a bell, etc., and ranged small animals around the Christmas card which Aunt L. sent us from England.

*

This morning, I woke up after 8 a.m. andwas, apart from my uncle, the first. I dressed in the Scottish kilt which my aunt K. bought for me, and which I like to wear at Christmas since it is bright red and very pretty, and then visited Ge. and J., who were surprisingly speedily awake. T. got up on her own and put on a delicately thin, dark blue flowered dress with a semi-Victorian collar and front, in honour of the occasion.

The table was already set with the plates, full of Spekulatius, oranges, mandarin oranges, apples, nuts, gingerbread in chocolate covering, chocolate, my beloved Dominosteine, tiny chocolate bottles with liqueur in them (come to think of it, there has been a sad dearth of brandy beans in our household in the last year or two), coconut macaroons which M. brought us yesterday afternoon, and marzipan with a thin chocolate shell. We had buns fresh out of the oven along with salami, ham, soft and hard cheeses, honey, and marmalade; we drank tea and coffee, black currant and peach juice; and on the refrigerator there were plates with heaps of the usual feast of fruit: a pineapple, mandarin oranges, two fresh green figs, ginger, dates, etc. As we ate, Mama put on a CD of the Messiah; when I was very little it used to be a record of the Messiah which she would put into our stereo system, but given the march of time and technological development it now plays from a computer.

During the breakfast, a debate arose as to what "myrrh" might be precisely, so I looked it up in our set of Encyclopaedia Britannica from around 1991, and aside from that we were mostly joking around.

Mama has been tootling Christmas carols on her French horn, and Papa accompanied her on the cello for a while. And now I think I have gone on long enough. What I will say, though, is that I have felt alternately filled with Christmas spirit and empty of it in the past few days. Not that I mind being grumpy, but I can be grumpy any day in the year anyway. What works best is to find a seasonal piece of music or a seasonal poem or something of the sort, wait a little, and see if I feel in the mood — instead of being pulled in two between contending impulses of sentimentality and pessimism.

Regal Circumnatal Festivities

2011-12-14T19:10:00.010-08:00

On Wednesdays the blog Jezebel provides synopses of the week's events as reported by tabloids; this time I found the portrait of the British Royal Family's Christmas traditions full of comedic merit.

So it inspired the following work of art:

which is much easier to perceive when you click on it to enlarge it.

*

Other than that I baked brownies with salted caramel according to the "Pioneer Woman" recipe.

I was going to take all or half of the brownies to share with my Greek class, which has that kind of atmosphere. (A classmate even generously gave us chocolate Santa figurines on St. Nicholas's Day.) But since I left them in the oven for too long they burned black around the edges and became granulated in the middle, and since they have cooled they have become hard as adamant. (Surprisingly they are still delicious, and can be pried apart by a fork.)

The caramel turned out well by a miracle, since it charred and recrystallized at one edge of the pot. I was dubious about putting in gelatine (I took one package of gelatine and the full quantity of water, which soaked up the gelatine powder entirely but made the caramel generally more fluid than necessary); but I surmise that it is used to prevent the caramel from becoming a thick hard crust or from squelching down into the chocolate cake.

I also washed dishes for the first time in weeks or months; but after one or two loads my enthusiasm tapered off, to no one's surprise. What I am looking forward to in terms of domestic activities is concocting an enormous bowl of eggnog. I have consulted different recipes depending on the year, and this year intend to prepare it according to Melissa Clark's recipe from the New York Times. (I would seek out and post a link to the webpage, but I selfishly don't want to lose more of my 20 free Times internet articles per month.)

*

TOMORROW I have 3 hours (τρις ωρες ?) of Greek, 1 hour and 45 minutes of Islamic history seminar, and 1 hour 45 minutes of Latin (all obligatory). While I have taken to napping in classes (for fun and profit) if I have slept too little and have found that a Napoleonic five-minute catnap can be helpful indeed, it is comparatively awkward in the seminar because it takes place in a small room with people sitting right next to me. Besides Latin is in the evening, by which point even my third wind should have exhausted itself. So I should get some sleep.

*

Today I had a Greek speech laboratory class, which went well. Much to my surprise each time I listen to dialogues from the past Wednesdays I understand a much greater proportion of them. The Vatnajökull — as I will henceforth denominate each laboratory computer since they operate as slowly as glaciers run — which fell to my lot started up fairly quickly. Last week or the week before one of the computers firstly took forever to start up and then secondly refused to transmit sound; I timed the process, and it honestly took half an hour until I had tried and abandoned the first computer and had managed to get the sound file up and running on an alternative computer. The professor has also had a great deal to say, though quite politely, about this masterpiece of technological efficacy. To be honest I rather like navigating the arbitrary waters of computer idiosyncracies, however, and growing up with Microsoft operating systems is a lesson in patience, the helpfulness of workarounds and modest little tricks, and the quiet whimsy of fate.

***

When I went home, I noticed that two orange-vested workers were fixing a slide of planks over the gravel and up the bottom of the embankment where the Fabeckstraße crosses the U-Bahn rails. Further along to the Podbielskiallee station, bright garbage bags were lying huddled at the concrete ledge beside the tracks, and I Holmes-ishly observed that they must be full of the leaves that were raked from the Prussianesquely overgroomed, long beige grasses on the nearby embankments.

At some point in the transit to or from the university, two contractors for the BVG (they tend to wear navy-blue jackets with 'Im Auftrag der BVG' written on the back and a white stripe or two running above the waistband, and hunt in pairs or gather in groups of five or so, and hold little devices like the ones for credit or debit card payments in stores or for signing for a postal delivery) entered the train and asked for our tickets. Sometimes they enter the train, sometimes they roam the platform and ask people to show their tickets, once one of them brigandishly asked us for the tickets as soon as we stepped out the train door and I walked past and thought (and must have looked like I thought) 'You must be joking.' Sometimes I think there are still plainclothes people who hop with somewhat irritating jubilant airs into the train and whip out their identification, then ask to see tickets. Anyway, this time I fetched out my ticket very, very slowly, hopefully in an inconspicuous way but I really wanted to buy time for anyone who didn't have a ticket; and the person wanted to see my photo ID so I took even more slooowwwly.

While my hypothetical moral inhibitions about working for call centers have almost dissipated, ratting people out as a "loss prevention expert" in a shoe store or as a ticket controller in a train or whatever is still infra a lot in my view. Still, I haven't found that any of the security contractors were personally objectionable; though to be honest I would have expected one or two to seem power-hungry or aggressive or condescending.

What I don't understand is whether they are there in case security concerns arise — like beatings or sabotage —; or to ensure that contrary to the words of the Bible the poor, i.e. the homeless, are not always with us; or to drive in cash for the BVG (a Christmas gift to self, as it were); or to provide jobs for individuals who have trained as security contractors; or for other reasons. Anyway, I have already expatiated upon my conjectures and observations to the family, so much of this will seem old news to them.

***

Now: sleep!

Vivat My Brother; and Latin

2011-11-28T14:44:00.005-08:00

It's my brother's birthday today, and in honour of it we feasted: chocolate, marzipan and cake.

From 6 p.m. until 8 p.m. I was at the Rostlaube for my Latin class, wherein we were taught the perfect participle passive (e.g. arbor caesa est) and the 4th declension (e.g. manus, exercitus, senatus). We tamely cleave unto the textbook, so we read through and translated a reading from it as customary. This time it was a paragraph on Rome after Tarquinius Superbus — the father of the perpetrator of the Rape of Lucrece, I think, but it wasn't mentioned — was jettisoned and his friend, Lars Porsena, king of the city of Clusium, lay siege to the city. There were new words, like iussu (the ablative of iussus, and it translates I think as "by order of" e.g. the senate) and the aforementioned exercitus (army).

One of the sentences in the reading didn't appear to make sense, since it looked like a singular subject with a plural verb. So at home I asked J. (who has been toiling through school Latin for ~~decades~~ ~~centuries~~ years) how he would translate "field camp" into Latin. He said "castra," then took out his Stowasser German-Latin dictionary. It turns out that castrum, -ī means "fortification," and, as I just found out through a certain online encyclopaedia's dictionary, castra is pluralis tantum and means "camp."

Anyway, I arrived home rather grumpily, having waited too long for my uncertain temper to catch an U-Bahn train. Since then I have written a Lighthouse blog post, chatted with the family in the corner room perched atop the coal-fired stove, eaten and had tea and coke, and begun a little light reading.

In the U-Bahn, a busker sang something in Dylan mumble-English to the accompaniment of the guitar, and I was rather amusedly transported back to the 70s. I looked out for the moon on the way to and from my class, but none was to be seen, though the brightest star shone intently from its customary quadrant and I finally noticed the beautiful effect of the windows of the houses around the Rostlaube when it is too dark to see their façades. The interior illumination lends them a strange transparency — as in, you can't only see vaguely into the rooms, but the houses on the whole seem like modest two-dimensional shapes and as if there were a lot of room for trees and lawns and flowers behind them — and a lantern-like appearance. The effect even worked back at home, in the half-lit façades on our otherwise busy and loudly lit street.

Besides I stared into the cafeteria again, since the large area in the back where nobody sits except for the hundreds of chairs and tables and a couple palmetto plants inevitably creeps me out, and I keep expecting to see a corpse lying there, kind of in plain unseen sight, like in an early 20th-century factory or some other large building after hours in an Agatha Christie film. When I passed it at shortly after 6:10 there were still two or three people seated at the near corner; often there are more.

I've decided to skip the Foundations of Ancient History lectures, since I've lost the hope of gaining credit for them anyway, and they are sometimes worthwhile and sometimes not; and I didn't feel like learning about the philosophy of German idealism this week; so until Latin I had a free day to do nothing in particular.

A Discourse Upon The Ontology of Being

2011-10-31T07:34:00.004-07:00

TODAY I dropped in on a lecture from a course entitled "Introduction to the Philosophy of German Idealism." We had not yet embarked on the full spectrum of Hegel, etc., but were sitting comfortably in Aristotle and then transitioning to Kant.

Presumably the subject of the lecture was ontology — the problem with philosophy as with many other disciplines, I find, is that one must be extremely careful how to use one's terms once one is no longer permitted the freedom of layman's terminology, just like I felt gingerly about the French language after reading a compendium of naughty idiom.

At any rate, the lecture was about how one describes what exists, i.e. is. There seems to be a fine distinction in that Aristotle does not bother to mention that we may not absolutely know or describe what truly exists, whereas Kant stresses that we know or describe only what we perceive.

There was a certain Socratean element, or rather an element of what I seem to remember my Uncle Pu introduced to my siblings and me when we were little: we would make a statement and he would ask us, "Why?" and then when we had answered ask us "Why?" again, etc. So in the lecture, rhetorically put questions like "What is whatness?" followed each other in quick succession, and I would be vaguely thinking, "This question is either very dumb or very clever, and I'm not always quite sure which."

Basically, however, we were looking at neat little lists of criteria by which one may define a thing, (relatio, modality, quantity, quality; universally or particularly; negatively or positively; etc.), which Aristotle and Kant drew up similarly yet differently; the professor was explaining to us what Aristotle and Kant meant by those terms.

My brain went on holiday part of the way through, and in its leisurely way ambled back again to the substance of the lecture, so it was all quite relaxed; and I'm not attending the lecture for credit or all that regularly. I have the creeping feeling that I will, however, need the knowledge from it.

Then I took the U-Bahn back to the bookshop and spent a quiet couple of hours wasting time on the internet. My first class was Foundations of Ancient History again, and this time the concentration in the spotlight was the Studies of the Ancient Orient, which in a weird roundabout way (which I don't feel like explaining) is like examining the wreck of the Tower of Babylon (Babel transposed to Mesopotamia) in linguistic terms.

Besides I've had two emails, confirming that my archaeology work course is from 10:15 a.m. - 3 p.m. on Fridays, and that I can join the History and Culture of the Near East seminar of my choice, namely on Thursday. So Monday from 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. is free for the bookshop, lectures I might want to attend unofficially, or any desired variety of loitering. And I needn't take off for the work course at quarter after seven as previously feared! (c:

Occam's Razor and the Throttled Lion of Nineveh

2011-10-26T14:29:00.008-07:00

This morning I slept in and snuck into my Foundations of Ancient History lecture over half an hour late.

It was a representative of Near Eastern Archaeology who was lecturing this time, and he quickly went over the archaeologists responsible for digging at Susa (where the Code of Hammurabi was found as part of 2nd-century-B.C.(?) loot) and at Çatal Hüyük. When I came in, he also mentioned the relief of the lion-hunt at Nineveh, presumably the one which T. and I quickly but thoroughly enjoyed looking at in the British Museum some five years ago. Heinrich Schliemann was mentioned and, surprisingly enough, there was no verbal hopping with rage. Indeed he suggested that the concept of stratigraphy, and of the information which may be gleaned from observing the contents of the layers relative to each other, was then not yet developed. On the other hand he stated that any archaeological dig in fact involves the destruction of that which it studies.

Another point on which I am inclined to be more critical than he is with regard to reconstructing ruins. For example, though it may be presumptive to find fault, the fakeness of the Gate of Ishtar in the Pergamon Museum gets on my nerves; and I found Saddam Hussein's government's reconstructions of ancient sites in Iraq butt-ugly because they were turned into huge blocks of characterless, unworn, glaringly indistinguished mudbrick. A proper ruin has gravitas — just like a proper painting, which if it was indeed painted 300 or 400 years ago should have a patina to make one wonder if our common ancestor was in fact a dark-dwelling mole. I (let's say partly; it was an unfinished fragment) wrote an essay on Sir Arthur Evans for my Classical Archaeology course at UBC, and I vaguely recall that he had reconstructions built at Knossos, to help along the publicity and funding, much like what is theoretically organized at Pompeii except that a wall recently collapsed due to improper maintenance, etc. I was willing to overlook it there, going from the premise that Evans is one of the protagonists of archaeology and thus worthy of greater critical latitude, but still.

Aside from that the professor had a great deal to say about matters political, which upon the hearing I took with a large grain of salt, but whose essential impulse was not, I think, unadmirable.

In this context, and also out of admiration for a goodly quantity of hard work, he mentioned an exhibition which came to the Pergamon Museum until late August. Max von Oppenheim had founded a Vorderasiatisches Museum and it was filled with statues from a monumental dig at Tell Halaf. A firebomb struck during World War II; the firefighters came, and it seems that the impact of cold water on hot basalt stone is explosive in its effects. So in 2001 a team began to painstakingly set together the 27,000 fragments.

"Das 27'000-Teile-Puzzle" (Basler Zeitung, orig. Tages-Anzeiger, February 3, 2011)

***

In Greek we were at the speech lab, where the computers cooperated, and so we listened to a dialogue being read out. Some words were easy to understand and I took a great deal of pains to figure out the meanings of the words as typed out in our textbook. But at times the sounds of the words and syllables shifted like will-o'-the-wisps, so that one time I would understand them perfectly and another time encounter gibberish. Before that I extracted my trusty dictionary and looked up the definite and indefinite articles as well as the conjugations of εχω and ειμαι. Not much has changed over the centuries, compared to what one would expect; on the other hand, I've difficulty recalling the Ancient Greek plural articles, which were generally given to my Ancient Greek class.

***

There is a vote on the extension of our student transit ticket arrangement being held by the student body. The prices are to be raised in the following years, but it sounded like they weren't negotiable, so I took to the ballot-box and voted in favour.

***

Besides I walked to the Institute for Prehistoric Archaeology to discover the sheet which is to advertise the times and dates of a work course; I didn't see one, so will email the professor again. On the way back I passed the Kenyan embassy and, much to my amusement, the smaller home to the Lesotho mission tucked beside it.

***

Then I went to a history seminar where we traipsed over a library and had to write a statement about why archaeology interests us. It was embarrassing particularly because I'm not sure if my interest in it isn't kind of lame and fanciful (though nice), like saying "When I grow up I want to be an astronaut." Certainly not something which one wants to expand on to an adult expert. Besides the class was overstuffed in the little villa. I felt guilty because I was not supposed to be there, according to the formal rules, at which a great deal of winking is done by students and docents alike. I guess I'll hope for the best.

***

Lastly I decided to stick around for an Introduction to Theoretical Philosophy. I was peeved when a surprisingly vast horde of us (young and old, students and guest auditors) was locked out of the room until after the hour. Given the institution of the "academic quarter," classes begin and end cum tempore, a quarter hour off from the stated time, so there were some ten minutes left until class began. But I had been lolling around on my feet for a long time and was eager for a seat inside the hall.

First of all we were told through a passage from Kant that philosophy is not the reading of the ideas of another, but the practice and personal application of reason on our own — the philosophy past is the rubble upon which we construct our own ideas. Then there was a long and repetitious excursion through Philosophy's FAQs, and the professor underlined that philosophers barely ever agree on anything, even as to who among them constitutes a proper philosopher. Then he said, with quotations from Karl Jaspers and a nod to Schopenhauer, that man becomes aware of himself as he reflects on the world around him, and that the portion of the world upon which he does not reflect does not exist for him. And so on and so forth.

I was hungry and grumpy; ensconced in a kind of superior eyrie at the summit of the lecture hall; and very much inclined to reflect on the world through an oneiristic (if the word exists) lens — which is to say have a nap; but I want to give the lecturer and lectures more of a chance. The philosophers intended to appear in this course: e.g. Plato, Aristotle, Socrates(?), St. Thomas of Aquinas, Ockham, Descartes, Kant, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Quine, and Derrida. The course should generally be good for showing off — 'empirical' and 'Occam's razor' and 'straw man argument' are a start in terms of preexisting knowledge, and 'normative' would be too if I remembered what precisely it means or felt like consulting a dictionary; but there is no reason to settle!

*

P.S.: The wording "throttled lion" is cribbed from my sister.

The Year of the Elephant and Other Stories

2011-10-25T06:20:00.004-07:00

This afternoon, before coming to the bookshop, I had my first Islamic Studies lecture, i.e. the prerequisite course to higher-level studies of the Culture and History of the Near East minor.

I had originally thought to skip it entirely this year because I like my Greek classes and there happens to be one at the same time, besides which the seminar would require a little schedule-cramming. But I sent an email to the Islamic Studies department and, though the response was helpful and its terms liberal, it did transpire that it would be best for me to take it.

So far I have not gone to a seminar. If the rooms in the large building wherein they are held are not too crowded, I am thinking of going to more than one. (I visited the building after class today so that I could figure out how to get there; or, in the worst case, how not to get there.)

***

THE PROFESSOR began with a more cerebral approach than customary. For instance he acutely and very quickly argued-without-arguing which historical approach is best — a social focus, political focus, or what-have-you; story, empiricism, or theory — and announced that (as the lecture title implies) he would focus on Islamic society at various historical points. A corollary of which aim is that he does not intend to take a strictly schematic, chronological or geological approach, rattling off what happened where in a list. — Since I haven't thought much about it, the only thing that came to mind by way of social history is George Macaulay Trevelyan's English Social History from Opapa's bookshelf. I looked into it and seem to remember finding far too vague to be of utility.

Nevertheless he began at the beginning and tried to portray for our benefit something of the Arabian peninsula before the birth of Muhammad and the spread of his prophecies. It was a nexus of the Byzantine, West Roman, and Iranian empires (re. 'Iran': Persia, he said, is in fact a smaller region) or more specifically of the traders who shuttled silk, gold, slaves, myrrh, balsam, etc. between them, over a land route to Syria and along the Red Sea to or from the Mediterranean and through the Arabian Sea, or over the Silk Road, to India.

There were orthodox Christian sectors who were in opposition to the state religion of Constantinople: the Nestorians and the Monophysites. The Nestorians are also denominated Duophysites because they believed that the spirit of God is separate from Christ, and the Monophysites comprised the Copts and others who believe that Christ is God and man in unity. In Iran there were Zoroastrianists, who were monotheistic on the one hand but believed in the dual presence of good and evil on the other. There were tensions between which trading points supported which state and consequently its religion.

Contrary to common belief, Islam is not a "faith of the desert," since only a relatively small part of the Arabian peninsula consists of dunes in which no plant may grow; and at the time of its inception the trade routes meant that there were thriving little towns and kingdoms like Sabaa (the Queen of Sheba — the professor emphasized — may not have existed, but her kingdom certainly did) all over.

Mecca, with its Kaʿba — whose provenance is rather vague, though it is now considered Abraham's toil, but significance great — was one of the trading points, and one of the places where poets met and talked and developed in a subtle long-winding way what we consider the classical Arabic language, ʿarabiyya.

It was ruled within the great Quraysh tribe. In the old sense of proper government, the chief of a tribe was, as the professor put it, primus inter pares. Every man who was a tribesman, not a slave or an outsider (for instance the Roma, or gypsies), was considered to have equal rights. The chief was the mediator and where necessary the representative of the tribe in negotiations and relations with other tribes; every tribesman had a right to protection. Slaves, who were widespread there as they were in Europe, had no right to protection.

One of the poorer men who was not happy under the heel of the fellow Qurayshes, despite this nominal equality and freedom, was Muhammad, who lived on the outer margins of Mecca. He was born around 570 AD (in this case I will say CE), which is a little subject to controversy because by others his birth is attributed to the Year of the Elephant — apparently the year in which what would become Yemen was conquered by Ethiopian troops — but the dates don't fit. He married the widow of a comfortably-off tradesman and ended up travelling up to Syria and becoming acquainted with the religious traditions of his neighbours. Then he was privy to enlightenment by God through his intermediary, the angel Gabriel; after running afoul of the authorities he retired to Medina. There he wished to form an umma, or community, with a Jewish clan in the area, which ended in blood and presumably tears. He decided that it was his aim to return to Mecca — he did, and (by this point in the lecture the end of class was impending — so 'tell-tale compression' of events, etc.) by the time he died in 632 CE his religion was officially observed throughout the Arabian Peninsula. It is this kind of state religion which a sector of Islam insists on endeavouring to reinstate.

That was basically the end of the lecture. I've left a great deal out and I'm happy that there is so much more, because I like having a whole pile of facts and thoughts to sort through at leisure. I think I've remembered everything reasonably well, too, but this blog post isn't fact-checked, so reader beware and all that.

He is incidentally the only one of my professors who seems to read out a lecture from detailed notes or even a text — so far it seems a pithier and more content-rich and a little less condescending method than PowerPoint presentations and other methods which involve ex tempore commentary. I also liked that he clearly had lots of opinions and a lively interest in politics and controversies — during the beginning of the Iraq War he would probably have been one of those of us who talked about it with everyone he knew, read as many magazine articles about it as he could lay his hands on, sent letters to the editor, etc. — but that he didn't feel impelled to inflict them on us. Sometimes I come across people and have the urge to haul them home to meet the family, and as far as I can tell, he is one of them.

***

My other classes were Greek (we're reviewing the sounds/phonemes, thank goodness, because I don't know all of them that well, and am sort of giving up on knowing when to use which pronunciation of ντ, for instance; today when I was gone we in the broad sense of the term we also learned "have" and "be," and the definite and indefinite articles, and maybe something I've forgotten) and Foundations of Ancient History. That class began with 19th-century Danish archaeologists who came up for instance with the three-period system (Stone Age, Iron Age, Bronze Age) and ended with the, er, Schicklgrubrian reinterpretations and politicization of German and Scandinavian prehistory research. At the very end the lecture slid into the inevitable post-war repentance, discarding of the ideas formed in the shadow of the short mustache, and the rise of new technology, for instance radiocarbon dating.

Greek, in Exhausting Detail

2011-10-20T03:48:00.004-07:00

Please beware of and forgive all and any factual errors in the following:

This evening I have Latin again, but in the meantime I have returned from the morning's Greek lessons and am sitting comfortably in the bookshop. In the lessons we reviewed the phonetics of the past two days, which is highly useful, and read aloud example words for consonant pairs like κλ and γδ, which looks complicated but in fact isn't.

This time our professor took the time to tell us the meanings of words, which with πνευμα (air, breath, spirit) and ενεργειεα was simple enough; there were quite interesting ones in between. Ανθοσ (flower) and αμυγδαλια (almond tree) were familiar but I hadn't known the Greek stem-words.

Though I have left out the stress accents (in Greek, the accent is called the οξεια) on these Greek words until I figure out the html encoding, there should be an acute on each one. Since 1982, Greek has adopted the "monotοnikó" (μονοτονικο) system whereby every accent is stricken from the written language except for the οξεια. In the absence of the rough and smooth breathing (the little curling apostrophe which sits on the first vowel of a word and separates the "ho"s from the "o"s), and circumflexes and grave accents indicating changes in the pitch of the voice, written Greek has become much less fussy. I wonder where the changes in pitch went — whether they were artificially imposed on Ancient Greek when it became the scholar's preserve or whether they did exist but have fallen into complete disuse over the centuries.

Earlier the professor gave a leisurely introduction into modern Greek history.

She reiterated that the Erasmus system of pronunciation (e.g. οι = ahoy!, αι = might) is artificial and demonstrably historically inaccurate, Erasmus having designed it purely so help his students learn to spell the words. I was a little miffed, since I like Erasmus's system and moreover have used it consistently for Ancient Greek — though it is admittedly best suited for communication within the ivory tower. But Russian or French and certainly Greek universities — for example — seem to teach a different Ancient Greek system.

She went into detail besides about the Katharevousa — which is a formal language created after Greece shed Ottoman rule, spelled καθαρευουσα, and which like modern Italian hopped back in time not in this case to the Middle Ages but a little further for inspiration. But if I've understood correctly, it created an unsettling gap, by separating Greeks into the hoity-toity world of the official constructed language, and the hoi polloi world of the demotic tongue, Dimotiki — δημοτικη. The popular language had in fact acted as a reservoir to preserve Greek over the centuries and folk poetry had kept what the written word had discarded, but in a different form from the tongue of Aristophanes or Pericles, whose preservation fell to scholars who left Constantinople as it fell in 1453 and to their Arabic colleagues and later of course to scholars across Europe who would no longer have been privy to the spoken traditions (for instance pronunciation) which would hint at the ancient forms. Katharevousa took over some of the popular language, but otherwise was a little estranged. Besides the Katharevousa is apparently not held in good odour since it is associated with the military dictatorship and its organs.

What I had not heard before is that the administration of Greece in the early 19th century had been pedantic and quite foreign in character. It was guided by Philhellenes from the remainder of Europe, many of whom were shocked to arrive in Greece and find that it was not a nation of (as the professor put it) lofty-souled, tunic-wearing philosophers. Instead there were guerrilla fighters. She also pointed out that due to the four preceding centuries of foreign rule, and a brutal extirpation of the regional aristocracy at the time of the conquest in 1453, Greece does not have any aristocracy; its handful of modern kings were invariably imports or descendants of imports.

Apart from that she explained the construction of Greek last names, which were introduced as such under the Ottoman government to simplify taxation and the military. Papandreou would mean, I think, the child of Andreas; physical attributes like black hair also lent themselves to names.

Midweek

2011-10-19T13:44:00.004-07:00

This morning I went to the Foundations of Ancient History Studies lecture and arrived in excellent time, in the very large and already familiar lecture hall with down-folding blond wood chairs and the technical booth in the back at the top and the ghostly glow of a PowerPoint slideshow in front. It has a clever windowy antechamber which presumably guards from noise and conspicuous intrusions.

As it turns out the Foundations course will introduce a cluster of specializations, like Prehistoric Archaeology and Classical Archaeology, and even the seminars will rotate between the various sub-disciplines and therefore various buildings.

The professor, who looked rather like General Wesley Clark, laid out the course itself, up to the exam; his associate described the electronic resources. The professor defended the three-year Bachelor system enthusiastically, whereat I metaphorically speaking rolled my eyes.

Then I had a long interval to the next class, which I spent in finding the right room and in looking up (in an English-Modern Greek dictionary which was I think bought accidentally) the words which my Greek class materials use as phonetic examples. Someone else asked me for directions.

Greek took place in the speech laboratory today, so we sat among the cubicles with fairly rotten computers; mine refused to start up properly so I never even glimpsed the user desktop. But we spent most of the time finishing the phonetics and reading the sample words out loud. Ν can sound unusual depending where it is placed, for instance, so we spent some ten minutes with the computers in the end.

Since there was no Ancient History seminar and no evening philosophy lecture, and the career preparation advisor whom I had wanted to consult about the archaeology work course, etc., seemed very busy, I had the rest of the day off. Despite the respite, I still feel really tired. So I will continue my Greek homework and then rest in preparation for the class at 8:30 tomorrow morning.

A Student's Odyssey

2011-10-18T13:09:00.004-07:00

Today I had the first day of my Greek pre-language course. We learned how to pronounce the vowels, consonants, and diphthongs, and were introduced to the textbook and two potential grammar reference works, by a very nice professor who is an excellent teacher. Knowing some Ancient Greek was an advantage, but some of the counterintuitive sounds were thoroughly irritating.

e.g. β beta
- letter name pronounced "béta" for Ancient Greek purposes
- name pronounced like Latin "vita" for Modern Greek purposes

ντ nu + tau (nt)
- pronounced like "ant" in Ancient Greek, as far as I know
- pronounced like "d" ("dog"), "nd" (and), or "nt" (ant) in Modern Greek

μπ mu + pi (mp)
- pronounced like "imp" in Ancient Greek, as far as know
- pronounced like "b" (bar), "mb" (amble), or "mp" (imp) in Modern Greek

Besides "nu" is pronounced "nee"; "mu," "mee"; "tau," "taph".

AND all of these vowels or diphthongs are now pronounced like "eek!":

iota (ι), eta (η), upsilon (υ); (omicron + iota) οι, (epsilon + iota) ει

AND alpha + iota, αι, is pronounced like the epsilon — "meh."

THE professor argued that Greek is a what-you-see-is-what-you-get language because it has so many compound words (e.g. symphony = with + sound). But I find it quite ambiguous, as I told my father at somewhat obnoxious length today. Taking the example, "with sound" can as easily signify a modern "talkie" film, noise, or singing in unison.

*

ANYWAY, I think that the Rost-/Silberlaube is mad at me after the remarks I made about it yesterday; I spent maybe an hour trying to find a room in it that didn't exist, and after literally roaming over the rooftops I stumbled across the right room through mere chance since class schedules are posted beside classroom/lecture hall doors. But I do know where the Habelschwerdter Allee is now, from having to consult further maps.

Then I decided to pay my father a visit and roamed all over the wrong part of his building, dismayed and bewildered because none of the rooms looked familiar from a similarly peripatetic adventure last week. In the morning I also went for an, er, circuitous walk, which I will skip in this post.

The irony is that at least two people asked me for directions today.

T. HAS kindly and justifiedly bought me a very own alarm clock, which I should set soon, and one of the drawers around Papa's desk donated the battery. Tomorrow I have three classes, from 8-10 a.m., 12-2 p.m. and 6-8 p.m, if I decide to attend all. The important one is my Greek, from 12 to 2. As optional homework I have written out a good copy of part of my Greek course notes; besides I've sketched out a schedule for the next five university days, but it will require ironing out.

LASTLY, I like riding the U-Bahn, partly because I like the people-watching, and because I have not been packed into it like a sardine yet; but I like the stretch around Dahlem-Dorf best because it is overground, at the bottom of a green embankment.

A New Beginning

2011-10-16T18:11:00.006-07:00

It's the night before my first day of normal classes at the FU — one is an art history lecture, and the other an introductory Latin course which I intend to audit this semester and properly take the next. So I will be gone most of the afternoon and evening.

On Saturday I sent an email to the professor in charge of a paleontology work course at the university; depending on the response I will be part of a group learning how to archive and preserve remains from a prehistoric dig every Friday. Since I have wanted to do that since before I was ten years old — and, if it isn't congenial after all, I'm happy to have a chance to test it — it is feverishly exciting.

In general I feel pleased, bent on getting my way (as in taking the courses I want to take despite scheduling obstacles), and nervous.

***

Updated:

The first lecture was a fizzle, since I left the bookshop in time, found the building without difficulties thanks to my habit of drawing little diagrams for myself (a habit inculcated by unhappy events relating to past job interviews), and found the proper room by a stroke of luck. It appears to be a fairly large lecture, too, which makes me happy because I like being an anonymous student and not having to do group work or talk to people unless one or both of us feels like it. But as the hour struck, a student came into the class and said that the lecture had been cancelled for that day.

So I went all the way back to the bookshop again and was there to greet Mama when her time came to take over. The prehistoric archaeology professor has answered my email and said that it would be fine if I participated in her work course, if I am really interested in washing and labelling finds. So I went to the campus in the middle of pleasant suburbia, via a "long and leisurely" bus drive through the incipient rush hour, to "scope out" the terrain. Instead I found, to my howling dismay, that there was a compound of some thirteen buildings in which the course could be held. In fact the identity of the building was revealed in the course index, but I had foolishly skipped it over as an irrelevant detail. One of the buildings I went into didn't have the tentative room number — it had the room number before and the room number after but not the one in between, which left me figuratively hopping with suspense. But now I know the right building and that was not it. The date of the first meeting is also unknown and will be revealed through an "Aushang," which apparently means an update to the institute's website.

Then, somewhat disgruntledly, I travelled back to the U-Bahn station Dahlem-Dorf and betook myself in search of the Rost- and Silberlaube for Latin. This is a huge building which appears to be the core of the campus in terms of teeming with students. I looked for the Habelschwerdter Allee in vain on the U-Bahn map, but being fairly certain that it was down the railroad tracks and then left, and being confirmed in this by a sign, I went down to the Thielallee (pronounced roughly teal ull-lé). I entered the Laube, still not knowing where the Habelschwerdter Allee is, though it must be admitted that it wouldn't be difficult to find out.

If the belt of a treadmill were ever stretched out to represent the true distance which one walks on it, the corridors of the Rost- and Silberlaube would correspond to it in terms of length and of the feeling of futility which it instills. The room numbers are e.g. xx/xxx, in which the first xx indicates which cluster of rooms is meant, and the first x of the xxx indicates the floor number (1, 2, 3). My cluster was for some reason dark. I may be exaggerating, but it seemed like the only light was coming from inside the rooms, the exit signs, and the neighbouring hallways. For some reason that also really peeved me, though from an environmentalist's perspective I salute it.

So my Latin class convened in a horseshoe of desks which filled, and filled, and filled some more. After minutes of entering, seating, chatting and finally befuddled silence, the professor arrived and said, bravely, that it was interesting how the computer system told her there were twenty-three students in this class and how it strangely appeared that there were rather more, and then cheerfully and I think a little nervously launched into her first lecture. She was wearing black jeans and a blazer, reddish hair loose, appears to be in her 40s, has a warmth which I think comes from Polish or Czech parents, and has quite a nice voice and interest-retaining teaching style though I find her grammatical elucidations rather confusing. But I was in a straight-out bratty mood and rather peeved that we were covering material I had already learned on my own; and the Domina ancillam vocat sentences were a base "homage," I indignantly thought, to the old German Latin staple Ludus Latinus.

Anyway, we learned the hoary basics — that one can play around with the word order in Latin, that the nominative case applies to the subject and the accusative to the object, and that many words ending in -us are part of the o-declension and that words ending in -a (except, I thought with dim recollections of textbook paradigms returning, for the neutral plural) are part of the a-declension. There was some interesting stuff about where to emphasize words, involving long and short vowels; it was altogether very close to the Ancient Greek quirks which I know and therefore love, and did not love all that much in the process of having to prod my brain into getting to know them. I want to make vocabulary flashcards but I feel tired. Maybe tomorrow — after my packed 8 a.m. - 2 p.m. schedule is over.

Then I went home in the pitch dark, which made me a very unhappy camper. But on the whole I figure that I will grow more of a backbone if there are petty daily discomforts to grapple with and the lesson learned how to deal with them with sense and some small measure of dignity, though grumbling has also been fun. I've taken a shower and made my bed, and now I intend to rest in it; and that feels inspiriting.

Phyla, Panini and Paperwork

2011-10-02T12:19:00.005-07:00

To supplement the course of botanical inquiry I've been on lately — mostly reading a book on plant systematics which should help me keep the classes, orders, families, etc. of flora straight and enlighten me better about the tiny characteristics which distinguish them — I decided to look around YouTube and quickly found an apt lesson on classification and evolution from a course at Berkeley. So I spent roughly an hour on that, including the times I had to pause and repeat it so that my notes would be more accurate, and since then have begun copying down a diagram of the outdated higher orders of life, in the back of our Oxford English Reference Dictionary. We covered those quite thoroughly in Biology 11 and most of the evolutionary elucidations were already familiar from that class and previous science classes, but then I came across brachiopods (which were probably not brought up at all, probably because most species survive only in fossil form) and so have been launched on a certain-online-encyclopaedia session. I might review flatworms and nematodes, too, which quite lastingly put me off 1) ponds and 2) soil, if one grubs around in them without washing one's hands afterwards.

***

My sister purchased a panini grill, or a hot sandwich press if you prefer, and is very enthusiastic about it. As far as I have observed, it does not reach a very high relative heat because it is adapted to the conventional electrical outlets; secondly, frying things in fat and achieving a strong Maillard effect (if you'll forgive the pedantry) greatly improves their flavour. My sister presumably bought it because one thing she liked about the first two years of university, even when they were otherwise dire, were the grilled ciabatte with salmon and our choice of topping from the residence cafeteria. They were freshly assembled and if we liked grilled in a press with generous splashes of olive oil.

Anyway, I feel nostalgic about the cafeteria too, but we do have a cast-iron pan to 'grill' food on even if it leaves no stripes on the food. So what I feel more nostalgic about is, for example, having fish and chips, chicken fingers, enormous sticky cinnamon buns, Belgian waffles and nacho chips without having to bake them, and a salad bar though the time I assumed that what looked like feta cheese was feta cheese was frightful, and having several flavours of ice cream at hand at all times of the year if I feel like having some, etc. In fact I ate quite healthily but the possibility of eating sinfully was highly exciting. (The 'feta cheese' was tofu, by the way. In one of my Foods and Nutrition classes in school we had cooked it two ways to show that it isn't horrible; as I recall it we ended up with a tofu stir-fry and warmish slabs of the stuff inundated — purportedly 'fried' — in maple syrup, which indeed weren't terrible but gave the tofu all the dynamic interest of a flavourless piece of gelatinous white bread.)

Possibly the least delicious thing I had came from the prepackaged food section: a little tub of pineapple cottage cheese, which I tried as a novelty. Either I am genetically engineered not to like it or it is really abhorrent in a neutral sort of way. Once the wasabi sauce that went with the sushi packages also gave me something like stomach cramps (nothing worse) and I figure that was because though I'd eaten wasabi several times it was still too unfamiliar to my Teutonic digestion.

* (Continuation, in which I say a lot of tactless things:)

As far as university present is concerned, I have my student card and transit pass and e-mail account now, and soon I can register for my courses. That registration process is worrying me a little because the FU has regulations the way that the seashore has grains of sand, so it sounds terribly uptight and labyrinthine and I always worry about getting into trouble because someone in the university administration might not have enough common sense to see that even if I make a huge effort to research and ask questions at the right spot, there are some arcana or even obvious things which cannot be found out, deduced, intuited or otherwise perceived by the ordinary mortal who is not up-to-date on which office is handling what, how, and when this particular year. For instance, the structure for one of my minors has changed this year without notice, splitting into four specializations, and (though cautiously optimistic that it will turn out for the best) I'm hopping mad that there was no notice. Anyway, I'm grateful for many things, but even the mildest bureaucratic surprises (what a terrifying combination of adjective and noun!) tend to make me explode in irritation.

*

I know that I'll have to let go my idealizing allegiance to UBC and its administrative practices eventually and transfer it to my present institution. But the highest echelons of the FU also horrify me because of their blather about becoming business-aligned and 'elite,' etc.

If you have to talk about becoming 'elite,' you're not it; though to be fair a former president of George Washington University was also recently dropping 'prestige' all over an article in the Huffington Post (?). I go to university to learn well, to train the mind and my ability to research and process information in a productive way, and (this time) to hide from reality for four or five years; and frankly I don't want to be a shining example of intellectual superiority or careerist ambition, either on my own behalf or on the university's, because that would make me a terrible person.

If the FU presidency has a monomania for the American university system, it could at least take a better and more astute look at how humanized as well as successful it is — and that what drives it are (as far as I can tell) not managerial acrobatics but the lashings of private money that flow into it.

For instance I think that UBC is good because of geographic position i.e. at a kind of nexus of Asia and North America, because of the somewhat exaggerated payment it extorts from non-domestic students, because of its liberal environment, because of its capacious endowment, and as far as I can tell because it treats its students and employees reasonably well.

I think it's more in backward states like Texas where troglodytes like Rick Perry are demanding that airy-fairy students have success in the business world and get jobs right away. I think it's incredibly dumb, too, to blame one's university on not getting a job. People who do get jobs right away probably do it through their own or their family's connections; and for people like me who'd rather jump off a cliff than acquire influence, I should gather job experience during the studies or the holidays or take extra pains to find positions where any university graduation as well as the ability to write well, informedly and coherently is already sufficient qualification. Frankly I think that employers who demand a diploma without a pertinent reason are snobs or lazyboneses who can't be bothered to test applicants' talents properly; but that's the way the world apparently works.

A Despatch from the Medico-Institutional Frontier

2011-09-19T10:42:00.006-07:00

Papa is not home yet after all, and though he might have shown up on our apartment building stoop in the taxi around the same time as I reached the hospital, I decided to venture forth in case he was still there.

In the bag: a draft contribution to a periodical plus a lot of extra paper which had ventured into the pile, a magnifying glass for the infinitesimal print, two issues of the computer magazine CT, the newest Manière de voir (a magazine which comprises selections from the Monde diplomatique archive on a particular theme) still in its wrappings.

What I had not brought were the lab books of two of his tutoring students, which he rather touchingly wanted to correct so that it would be ready in good time for them. At least he isn't out of touch with his colleagues; he telephoned with two of them, which must have been fun: 'So, I have a really good reason for not showing up to work today.' . . .

On the whole I am fairly oblivious to symptoms of illness in other people and decided to treat my visit as dropping by and not as a medical inquiry. It felt like the right course, though visiting someone in the hospital and not asking about symptoms or about the hospital itself sounds weird; and though we both pitched conversational tidbits equally Papa didn't raise these subjects. My impressions were that Papa seemed tired and though he could walk well was still a little unsteady (since his balance had been physiologically affected). To be really frank he had a rather forlorn air. His interest in the field of medicine (balanced or fed by a horror of consulting doctors) had seemingly drooped in the institutional environment; rather than making philosophical observations he clearly really does not want to be there and would greatly prefer to convalesce at home and get back to work.

As for the hospital itself, it has a splendid view of the Berlin skyline, is conveniently located off the U Bahn line that runs past our block, and I thought the atmosphere was good. I checked in at the front desk, a dimly lit room in which two more or less disgruntled people peacefully sat, then took the elevator to the relevant floor; then checked in as advised with the nurse at that station's desk to see whether his room was still the same. He is in an oblong room with two other beds, in which two miserable and inert-looking individuals also lay; there are blue lockers for cleaning or other equipment at the door and tucked in that corner a sink surrounded by a white shower curtain with a monotint winter tree and geese motif; the bed was no massive electrically manoeuverable thingamajig but simply a bed; and there was a nightstand beside it with a foldable tray upon which one could eat, but preferably not cut anything more resistant than a piece of cheese, because putting pressure on it makes it bend like Anna Pavlova. In the aisle at the feet of the beds, there was also a table where Papa could likewise eat.

So we chatted along in the room and then wandered out into the lounge, which is an oblonger windowed room with a plain white table and padded blue chairs where one can eat or talk or read. Papa did have a copy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung to read, by the way, so he improved on my small elucidations of current events where he already has, to use the delightful German expression, his nose in the wind.

***

As for the Berlin city elections, do I feel guilty for not having voted? — Yes. — Did I feel I was well enough informed to make a responsible decision, rather than going with my gut? — No. I did the Wahl-o-Mat and it left me even more confused; for most of the issues I had to vote "neutral" because I had no idea what the projected consequences or the philosophical underpinnings were. As it is, I was politically scattered between the SPD, Grüne and Linke; fortunately, except for the CDU voting bloc and the people who voted for the Piratenpartei, it appears I had this befuddlement in common with the Berlin population in macrocosm.

A Sketch of the Wordthrift Bookshop-Tender

2011-09-19T03:59:00.003-07:00

It's been an interesting time for the past day or two (counting yesterday afternoon) which, er, culminated in a hospital visit; it seems to be an "all's well that ends well" case that nonetheless scared us all. I'd rather not talk about it; it's not my story to tell and it's not at all entertaining.

I'm at the bookshop hoping that the phone call about Papa's arrival home will come, and in the meantime am doing various things on the internet as customary. I didn't sleep much but felt very alert most of the night, and quite as alert and prickly this morning.

Anyway, a customer came in and asked what would be read during the next weekly reading. I said I didn't know, and since she turned to look at the door where the information about the readings is posted and the information was likelier to be found, I dove back into the computer. Soon I looked up our website on the very slender chance that the information might be found there; it wasn't, so I didn't mention it.

Then, on the way back out the door, the lady paused to say with quiet indignation that I wasn't particularly forthcoming, and that if someone comes in with interest I might as well respond. I replied that I didn't have the information, and that it's my mother who does the readings; and then somewhat awkwardly and longwindedly suggested that people tend not to like to give out their telephone numbers and email addresses, but that if she wanted to leave one, my mother could contact her with the reading details once she arrives after 3 p.m.

So the lady (somewhat to my surprise) left an email address. First she interjected that my mother probably wouldn't be too pleased with me — to which I smoothly agreed, "Probably not," while thinking that I'm a little too old to be parentally chastised.

At any rate, I took the relevant notes and put up the piece of paper with the address, etc., on the laptop screen where it can hardly be missed. Soon a Swiss (?) woman came in to inquire after a specific book, and I was a little more extroverted than customary. Thirdly, of course I admire the lady's willingness to keep trying to talk and reach some kind of understanding in the face of a clash of temperaments or moduses operandi.

But — aside from that — I keep fishing for a germ of guilty conscience, in vain. Even more perversely I find the contretemps rather funny. This might not be a particularly grand or admirable example of the quality; but I like feeling cheeky. On the other hand, I don't know what Mama will think of the matter; so if she thinks that my taciturnity was a serious infringement of manners or of the reputation of the bookstore instead of a mild case of still-professional grimness I may repent.

Börsenblatt, Berlin Elections and the Billboard

2011-09-15T05:26:00.001-07:00

Today I woke up a little in advance of when I had to be ready to go to the bookshop, and since then have arrived agreeably early, received a package of promotional bookmarks from someone pedalling by on his bicycle, leafed through the Börsenblatt (the weekly — I think — publication of the German booksellers' guild), and seen one pair of people enter the shop to look around. The weather is variable and chilly, owing to the west wind. The news hasn't been too compelling, though since a slow day is generally good news for everyone it's not a complaint; and later I will undoubtedly look at more slideshows from New York Fashion Week.

***

In three days the Berlin city elections will be held and though I have a vague idea of voting for the Linke party in at least one category, I am completely uninformed. On no solid grounds I'm assuming that the Green Party on this level is not particularly alluring, because of petty, snooping, egotistic self-righteousness and for instance the mentality that cyclists are a morally superior lot who deserve to have shelters for their vehicles in case of rain, etc. Most of the charm is being able to vote for a really lefty party that is better on some issues — like civil rights — than any other, in a context where I don't look nuts and communist for doing so. Besides, as long as I don't vote for the FDP everything is fine (which is pretty much the electoral motto in my family and its immediate connections). Speaking of which, also on no solid grounds, I think that the Newer, Younger, Shinier Wave in the FDP — on the federal level, so it must be admitted that it's irrelevant to the city elections — makes even Guido Westerwelle look like a noble character and well-rounded statesman.

***

Last night I tried to foray into the world of popular contemporary music again. Two of the main realizations were that (evidently having a heart of stone) I still don't understand the profound significance of Tupac Shakur or why he is treated as a martyr (though being shot full of five bullets as he was in 1994, if I recall the relevant Wikipedia elucidations correctly, must have been an unpleasant experience), and that to be honest I liked "Baby" as sung by Justin Bieber. Not because it is a great song and not because the singing by Ludacris wasn't far more interesting than the rest of it, but because one can hear clear and apparently unadulterated singing at length instead of the customary manipulated mix of nothing in particular (*cough* to use a self-conscious example, Black-Eyed Peas "Imma be" *cough*). Kelly Clarkson has a similar likeable simplicity, which is also why I was glad when she won American Idol years ago.

In spur of the moment judgments, Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" sounds far better than her "Born This Way," admirable though the message of the latter is; the song by Taylor Swift which I heard was pretty immature, twee stuff. Then I found out that one of the songs fellow students used to play during my studying in Vancouver was apparently "Yeah!" by Usher. Besides I listened to Dolly Parton; to be honest, I like her so much that she could sing terribly and I wouldn't criticize it, and in any case there was no danger of it. Unrelatedly, hearing Susan Boyle was also a possibility, but the same kind of horror with which my uncle Pu regards classical music competitions, I apply to competitions where the best of the crop are people like Paul Potts — whose "Nessun dorma" I did hear and found, though earnestly sung, not very profound and completely out of touch with the operatic tradition — and where the fuss surrounding them is more important than the music itself. (Though, to go on a further tangent, such distracting fuss is also offered up in the most prestigious continental opera houses, when the stage direction goes out on the town and produces what is pejoratively termed "Euro trash opera" in the States.)

Lastly I heard Adele, who is offered up as the grand contemporary exemplar of good singing and profundity; that is probably true, but I don't approve of adopting a singing tradition which has direct roots in slavery and segregation and a sense of homelessness when it expresses nothing more profound than middle-class pensiveness or romantic woes. Amy Winehouse sang in the same tradition, but she gave it an individual, sharp edge (to be honest, I find her singing hard to listen to at length because of this edge) which made it halfway her own. With Adele it is still the excellent imitation of something that older people who were born into the generation can, and do, do better. (I haven't heard Duffy, so couldn't compare her style.) At any rate "Rolling in the Deep" is a good song, and an improvement on "Chasing Pavements," though since I listened to a mixture of live performances and recordings it is hard to tell whether unreliable sound quality, etc., biased the impression.

One obstacle to this entire foraying procedure is that I am really bad at catching lyrics, so there could have been something Shakespearean in the way of songwriting and I would have missed it. What I wonder, too, is how much listening to opera singing once in a while qualifies me to understand which songs are full of thought, effort and inspiration, and ably sung, and which ones aren't. It was much easier figuring out which songs are generally well liked when I was still at school, though that was a totalitarian music appreciation environment and if people preferred edgier or older music than Ricky Martin or Britney Spears they had to keep it well hidden for fear of Being Strange.

Immatriculation, the Runway and Splendid Singledom

2011-09-13T06:23:00.000-07:00

Since the last post I've been accepted to university, and have sent off the immatriculation paperwork and paid the fees, at least pro forma since I don't know how long the banks take to sort them out. I have laid excellent plans for preparing academically, because I am hoping to burrow into my studies and only crawl out of them for basic interhuman communication and for work (nature thereof to be determined).

At the moment I am sitting in the bookshop, after a not unproductive morning wherein someone appreciated the lovely wrapping papers which we sell at their full aesthetic value and someone else bought a book out of the window display. The New York Review of Books arrived this morning, so I retrieved it guiltily from our postbox and brought it along to the shop, and have skimmed over Michael Tomasky's political article when customers have come in because staring at the computer then would seem a trifle out of keeping.

Yesterday my sister T. prepared fudge for us again, out of cream and sugar and chocolate and beet root syrup and butter, and it turned out well. Then we had Leberkäs, which are rectangles of meat that taste quite good with sharp mustard of French provenance scraped over them with a fork and toasted in the oven, with mashed potatoes and apple sauce.

Otherwise I've been thinking about carrying on my "live blogging" of War and Peace for my books blog, though since Tuesdays are supposed to be about modern literature or premodern literature I meditated about riffing on an Aesop fable or one of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales instead.

So what I did do in the end is look at more photos from New York Fashion Week. So far I have really liked Zac Posen's collection, which looked I thought like a very Parisian audition for the house of Dior, and Carolina Herrera's collection, which is inspired by the 1930s? and Bauhaus in a vivid way that reminds me of the costumes and buildings in Poirot, and Donna Karan's collection, which is inspired by Haiti and I thought dealt with the artisanal sources faithfully and self-effacingly, though of course she dropped in conventional monochrome pastel dresses for a better-rounded collection. As usual, liking collections is quite different from thinking that I could wear them well or would want to wear them, just as I think that admiring a painting is probably better than acquiring the original, firstly because it might not fit in with one's home or one's personal aesthetic and secondly because there are so many good ones that preferring one to the other is difficult to absurd and thirdly because familiarity breeds contempt.

Anyway, as far as work goes, I first of all want to connect my studies with very concrete skills, and secondly if I have more than 200 Euros in my bank accounts I will be greatly surprised. I have more money which is earmarked for clothes (from my aunt) and for piano lessons (from a friend of the family) respectively, which I tend to keep sacrosanct. But I have relaxed my rules for the latter enough to spend 10 Euros from it on a concert and consider using more to hear the singing masterclasses with Christine Schäfer at the Hanns Eisler music school at the end of the month, which is partly also intended to improve my background knowledge of the discipline in case the opportunity arises to write a Maria Callas-related essay for my Greek courses. The problem is having enough funds to pay for transit to and from such events.

But otherwise I am very happy with not having extra money. Firstly it is much easier to not spend money if it isn't there to spend; I never consider the money truly mine anyway because there are many rightful claims on it first of all by pitching into household expenses, secondly by paying health insurance and other necessary things, and thirdly by charities; and thirdly I spent my childhood and teenagerhood feeling uncertain about every single purchase I made (grocery shopping, present shopping, buying gummy bears and clothes and so on for myself during university) in case it was superfluous. Besides I don't much like going out, so if I do meet people I like I'd rather talk with them or play soccer or whatever than go to restaurants or lectures or whatever, and it gives me the perfect excuse to avoid even seeming like I am on the search for a boyfriend.

More friends would be nice and it is definitely dreary not being able to talk to people; but where a boyfriend is concerned I need to sort out my psychological messes, grow up and into myself — which includes beginning to work properly, and finally come across the proper person first. In school and university, the boys whom I admired the most were ones who were friendly (not to me but in general) and clever, and I called those crushes — really it was in a pretty sisterly way without the least bit of a spark. Besides I have an inkling that I am going to be the strong, reliable, and somewhat inscrutable person who knows how to do the necessary things (paperwork, plumbing, electrical repairs, etc.) and how to make people feel secure in an eventual relationship; that sounds rather nice to me now that I am no longer a needy teenager, and I have to be extra-well prepared. Partly I think about what is right for me in that respect because three of my Facebook friends from school are pregnant and six are married and one at least already has a child, but it was clear even back in Grade 7 that I have my own turtle's pace of leading my life, which is certainly odd but effective and, indeed, right.

Ramblings, From Trauma to Poor's

2011-08-09T16:44:00.006-07:00

It's quite late but I am still very much up, and since my usual time-wasting experiences are temporarily out of reach, I was doing a little research for the story instead. As long as the reading about gunshot wounds was strictly theoretical and verbal, it was fine; even looking at the photos was fine. Then I looked at photos of other types of wounds, stitches, etc., and was for once subtly rocked to the verge of seasickness, as it were. So I decided to postpone the rest to a different day, and here is my blog post instead.

This evening my sister T. had an interview, and instead of having to go off to a complicated location, the interviewer came over to us! The rest of us were tucked away in our respective rooms and didn't traipse in to disrupt the proceedings. Anyway, it was a lovely change of pace.

***

The weather has been mixed, with a couple impressive gusts which bent back the branches on the oaks and even stirred the top of the trunk; in Dahlem a gust of over 19 m/s was recorded, which is not unusual but at any rate an 8 on the Beaufort scale and gale-force. The temperature fell and rose between 14 and 19 degrees Celsius; the humidity was generally I think between 60 and 70%. I like looking at the circum-British marine weather on the Met Office's website, too, and finding strong winds and learning the names of the different quadrants of sea. It's fairly useless for knowing the weather in Berlin except if conditions in the "German Bight" are similar.

At any rate the night sky is covered in clouds for the first time in several days, which I know because I have been watching for Perseid shooting stars before the moon becomes full. I can only point out the Big Dipper and the moon and sometimes Orion, but do recognize Cassiopeia because it is simply a sideways W, and so by luck I think I figured out where Perseus's constellation lies (i.e. mostly behind a neighbouring apartment building).

Though too impatient to watch stars well, I did take the time to sit in the open window of Ge.'s and J.'s room and watch the aperture of sky for a long while, and noticed that it is a slow process for the eye to accustom itself to the darkness and to glimpse more stars. Then of course there was the ambient city light, and even someone turning on the light in a room dimmed the stars further. I haven't seen the obvious blips of shooting stars which I saw (I think those were the Leonid showers, so in November) gliding over the sky in Canada once; but I saw one goldenish fizzle, which was strange and possibly something else, and I have never seen so many imaginary streaks of light in my life.

***

I have been following the riots in London with intense interest. On the whole, though I made a conscious decision not to read the coverage in the Telegraph much, I find the response of public opinion reasonable. The calls for police brutality and prompt military invasion are of course shortsighted and profoundly unintelligent on the whole, but as a verbal reaction at least they are to be expected and natural. What interested me is (for example) that there was so much of a focus on David Cameron handling the matter, rather than Boris Johnson; though admittedly Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (I read the whole name somewhere today and thought it was worth repeating) does not exude the air of the stern, noble arbiter of the socioeconomically afflicted.

Generally what I think is that living in downtown London is, depending on income level and the nature of one's immediate neighbours, in fact quite brutal and very monotonous; so without considering all of the looters as victims, and with considering setting fire to buildings as well as beatings of people as acts whose abhorrent nature should not need to be pointed out, I have a lot of sympathy for the rioters and looters. As for the theft, of course I am not comfortable with it; in pragmatic terms, it is clear firstly that destroying the work and savings of someone who has had to struggle for them (like the owners of the small businesses which have also been attacked) is unjustified, and secondly that the wealthy management of a multinational retailer are very likely to ensure that the brunt of financial losses falls on persons other than themselves. Thirdly I think it's true that the looting doesn't do much for the besieged economy; fourthly I don't understand why technology gadgets seem so essential to these people. As for the man who was shot and killed in Croydon, the phrasing of the incident is so ambiguous that I wonder whether he was shot by the police, and if the death was in fact related to the riots or not — doubts all the more justified, I think, by the improbity of public statements regarding Jean Charles de Menezes, Ian Tomlinson, and more recently Mark Duggan.

***

As for the stock market crashes, I think that they are fairly stupid, and have been as inclined to mutter about Moody's and Standard & Poor's (also of course in connection with Greece, Portugal, and Italy) as many other people, though I need to read more business articles to know what precisely is going on. Becoming the agency that hammers the nail into the coffin of a national economy must not be very rewarding, and as Paul Krugman has pointed out, for instance, S&P entirely failed to identify the subprime mortgage problem before it burst onto the scene and so is something less than omni in its science. On the other hand if something finally gets Berlusconi out of the prime ministerial office and into the round of judicial proceedings which have been breathing down his neck, I don't mind if it is this period of economic malaise.

Possibly the Longest Navel in History

2011-07-25T07:38:00.003-07:00

I've begun writing on my "lousy stories" again. It's an old tale which I felt was stupid and shallow the first time I wrote and finished it and have been revising out of a sense of shame ever since. The latest draft was begun June 21st-ish, and though I suspect that I must have left this latest draft open whilst wandering off elsewhere, Word says that I have spent over 85 hours on it.

What I've done lately to encourage writing endurance is set up an elaborate tea service at the laptop. I cleaned the secretary-desk a little. The ceremony involves brewing a pot of tea, arranging it on a large plate or today our tray, having a sugar pot and a rye cracker beside it, and then consuming it as the writing advances. I don't know if it qualifies as a slop bowl, but I even have a little fingerbowl in which I put today's teabags when they had sufficiently steeped. It feels very professional; the real business of literary endeavour is, of course, unconnected to the state of our teapot.

***

Though I was in the bookshop for a short while today as Mama's holidays begin to taper off, I have had endless time for the piano: Mozart's early sonatas and the concerto in d minor (20), Chopin's "revolutionary" étude and his "raindrop" prelude, Händel's "Harmonious Blacksmith" suite, the slow movement of Mendelssohn's d minor trio, Schubert's sonata in B flat major (D 960) and the two before, and Bach, for instance. I like having my sloppy pile of notes on both ends of the noterack and on the noterack itself, and pulling forward one of the previous notes to wedge in place the recently turned pages of the current score.

I really like Beethoven's cadenzas for the Mozart concerto, but that may be because of their familiarity from the Rudolf Serkin and Clara Haskil recordings I liked to hear at university. Clara Schumann's introduces (I felt when I attempted it today) too much of her own style and Carl Reinecke's is friendly but perhaps slavishly subordinated to Mozart's composition. In the fantasia-like tradition of cadenzas they are all rather weird; so with the very weirdest I am parochially inclined to prefer my own flavour of eccentricity. On the other hand canon compositions themselves are often hard to follow, as I had reason to observe again today in the thickets of Schubert; and I will likely concede in a couple of years that the problem lies not with the cadenzators but with the uncongeniality of my interpretation.

***

Yesterday it was Mama's birthday, and though she has never felt inclined to fuss about it, she took it upon herself for our sakes to indulge the mood for a bit of a splurge and shop for an elaborate set of repasts.

In the morning I spent an idle hour or so washing cutlery and cleaning the stove, with its extremely irritating freight of mistakenly loyal grease which was sort of like a glue stick when you try to rub the glue off of something and it only becomes more grey and streaked and stubborn. I wasn't the one who spattered the damn stuff after leaving a middling flame unattended on the largest gas burner. There were little creamy splatters on the inverted underside of our Römertopf lid, which I conveniently ignored.

Anyway, after lingering over that I prepared three "puddings surprises," this time with three types of pudding mixes, the ladyfinger biscuits, coffee, sherry, bilberries, raspberries, the berry juices and chocolate sprinkles. Due to different cooking times the puddings were fairly tepid by the time the dishes were achieved, as it were, but I woke up the others so that they could enjoy the pudding in residual warmth. I think the pudding would have been improved with more sherry.

Then Mama and T. laboured over fruit tortes, which were beautiful and delectable and their toppings compounded of mandarin and peach slices from a can, apricot halves, blueberries or bilberries, raspberries, and pineapple rings. There was whipping cream to go with it, and a bowl of yoghurt with the remaining fruit. To follow we had bars and squares of chocolate — nougat, milk, marzipan, and ginger marzipan — which were partitioned in the corner room as one of the Herbie films appeared for the millionth time, still charming, on television. In the evening W. came by with a bottle of prosecco, which I enjoyed likewise in a sampling this morning. Of course we had also sung Happy Birthday.

***

Anyway, I thought that I would write a thorough profile on Amy Winehouse for one of my blogs. But though I spent a good part of yesterday researching and I like her and find her interesting, I think that it would be best to have gathered a knowledge of the music industry and the historical background against which her songwriting and performances developed. Hopping on the bandwagon isn't a problem in this case, I think, because so much nonsense has been written about her that someone should do a nicer job of it — though I do like Russell Brand's commentary from his blog (it should still be available at Guardian.co.uk). Secondly, while the subject is still fresh there is less of a likelihood that stuff will be raked up that should be left forgotten. I was interested in her to begin with because I had never heard any criticism of her musical talent, whereas music of any genre brings out so much partisanship, envy, and nitpicking that this is impossibly rare; and because she did seem to fit so naturally and authentically into her jazz, rocker persona, old-fashioned groove.

As for Norway, I think that it is too easy to write something sensationalist or grandiosely sentimental, and it's doubtful whether one can write anything helpful or unprecedented. As little can be done in retrospect for the victims at the youth camp and in Oslo as for many other civil or military situations in the past year in which many (unarmed, young) people have died. What one can do is not to construct a perverse demigod out of the suspected murderer by discussing him more than those who died.

For News of the World I am completely uninterested, though why the straightforward tabloid rather than the tabloids in the guise of news-papers which compose the rest of his [= R. Murdoch] subjournalistic consortium should be the one under fire for its ethics is the question, and it is a pity that the employees were let go when it was closed down.

Where Somalia and northeastern Kenya are concerned, I still don't have the impression that there is much one can do as an individual abroad. What I do think is that the portrayal of the famine-stricken as brainless and helpless mouths to feed instead of as herders, villagers, etc., who would have been able to get along on their own and in their native soil had they been given the resources (wells, etc.) which a government or agency should have afforded them, and who need not only food but also some measure of protection and a dignified temporary shelter, is patronizing and denigrating. The closest I've come to reading about such a situation is in Laura Ingalls Wilder, and it is very clear that there is nothing one can do — hard work or intelligence or even wealth — against the weather if you rely on agriculture. The main difference in this millennium is that the infrastructure to develop and distribute technology has improved along with the technology itself, that where farming is done on a larger scale the risks tend to be better balanced out, and that governments are better at evening out the odds for vulnerable farmers if they accept the responsibility.

***

Last week I had an interview for a job at a restaurant. The transit and timing worked well, but the interview itself went badly. Either I didn't seem waitressy or the person was looking for an excuse not to hire me, because he said that without food industry experience he couldn't hire me, in fact nobody could hire me, in fact that at best I could do cleaning work; then was wroth that I didn't speak Italian though I could tease out the meaning of the advertisement; all things which were clear in the c.v. and letter I had sent him. He sent an email apologizing for being in a bad mood, since he is stressed; but I didn't think it was entirely sincere and everything felt a little "squicky" anyway and not a situation where I would be happy or make the employer so. So I turned down an offer to help with the website; it is on the face of it a dumb thing to do (beggars choosers etc.) but in this case my instincts were emphatically against it and I don't know much about web design so wasn't eager to have the bluff called. I consider it a bullet dodged, and was mostly irritated at the time because of the expenditure of time (esp. two words: S-Bahn delays), effort, and of hope that I would at last have work. Now I feel pleased because I have managed to be obdurate about not putting up with balderdash.

Negligees and Menacing Moons

2011-07-10T20:42:00.005-07:00

Besides practicing again, I have been keeping up with the haute couture in Paris, which ended on the 7th. These shows are, I've learnt, put on by members of the Chambre Syndicale, which demands that a fashion house put on two per year. This year I liked all of the ones I looked at — as usual I looked at the slideshows on Style.com, which have the advantage of occasionally giving the names (and agencies) of the models, while Vogue proper's website has a little magnifying box so that one to look at the photos close up, so that the workmanship is visible and it is easier even to tell what the fabric is. But newspaper websites like the Daily Telegraph's have them too.

One of the dresses I remember is Azzedine Alaïa's last; it is (if I recall) made out of a black latticework-like fabric which reminded me vaguely of old Middle Eastern window architecture, it has a broad belt-waist with metallic rims, and it is tied up at the throat with thin black straps, and hanging from the waist there is a short overskirt which falls in a pattern of petals. The overskirt mimicked the "skating skirts" earlier in the show which — though if they are trimmed with real fur I am inclined to disapprove — had a lovely Victorian appearance, and one or two came in a dark red velvety shade. They reminded me of ostrich feathers because of their fringe and their laden droop.

Then I really liked Anne Valerie Hash's line, which was a masterpiece of modernist French subtlety, and it was a relief to see black models; I don't know how to say this tactfully, but here their inclusion didn't look like political correctness because I don't think the clothes — the satiny fabric and the creamy or black shades — would have looked half so well on anybody else.

I looked at Dior briefly, twice, and felt that the problem with it was that dress-wise John Galliano has a better rein on his imagination once he has indulged it; I don't remember him ever indulging in pastels much, though they're more of my own bête noire, and the choice of patterns would have benefited from a sober second opinion. But the way in which the costumes were thrown together was at fault, too, since pieces that looked busy and unwearable together would have done very well if they had been contrasted with something striking but plain. In one case I noticed that there was a quieter skirt; I think either giving it a broad hem at the bottom or a strip of dark colour would have helped, since it was beige and looked almost literally like the unglamorous gruel of office fashion. I don't think the collection was disastrous by any means, but not thought over enough (and the reasonably popular photo of the girl in the opalescent moon dress would have been less horrifying had the sickle not been wedged with such homicidal tightness around her face).

Elie Saab had a line of thin dream-dresses which had a bathroom colour theme going on, namely that I could imagine each tint in the handle and packaging of a feminine razor; and though like Monique Lhuillier's his dresses do appeal sentimentally I have been meanly inclined to think without evidence that he designs a little cynically for the unimaginative tastes of the rich and famous. With Givenchy I didn't exactly get the point, since it was essentially all white negligées, suitable if one is an opera heroine who wishes to die tragically of consumption (the riverside backdrop to the show lent another suicidal overtone, though perhaps too Canaletto summer and not sufficiently gloomy or house-overhung for the lantern-lit, Thames-dragging variety of old-fashioned demise) but otherwise a trifle beside the point of winter attire, or for that matter attire. The Valentino show was rich and cheerful, and I liked the bright congress of Natalia Vodianova, Anne Hathaway, and the other guests.

Jean-Paul Gaultier's show I've somehow forgotten, and Chanel's I don't think I looked at in the first place — which is absurd, of course, because they're very important and I tend to like Chanel.

Anyway, this was all kind of frivolous and what the point of reviewing it as I have is precisely, I cannot say, but perhaps it is amusing. What is more embarrassing sartorially is that I could stare at what Kate Middleton wears forever, and either photographers choose her photos very respectfully or she is incredibly photogenic; at any rate I tend to delay looking at slideshows for a few days so that I am not undignifiedly hanging onto her every snapshot, as it were. Kate Moss's wedding photos I skipped; and the royal nuptials in Monaco made me (like other meddlesome-minded hoi polloi) a little sad, so I went through one slideshow a little absentmindedly and decided to shroud the rest in a sort of imperfect individual privacy.

A Chromatic Scale

2011-07-07T15:38:00.007-07:00

It's the summer holidays and so I haven't been at the bookshop, instead have been drifting and doing kind of the same things and kind of other things, in a looser schedule.

For one thing, the spare time is a nudge to work on the piano again. Today and yesterday I sightread some of the piano part for Beethoven's ~~Emperor~~ concerto No. 4. It went better than last time because it is difficult to get into the mood; the piano bit is more scrappy and subordinated to the orchestra than in some other concerts. It's especially rewarding in a way, though, because the recognizable, relaxed, and lovely pieces of melody come at unexpected moments, especially after the most tedious scale or repetitive broken chords or a difficult trill that persists like an angry and troubling bumblebee. (Which can also happen with Mozart when, in a compositional device my father likes to point out, a chromatic scale leads haphazardly back to the original key. Chromatic scales run up or down in half notes; I think that they have a meandering character because they pause by the sharps and flats and therefore draw out the run, or a scurrying character because the additional sharps and flats render them more frenzied. Inventing dumb or obvious miniature stories about scales is the way I've developed to convince myself that they have meaning and that I can love them.) It is nicest of all when it is an endearing earlier motif which I thought had been extinguished forever.

There are two cadenzas to the concerto in the back of the score. The first made no sense to me yesterday but I should try again, and the second is the one I seem to have heard in recordings. Today I made up ones of my own as I went along, because even if I don't have much of a method or book-instruction yet I must start figuring out improvisation at some point.

By the time I had gone through Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, Chopin's Raindrop Prelude and Revolutionary Etude, etc., I was tired.

The Grey Lady at the Helm

2011-06-07T20:35:00.005-07:00

This article is a project that has arbitrarily consumed hours and hours of the past week. Credit goes to all the reporters and anonymous Wikipedia contributors whose work I have aggregated. I hope the self-conscious attempt at being journalistic isn't too mined with jargon and other characteristic flaws to be readable or fit into a personal blog; and I tried to answer all of my own questions. What is left out is a closer look at the New York Times's editorial approach to the Bush years, since I had neither the strength, curiosity, nor ready sources to have hoped to do justice to it.

On June 2nd, Bill Keller, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Dean Baquet, and Jill Abramson gathered for an 11 a.m. address to the New York Times newsroom and announced that Abramson will replace Keller, who is resigning to pursue writing, as the executive editor on September 6th. This is the first time in its 160-year history that a woman will head the newspaper, and for the second time or so the dignified New York Times made a stir in internautical wilds like Twitter.

Jill Abramson, born in New York City and alumna of Harvard University, had worked as a journalist until 2003; after the Jayson Blair news fabrication scandal she was appointed as co-managing editor for the news.

The tasks of a managing editor are to "[oversee] and [coordinate] the publication's editorial activities" and at the Times it is the second-highest post. (Based on pure surmise this presumably means that if the arts editor wants to know whether to publish a contentious story, as is, or with changes, (s)he would refer it to the managing editor; and it would be at Abramson's discretion to consult the paper's lawyers or the top editor or even the publisher, etc., if she can't satisfactorily settle the question herself.) Baquet, now the assistant managing editor and an employee who is highly regarded by his colleagues at the New York and formerly at the Los Angeles Times,* will assume this post.

THE history of women reporters in the Times is venerable but chequered, and it begins with Jane Grant. She was stuck writing articles on "women's issues" and struggled through a rude environment for fifteen years in all. (In 1925 she co-founded the magazine New Yorker with her husband Harold Ross.)

Later women have held high positions in the Times, like the columnists Anna Quindlen and Maureen Dowd, and more recently Gail Collins; Carlotta Gall is charged with the reporting from Afghanistan and Pakistan after a similarly tough post for a different paper in Chechnya; and bylines from Ligaya Mishan through Elaine Sciolino to Janet Maslin appear throughout. Dowd won a Pulitzer in 1999 for her columns about the Monica Lewinsky affair, but she has ten predecessors (Ada Louise Huxtable in 1970 for architecture reporting, Nan C. Robertson in 1983 for a medicine feature, Sheryl WuDunn in a shared laurel in 1990, Natalie Angier in 1991, Anna Quindlen in 1992, Isabel Wilkerson in 1994, Margo Jefferson in 1995, Linda Greenhouse and Michiko Kakutani in 1998 ) all the way down to Anne O'Hare McCormick, who in 1937 was honoured for her foreign correspondence. (Since then there have been five others: Gretchen Morgenson, Andrea Elliott, Amy Harmon, Sheri Fink, and Ellen Barry.) There are three women — Lynn G. Dolnick, Susan W. Dryfoos, and Cathy J. Sulzberger — on the Ochs-Sulzberger Trust board, too. Judith Miller certainly left her mark as well.

AS for other American publications, women have already held leading posts. Tina Brown edited Vanity Fair from 1984 to 1992 and The New Yorker from 1992 to 1998, Katharine Graham was the moving spirit behind the Washington Post as its publisher, Anne Marie Lipinski was the editor of the Chicago Tribune from 2001 to 2008, others have headed the Portland Oregonian (Sandra Rowe starting in 1993) and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Julia Wallace starting in 2002). Nancy Hicks Maynard was the first African-American woman to own a large newspaper, the Oakland Tribune, in 1983. In the online press Arianna Huffington and more recently Brown have become formidable figures.

The response of these colleagues, also in the television milieu, has been enthusiastic; PBS's Gwen Ifill, Katie Couric of ABC News, Time's Kate Pickert, CNN's Christiane Amanpour, and Tina Brown joined employees in the Times in expressing their congratulations and appreciation for the shattering of another glass ceiling.

***

Jill Abramson has co-written among other books a weighty rebuttal to the defamation of Anita Hill by David Brock in his book The Real Anita Hill, by political allies, and by the media who uncritically repeated the libel. Hill had endangered the confirmation of Supreme Court appointee Clarence Thomas by accusing him of harassment. Jane Mayer (then a colleague at the Wall Street Journal and now a contributor to the magazine New Yorker) was the co-author, and it came out on the bookshelves as Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas in 1994. Since then it has become the final word on the matter. In October Puppy Diaries, a nonpolitical compendium of her series of personal blogs on the Times's website in 2009, will appear in Times Books.

In terms of the press, she worked for Time magazine (1973-1976), NBC News, The American Lawyer during the eighties, and the Legal Times as editor-in-chief from 1986-1988. In 1988 she started her stint at the Wall Street Journal's Washington bureau, and when Maureen Dowd nudged her to the Times in 1997 she became Washington bureau chief. While she was with the Times she and Don Van Natta Jr. uncovered part of the network of lawyers and enemies of the Clintons who ferreted out and nudged into press circulation reports of fiscal and amorous impropriety in the 1990s (praised in ex-editor Joseph Lelyveld's 2003 article, "In Clinton's Court," for the New York Review of Books).

Since 1988 she has appeared on television often: 39 times on the political affairs channel C-SPAN and 2 times on Charlie Rose's highly civilized talkshow on PBS. Her voice has a New York edge, and it is a continuous flow of words that stretch into each other, presumably as a way to avoid stumbles or filler like "um," though "you know" presents an island of punctuation intermittently. In short, her speaking style is Harvard-educated Sarah Palin with superior syntax, brain, and no conscious folk vernacular. On television her clothing seems a little stuffy, her tone occasionally patronizing, her emotions and reactions detached by superego, and despite the geniality toward the interviewer her air is a billboard declaring Keep Away. Relative to the rank and file of commentators, she is neither defensive nor aggressive, nor needily impelled to prove herself; she seems as willing to listen and think as to talk and think. She gives a careful interview. When someone challenges the Times's golden calf, viz. the belief in its own immaculate objectivity, her sense of responsibility to the New York Times seems to declare red alert as her autopilot reiterates nuanceless assurances of the Times's impeccable neutrality.

JILL Abramson has been seen as the potential heir to Bill Keller for years, though as she put it to Gabriel Sherman in 2010

"I don’t dwell on it," [. . .] "I think it would be a healthy, nice thing for the country. It is meaningful to have women in positions of leadership at important institutions in society. But, you know, there are wonderful male editors in this place who are just as capable as I am, and they could run this place exquisitely well. If it happens, it happens, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t."

She has a relatively benign example to follow. Before Keller became the executive editor he had been passed over for the position in favour of Howell Raines. When Raines was fired two years later in connection with the Blair scandal — nominally; he also raised animosity by insisting on reforms which frankly the Times might need, but perhaps more aggressively than the Times needs — the publisher decided abruptly that he wanted Keller after all.

BESIDES Keller's dispiriting consciousness of being Sulzberger's second-best, his heart lies in the writing which earned him his Pulitzer (though why he would use the lofty writerly skills, which to garner the prize must have rendered the decline and fall of the Soviet Union in vivid colour, to battle the Twitter windmill is beyond me) rather than in editing, particularly when freighted with a high burden of business decisions.

Keller's current employee David Carr characterizes him with excellent conciseness in a recent interview with Baristanet:

He has accomplished amazing things in the job and is probably one of the most talented journalists of our time. Remember, he was not the first choice, and it was an accident of history. And the crown with him never exactly fit. He never was the imperial executive editor of the New York Times, and he turned out to be a fabulous one.

Keller himself has surmised,

I think Howell’s view of leadership is martial [. . .]. And mine is more paterfamilias, I guess. You are dependent on this huge reservoir of talent, and your job is to create the circumstances under which they can do their best work, to reward them when they do well, correct them when they do wrong, set some guidelines, and spur their ambitions. But it’s not about me.

SO Keller soothed the savage malcontent among the Times reporters. Even if the outrage is not entirely laid (Abramson herself has been gloomily cast as having Raines moments), Sulzberger is fully behind her — even in 2003 he was hoping that she would become the first female executive editor — and despite the controversies over the delay of the National Security Agency wiretap story in 2005 and over the free imaginative rein which Judith Miller held over her reporting on Iraq's putative weapons of mass destruction, etc., she appears to have emerged happily from the froth like a Venus.

***

Her father, Norman L. Abramson, is a New Yorker like her mother and "retired president of Irish Looms Associates, New York textile importers." (This is the information in her wedding announcement in the Times. Despite the section's habit of adorning occupations which have an insufficiently patrician air, in this instance embellishment is clearly not required.)

The household were newspaper-readers who harboured a Virginia O'Hanlon faith in the Times's dictates — "In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion. If The Times said it, it was the absolute truth," Jill Abramson told the newsroom on Thursday — and it could afford to send her to Ethical Culture Fieldston School, a NYC school and member of the Ivy Preparatory School League.** The school's list of prominent alumni is a fragmentary Who's Who of the American elite, among them Sofia Coppola, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Howard Wolfson, David Denby, Jane Mayer (whom Abramson seems to have met and become friends with at the school), Sheryl WuDunn and, coincidentally, Gil Scott-Heron.

At Harvard she pursued undergraduate studies in History and Literature, and emerged magna cum laude in 1976, to dive straight away into the journalist profession.

Along the road she picked up an interest in fashion — in pursuit of his profile Gabriel Sherman caught her before a Narciso Rodriguez runway show — and in music in the form of Arcade Fire; feminism appears a passion if her early book on the first graduating class of Harvard Law School where women had represented over 10% of the freshman class, the photo of the Times's third female reporter on her office wall, and her paean to her predecessors during her newsroom speech on Thursday are an indication; so, clearly, is raising dogs. She broke her wrist last year during a hike, so corpore sano is evidently not neglected either (except for the wrist).

In 1981 she married fellow New Yorker and Harvard graduate Henry Little Griggs 3rd. As the son of an NBC News producer and employee with a political PR company he was not new to the halls of the Ivy League, journalism, or politics either. They have two children and the hero of the puppy diaries, Scout, and alternate geographically between New York City and Connecticut.

***

"Good for one fare only"

Subway token inscription / philosophical metaphor for a human life (presumably it implies carpe diem/dum vivimus vivamus) / part of Jill Abramson's tattoo

*

"Jill Abramson" [Wikipedia] (read)
"Carlotta Gall" [Wikipedia] (read June 6, 2011)
"Elaine Sciolino" [Wikipedia] (read June 6, 2011)
"Jane Grant" [Wikipedia] (read June 6, 2011)
"Tina Brown" [Wikipedia] (read June 6, 2011 UTC+2)

"Jill Abramson: 'I'm a battle-scarred veteran'" [Guardian] by Ed Pilkington (June 7, 2011)
"Jill Abramson, Just-Named New York Times Editor, Ready To 'Seize The Future'" [Huffington Post], by Michael Calderone (June 2, 2011)
"New York Times shakes up its masthead" [Politico], by Keach Hagey (June 2, 2011)
"Jill E. Abramson Is Bride Of Henry Little Griggs 3d" [New York Times] (March 15, 1981)
"Ethical Culture Fieldston School" [Wikipedia] Read June 3, 2011
"The New York Times" [Wikipedia] (read June 6, 2011)
"Times Two" [New York Magazine], by Gabriel Sherman (September 26, 2010) [and Page 2]
"New York Times names Jill Abramson as first female executive editor" [Guardian], by Jason Deans (June 2, 2011)
"Coffee With . . . David Carr" [Baristanet] by Debbie Galant (June 5, 2011)
"The United States of America vs. Bill Keller" (p. 2) [New York Magazine], by Joe Hagan (Sept. 10, 2006) [and Pages 4, 7 and 10]
Interview: "Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson in Current Affairs" [Charlierose.com] (Nov. 7, 1994)

*

* From Politico's article: "Dean Baquet, the paper’s assistant managing editor and Washington bureau chief who became a kind of journalistic folk hero when he refused to cut staff as editor of the Los Angeles Times, will replace Abramson as managing editor."
** To be honest, though the Ivy Preparatory School League sounds prestigious and likely is, even after reading the relevant Wikipedia article the practical ramifications of this affiliation remain obscure.

Lycurgus, the Obnoxious Tyrant

2011-06-07T15:22:00.006-07:00

Back during one of my depressed years, maybe Grade 11, when I was worried about being underread, I kept our old brown copy of Plutarch's Lives (in the Dryden translation, and my grandmother's I believe) at the bedside and strove to make inroads.

One of the lives did strike a chord, since it recapitulated what I learned about Spartan education in history class during an otherwise mostly unedifying year in German school. Under the impression that Lycurgus's biography was the one in question, I found it this morning in a different translation online and read it, keeping on expecting to find the nice passages. The further it went the clearer it was that this is the incomprehensible hagiography of a tremendous jerk, and a paean to totalitarianism.

As I thought it out, Plutarch is likely an originator of the neoclassical and later Christian model of finding a historical figure who can be elevated as a man worthy of emulation, who never does anything wrong and whose enemies are wicked envious ones, or whose faults (for whom a nebulous and inexorable fate is to blame) are a dignified caution to his historical successors. (Probably a harebrained idea, but it seems to me after reading lots of retellings that Homer's heroes for example don't strive so hard after perfection and everyone meets a sticky end whether they're impressive human beings or middling ones — their paths of glory lead but to the grave, etc.) The taxation on the truth and the realities of the human character is too high to be redeemed by the potential benefit. In short it appears profoundly unsound. The air of moral eventemperedness and conservative yearnings are taken as signs of health and practicability, but in fact they often appear to conceal narrow experience, feeble imagination about human nature and the world, and an egotistical need to order the cosmos to one's physical and spiritual comfort that neither recognizes the rights and differences of others, nor is fundamentally good.

Anyway, that is a tangent which it is practically impossible to defend objectively, so to return to "Lycurgus" here is one passage that encapsulates a little of the pleasant experience his rule must have been:

the Laconian cup, we are told by Kritias, was especially valued for its use in the field. Its colour prevented the drinker being disgusted by the look of the dirty water which it is sometimes necessary to drink, and it was contrived that the dirt was deposited inside the cup and stuck to the bottom, so as to make the drink cleaner than it would otherwise have been.

From the modern perspective, water taken from dirty sources would have borne fecal bacteria and parasites, and drinking a broth is not more pleasant even if the silt has settled and the vessel it's served in is a tasteful chalky grey. Besides I am pretty sure that Lycurgus would have drunk (if that grammatical tense is correct) from a slightly different cup. Skim over the dry passages and there are many more gems like this one.

Anyway, I don't follow Plutarch's thoughts. Would he have liked to live in a dual kingdom with lousy furniture, communal dinners, discontent rich people throwing stones, servants presumably living in worse circumstances as the wealth declined, a mediocre democracy where Lycurgus was ruling through the young second king after a military coup (though bloodless), no "useless tradesmen" and no merchant relations with foreign towns since these couldn't do much with the new iron (as opposed to gold and silver) coins?

Unless he was living on the street and was infested with a horrible disease, in contrast to which this Sparta might sound like the Elysian Fields, I doubt Plutarch would have found this lifestyle much fun to put in practice. Sparta may have been truly awful before Lycurgus improved it and so he is a model of making the best of a bad lot. Or, since I didn't finish the Life (too disgruntled), perhaps it has a splendid surprise ending.

Maybe he should be excused on the grounds that most of us who read the Little House on the Prairie series when we were little also thought that, with the exception perhaps of the Long Winter, it sounded rather cozy and nice. The idea of austerity can be charming, the reality of it unthinkable.

What also annoyed me was the praise which the Oracle at Delphi accorded to Lycurgus, twice. Either the oracle accepted arrant bribery, Lycurgus was misrepresenting its findings or never went there, or the oracle did inspire herself through now-controlled substances and had partaken of particularly happy ones whenever he came to visit. I don't think any proper god would accord a follower unalloyed praise, because 'tis human to err, etc. The tale of Croesus is far more instructive and real, I think, and I would think more of Plutarch's or Lycurgus' psychology if one of them had thought that the praise must be a particularly mean trick of the Olympians.

But, to end on a more cheerful note, the Laconian cup puts me in mind of Aunt Adelaide Stitch's education and boarding programme in Nurse Matilda:

"Her own suite of rooms, decorated in chocolate brown
A new wardrobe of clothing in colours that wouldn't show the dirt"

The Audience of Wooden Seats

2011-06-07T11:23:00.003-07:00

Though I have watched pieces only of the least artistically obscure of his films, besides ignorant of the craft in general, and therefore am ill qualified to judge his actorly stature, I've had a mild crush on Peter O'Toole after Lawrence of Arabia, Goodbye Mr. Chips, The Lion in Winter and the one with Audrey Hepburn whose name I can't recall; so here is a link to an interview — "Peter O’Toole Has a Few Words for Directors" — by Dave Itzkoff of the New York Times (June 26).

Chirpy Update on "Uni," Etc.

2011-06-05T11:14:00.003-07:00

On June 2nd I sent the electronic application to the Freie Universität and on the 4th I sent the corroborating documents (or, rather, my mother kindly dropped the envelope into the box for me on her way out), and now I am waiting. Since July 15th is the deadline for applications and responses come in September, I am not worried about being too much on tenterhooks, and instead am focusing — at least these days — on researching the news and revisiting Mozart sonatas on our piano and tending the bookshop.

After much dithering I decided to apply for Modern Greek, as promised, Near Eastern Studies (culture and languages), and Classical Studies: Latin. Russian wasn't an option in combination with other courses, as I found after studying the charts lengthwise and crosswise several times, though eventually I want to take a language course in it outside of studies. Realistically I don't think my chances of getting in are terribly good; however with Modern Greek I do happen to have an extra "in" if I've learned another modern language; since English is evidently one, and French in university and Spanish in high school are there, I hope that will help, and fortunately I did rather well in my Ancient Greek course.

In the meantime I've tried to acquire a little modern Greek; fortunately a vague recollection led me to the BBC website, which has a modest collection of resources including MP3 files to supplement the pronunciation guide I found in the dictionary in our bookshelves. I've done other things too but won't go into too much detail. Fortunately the pronunciation doesn't appear too abstruse, though it has certainly changed in 2000 years and it's a minor disappointment to pronounce "ph" as such and not as a strong "p," the loss of "eta" as a long e as opposed to ee is also sad, and so on and so forth. These changes do align the sound of Greek words more closely with the pronunciation of similar words in different languages, however, just taking "philosophy" as an example, and I admit I'm hardly distraught that the accents now indicate simple emphasis and not convoluted changes in pitch.

So . . . otherwise I'm reading through UNAIDS's report on AIDS after 30 years, though I am too ignorant about the issue to be properly informed even after the perusal, and at some point I may wrap up a blog post about the incoming executive editor of the New York Times. For the latter I've gone through our physical archive of New York Review of Bookses, and since Jill Abramson did important political reporting the contributions where she shows up have been a bundle of nostalgia. Her television appearances on Charlie Rose are also preserved, so I watched those. When was the last time I'd heard about Zell Miller, Jesse Helms, etc.? But I don't feel nostalgic about Whitewater, etc., and while the confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas must have taken place while I was already reading the newspaper I don't remember anything about them. The combination of scandalmongering and of libelling victims of harassment makes it seem like it would have been a lacklustre use of time and attention anyway. Speaking of Rose, I found his show tremendously boring the last time I tried to watch it, but it has apparently really grown on me.

Less importantly, it has been a very warm day, not miserable precisely and my brain is reasonably active because of the aforementioned mental exercises, but my physical reflexes are presumably terribly slow and let's say I feel a little sticky. Garbage Day (Friday? — I've forgotten.) was the pits, and still a balmy air is very pleasant when it emanates from the flowers and particularly roses which are blossoming in panoply. Yesterday morning I realized that dehydration might be a minor issue, so I am taking "doses" of water with a couple drops of lime juice, teaspoon of sugar, and pinch of salt. It feels pleasingly unspartan particularly when I reach the bottom, i.e. the delicious deposit of saccharine grains.

Scrying

2011-05-16T13:52:00.004-07:00

I've come to the conclusion lately that it would be best to apply for university again. That I am not enthusiastic about it is certain, but since I live in a country where it is paid for and since it is better than idling for another year (the idling is worthwhile, but there is a time when it is worthwhile, and next year it would not be) I have decided to take a chance. The main obstacles now are, first and foremost, the likelihood that I will not get in; secondly, figuring out which programmes to apply for; thirdly, finding work to supply an income and help me when (if) I have the BA and am standing on the threshold of a career.

So far I would like to take Modern Greek, Russian, and Latin. (The first would be the major, the Russian and Latin double minors.)

The courses of Ancient Greek at UBC might not help that much, so I have decided to try learning a great deal in the meantime. At the bookshop today I did quizzes to learn the colours, for instance, and of course there are newspaper articles available for reading practice once I am advanced enough, which will take a little while. Besides there is the literature, geography, history, cooking, etc., to read up on for background. I'm hoping that the fact that I've liked Greece and Greek so much, though as they were two thousand years ago, will fuel the toil.

Besides I would like to do something in journalism and maybe visit one or two classes to be sure that I am making the right decision.

In the meantime I am worried that I am worthless, etc., as customary, and past dealings with the Freie Universität haven't removed the feeling that with the grades I had in the past and other things I am not a welcome applicant and am both obstreperous and beneath their notice; but these worries won't help even if they are right, so I blot them out and try to forget them. I still haven't lost the feeling that I should stick with applying to the FU, either, rather than trying a different university.

Anyway, in the best case scenario I'll be accepted and happy in my studies. I have all sorts of inferiority complexes about my mind, reinforced by years of creeping along in school and sometimes doing very well and sometimes doing very badly with equally middling energy, and never being able to take positive opinions as an incontrovertible truth rather than polite flattery. Besides I worry that the next time I become depressed or unhappy, the clarity of mind, memory, etc., will be taken away again — which is one reason why I am so circumspect about finding the right job. Feeling stupid feeds into insecurity, and not being clearminded enough to sort through the problems and find mental distraction makes me feel trapped inside my head. At present reading novels, one after the other, feeds my mind and curiosity reliably, and keeps it running so that I can process newspaper articles, the world around me, whatever I feel like reviewing on the Lighthouse blog, etc., easily.

As for the distant future, I have changed my mind in a major way about becoming an author. I feel less doubtful now about being able to write reasonably mature stories and so on, which may be a troubling sign in itself; but the prospect of becoming a public figure or of flogging my ware is so disruptive, and so little concerned with the kind of personal but unselfcentred exercise which I consider nice literature to be, that I want to wait if at all until I am older, secure of my identity, and good-humoured enough to clown around in public persona if that's what publishers, etc., demand. Journalism and writing stories for myself seems better, and if I can Emily Dickinsonesquely leave one or two very good novels behind for posthumous publication (if they're any good) I'd be pleased, and aside from that I think I'd like to publish stories for free on the web. Not middling run-of-the-mill stories but good, unpretentious ones whose principal purpose is to be enjoyed in the reading and the writing. As for poetry (to which the Dickinson analogy would of course better apply) I'll no doubt write it when the spasm seizes but otherwise I think my approach is too desultory to deserve much respect.

Canada: Roughly Four More Years Of The Plague

2011-05-03T04:58:00.004-07:00

In . . . cheerful . . . news, Canada has just reelected Stephen Harper as Prime Minister and given his Conservative Party a majority in Parliament.

Though I have long left the shores of Canuckia, it was not before Harper appeared on the scene as part of the "reform" conservative movement. It is essentially composed of neoconservatives who have very peculiar ideas of the world allied with a practically impermeable layer of semibenevolent stupidity. Its other exponents include Stockwell Day who, though also young and reasonably picturesque (in politician terms) like Harper, was a less serious figure but left the realm of Canadian political comedy with far greater riches, like the picture of him in a skintight suit on a speedboat. Harper seems, behind his somewhat undistinctive face and slightly protuberant-tipped nose and indolent blue eyes, the most intelligent of the lot.

Behind this meaningless façade the government is as far as I can tell self-seeking and inwardlooking, ignores those social problems which it might prove inconvenient to solve, and casually prone to endorsing rather repellent ideas to the effect that Muslims are generally suspicious, people who are poor are maliciously bent on disturbing the comfort of the rich, immigrants are moochers, and that the starving masses abroad should feel content with Canada's past largesse and accept the now circumscribed crumbs of aid like the princely alms which the wilted soul of an Ottawa parliamentarian considers it to be. This mentality will be familiar far beyond the shores of Canada, for its proponents are a somewhat international burden.

On the other hand the NDP, the New Democratic Party and the party to the left of the Liberal Party, has done exceedingly well. How the Liberal Party, which happily occupied the centre and majority of the Canadian pool of eligible voters for over a decade, managed to lose the vast sections of support may remain a mystery. Certainly Michael Ignatieff is a contentious figure, though whether it is that he mostly dwelled in the US, that he is an Elitist who spent years in the Ivy pinnacle of the Ivory Tower and hobnobbed among the ambient intelligentsia, that he supported the Iraq War (which is the "deal-breaker" for me), that he had tinges of neoconservatism (which was also a problem for me) or that he is simply not very compelling in himself and as a representative of a happy and harmonious Liberal Party, it is impossible for me to determine.

The NDP's Jack Layton seems a slightly abrasive, combative miniature Napoleon, who has the minor opposition party advantage in always being right whenever he criticizes a government policy that turns out to be wrong. And I think he has also profited either by the leftwing belief that now that Canada's economy is in a good state one can afford a little idealism, or by a spillover of the lefty hopefulness of Obama-era America circa 2008, or both. When I was growing up in Victoria the problem was that the Liberal Party was the only left-wingish party capable of gaining a majority, so a vote for the NDP or the Green Party was essentially a vote wasted. Since the opposition to the Conservative government has been a triumvirate for a while, composed of the Liberal Party, the NDP, and the Bloc Québécois — the second and third parties harbouring a relentless undercurrent of needling resentment for the first due to their history of suffering as the more or less impotent naysayers under the Liberal yoke — the argument that the Liberals are the lone hope of the left has evidently become less and less compelling.

Lastly the Green Party triumphed with one parliamentary seat, held by the party's leader Elizabeth May.

Anyway we may well wonder at the degree of stupidity which led people to vote for the Conservatives by such a margin, but evidently the Canadian public has decided that the success of the NDP is a sufficient sign of progressivism, so the mere, trifling fact that the Conservative Party can push its nasty ideas through freely is a side issue . . . except of course for the people who are most affected by the nasty ideas.

If my Facebook friends are an indication, there is no great rejoicing at this electoral outcome, though as one friend astutely pointed out, it isn't quite as embarrassing as the reelection of Bush was for Americans.

What I will do is effectively stuff my ears for the next little while and think very concentratedly back to the glory days of Trudeau and Chrétien.

De Miseris Mondayensis

2011-05-02T04:25:00.003-07:00

It's around 1:30 in the bookshop, a thunderously grey day only without the thunder and the sky has dissolved into white cloud cover, and the very new heavy foliage of the trees gives a peculiar weight and fullness to the scene. I hadn't been outside much since the Friday before the holidays, if at all, and it was all very new to me. There are even dandelions blown to seed in the garden patches at the street.

During the white night I read about the Osama bin Laden stuff and wrote the blog post beneath, which I may delete eventually because it doesn't seem nice or helpful, and it feels revolting to be so cheerful about someone's death (Mama felt that it was murderous and Papa was angry about it, I think). I also still don't understand why someone dying should make me feel so much better. Someone came into the bookshop to drop off a book for us to sell on commission, and he solemnly stated that yesterday was an important day in history. I must admit that I replied, facetiously, "Because of the Pope?". As I was going to write on a Facebook update I never posted (not wanting to attack people with political controversies), I think that this would be an important day of history if bin Laden's death made the people who died in 2011 (or in the African embassies earlier, or on the U.S.S. Cole) alive again. But this is just a death day. So that's why I was irritated and (completely uncharacteristically) sarcastic.

What I don't understand is why all of the doubts I had about whether bin Laden knew of the plans for Sept. 11th, or took them seriously if he did, have suddenly vanished. The idea of CIA plots was in my view absurd though in the realm of possibility; what I rather thought is that it might have been a "grassroots initiative" and to make Osama bin Laden immediately responsible for that is like arguing that any crime a Mafia drug dealer commits is directly ordered by the padrone (if that's the correct term).

In any case it is comforting to read Gawker and Jezebel, because there is a good deal of New Yorkish levelheadedness, skepticism and thoughtfulness in the comments. I was looking for an editorial or article in the newspapers to make a useful point for me, but it didn't happen. There was an immensely sad quote from a woman whose son had died on Sept. 11th who basically had no reaction, and said that bin Laden's death didn't change anything. Nonetheless I felt as if it did, and though it may be wishful thinking I hoped that we could cork the islamophobia back up in the bottle, not carry out secret operations in Pakistan, etc., and begin again with a clean canvas.

Anyway, these things happen slowly. The newspapers are much better again, even before 2008 I was thankful at the thought that Donald Rumsfeld was no longer Defense Secretary (though when he appeared on the Daily Show this year it was definitely too soon), when Obama won the election I realized that the Bush administration had stolen eight years of my life which I will never get back but at least those eight years were over, and pretty much every time I watch a session in British Parliament I am happy that Antonius Blair has departed and the clean fresh air of David Cameron has entered. But Fox News and its brainless brethren are still with us, and CNN for instance has I think not a fifth of its former succinctness, informativeness, and class, and since I watched the Headline News almost daily as an eighth- or ninth-grader I should know.

Other than that, my holidays were I think well spent. I've read dozens of romance novels, relaxed into a veritable sea anemone, scribbled a little on stories, returned to long Hermitologies blog posts though they are most likely a nuisance, and finally spent more time on the piano, where I had marathon sessions with Bach, Beethoven, Satie, Haydn, Scarlatti, Chopin, Schumann, Mendelssohn, etc., etc., and eventually stopped overthinking the music. The idea of composing probably won't amount to much, though.

Here in the bookshop I turned to a philosophical book on Aristotle again but couldn't concentrate. But hopefully I will, because it spreads on the troubled waters of my soul like a calming oil, and I could really use some of that.

P.S.: Never mind the Latin in the post title. Half of ancient Rome is probably rolling in its graves.

Trying to Close the Chapter

2011-05-02T01:10:00.004-07:00

Last night I came across the snippet of an AP news article which announced that President Obama had called a press conference in the evening and that, unprecedentedly, he had not mentioned what it would be about. I was guessing that it would be about Libya, the budget or (in the wildest conjecture) his resignation.

Then the first reports came that, according to an anonymous American government official, Osama bin Laden had been killed and his body captured, and that the press conference was related. About an hour after the announced time of 10:30 Eastern time, in which I had the White House livestream open but nothing happened, that turned out to be the case.

Though I would have expected that the death of Osama bin Laden would leave me indifferent, it hasn't. It brought back my memories of Sept. 11th and made me feel (illogically or not) that it was finally resolved and put in the past.

The fact that he had been purposely assassinated didn't bother me either. I preferred it to torture, an unjust trial, secret jailing, humiliation, institutional execution, desecration of the body, or any of the other methods which disgrace us and our governments more than the people who suffer them, and which I would have expected. If he was really shot through the head he hopefully died right away.

If the attacks had not happened on Sept. 11th, several thousand people would still be alive and (as Obama pointed out) parents would have been able to raise their children, etc.; besides the press would have remained objective, no one would especially notice if people are Muslim or Arabic, and there wouldn't have been the pressure to go to war in Afghanistan.

On a personal level it also had a bad psychological effect on everyone who cared, also on me, and dragged us down into a weltschmerzy depression which had a deadening effect on anything artistic and intellectual. Though that was important to us of course it was insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

It also seemed to damage the relatively pacific and open inner life of America itself. Though it bothered me that no one made the connection between the suffering of Sept. 11th and the suffering of people abroad who live with war daily, there is really something vile in bringing violence into a country which (regardless of what its government wreaks abroad) has managed to forge a reasonable level of inoffensive comfort and harmony, and to gain a sort of innocence, and to share this peace and some goodwill (naïve or otherwise) with those who enter it. I don't think immigrants had an easy time, but unfortunately, no matter what the country, they rarely do.

*

On the other hand, we are responsible for the hundreds of thousands of deaths, torture, illegality, and so on that came afterwards.

We used indiscriminate weapons in Afghanistan and killed entire families, we supported any force whose opponents are Arabic or Muslim and armed no matter how they treated civilians, we killed Sikhs and Muslims and didn't report the deaths properly, we were suspicious of anyone who was or looked Muslim and made them feel it, we pretended that torture wasn't torture and handed off men to dictatorships to force confessions, we imprisoned over seven hundred people in Guantánamo Bay without investigating their situations properly and let them rot there, we invaded Iraq, we undermined the case for respecting human rights by demonstrating that we did not feel bound by them, we hired contractors who shot people for no reason, we put hundreds of thousands of soldiers into situations where they had to fire on civilians or terrorize people by invading their homes at night and where they were at risk of being wounded or killed or emotionally damaged, we arbitrarily arrested people and held them over the twenty-four-hour limit under the Magna Carta, we approved the Patriot Act and its ideology that an American life is worth more than the life of an individual of any other nationality, we intimidated and harassed and isolated people who were against the Bush administration's policies for being unpatriotic, we flew over and dropped bombs into Pakistan and didn't particularly care whether people who had nothing to do with the matter died, and so on and so forth. Some of these things are continuing.

And I think that we are solely responsible for all of that.

So it is time now, since not only the hijackers but also the person who apparently stood behind them are gone, to begin to really look at and address the abuses and murder that followed Sept. 11th.

As a side note, I don't think that Osama bin Laden's death should be celebrated as an achievement of America as a country, either, since killing a man is the kind of, er, feat which knows no national limitations. But I admit that it's bringing out weird jingoistic feelings in me too, the kind I hated ten years ago, and of course I'm not American.

*

As a detail, I was wondering why the CIA director, Leon Panetta, was so moved and close to tears during the press conference about the shuffled positions in the Department of Defence, etc., last week. I think this may be the reason.

The Balcony Scene, Un-Star-Crossed

2011-04-29T17:54:00.004-07:00

This afternoon I woke up to find that the Royal Wedding was already taking place rather than occurring in the early evening, as I had thought. The television was out in the corner room and I didn't want to suffer through the commentary and the length of the ceremony itself, so every now and then I read about it on the Guardian.

The more I read the more likeable and interesting the ceremony sounded. In the end, for strange reasons difficult to pinpoint, I became very fond of the wedding; as it turns out my critical faculties were melting into a species of naïve admiration.

The ceremonies had a fine balance between formality and informality, pomp and modesty, tradition and modernity; little things like the trees in Westminster Abbey, the fact that Kate Middleton's dress was neither fluffy nor too remote (as Karl Lagerfeld suggested), the red uniform of the groom instead of a rigid black suit or more gritty militaristic clothing (as it is the formally decorated and sculpted back of William's costume had a hint of the watchmen's attire in the Wizard of Oz — oh-wee-yo, oh-weeee-yo; etc. — about it), and the, er, creative exuberance of the ladies' hats were thoroughly pleasing.

What I did watch on television (where at least eight channels, including ARD, ZDF, CNN, BBC and TV Monde, were covering the ceremonies live) were the minutes on the balcony. It was rather fun to observe the dynamic between the actors, by which I mean the royal family.

As is well known, the kisses of the married pair were (as it was described on Le Monde's website) very English and not French. In that scenario — massive crowds, television, and the argus eyes of one's granny and other family, not to mention several centuries though not quite forty, contemplating them — an impetus of Heathcliffesque passion hardly seems proper or likely, so I found the absence of romantic fakery refreshing.

Besides the two of them have, to a degree (and in my opinion), slipped fairly suddenly into premature middle age and responsibility lately; it's clear that they have long and demanding careers ahead of them, whether as a rescue pilot or as a public figure or both, etc., so a certain pragmatism and sedateness is right.

What I really coveted was the wedding cake, a colossus of the genre, a veritably princely creation in beaded and flowered white, which I stared at in the monarchy's Flickr photostream. Cupiditas radix malorum est! In this type of crisis I remind myself of the time I read that fondant tastes lousy.

***

Anyway, otherwise weddings horrify me a little. First of all I tend to the opinion that love is egotistic and that weddings are generally self-seeking, secondly that the ceremonial form and public exhibitionism injures a relationship's private, unforced and sacrosanct nature. Thirdly the planning of them sounds nervewracking, for one's self and for any minions, and lastly I have the sense that the day of mine, if it occurs, will be a nightmare.

***

In the evening I made cucumber sandwiches; little rounds and hearts and an angel cut out of white bread, using cookie cutters, with dollops of cranberry on top; and a pot of chamomile tea. Together with the bags of winegums and licorice allsorts (since they were H***bo there were unfortunately far more gummies than licorice pieces) which Ge. had purchased they formed a repast in the corner room. The chamomile tea was intended to be fruit tea, and Mama howled in protest when she observed the switcheroo, but nobly drank a cup regardless.

In the past, and unrelated to current events, I have tried to make English teas, and the results have always been doubtful. The thing is that the sandwiches and tea are dainty but not very filling, and scones and clotted cream seem more rustic and besides a pain to prepare, and it is difficult to manufacture lemon curd which does not taste and look artificially enhanced and overly sugary; and even then these things are still not really filling. Besides the subtleties of the sandwiches are beyond me and the consequences are invariably plebeian.

Other than that I have been living the life of a slob, and the juxtaposition of that with the neat luxury of the wedding was highly enjoyable. Picture bare feet, clothing I've worn day and night perhaps even since the weekend, unwashed hair, a soupçon of perspiration in the air, and a fixation on the computer screen, and there you will have an unflattering but accurate portrait of me in a holiday mood. I did wash my hair in the evening and brush my teeth earlier, so it could be worse. What is sadly true, however, is that I am one of those commoners who looks to events of spurious significance, like the events of today, as a distraction from the plodding thoughts and minor feelings of inadequacy of everyday existence; a little opiate for the masses can help here and there . . .

Fitzinghurst and Susannah

2011-04-28T15:18:00.003-07:00

An accounting of royalle nuptialles, undertakene in the yeare 1736 in the faire kingdome of Englande. Tho' loste to posteritee for a nonce, rediscovered by E.H. and transmitted thusely to a century newe.

***

28th of April 1736
London Towne.

Dear diary,

'Tis the eve of the wedding of Prince Fitzinghurst with Susannah Centreham, daughter of a Berkshire coachman, and the coffee-houses (when not brooding o'er the parlous state of our state's finances) are agog with interest in the preparations.

Westminster is all barred to the publick, save to those who there have their home, and the gawkeres from foreign shores must content themselves with the environnes of Tyburn and other lurid and comparatively unkingly spectackles.

The armes of state and pennant of England are aflutter everywhere, indeede one cannot enter a whitewashed roome without beholding before one's eye a faint shadow of blue and red in reverse, in shorte (as the scientists have wrote) a spectral green and gold. I deem it not treesonous though impolitick to admit that I have affected short sighte and worne tinted goggles since Tuesdaye to spare mine visual (and mentall) healthe.

On Sundaye I walked the side of the Thames to finde that it was a thoughte less stinkee than upon previous rapprochements. The reason to this Enigma was evidente enough when my Horse led me upstreame past a kind of dory in which men (who looked to be of ill repute and doubtless grateful of the groats' payment) were a-skimming the noctious waves of our noble river and removing a Menagerie's worth of deceased beasts, fishe, and Debris of urban life. Greenere of visage I spurred my horse and soone arrived at home.

There I found my trusty servant bearing my eventide repast to table as the hour had strucke. With customary loquacitee he told me of the strange happenings in the town. One quarter in Westminster had been cleaned with such rapiditee that its inhabitants, when returning from the day's labours, failed to recognize their streetes and piteefully strayed. Our pick-pockets profited therefrom and it is said that more than one earnest thanksgiving to His Highness and Her incipient Highness was offered up among the more devoute, but the tradesmen and fine folk did not offere parallel gratitude even when at last they arrived in their homes. 'Tis bruited besides that one lady swooned giddilee as she passed into the abruptly purified atmosphere, and berating her servants when she had regained consciousness, declared that if she wished to draw breath relatively unhindered she would be living in sight of a Tree and not in sight of a Smokestack.

As I write this I look out upon the street and forcibly recall that the Fashioun has run mad. There are old and young men who bear upon their pates wigs dyed in the colours of State; the ladies affecte ribbons around the crownes of their headgear, gownes, shoes, &c., in the style of Miss Centreham, to the extent that there are hundreds of Miss Centrehams to be found in every quarter of the city. The taske of the Royal Guard must be truly of Mammoth proporcions. My old friende in the wildes of Buckinghamshire informs me that the Plague has Spread beyond the urban limits.

The pondes within twenty leagues of London have all been fished clean of the species of troute which is intended for the nuptial Banquet. Most have been purloined by an army innumerable of gastronomick imitators. My correspondent (invited to too many a supper) cannot bear the sight or taste of this fish anymore, and goes about with a porcion of pickled eel in his pocket by way of Anti-dote. A couple of species of songbird, doomed by their edibility and grace and like rumours of their presence in the banquet, will in probability not be seen on these shores again either. 'Twill lighten the labours of Linnaeus.

In fine 'tis a relief that a marriage like this comes perchance once every three decades. When the present Fuss and Frivolitee is fizzled, the earnest of our finances, ills of societee, &c. will pull us once again down to the sublunary realities of English existence. And then my goggles may be layed aside for another thirty years!

Divers Pianistic Endeavours

2011-04-24T16:24:00.005-07:00

On the piano I played the beginning of Schumann's a minor concerto, the first movement of Mendelssohn's d minor trio (may have finished the second, too), Chopin's "revolutionary étude," his "raindrop prélude," and maybe other things today. Afterwards I rummaged in our shelves, looking for Lizst's third "Liebestraum," and among other things unearthed Rachmaninoff's prelude in g minor again, to be revisited properly in future.

While the Haydn trios which I play with Papa and Pudel have been going beautifully, and the better things go the more imaginatively we render it and grasp the echoes of folkloric music and so on, I am not as happy about the way I am playing solo. Besides, due to the hot weather or something else two or so of the keys are sticking, which is a pain of in the neck for the romantic repertoire that roams over almost the entire range.

The problem is that now I mostly consider the way I want to play the music; it seems humbler and nicer to follow the old approach of inhabiting the atmosphere and of figuring out what the composer was thinking and hoping for when he wrote the score. It does seem reductive to play Haydn and Mozart and Bach and Beethoven and Mendelssohn and the others too idiosyncratically Haydnishly, Mozartishly, Bachishly, etc., but it indicates a certain respect for their work and stature, and I like doing justice to zeitgeisty and stylistic quirks, and faithfully embodying their moods instead of drawing attention to myself.

So that's why I have thought that it might be worthwhile to compose things myself. Encouragingly, and along the lines of Lady Catherine de Bourgh's pronouncement in Pride and Prejudice, I have the inkling that if I learned to compose music, I would be very good at it.

***

"What is that you are saying, Fitzwilliam? What is it you are talking of? What are you telling Miss Bennet? Let me hear what it is."

"We are speaking of music, madam," said he, when no longer able to avoid a reply.

"Of music! Then pray speak aloud. It is of all subjects my delight. I must have my share in the conversation if you are speaking of music. There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient."

(Quoted from Pride and Prejudice at Gutenberg.org)

***

Anyway, though I am presently completely ignorant of the laws and details of composition, I think it would be fun to find whether my style is old-fashioned, derivative, or a progression. When I am playing I tend to feel quite close to Beethoven's compositional thought processes, but when I dabble (badly) in writing little compositions myself they tend hypothetically to resemble Mozart's oeuvre at the age of two. So this is still a castle-in-the-air.

2011-04-24T13:52:00.005-07:00

After tiring of the television I picked up a violin again with the most moderate imaginable success, and eventually went to sleep. Now I'm awake again.

Then, because it is Easter and bells are a symbol of the feast, I wanted to write about Schiller's poem "Das Lied von der Glocke" for the "Lighthouse." Since it isn't turning out the way I want, I will post it in Hermitologies as an unfinished fragment with no literary pretensions. I didn't consult a dictionary, either, so the translations are totally unreliable. Sorry for the lousiness.

***

"The Song of the Bell"

First published: 1798

WHEN I was twelve years old or so my grandfather taught my sister and me a little German grammar and literature. Among other things Opapa read Schiller's "Lied von der Glocke" with us, and I liked it very much. Now it feels didactic and a little consciously quaint, but it has a purity of language that is quite classical as well as an informality of subject and diction that already feel romantic.

It traces the casting of a church bell, and describes in poetic terms the manufacture and its purpose once it is finished and hung in the tower (and I think it is very suited to Easter because of the association of the feast with bells in Italy and France).

After a Latin epigraph whose emphases echo the ringing of the bells — toll . . . toll . . . — it begins,

Fest gemauert in der Erden
Steht die Form, aus Lehm gebrannt.
Heute muß die Glocke werden.

"Firmly walled within the earths there stands the mold of fired clay; on this day the bell must be."

The bronze is formed from liquid tin and copper, ash salts are added and the foam removed so that the bell will have a clear tone as the dry fir wood heats the whole, and the workers are sweating like pigs.

Schiller reminds us of the higher purpose of these proceedings:

Soll das Werk den Meister loben,
Doch der Segen kommt von oben.

In other words, the work should sound its master's praises, and yet the blessing comes from heaven.

If I understand the lines he idealizes manual labour in general, arguing that it invariably has a purpose and that any man who does not work meditatively is degraded. Schiller doesn't do much for the repute of poets as pragmatic individuals who understand the realities of the labour here.

A church bell is admittedly lofty in more than the physical sense. It will persist (if providence permits) for centuries, and

rühren vieler Menschen Ohr
Und wird mit dem Betrübten klagen
Und stimmen zu der Andacht Chor.
Was unten tief dem Erdensohne
Das wechselnde Verhängnis bringt,
Das schlägt an die metallne Krone,
Die es erbaulich weiterklingt.

"touch the ear of many men and lament with those who live in grief and sound with the choir to the prayer. What to the sons of earth below the varying fates and destiny brings, that beats against the metal crown which it most usefully further rings." ("Erbaulich" is much like the modern word "constructive" — though I put it as "usefully" — and similarly pedantic.)

Then the narrator follows the fate of an ideal baby whose arrival and every subsequent epochal moment of life is celebrated by the bell. Schiller is drippingly sappy when the baby grows into the age of romance:

herrlich, in der Jugend Prangen,
Wie ein Gebild aus Himmelshöhn,
Mit züchtigen, verschämten Wangen
Sieht er die Jungfrau vor sich stehn.

"Glorious in the pomp of youth, like a presentment from heavenly heights, with decorously shameful cheeks he sees the maiden before him stand."

Bleaugh.

After the nuptials we revisit the bell. You poke in a stick of wood; if it comes out of the liquid bronze with a glassy coat it is time to pour the bronze into the mold.

Then the metonymous baby marries, as Schiller declares that an alliance of feeble (femininity?) and strong (masculinity?) is the ideal. The family flourishes and is from the sounds of it painfully bourgeois, though as Schiller points out fortune is fickle and they may yet be poor.

As the bronze is poured into the mold, at last and amid anxieties about its propensities to break, Schiller philosophizes about fire. Fire is good for humanity if we tame it and bad if we do not, etc. Any retelling of the Prometheus myth, however simplified, already has this truism covered, I think.

In Schiller's case it appears to be a metaphor for human passions, and he admonishes the reader to keep a tight rein on it, be decorous all the time, and keep the will of heaven always in mind. Otherwise God will unleash destruction upon him:

Leergebrannt
Ist die Stätte,
Wilder Stürme rauhes Bette,
In den öden Fensterhöhlen
Wohnt das Grauen,
Und des Himmels Wolken schauen
Hoch hinein.

. . .

Needless to say, Schiller's conception of religion pretty much does nothing for me, and it seems consciously folksy and naïve.

. . .

A major charm of the poem — as the relevant article at a certain online encyclopaedia states — is that it has a clear narrative, so that even a grade-schooler like I was can like it; besides it is feels like an atmospheric vignette of German society in terms of the late 18th-century ideal as well as of the historical setting, which is particularly useful as a kind of verbal illustration if one lives as I did in relatively ahistorical und un-Teutonic places where churches with bell towers are rare birds. It is left to adults to speculate on the full and finer significance of the poet's thought.

Easter in Insufferably Trivial Detail

2011-04-24T06:16:00.006-07:00

I was up before the Easter bunny today, not on the "early to bed and early to rise" principle but on the principle that I like to kick back my heels and stay up into outrageous hours and now that I am on holiday there is no duty for me to be spiritually hungover for.

This year the Easter brunch was particularly munificent. Despite cynical prognostications one of us did shop for Easter eggs and Papa had a secret stash which enriched the table greatly. So we had a little bunch of chocolate eggs, filled or not, and candy eggs with nougat or marzipan or other centres, and sugar eggs that looked like a sunny-side-up egg on our plates and decorating the white tablecloth; our trusty reddish clay pot of tea; two platters of cheese and Schinkenspeck and maybe blood sausage; baskets of soft pretzel sticks and croissants filled with nougat or marzipan or plain and raisin buns and ordinary buns; cold boiled eggs that had been painted red or orange or yellow or green or blue or lilac with watercolours; and fresh soft-boiled eggs. Then there is a large platter of further Easter eggs, and two chocolate bunnies stood at each plate, and chocolate ladybugs interspersed; the centrepiece is a jar with cherry twigs and a scarlet geranium and a yellow and violet pansy, with three of our handpainted hollow eggs hanging from it. Ge. heated milk and there was I think also a pot of hot coffee.

* * *

Before it began we watched the children's show Die Maus. It had a depressing story about the history of the Easter egg hunt; the heroine was a hen who wanted to lay white eggs and could only lay them in different colours. Aside from the quality of the short animation, it was first of all disconcerting that the hen was so conformist and secondly that she was fixated on white skin tones, even if the skin is a shell and belongs to a fictive egg. Mama also thought it was weird . . . Then there was a segment about milking eggs, which was where the real depression set in, because the actor just went in and milked a random cow out of an anonymous row without asking permission or anything, and I was already feeling Charlie Brownish enough when they then showed how the machine milks cows, and anything more loveless, mechanical, and disrespectful can hardly be imagined . . . So to progress further into the children's literary canon I felt like Eeyore at this point.

Then a film crew accompanied our Pope as he went about his daily activities in the Vatican, and it was incredibly boring. There are two cooks and two housekeepers or something in his household, conservatively and formally dressed women who look utterly devoid of cheer (note to self: do not work for Pope unless wish to look like life sucked out of self), and then a secretary and other people, a very closed circle which barely enlivens the minimalist though not modern rooms. He eats breakfast off of specially commissioned plate with his coat of arms on it, presumably eats lunch or dinner off the same, takes a short walk along the same old route to aid his digestion (TMI, I thought!), signs proclamations given to him in a portfolio by someone in a boring office with however a checkerboard pattern in the floor which I found superficially intriguing, and then watches television on one of a set of dusty olive armchairs whose velvety surface looks like it has been vacuumed within an inch of its life twice every day. And in the morning he can appear on the balcony and wave to people and say something in several languages, as the flag waves below him. And so on and so forth. Given the choice of being a mafioso or Catholic grandee the former seems far more fun, though the formal gardens of the Pope's summer palace are like a wormhole in time, and the patch of olive trees where the cows graze and the brood of chickens are endearing. The footage of the Pope himself was captured by the Vatican; our secular Maus production team was permitted to film on the palace grounds.

The short animation about a sheep who runs a farm for a day was far more fun, and I can't presently recall if there was anything else.

Anyway, even an innocuous children's show can apparently feed my cynicism.

* * *

Then Arte showed a production of Händel's Messiah. I missed most of it but it looked like utter tosh. From an environmental perspective it was however most congenial, because it lit only the bottom tenth of the stage, though in antiseptic white glare, everything else being plunged in darkness; an energy-saving measure if I ever saw one.

The action took place on a gigantic revolving stage, which failed to transcend the dignity of a Lazy Susan, and for some reason the thick and towering partitioning walls were given a classisistic flair which did not fit the modern hotel(?) environment.

Which leads me to the dramatis personae, who were all dressed in modern businesswear, grey and black and other dark skirts and tights and jackets, and white shirts for the gentlemen. How is this related to the Messiah? — The secret is shared between the director and god.

By the time I arrived they were stacking dark wood chairs onto a pile in the centre of the Lazy Susan on top of an airport-lounge or hotel-room-y wall-to-wall carpet, and then bending over as if they were all afflicted with stomach cramps or extreme somnolence only to get up again and wilt in subsequent scenes, and Mama mentioned that there was an earlier scene where someone had slit his wrists.

Then the scene shifted to a hotel room where a woman was undressing, going to a crib that clearly had nothing in it and the white curtain above it did nothing to convince me otherwise, and dropping her clothes carefully on the floor!, and then a man in his shirtsleeves who (so Mama informed me) was supposed to be Jesus entered the door quietly backwards like Mr. Bean enacting the world's worst ninja and sat down on the floor before joining the lady in bed after she had peeled off her black stockings for the titillation of the audience.

Being fed up I wandered away from the corner room. When I came back there was a faintly North Korean choreographed group thing where they waved their hands about and so on, and then a woman in a pale nightgown who was presumably something like an angel interpreted the lyrics in sign language. Eventually the stage light narrowed in on the angel, who was terribly obnoxious, and it was somehow over. Then everyone came to take a bow and the audience clapped enthusiastically.

As far as the production goes this could have been any play or opera or oratorio ever written, if you're going to reinvent the tale entirely. In the US this would have been more amusing or genuine, but in Europe these things always reek of trying so, so hard to be cool and avantgarde.

Anyway, didn't see all of it and don't want to set myself up as a critic, but that was my take on the affair. At least the stage lighting, aside from its ecological worth, supports the opthalmological and optometrical trades. Thank you for your contribution to our economy!

* * *

Happy Easter!

Rant About the Ivory Coast

2011-04-09T02:36:00.002-07:00

Not a cheerful subject, but I'm becoming very angry about the role the UN has played in the Ivory Coast. It has given Alassane Ouattara and everyone fighting under him a carte blanche — simply because he won the elections by whichever margin — which will have to be revoked soon, and it has not acted as an impartial arbiter in any sense.

It is fanatical to believe that the outward form of democracy is the highest good, above the wellbeing of Ivorian citizens whom it is supposed to represent. In fact in this case the election seems to have resulted in a UN-approved hegemony, and now the parties are fighting over who is the hegemon over whom.

Even the rebels in Libya have been criticized far more for deciding to take up arms against a state which has been run by Muammar Gaddafi for 42 years — not by firing missiles into markets, assassinating statesmen, setting car bombs, or slaughtering civilian opponents, as far as I have heard, but by openly attacking military vehicles and installations — than Ouattara's supporters in Côte d'Ivoire. Now that (inevitably, given this course of action) several massacres have been ascribed to fighters on Ouattara's side it is quite clear that it almost never was about the people of Côte d'Ivoire.

I think the UN has allowed itself to be unduly influenced by the fact that Alassane Ouattara has cooperated with it whereas Laurent Gbagbo hasn't. That circumstance is too unrepresentative and insignificant to be the foundation of such wholesale approval and persistent benefit of the doubt when it comes to allegations of massacring, and I am guessing there will have to be a change of official position.

On Becoming a Warmonger

2011-03-20T09:12:00.005-07:00

Yesterday and today I slept into the afternoon and woke to a rewarding plenitude of sunshine. Not that I should be rewarded as such for lollygagging, but rather perhaps for having overcome a tumultuous week with a modicum of cheer intact.

When the Security Council voted on Resolution 1973, the one about intervening in Libya, I watched it on the live broadcast at the UN's website, and by that point I was in favour of the no-fly zone. It's not a popular opinion in this household. What convinced me was the fear that as Gaddafi's army retook land it would destroy houses and fire on armed rebels and unarmed civilians indiscriminately, the hypocrisy of encouraging the rebels but doing nothing to help them when they are faced with being killed off in great numbers, the clause that there would be no ground invasion, the clear desire that the political future of Libya will be left entirely to the determination of the Libyans, and the fact that even if it is unlikely that anyone will help the protestors being shot at, though unarmed, with live ammunition in Bahrain or in Yemen, at least in one country they will receive a measure of support. As far as I heard the way the protests were handled in Tripoli was unusually cruel — for instance, that bodies of suspected fighters were reportedly taken from hospitals and not returned to their families at all or except under conditions — and governments of other countries (Morocco, Jordan, and even Egypt) reacted very differently to their own protests. Besides it is not fair to say that we may do our best to overthrow our government by casting votes against it in elections, but that people who have far acuter reasons to wish to do so may not, because they would be provoking violence from their government. Since I usually dislike revolution and instinctively dislike wars led by the European Union or the United States (though I was in favour of NATO's actions over Kosovo in 1999, which however seem much more equivocal than I thought at the time) the fact that I have changed my mind in this specific instance indicates that there is a good reason for it. On the other hand I do not like the tendency of the countries which are carrying out the military intervention to celebrate specific airstrikes at all.

Anyway I feel morally responsible for this opinion and so mixed in with the usual Weltschmerz there is the surface worry that I am terribly wrong. Secondly I do think that sincere mediation led by a state like China or India to bring about a political solution now — like a transitional government of Libya still headed by Gaddafi with impartial and rebel statesmen mixed in, with elections to be held three or four years from now so that there is enough time to become familiar with new figures and to adjust to the idea of no longer having a de facto dictatorship; and no presence of armed forces in the territory now held by the rebels — before the war grows intenser, would be a good idea.

On the personal level I've been reading portions of Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution, which I attempt often with temporary success, and playing the piano for short periods and working on a different blog, among other things. Then I've been thinking about university again, and since I provisionally intend to study sciences this time around I've been looking into a book on tensors and a physics textbook, Gravitation. J. was doing Latin homework and Mama was reading something by André Gide in the corner room as I was doing said looking.

English Literary History in a Nutshell

2011-02-25T06:25:00.006-08:00

[More nonsense. This is likely Part I of II.]

Prehistory

Scratches in tree bark, soft stone and dried mud.

Roman Britain

Army ledgers. The poetry of names and strategy.

731 A.D. Ecclesiastical History of the English People

For the benefit of legions of young military-age men educated in monasteries and elsewhere, the Venerable Bede produces a history "textbook," a literary genre designed to bore school-persons into submission and in this case thereby to reduce resistance to Christianity.

1000 A.D. Beowulf

A baying wolf from Sweden goes on an epic rampage against an early teatotaller and his mother in Denmark, and decades later dies when he attempts in vain to remove a fire hazard from his kingdom. After this tragic incident, possibly pure fiction, Swedish children were taught to "stop, drop and roll" and the first fire trucks — wheelbarrows and rainwater — were constructed.

end of 14th cent. Canterbury Tales

In a court unsettled by the Hundred Years' War, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote bedtime stories for the beleaguered nobility much as Giovanni Boccaccio had done in his Decamerone in Florence.

1589-1613ish William Shakespeare's Plays and Sonnets

A cabal of English Literature professors at Oxford University decides to write plays plagiarized from ancient and newer sources to establish an authorship controversy whose resolution would procure funding for their successors in perpetuity. William Shakespeare is the hapless tool who must produce the plays and pretend to be the figurehead of the thing.

1611 King James Bible

As the head of the Anglican Church King James I considers it infra dignitas to have it known that he has read a Puritan translation of the Bible, and reading it in ancient Greek or Hebrew or the Vulgate is a drag, so he commissions his very own.

1667 Paradise Lost

"A smalle whyte dogge by the name of Paradys has been loste on the road twixt Southampton and Dover. Any kind sirs having knowleddge of his presente lodgynges please to despatche a messengere to J. Milton, 34 Hay Roade, Chalfont St. Giles Bucks."

1671 Paradise Regained

Hiding in hay-cart all along.

1712 Rape of the Lock

A consortium of millowners is highly wrought after the Leafley river is reconstituted into a canal and the old lock above the juncture to the Finch tributary is demolished. They turn to Alexander Pope to tear into the enterprise with a sarcastic editorial using his preferred weapon, heroic couplets.

1722 A Journal of the Plague Year

Six decades after an unspeakably horrid year in dress fashions, pamphleteer Daniel Defoe bravely broaches the collective trauma of English society and describes the monstrosities in lace and velvet which lurched and broddled through Whitehall.

1729 A Modest Proposal

After a bitter babysitting experience a young policy-maker in the Foreign Office advocates cannibalism, only to be sternly told that he must evince greater sensitivity to the public and obtain knowledge in the art of child care through apprenticeship in a nursery. Later in his career it transpires that it was he who (under the influence of hallucinogens) had anonymously published (1726) a highly spurious account of his travels in lands for example where horses reign (known afterwards by the name of hippocracy, sometimes spelled hypocrisy). It offends so many diplomatic missions who read it as ridicule of their own nations that the War of the Austrian Succession two decades after is but an extension of childish insults by other means. Yet the authorship has come as no surprise to his superiors in the Foreign Office, who have placed no great reliance upon his dispatches after the first; their initial panic after reports of Rose-coloured Pachyderms preying upon the docks of Marseilles proved greatly unfounded.

1794 The Mysteries of Udolpho

England discovers southern France and Italy only to be shocked by the depravity of the upper classes and surprised by the similarity of its scenery to paintings by Watteau and etchings by china-manufacturers. As Mrs. Ann Radcliffe reported in this and later works, Italian marquesses are greatly prone to killing off their families and conspiring with clergymen.

1813 Pride and Prejudice

A naive and unobservant young novelist, daughter of a rural parson, suggests that one should marry for love rather than rank, money, or suave manners. Her work unleashes a firestorm of denunciation which, particularly among women, inspires animosity against her and her works to this day.

1814-29 Waverley Novels

Sir Walter Scott uncovers a similar vein of depravity in England and Scotland. Brides stabbing unwanted husbands, Scots stabbing unwanted English, Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert trying not to execute unwanted love interests, etc., and everyone from astrologers to highlanders conspiring against everybody else.

1836-7 Pickwick Papers

An inventory of the finances of a small town outside of London by name of Pickwick. Followed by Oliver Twist, a monograph on an obscure Elizabethan poet; A Tale of Two Cities, contrasting the street waste disposal methods of Paris and London; Great Expectations, predicting a stark rise of the gross domestic product in London and outlying towns between 1862-5; Little Dorrit, a comparison of the types and quantities of fish which were caught off a tiny Dorsetshire port in 1857; and Nicholas Nickleby, a philosophical look at the relative merits of hempen and wood-fibre paper as described in the diary of a 17th-century scrivener. Charles Dickens was a minor and dry writer with a profoundly limited insight into the realities of human interaction and greater social problems, and so despite an impassioned reevaluation in the 20th century he never truly acquired influence.

1847 Jane Eyre

In an investigative report the Yorkshire freelance writer Charlotte Brontë concludes that it is best for well-born but poor women not to become governesses except if the surname of their employer is Rochester, and finds at the same time that any woman in an engagement should secure her footing in the eyes of the law before the ceremony by inspecting the betrothed gentleman's house from roof to cellar to ferret out concealed dependents.

1847-8 - Vanity Fair

Having consumed too much cotton candy, the writer William Makepeace Thackeray indicts a rambling denunciation of society and the sugar industry at large, and the sugar industry at street carnivals in particular, concluding that the brief surge of energy is in the end a hollow good.

1891 - Salome

The great playwright Oscar Wilde suffers fraught relations with other personages of high society. Pushed past the powers of endurance by one particular grande dame, he decides to spoil her appetite for dinner by putting in theatrical form a Biblical tale of a young lady who, on a momentous occasion, orders not a salad, not a soup, not a proper met of any sort, but the head of a prophet on a platter.

Et cetera.

The Hamster Ball

2011-02-25T01:25:00.004-08:00

Yesterday evening, having gazed upon the latest offerings of the sartorial art in Milan, I watched the new season premiere of America's Next Top Model, having been forewarned by a certain blog (namely Jezebel) that it would be tremendously stupid.

So it was and yet not repellently so. This time the group of obligatorily shrieking girls who were anointed unto the "Top 13" were told at first by the cryptic medium of a blank piece of paper in an envelope that they were unanointed, so that their shrieks were muted into sobs amid the shrieking of, presumably, actresses, who it was pretended were the successful contestants. Tyra Banks magnanimously explained to the pseudo-rejected girls, as they meditated the ignoble heap of their suitcases in the staircase, that they were through after all, and that she had only been trying to give them the experience of rejection. Why she would consider that the girls had not encountered rejection yet, particularly those who had already worked as models, remained unexplained; so it must be surmised that this little trick was designed for the benefit of the television viewer. Anyway, she pulled away a curtain to reveal their home — perhaps due to the vagaries of the camera lens the atrium looked roughly the size of a high school gymnasium — and with piercing cries they revelled in their material surroundings.

The perennial circus of the contestant interviews was not broadcast this time, but Tyra exercised her actorly predilections by imitating three common contestant types. I consider it a little unprofessional to make fun of young people half your age who are guests on your television show, as it were, but the second impersonation was good.

The next morning, at least in terms of artistic compression, the girls were hailed out onto the lawn where they met Erin Wasson. Her status as supermodel and stylist and jewellery designer was elucidated; and I could have sworn that she also had a fashion line which showed during New York Fashion Week and which was discontinued due to fiscal pressures — this, at any rate, was not mentioned.

Erin and the fashion shoot director Jay Manuel announced a runway fashion show in one of Alexander Wang's lines and Erin Wasson's jewellery. So far, so good, I suppose. As a clincher, however, the models were to walk on a 12-inch-wide transparent strip jutting into a pond and they had to walk inside a plastic bubble where bits of reddish material would drift along the bottom like confetti in a hamster wheel. Why self-respecting designers would participate in a runway show set up to be more or less impossible, humiliating for the contestants, and too fussy or weirdly arranged to permit a good view of the fashion which the models are supposed to be modelling, remains another unanswered question. In the event two or three of the contestants fell, could have hit their heads on the edge of the runway and been knocked unconscious (a litigator's dream) but fortunately didn't, and had to crawl inside the sphere until it bobbed back to the runway where their feet could gain purchase. Idiocy, I say!

Behind the scenes the photographer Russell James staged what is called "beauty" photos at Style.com. I think it is a public relations invention intended to humanize the models and by extension the fashion industry, and to counter the nasty insinuations of cruelty (invented as it were by the rational people amongst us who don't think that fashion transcends the human right to comfort and dignity) against the latter. Models obligingly pose with a sandwich, a respectable book (no Harry Potter, though I guess that would be endearing), curling-irons, make-up brushes, mirrors and each other, and smile with the serenity which inevitably accompanies 12-hour-workdays, painful high heels, hair extensions which it will take hours to remove, and other stresses perfectly natural for people who are deracinated from their homes and not yet old enough to graduate from school.

Based on these backstage photos or on the desired narrative of the show's producers, the girl named Angelia was sent home. I was pleasantly surprised that some of the contestants did look like they could be models. This also means being as slender as possible; to the fashionable mind I don't think that models are ever too slender for the runway and only perhaps for print work it might be awkward to have the lateral dimensions of a piece of paper.

***

Last cycle was the first "high fashion cycle," where presumably by grace of André Leon Talley — a friendly giant of sorts — designers from Diane von Furstenberg (who was really impressive and a revisitation of the 1940s and 1930s, European-accented American high society) to Zac Posen were hooked into appearing. Karolina Kurkova made a slurried drink of healthy, healthy fruits and vegetables, which though it ended up tinted a respectable blueberryish lilac was greeted with muted enthusiasm, and evidently inspired less enjoyment than the batch of deep-fried Oreos with which the contestants were likewise regaled by one of their number.

Franca Sozzani made an appearance too as the editor of Italian Vogue; I think I would like her, but I do find it a bit tiresome how she is part of the handful of fashion industry members (also like Emmanuelle Alt, Carine Roitfeld and children, etc.) which is always photographed everywhere. Then there was a painful non-conversation between a model raised in rural America who was unable to decipher Gallic-accented English and the photographer Patrick Demarchelier, both bored and on edge. As high fashion television I thought the season was a bit of a bust, though a painful degree of ambition and kowtowing permeated it, which doubtless resonated with the target audience of 13-28-year-olds who are enduring or still able to recollect the vicissitudes of attracting the favours of the fashionable clique in their schools.

***

Lastly and somewhat unrelatedly, I've been keeping track of the fashion weeks in New York and London. New York's week was so excessively tasteful and at times boring that one or two years ago I would have made sage remarks about the Recession; and for once I looked to London for relief, eager for the heady dash of discombobulating vulgarity by way of contrast, only to find that here too was a sad dearth of offensiveness. In Milan so far some conspiracy is going on, too, because the shows I've seen so far tend to plunge into "jewel tones," which means intense and saturated cobalt, amethyst, emerald and so on and so forth. At least familiar model faces like Natasha Poly and Anna Selezhneva and Coco Rocha have reemerged there; they had not much appeared elsewhere and I didn't know whether they were superannuated, keeping out of the spotlight for a while on a publicist's advice so that their allure remains fresh, or bound by exclusive contracts to make Milan Fashion Week (which has been a trifle moribund) particularly attractive. By the way, I have not seen Anna Wintour anywhere. Maybe this means that Carine Roitfeld, so newly deposed by Emmanuelle Alt, will be at American Vogue after all, or maybe it means that I haven't been looking at the relevant front row photos. As for the season's fads, the one I've noticed most is the colour scarlet.

***

Anyway, despite the pretentiousness of my statements and the scarcity of qualifiers, I am evidently not inside the heads of the people who put on New York Fashion Week, London Fashion Week, Milan Fashion Week, or American's Next Top Model, so the preceding may be pure invention.

Rambling about Tricherie

2011-02-23T02:05:00.004-08:00

I am once again in the Throes of a Cold, this time with a sore throat throughout Sunday, then intermittent loss of voice on Monday and Tuesday. And my legs are weakish when I go to the bookshop and my head feels disproportionately hot. Yesterday, however, I discovered a miracle cure when I decided to roll around in the chair in the bookshop's office. Whether it is the cooling effect of the wind compounded with the cardiovascular perks of the exertion of pushing one's self around with the feet, or the release of endorphins, or a more complex explanation, it made me feel much better. But I also gargled a little chlorhexamed this morning.

When I came in this morning Mama summarized a TV discussion about our defence minister Guttenberg's (whom I somewhat dislike and therefore pronounce in English so that the name has "gut" at the beginning) plagiarism in university. I haven't read the details, but I have never really bought into the virulent denunciations of plagiarism. It's a ratty thing to do in itself, but I think it's more sad than depraved, because it means that one doesn't have the same pride in one's work and hasn't benefited by the same process of clarifying one's thought and preparations; so in the end it carries with it a hollow benefit. Besides not all essays and theses are written with love for the field, or written on a topic which is genuinely interesting and useful, so morally and spiritually I find them a hollow exercise at the outset. In this particular case one might guess that the denunciating party doth protest too much; certainly I think that neglecting a German citizen in Guantánamo or accidentally dropping a bomb on hundreds of civilians is more shameful.

The closest I came to plagiarism was probably during a group project for English 120(?) when we had to write an annotated bibliography for a poem by John Donne. It was the day of the Bush/Kerry elections when I had to finish it. In between hectically refreshing the election map at nytimes.com I tried to read the books, summarize them in three to fivish sentences, and gauge their usefulness given the subject as we were supposed to. But eventually my mind was overstuffed and I had to go to sleep; so with one of the books I just checked the index to see if the poem is mentioned, summarized the table of contents and propped it at the head of my bed and was trying to read it anyway when I went to sleep for two or three hours. It was quite clear that Kerry had lost by then and after that it was one of the worst days of my life. When the bibliographies were handed back a couple of weeks later the professor or teaching assistant or both first of all made a speech about plagiarism to the class, and I think I felt rather guilty. Then there was a little note on my bibliography in which the TA explained that she had checked the annotated books because the phrasing of my annotations sometimes seemed unlikely, and that I had squeaked by but should be more careful.

There were three cheating incidents in school: when I was in Grade 1 or 2 we had "minute drills," where we each received a piece of paper with math questions on it and we were supposed to solve them as many of them as possible within a minute or two. I disliked the pressure and was afraid of disgracing myself, so I surreptitiously answered a handful of questions beforehand. After a couple of times doing this I realized that it was unnecessary and stopped. And honestly I didn't feel that bad about it, firstly because I was good at math, secondly because I wasn't trying to do better than the others, and thirdly because I wasn't caught.

In Grade 9(?) we watched a film in Social Studies and were asked to answer a worksheet or write something about it. I thought then as now that watching films is really no substitute for substantive learning material, and besides it wasn't a big deal; so I didn't put up much resistance when a clique of classmates sitting around me asked to copy what I'd written. Somewhat to my surprise we were asked to hand our work in. I'd forgotten about it completely, when a couple of weeks or months later the student teacher asked us to step outside the door one by one and inquired whether we had copied things off of each other — said that, in fact, it was evident that this had happened — and asked me specifically whether I'd been put under pressure. I tried to remember but couldn't, and I detest tattle-tales, so I honestly said that I wasn't put under pressure and didn't remember. What did irk me was that I then received a 0 for the assignment. Later someone intermittently tried to copy off of me during the Spanish final exam, but as I said to her it was unlikely that I'd gotten everything right, besides which it would have been difficult for her to see what I'd written because she was across the aisle and my writing is tiny and somewhat indecipherable. I did find that rather obnoxious but maybe she needed the boost to her self-confidence as much as I had in Grade 2, and she was very good at spoken Spanish.

Lastly, and very ignominiously, I went to a provincial-level geography quiz during Grade 8, because I had misunderstood the teacher during the school-level finals and forewent answering a question which I should have answered and would have gotten wrong. I realized that I had misunderstood him when he prompted me to answer the next question. For the rest of the day I was in agonies of conscience, but was far too ashamed to tell the teacher and forfeit, which would now seem the sensible alternative. The third-place winner seemed cleverer than I was; in terms of the score I think I would have had one point less than him. Anyway, for these and many other reasons I am glad to be out of an academic environment.

It must be admitted, though, that this kind of competitiveness and artificial frames which almost coerce one into cheating are present outside of school — the job search, for instance, or work contracts, or writing competitions, and many other things. Competition is fun enough if one can win it fair and square, but otherwise it seems degrading.

What I like about not working is not that it's easier, which it isn't even after I was inoculated against serious depression two years ago, but that it gives me freedom. The material freedom of earning an income might be equivalent, but it likely does not encourage one to think and act independently, nor to strengthen and expand one's inner life. But since I have had that, I think it is worthwhile now not only to gather experiences and earn an income but also to profit by the raised threshold of physical and therefore mental activity. The work at the bookshop is quite invigorating that way already.

Le Lai de Rampal

2011-01-03T05:20:00.004-08:00

One day a knight was wandering by a stream and as the water rushed over the curved stones so did a string of notes flow from his flute in an unbound and undirected manner. He was afflicted by melancholy, for he had ridden through a marsh where the sedge had shrivelled to such lifeless mouldering tangles that his tender sensibility had been affected sorely.

King Arthur beside had given him naught but a handful of groats wherewith to maintain his steed. One of his secrets most profound was the hairbrush with which he groomed his propre mount like a stable-boy, and another of his secrets most profound was the twice-daily surreptitious journey which he and his horse undertook to partake of the fodder of the richer knights. His parentage had died and could not further his glory; his lofty provenance, for French, availed him little in the honours of the court; for his sword he could but afford a silver-plated stick and (for he had tried this) that could not even skewer an ortolan; nor could he find the tongue of the simpering lasses of Caernarvon intelligible enough for courtly exchanges.

So the knight drowned his sorrows in the finest wine of Burgund, and tootled a disconsolate improvisory tune on the instrument besides, and his faithful steed followed (for the knight had the foresight to carry the equestrian provender). All of a nonce he saw under the bridge the fine glimmer and sheen of maidenly tresses, suspended over the rippling water's surface as the sun burst through the hawthorns and willows beyond the bridge at the banks. "'Tis a fairy!" exclaimed the knight in Anglo-Norman, as he started forward; then he paused, "Perchance a fairy wicked, for she lives aneath the bridge where dwelleth sombritee." But the hair sparkled again, alluringly, as the fresh and unassuming trees waved their leaves and the harmless water lightly trickled. "Nay! Where the sun fears not to shine her rays, surely a goodlie knight need not fear to followe."

He hied him to the bridge along the towpath, the steed following in distress as his provender strayed ever further away, at a run, and vaulted over the low wall and slid down the mud to the embankment. "Milady, here I have hastened and here I am arrived . . ." said he, but never said more mot, for he found only a glittering spider's web which clung softly to his face and tore in shreds to drift on the river wind.

[Another slight story departing from the Lai de Lanval. Written today; I might edit it.]

A Snowman on the Rampage

2010-12-26T16:54:00.004-08:00

A story suggested by the length and Damoclesian implications of the icicles outside. It transpires in New England. A nod likewise to Calvin and Hobbes.

***

For five weeks the snow had covered the ground and grown to the height where the house's foundation met the weatherboarding.

Leafless beeches, elms, and ash trees grew in the forest round about, and if snow had not been caught in the broad mesh of the wire fence the territory belonging to the house would have seemed to go on forever.

Though the clouds were thick with snow and the air was hazy where the powdery flakes fell like cherry blossoms out of season, the sky was as dark as if it had been clear.

There was a quiet traffic in birds, owls, rabbits, mice, and greater predators.

The movement behind the trunk of the only locust tree was as furtive but very different.

It came from a rounded figure, whose head and spherical shoulder blotted out the background for an instant before melding back into the trunk's shadow.

A strange depression sank into the ground beside the tree, and a strange marking of white was left on the locust bark as a twigged hand slithered, scratchingly, across it.

It was the snowbeast.

*

One twigged hand still bore the scrapings of the tree bark, the other emerged, uplifted, not with a carrot, but with a colourless arm of a like shape.

That arm was an icicle.

It did not drip; it had not cracked; it was not ribbed with the marks of the twig.

In the residual light of the benighted countryside, it reflected an eerie whitish glow and a fleeting watery dissolution.

*

Closer the snowbeast came.

The water-darkened rock which served as its nose twitched.

Two half-rotted beechnut hulls which served as its eyes bristled.

Its mouth, a moribund locust bean, turned upside down.

The twigs were raised; the icicle fell.

*

A lantern sprang apart with a shattering clutter.

The bulb extinguished.

The rays on the snow vanished with the silhouettes of the trees.

A rabbit at the fenceline hobbled away in affright.

The owl hooted and left an elm with a virulent flap.

*

The icicle stabbed and stabbed at the windowpane.

It was double-glazed.

The snowbeast advanced to the door.

The fanlight was single-glazed.

Stab and crash.

*

A great shard of grass settled in the snowbeast's midsection.

Meltwater gurgled up through the snow-wound and dissolved the creature as it thrashed in violent throes.

A bird twittered.

*

In the morning the owner stepped outside to sweep up the glass.

His wife called, "Do phone the insurance people, dear."

FINIS.

Dec. 27, 2010

[It's a dumb story, but maybe amusing. The original title is "Rime of the Snowbeast."]

An Imaginary Banquet and Poetics

2010-12-22T01:45:00.002-08:00

The snow still lies thick upon the ground, trodden likewise into café au lait tinged slush whose crumbly consistency is owing to its powdery quality and to the continuing frigidity, and from here I can see the deep paw-prints which a child made in the snowbank on the rear windshield of a car presumably on Monday. The trees are thickly clad, though the wind perturbingly wafts drifts of it to the ground, and in the courtyard the dusting against the solid dark ivy and the spades on the bicycle seats and the rampart along the top of the brick wall separating it from the next court have remained intact. The sky is as blank and greyish-white as an old computer screen, though of course unpixelated.

Yesterday Gi. did the first proper installment of our Christmas shopping: sugar, tomatoes, green beans, etc. I have daydreamed about baking Vanillekipferl, Dominosteine and maybe a chocolate or caramel brittle, to give as presents, but haven't found the time, leisure, or will to realize it. The dulce de leche coffee and the seasonal bowl of eggnog have yet to be made. An experiment with dissolved cream toffee, coffee, milk, cocoa powder, and plum liqueur produced reasonable results, and resembled a certain bottled Irish cream. I might make the eggnog today if a kind person would procure the ingredients. The recipe is from one of our Christmas books: you beat together egg yolks and sugar, add milk and heavy cream (I use whipping cream if we have it) and rum, and stir in beaten egg whites. The rum technically decimates germs; we never leave the eggnog sitting around long, though, but at least drink it straight away when it's fresh and before the egg white foam separates as it inevitably and annoyingly will. There might be vanilla extract in it too. In the New York Times food section I noted a butterscotch variant, but it might be too fiddly, whereas I have resolved upon a course of plain (if any) cooking.

As for the medieval repast, it is unlikely to be made but I've been thinking about it. If relevant Guardian articles and my recollection are correct it turns out that for a British Christmas the main dish was once boar or peacock, which became a swan in the 17th century up until the Victorian Age, when goose and turkey became popular. But I have been thinking more of the desserts. The question is whether anyone will eat apples and oranges and nuts if they are presented on the table. Watching another food documentary this time set in the Provence, I was thinking that the 13 Desserts seem somewhat medieval, so I could arrange a plate or two with raisins, nuts, dried apricots, prunes, figs, sliced nougat, etc., as the lady did, also with marzipan. I thought of making apple dumplings but they seem a lot of work, and straight roast apples with raisins in the middle are never accorded the affection which they deserve in my point of view, though to be fair the last round which I made was blackened (and in the case of exposed raisins, charred). I was thinking that it would be nice to press marzipan into a little cake or tart mould (we have two little ones), lined with ground or chopped almonds so the marzipan doesn't stick, and then to decorate it with pieces of glacé cherries or the like; or to make a Middle Eastern plate with halva, pistachios, dates, etc. Blancmange seems a little of a bother, but it is mentioned *pedantic cough* in the prologue of the Canterbury Tales. Besides, and of course not related to desserts, I have a hankering to make Yorkshire pudding once.

Unrelated to the Middle Ages and to British cuisine, I was thinking of putting together a fruit bowl as I did for my birthday, and which was much appreciated; the way it was special is that the fruit was more varied than ordinary, I washed and dried it very carefully, let it ripen in the early autumnal warmth for a day or two, took out our silver or pewter dish as well as a grand pottery dish to arrange it in, and of course spent much more time thinking how best to present it than customary. But what's nicer is the basket which we have every year on Christmas morning, most often containing a pineapple, a coconut, and a package of figs and of dates, besides the slew of mandarin oranges and apples.

Anyway, now I have had the enjoyment of imagining all this excellent food without having to shop for it, pay for it, wash dishes for it, prepare it, or dispose of any disasters (my rule of thumb is that if it's edible I must eat any remainders of my cooking, and I believe have only had to concede inedibility twice, though the improvised pumpkin pie I finished on this principle at the age of fourteen or thereabouts, with its hardbaked shell and stringy and savourless filling, will likely haunt me far into adulthood), so I am content.

As for the bookshop, three gentlemen have come to pick up their orders and one lady came in, first of all to point to the audiobook in the window and ask me if I knew what "On Civil Disobedience" was about. Whereupon I said, I think justly though maybe naming the date might have helped, that Thoreau was against the Spanish-American war and therefore refused to pay taxes, and was therefore locked up in prison, where he wrote this as a plea for non-violent resistance through non-cooperation with the government, and that it influenced among others Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi. This disquisition comes courtesy, I believe, of an introduction to that essay, which is one of those cases where after reading the thorough and unobjectionable introduction the tiny flame of curiosity for the book proper has extinguished itself. She ended up buying a different philosophical work and intermittently commanding her little white-and-orangey-brown dog to staaayyy. As she paid and received a little bag for her purchase and I asked whether she would like a receipt, the dog growled here and there, and she cheerfully remarked to him in an aside how nice it was of him to protect her. Which is in retrospect kind of funny; at the time I was thinking absentmindedly that his growling sounded like mild disembodied thunder so that one couldn't really tell where the little dog left off and the noise beyond the shop began.

One of the ordered books was the Nicomachean Ethics, so I asked the customer whether he was reading it for a course, but he said just for leisure and seemed to genuinely enjoy looking forward to the prospect; he wondered why I was surprised at the purchase and I said that I'd tried to read the Poetics and found it very tough going, and mumbled something about laconic language. He said that he had to check the glossary for practically every page but otherwise it was fine. So I'll take his word for it and admire a better man than I.

In German translation and likewise in a R*** edition (I mention it culturally and not advertisingly, hence the asterisks) the Poetics weren't so bad, however, though I never finished it or indeed broached more than a fourth or so of it, and I think the point is mainly to describe what plays were like in Aristotle's time and a major point in reading it is to see which blueprints playwrights have followed or sworn off following ever since. The stuff about poetry being like dancing in rhythm, etc. and so forth, didn't seem all that interesting. The true ordeal was when Papa and I once started the beginning of his Metaphysics in the original, and despite our Greek courses had to look up terms constantly whilst my not so carefully cultivated grammatical knowledge unravelled at the critical junctures, and I still have no idea what the words with half a dozen definitions like thymos exactly mean. Doubtless it would be better today, but I still think that Aristotle dominates the fine art of making one feel that one has made no progress in grasping anything.

Anyway, the second pair of people has walked by with a Christmas tree, so on that note (also since Mama has come in) I will end this post!

A Winter's Peroration

2010-12-09T02:08:00.004-08:00

Snow is falling again, but this time as a dust. The tree branches are still highlighted in white, curves of snow slide along the street lamps, icicles hang from the radiators of cars, and many cars bear a fleecy hood. Along the streets it has been threshed into grey lumps, and on the sidewalks either stomped into an uncomfortable hard carpet or marked sparingly in footprints and lone tire treads, or scraped and mixed with gravel and sand. It has slumped on the apartment roofs and left the topmost tiles half-bare, crowding at the gutters.

I've been here at the bookshop for an hour or so, and so far have had little to do except pull out a letter from the mail slot and record its arrival in my chronicle of events. There is a bag of gummy bears which accompanied a past shipment from the book delivery service which we use, and I have been profiting by that, and I read a small portion of The Age of Napoleon, lit a cone of incense, and began revising the beginning of a blog post about Persuasion. Altogether I have done a lot of draft work for the Lighthouse blog, but after spending much time over The Canterville Ghost yesterday decided that it would be best to write about it when I'm older, because my insights seemed neither very original nor very profound, I wasn't quite reading the story in the spirit in which it was written, and besides the draft post itself didn't correspond to my ideal of a book review. Whether rightly or wrongly I have had the sense in the past months of having to write anything I write ex cathedra, as it were, and not to publish anything which I wouldn't still find reasonably accurate, good and worthwhile in ten years. What this partly means is to write a good deal and follow trains of thought as far as they go before deciding to remove unimportant or imperfect passages and to boil down the rest, or to abandon it entirely as a sacrifice on the altar of literary judgment.

Where writing is concerned the historical tales are dormant. The newest incarnation of the one set in the time of Henry VIII began well, but I felt that I had reached not the 16th century but rather an odd intermediary point, and besides there were still a great many details to research and character traits to figure out. Only the plot could come on its own, since I have blatantly filched the outline from elsewhere and as for the rest have no reason not to think that the story will come of itself as I write, which has been the case in the past and is much more enjoyable through the element of surprise than most things my plodding brain could evolve. Recently I started a scientific book by Marat, in which he describes the origins of the modern understanding of electricity, and though not disposed to like him politically found myself liking the book. Other than that I have done precious little for the French Revolution research. The Age of Napoleon has reached the Age of Napoleon and mostly left behind the Revolution, so its continuing pertinence is slight.

Yesterday evening Ge. and Papa prepared a large dinner of Indonesian noodles, as it is termed in our family, and I helped cut up the leeks for it. My latest method is to remove the outermost layer or two, rinse the leek, chop off the stalk to be sliced, then to remove the outermost leaf or two, rinse it, chop off the stalk, and so on and so forth, and if it falls apart to "reconstitute" it. I was worried that the purple-silvered leaves would be tough, but they melted away. It was delicious and I had two large portions of it. Other than that I made carrot cake twice in the last week of November, once with a cream cheese, butter, and icing sugar frosting which was to my dismay yellow and fluid instead of white and stiff, and once with thick icing concocted of icing sugar, warm water, vanilla extract, and Cointreau. The second icing was fiendishly saccharine but I had no objection.

The next project I am meditating is a dulce de leche coffee: hot coffee, dulce de leche dissolved in it, kahlua, sugared whipping cream, and grated chocolate. I believe that would be called "moreish" in the British jargon. I found it on the website of a famous cooking blogger from, I think, Oklahoma, whose website is recommended on Jezebel quite often and which quite reliably has recipes for things my siblings would actually eat. Then there is a butterscotch eggnog recipe from the New York Times's food section. Besides I have been thinking of cooking a Scottish meal with a cranachan for dessert, and a medieval banquet with beer and things served on our wooden cutting boards (to be rechristened "trenchers"), and a French breakfast with croissants and delicate meats and brie and jams and hot cocoa (er, chocolat frappé) or tea or coffee or a combination thereof. But since the dishes have been piling up into a species of kitchen Mordor and I am still very antsy about washing the dishes in wintertime after the way my hands blew up and sprouted hives three or so winters ago, these may remain daydreams.

This year the Christmas season has been relaxed and low-key. St. Martin arrived quickly in the midst of other occupations, so I didn't even think of working on a lantern until the day had arrived and pretty much gone; the first Advent Sunday came in with some fanfare; and we celebrated St. Nicholas on the day before, which is to say that I slept in while some of the others had breakfast, and showed up in the early evening to find a lot of chocolate on my plate. When Papa was travelling in the U-Bahn a BVG Nicholas was on his rounds and so he ended up with a teddy bear key chain, and at work Mama received a package containing the Ferrero triumvirate of Rocher, Küsschen, and Mon Cheri. I've been thinking that maybe Christmas is more a holiday for children, which to put it baldly makes theological sense because of the "child" in Christ Child; but though in past years I have felt that I could hear the creaking and groaning of the industrial Christmas machine winding into gear around September and then cranking out a deluge of advertising into January, this year I am an insider at least in the book industry and therefore don't find it so artificial or overwhelming. So I'm not particularly grinchy and, though still inclined to be gloomy about selfconscious, intentional (the German word "vorsätzlich" popped into my head; can't think of the right English term for now) dogoodery and benicery, don't devote that much time to thinking about it.

On television in the past week there was another cooking documentary on Arte, one of my favourite genres. This time the protagonist was a French woman who hunts for truffles with her pig — quite a nice, tidy-looking pink pig as pigs go — and makes black truffle omelette, truffled boiled eggs, chicken stuffed with truffles, and rabbit, and serves the latter to a round of friends each in their own way carrying on a local tradition, for instance hunting truffles with hounds (more expensive than pigs, since they must be trained, and prone to distractions, whereas as long as there are no acorns nearby pigs are apparently exemplary in their devotion to the task at hand) and tending the rabbits.

On the piano I have been looking at Schumann's piano concerto again. I liked it and didn't love it at first, and maybe the same holds true now, but the more I work with it the more I like it and the deeper I dig into its substance. It is teaching me to take time with the music, to tie the notes together better in a legato and to tackle specific scales, and so on. Of course there is a value in playing it as slowly as I am, because it leaves me more time to notice things and because it is much easier to solve problems that crop up at a mild speed than at a furious one, though one can play absentmindedly as easily in one mode as in the other, and I think it is good mental exercise to find enough in the music that one isn't frustrated by the length. I think playing a passage quickly and discovering a macrorhythm or macrophrase is more of a trick than a true enrichment of the music, though of course it is often integral to the music, in composers like Liszt and Bach (where the melody is sometimes very well hidden amid the counterpoint, I think) the music is practically devoid of sense without it, and if one wants to play professionally people demand that one observe it.

I revisited Bach's Concerto in d minor recently, too, and enjoyed it much more than before, because though this is an undignified metaphor it feels like a very meat-and-potatoes sort of music, nourishing and strong and warm, though I still find the second movement desolate — and technical difficulties no longer interfere so much with this quality. Revisiting a Hungarian Rhapsody by Liszt was not as uplifting, though the tedious clinkery of the Friska and so on went reasonably well for sightreading, and I didn't play through to the end. Then I came across the Satie "Gymnopédie" which I remember playing for an exam, and arrangements of The Nutcracker, and the Christmas songbook which I am playing through a couple of songs at a time. Besides there is a Haydn sonata, and anything else which recommends itself at least for a glance.

On the reading front I began to read romance novels on the internet again. It was much easier to do it bravely and cheekily when the only alternative was to do dutiful things, be bored, and become depressed again, and less easy to do it now. It was a little intimidating when we were forced to pay 500 Euros for bit-torrenting (which has also killed some of my enjoyment of YouTube, because I still fear the day when a long letter of twenty-something pages will come listing all of the films I've watched in violation of copyright and extorting a bullshit — pardon the language, but it is suited to the context — sum for each of them) and when a host of viruses, Trojan horses and rootkits and spy agents, ran riot on the computer where I mostly read them. On Sunday, I think, I copied our files onto a USB stick and then (also with Gi.'s help) reinstalled Windows on that computer, and since then there have been protracted searches for the CD required to install the network driver, the printer, and so on and so forth. The whole has inspired me to learn more about computers and the internet, though so far I have read only a measly handful of pages in a JavaScript textbook from 1997.

I have become so paranoid about the internet that it isn't funny, somewhat justified by a recent problem with Facebook in which my account was purportedly accessed from Munich and I'm not sure whether that is just indirectly our computer or not, and being shut out of my risky Gmail account (which is no longer my risky Gmail account since I used it for Facebook and don't want all those details getting out). I'm sure it takes all kinds to make a world, but I find it increasingly difficult to understand why hackers are willing to waste their time to waste the time of billions of others, in a very invasive way, and to endanger the livelihoods of people who must finish something on their computer for work in a given time, and so on. Even sociopolitical hackery like 4chan's on VISA or whoever in retaliation for barring donations to Wikileaks is in the end a pain in the hindquarters for everyone besides the executives who promulgate such decisions. I find it darnedly tedious to change passwords so often and can't be certain that information recovery, etc., isn't phishing. Besides I hate the laxity with which the sphere of internet privacy is regarded by governments and courts.

Reading the news, listening to music, drawing things, writing things, corresponding with friends and businesses and so on, commenting on things you see and hear or do, are all profoundly private things. Crime, politics, and the intentional offer of goods and services are public things, and even there one has more choices in real life — for example, if one has a shop one can choose its neighbourhood and therefore have a manageable category of customers whose seriousness one can gauge in person, instead of being open to any customer, spurious, honest, or otherwise. Though I admit that here at the bookshop there has been non-virtual spam, too, some of it well-meaning and some of it truly not kosher.

Anyway, this has become a long and fairly indiscriminate ramble despite the ex cathedra principle. But I'll call it stream of consciousness and send it.

*

Words are like leaves, and where they most abound
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.

(Alexander Pope in An Essay on Criticism)

The Sea-Gnarlies

2010-09-27T05:57:00.006-07:00

Something I began to write last night. It is inspired by all the photos of Brittany which I've looked at for my research, specifically of the Abbey of St. Mathieu and the Baie des Trepassés. It's probably nonsense but I find it intriguing.

THE winter wind drove grey ridges of snowy-peaked waves against the cliffs, which thousands of summers had burnished into a dark clay red, and up in a fleeting mist which scattered furling to rain even onto the downtrodden heather at their edge. In every direction the rock was seamed, into and along every seam the brine and the wind ran, and the boulders in strange Neolithic forms which stood as towers in the bereft sands at low tide were now lightless houses on water-embowered islets.

A strange sound arose on the winds as they strafed the long-untenanted shell of an abbey, curved around the pillar of the lighthouse, sought the hollows among the gorse and the grasses, and whipped into a shiver the flexible twigs of dormant oaks and sombre pines. Even the river which ran into the bay was agitated as it swelled with a sudden cargo of rainwater.

Up from the shore crept the sea-gnarlies, the gnomes of sealskin pelts and tiny eyes buried in wrinkles and mighty tiny bodies, who sleep in the crevices in the sea floor and emerge only when a submarine tension and tremor signals a commotion on the surface. Then they hunt for their food: the stray corpse of fish or lobster or other creature which lands on the shore, oysterbeds and scallops and rope-encircled posts of mussels, unwary seabirds abroad on the same errand, and even a human. When they had scaled the cliffs with their fierce fingernails and toenails they brushed through the heather with a soft furtive sound, scratching here and there at patches of grass to bare the insects in the soil, and pinching or skewering or grabbing fistfuls of the resistant prey before swallowing them with grim joviality as amuse-bouches.

Down they crept to a swathe of boulders, gambolling through the surf and diving deep to the stone hidden by the winter tides, to pry the barnacles with their teeth and draw the crustacean innards into their mouths.

Through the abbey flitted the grey forms of the friars, not the ghosts of the dead friars but the ghosts of the living friars they had been eight hundred years since and as the eerie phantoms of their dream selves: amoral, unperceptive, yet arrested at moments into consciousness and intelligence. They copied Latin tales onto invisible scrolls, relived bawdy encounters, vituperated their head abbot and the bishop or some papal bull from Rome which had long since sunk into obscurity, complained about the rude and uncivilized folk among whom they unwillingly lived, cultivated vegetables or flowers or orchards which had long since withered and crumbled, or fought supernatural battles with angels and demons, dragons and selkies, and the wolves and boars and robbers which haunted the environs of the abbey or the regions of France from which they had once come.

In the nineteenth-century lighthouse which stood rooted in the land of the abbey but rose from it like a thriving sapling from a moribund trunk, the keepers’ dream selves, too, held vigils, each unaware of the other. And it was a peculiar contrast to see the automated beacon turning, beaming, flashing, turning, beaming, and flashing, as the weather station recorded the wind speeds and temperature and air pressure of its own accord, while the former tenants in their old-fashioned manner and dress employed antiquated invisible devices and measurements recorded in invisible ledgers, or sent radio messages to people who did not exist, and perceived and described eerily enough the weather conditions as they were in actuality. These mundane dreams alternated, too, with dreams of war, shipboard travails, imaginary fiends and adventures, and distant families and loves.

Oldest of all, the vague white shapes of Neolithic men and women mingled with the similar weak figures of tree-spirits and the solid stony outlines of Roman soldiers, who were for the most part not at ease and some of whom bore the bloody marks of axes and celts and spears on their persons. These were oddly pragmatic and therefore enacted the scenes of daily cooking, warfare, sailing, grave ceremonies around tumuli and dolmens, and gatherings among parades of stones across the heath, and still at times the Romans dreamed of their origins in the Mediterranean basin, and faintest wisps of almond trees, dolphins, the splashing of the wine-dark sea against a brighter shore, or the sirocco even manifested themselves in this adverse northern climate.

[. . .]

The sea-gnarlies were by no means, however, the only living beings abroad, even disregarding the gulls, cormorants, porpoises, and other animals. There were the Liths, boulder trolls who resembled the Romans in their grey girth but were far less anthropoid in form; the Liths sipped riverwater and ate sand from the shore and, having no need of alternative nourishment, they were singularly unaggressive and they rarely spoke so as to be heard except by their kinsmen. These Liths, in fact, were lumbering down to the shore then, leaving no prints in the sand as they waded through, for it settled again at once.

Slubbering Over the Trianon

2010-07-13T15:07:00.003-07:00

At the risk of being tiresome, I have idly begun reading Horace Walpole's letters again, and rediscovered a passage describing Versailles and King Louis XIV which I partially quoted long ago and which I want to share at length now. Firstly I like the ingenious turns of phrase and secondly the sarcasm and thirdly the way he sounds like any enervated traveller who catches an unsatisfying glimpse of a popular place and instantly falls in grudge. It was written in 1739 to Richard West.

Stand by, clear the way, make room for the pompous appearance of Versailles le Grand!----But no: it fell so short of my idea of it, mine, that I have resigned to Gray the office of writing its panegyric. He likes it. They say I am to like it better next Sunday; when the sun is to shine, the king is to be fine, the water-works are to play, and the new knights of the Holy Ghost are to be installed! Ever since Wednesday, the day we were there, we have done nothing but dispute about it. They say, we did not see it to advantage, that we ran through the apartments, saw the garden _en passant_, and slubbered over Trianon. I say, we saw nothing. However, we had time to see that the great front is a lumber of littleness, composed of black brick, stuck full of bad old busts, and fringed with gold rails. The rooms are all small, except the great gallery, which is noble, but totally wainscoted with looking-glass. The garden is littered with statues and fountains, each of which has its tutelary deity. In particular, the elementary god of fire solaces himself in one. In another, Enceladus, in lieu of a mountain, is overwhelmed with many waters. There are avenues of water-pots, who disport themselves much in squirting up cascadelins. In short, 'tis a garden for a great child. Such was Louis Quatorze, who is here seen in his proper colours, where he commanded in person, unassisted by his armies and generals, and left to the pursuit of his own puerile ideas of glory.

(From Letters of Horace Walpole, edited by Charles Duke Yonge and published in 1890; at gutenberg.org)

Soccer's Golden Fleece

2010-06-21T15:18:00.003-07:00

Given an interesting sleeping schedule I only watched a minute or so of Portugal vs. North Korea before nodding off on the sofa. Since I liked the Korean team in their first match, against Brazil,the seven goals against it would probably not have been an edifying spectacle anyway. Besides dancing on the grave of the vanquished has scanty charm; even Germany's 4-0 win against Australia was a little depressing for me.

When I woke up again Switzerland began its match against Chile, which I followed intently during the second half. I found myself hoping that the Swiss would win though the Chileans looked marginally better and, either because of the red card against the Swiss or for other reasons, the players in white kit were clearly on the defensive in a tacit admission of subordination. Even then the defense, though staunchly arrayed in its two rows every now and then, was not so agile and indeed dreadfully porous. Which may have been an "offside trap" (today's the first time I really took note of the term; I imagine it means that the defense loiters toward midfield so that any opposing players who break through are offside and may not attempt a goal). Either way the Swiss, even with one player down, doughtily preserved their 0-1 loss, as was the fate of the similarly disadvantaged Germans in their ridiculously, pedantically refereed game last week, so good for them. The Chilean team may be all right but I don't find it either very sympathetic nor brilliant, and the lovely fluent passing which distinguished its match against Honduras and was brilliant appeared to clash and vanish against the methodology of the Swiss, with the result that the game was a fairly unenlightening 90+overtime minutes of deconstructed brawling over a wide area.

***

Intermittently I played the final movement of Schubert's sonata D959 until 2-4 pages before the end. The theme is lovely but the rest of it is an example of what is commonly remarked, that Schubert can't bring himself to finish his sonatas at times. Why people don't say this more often of Beethoven compositions I can't fathom, and personally I haven't felt bored, precisely, by the three last sonatas of Schubert's. Besides I am unfairly inclined to grumble that whoever minds hearing out a Schubert sonata is deficient either in soul or in the elementary talent of tuning music out and daydreaming if you are bored. But in this case, considering that it was sightreading and therefore not the pinnacle of musical fluidity, I had to concede that enough is as good as a feast.

Three or four years ago I listened to Alfred Brendel's recordings and, though with the very last sonata Papa's and Clara Haskil's versions fortunately come to mind, and though at the time I liked his recordings, the memory of it in my ear is a tremendous obstacle to finding my own approach, and a hopefully characteristic approach, to Schubert. One thing that doesn't come out in recordings as much, I think, as in quotidian sightreading, is that Schubert can be immensely weird. The second movement of D959, which is in my view initially bitter and melancholic (I think that the saddest movements of Schubert are most faithfully rendered when they pluck at the heartstrings in a jarringly wrong and discordant way, though of course the composer resolves this with a happier movement or key soon afterward), but also uncomplicated and lovely, is tangled chaos by the second page.

* * *

Inspired by its match against Chile, and pending egregious displays of ineptitude or of poor sportsmanship, I have adopted Honduras as the World Cup team for whom to cheer. In the game against Spain, though they appeared overwhelmed at times, they gave a good battle. They passed well amongst each other and even did the billiard-like passes (which I love) where the ball deflects off the foot of one teammate to surely arrive at another's. Besides they were diligent and courageous about running for and through the ranks of Spanish defenders, and parrying for the ball with even multiple opponents, instead of just passing off the ball to a teammate in a freer position. And I have the impression that Honduras's goalkeeper is really quite good. Though evidently better than Honduras, I didn't think that Spain showed glimmerings of especial brilliance; yet its first goal was, to borrow from the British(?) vernacular, a corker. Fortunately the game was not sabotaged by silly refereeing, though the incident of the nose-stubbing of an Honduran by a Spanish player did suggest a yellow card, since neither player was near the ball and it was a disagreeable piece of aggression. But the nose didn't bleed, so the principal sanguinary spectacle was the split lip and spewing blood of a Spanish player.

It's not very saintly but I think that fouls have their place in soccer, if they aren't done with intent to inflict pain or debilitate (the jargon for debilitating fouls is evidently a "reducer"). It was funny in Spain vs. Honduras how the experienced players simply hopped over extended feet, etc., so that the shabby tricks were rendered ridiculous; what was even lovelier was the way the Hondurans and Chileans tumbled like acrobats during their game against each other, and gave as good as they got instead of one side victimizing the other. On the other hand it is simple to cause a nasty injury, so it's best not to tempt fate. And I really detest fouls as a risky, lazy shortcut in lieu of acquiring the ball through classic footwork and speed, and of running as quickly as possible to head off an opponent.

What I detest even more is the pretense of having been fouled. A little ankle-clutching now and then may have no further effects if the referee is unimpressed, and sometimes players who indulge in acting have really been fouled and are only seeking redress (though if the foul was really that bad they wouldn't have to act out suffering). And of course soccer players are genuinely injured and put at risk of losing their careers from time to time in a way which the casual television viewer cannot feel through the screen. But the dramatic facsimile of agonizing pain which would not look out of place in medieval paintings of inventive martyrdom — glass shards and heated iron grilles and all — is an insult to real injuries; it unfairly biases the game in favour of the ham; and depending on the circumstances it could give the other player involved a totally undeserved sense of guilt. Not to mention that it's unkind to deceive the referee and make him an accomplice to one's cheating.

Lastly, as a certain player who obtained the second yellow card which turned into a red card for Kaká proved, in the age of video and replays it is a stupid step, though it must be confessed that there are supposed fouls or handballs or so on which I watch over and over again and thereafter still don't know what happened.

* * *

Which brings me to the sorry quandary of France at the World Cup. The following may be entirely made up, partly because of the vagaries of reading comprehension and memory and partly because the press isn't always reliable, but here is a version of events:

Thanks to the gossip on the Guardian blogs I gather that Zinedine Zidane was really the coach for France during the last Cup here in Berlin, and that he and Raymond Domenech (who is himself sketchy as a coach also because he has used astrology to decide for instance which player is placed where on the line-up, like Louis XI in Quentin Durward, and in any case is not much respected by the team) are at loggerheads. Besides I'm guessing that it may have demoralized the team that they advanced into the World Cup because Thierry Henry's handball in the game against Ireland wasn't acted on by the referee. Before the game with Uruguay two players asked Domenech to change the formation to a different one and he agreed, only to find out that the formation had been suggested by Zidane, whereupon he rescinded. Then came the inglorious tie.

In the next match came the inglorious defeat against Mexico, in which Thierry Henry, punitively kept on the bench, sat in his thick dark blue jacket and crossed his arms in Achilles-like disgruntled exile from battle. So the France was deprived of a good striker and played with what I thought were flashes of genius and of effort for instance on the part of Franck Ribéry, but with a resignation to failure, middlingness, and a gaping lack of cooperation. I admit to feeling somewhat weepy after that game. And every time the camera went to Domenech, he just stood there, leaning against the pole and looking inscrutable, except for one time where he gestured in exasperation.

Afterwards, of course, it turns out that the striker Nicolas Anelka had flared up at the manager during halftime and indulged in a very rude sentence, which I imagine to be common if sadly unimaginative language in the sports milieu, even if directing it against a coach is unwise. For some reason French officials, though they hail from a nation which might be thought to view these things in blasé fashion, declared themselves shocked! and Anelka has been sent home. In the meanwhile, Patrice Evra, captain of the French team (I'm glad not to be in his shoes), professed himself understandably disappointed at the weak effort exemplified in the game against Mexico. Regarding Anelka's remarks both he and Zinedine Zidane stated to the press that they were out of place and that no one was seeking to defend them as proper behaviour, but that removing him from the French team was going too far.

And of course in the next training session the French team showed up but refused to train in support of their ~~fallen~~ banished comrade, leading to an altercation whereafter the field fitness coach (a self-appointed intermediary) stormed off in a huff and threw down his badge in the process. Then intervention of Sarkozy, and so on and so forth, and now they've trained again, though on an inauspiciously thunderous day where, according to the AP video footage I saw, the sky was about as lively in tint as the cellar of an Irish grey stone mansion. What is questionable is whether the team will appear in full number (aside from Anelka, of course) for the match against South Africa tomorrow. [Which, it seems, I'll have to mostly miss because of a summons to the bank. )c,: What rotten, rotten luck.]

*

Anyway, what I don't understand is the puritanical slant of the animosity against the French players. The World Cup is not a pristine event.

There is corruption and match-fixing, the betting around the game outcomes has its shadows like any other gambling, the staff are partly ill-paid, the funds expended on the stadium will hopefully bring joy to many South Africans but may also have deprived many others who live on welfare and so on, and it is to a great extent likewise a capitalist orgy of dubiously ethical companies seeking to put their brand on the "beautiful game." The fans are maybe serious devotees of the game; others seem like self-aggrandizers who expect people they've never met to live out their dreams, and some hound the players and deprive them of their right to privacy. Maybe they have enough money to buy tickets to the game without pain, maybe they are dipping into household funds or denying themselves better things for the privilege of taking chaotic transportation to an enormous arena and then taking their place on the hard and loveless benches of the modern amphitheatre. The soccer players themselves are on a strict training regimen, constricted in what they eat and what they do and where they go, and even if they are rich, wealth brings its own problems and I doubt if it is any substitute for freedom, uninterrupted schooling, and the time to develop other interests and skills. Besides they have to play so many games with their teams (Chelsea, Bayern München, Real Madrid, etc.) and then in regional competitions and then in the qualifiers and friendlies before the World Cup; after a while, why should they care? The commentators on the game may, like the fans, be serious devotees of the game; others are resentful pedants who are envious of the players or who look down on them as numbskulled pawns or who always believe that the players could and should have done something better.

If someone tires of the hypocrisy of the game, of their powerlessness to determine how they play even though they are the ones who must carry it out, or of the illusion that the Cup is of transcendent importance compared to different issues (even mundane ones of leading a reasonable life), I am glad that they have the courage to rebel, and I am glad if their teammates support them in this rebellion. I never thought I'd quote this approvingly, but after all the devise of France is Liberté, égalité, fraternité!

A Humming Piano and Soccer Stadia

2010-06-14T15:21:00.010-07:00

Since the inaugural game between South Africa and Mexico I have determined to plunge wholeheartedly into the World Cup, and so have seen I believe at least two minutes, and read the entire minute-by-minute reports on the guardian.co.uk, for every game so far. J., Ge. and I have taken to reading the reports out loud, by turns, and intoning "Gooooaaal!" in unison whenever it occurs.

I find that it is not making me much wiser as to the rules of the game, strategy, etc., or indeed about soccer in general, but it is interesting nonetheless and I like observing everything. Today I woke up toward the end of the Holland-Denmark match and saw maybe the last ten minutes, watched the Japan-Cameroon game more, and then followed the Italy-Paraguay game for the first half before being forced to desist in the second half because someone thought that an episode of Tatort was must-see television. At which point I threw a play-tantrum and stormed off to find something else to do.

For much of the remaining time the computer which I prefer for internet activities was occupied (by T., unobjectionably dispatching university coursework and being an example to us all). So I nursed a headache with much holding of cool hand to forehead (like a Victorian lady with the vapours, come to think of it), drinking of salted water and a tiny glass of port, lying down, and at long last an aspirin. On the piano I went through the Kinderszenen, other little Schumann works, one of Chopin's Etudes ("Revolutionary," for the first time) and the Raindrop Prelude, a movement or three from Bach Partitas 1 and 3, etc. Last evening I watched music clips from medici.tv's YouTube channel, and even though they were samplers of perhaps three to four minutes' length at most, they were inspiring. (Though I will not be playing a keyboard arrangement of Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" any time soon, and listening to the four-piano version of Vivaldi's Four Seasons was like four tiny pneumatic drills taking up residence in my brain; you really need the varied timbre and flexibility of a chamber orchestra to render the music endearingly.)

Then I basted together more of the torn lace in the collar of a nightgown, prepared a fresh batch of homemade moth paper (letter-size printer paper left over from Canada + cloves + dried thyme leaves + considerable smashing so that spice/herb oils soak into paper, dusted off and folded in half and cut into strips to lay in between the clothing), and shook out a pair of pants which had lain in the moth-infested pile. I must find a clever way to store clothing. The best way has the disadvantage of being inelegant and musty, and I am still skeptical if it works; I have not seen a solitary moth in clothes when I bundle them into plastic shopping bags and hang them from doorknobs, our clothes-rack, etc. . . . On second thoughts, my quibbles are insane.

[Pause while I scramble off to remove some of the piled-up clothing into a bag and hang it up.]

Besides I've been going through Teach Yourself Beginner's Latin again, which was one of my projects during the year after high school graduation. I haven't made much progress yet, but most of this is mindless review; for instance the uses of the nominative, accusative, dative, genitive and ablative are still present in my mind even if my knowledge of their endings even in the first and second declensions is faltering. Either way I'm still in the "equus laborat - equi laborant" stage. But I did reach a set of quotations from Latin literature, some of which I already memorized during the gap year and have been pompously citing to Mama when they seem apposite ever since. "Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant," is one, and "O tempora, o mores! Senatus haec intellegit, consul videt," is another. But "Verberat nos et lacerat fortuna" can be used in many situations too, and then there's a long one with "Interea Eos"* or something, from Virgil, which though a pain to memorize might replace the refrain of "Cast off the shackles of yesterday" from Mary Poppins as my all-purpose quotation a propos of toil.

*[*cough* I meant "Aurora interea miseris mortalibus," etc. The other quotations are from Tacitus, Cicero, and Seneca, respectively.]

Anyway, to return to the World Cup, I did find the Germany-Australia match last evening very good, and though it irritated me greatly when the ARD channel's commentator kept bemoaning the horridness of the Japan-Cameroon match (now that was a chaotic mess, and I thought it highly unfair that it wasn't a draw because they were both tremendously lousy) especially in comparison to the German performance yesterday, I have to admit that it did set a high bar. Its specific merits: the precision of the passes, intricate set-ups for goal attempts, way in which the players would not just roll the ball to the closest teammate when they were haplessly stuck in midfield but would really look for an opening and also pass the ball far across to a teammate if he was in a good position, clever footwork, and the absence of impatient kicks in the general direction of the goal whenever a forward became tired of fending off the opposing team's defence. It was also a pretty clean game where diving and fouling were concerned. The Australian team was clearly not as good but they didn't give up hope, were fast and reasonably agile, and played in a strong aggressive spirit without committing horrid fouls. (As far as I could tell.) But the straight red card for the Australian Tim Cahill did seem disproportionate and mean.

Where the teams are concerned, I am not "rooting" for any one in particular, though it would be highly reprehensible of me not to support Germany. The three teams which have impressed me are Germany and Argentina and Paraguay, though in the latter case it was admittedly because my expectations had been low. I still dislike Italy's team from the last World Cup, and specifically have not gotten over the resentment about the Materazzi-Zidane incident; besides which I am suspicious about their ethics regarding diving and the like. But if they prove a good team I wouldn't want them to lose unfairly. Altogether I tend to find myself being "for" a team in the course of a match, only to forget all about the preference when someone from the opposite team is launching himself on a good run for the goal.

As for the vuvuzelas, I can still hear them sometimes when I'm not watching the game at all, but for some reason am heatedly in their favour. Having lived in the countryside/suburbs I've been surrounded and menaced by my fair share of buzzing flies and wasps, and have felt a visceral dislike of the noise, but these horn-thingies sound benign and are relatively easy to ignore. Perhaps it's snobbish, but I've never been fond of the mindless colosseum roar anyway. If the horns seriously bother someone, though, I'll understand if they're banned. Anyway, as many others have pointed out, the "expert" soccer commentary on TV is all too often far more irritating, boring, and mindnumbing. And tediously condescending to Africa (which is evidently still considered as a country instead of a continent).

The Third Estate; or, a House Divided

2010-06-09T21:01:00.008-07:00

It is the early morning again. I've spent much of the night reading the letters of Madame du Deffand, a booklet entitled Les prérogatives du Tiers-Etat, and the elucidations on proper attire in "Horseback Riding 101" (Suite 101.com), looking at photos from Brittany which are much beautified by the sunshine and the May flowering of the gorse on the cliffs, and listening to music in the background as usual.

The following is a reaaallly long discursion on what I've been reading in the way of historical source material, and if the boredom becomes overpowering, please feel free to skip it!

***

Les prérogatives du Tiers-Etat is an oddity, its stated author being an anonymous duchess who had been elevated from low birth to her title by virtue of fortune, and its actual author apparently being Louis-Antoine de Caraccioli. Published apparently in 1789, in the thick of the Estates-General, it is a heated defense of the Third Estate and its right to political representation. It begins with the narrating duchess's indignant statement that many noble houses have contracted marriages to commoners so that their dignity and possessions and lifestyle are shored up by the wealth which they previously did not possess, and that therefore the aristocracy has no right to distance itself from the supposed lower class.

In History 120, I think, we were told that while in the English aristocracy the law of primogeniture governed inheritances — which means that the property and title would pass on to the eldest son, while the younger sons had to become clergymen, officers, or something else respectable to earn their living, as any Jane Austen reader will know well —, in France the property was divided among the children. I had difficulties understanding how the French system works until I remembered fairy tales where for example the eldest son gets the house, the middle son the mill, and the youngest the donkey. So it may be absurdly untrue, but I'm guessing that over time properties were divided up until the parcels of inherited land were too little to generate much revenue to live upon. But I hadn't heard of marriages between aristocrat males and plutocrat females in this century and country at all, and at first found it difficult not to feel as if I had hopped into an Edwardian satire (or tediously lachrymose portrait à la Henry James) of marriages between crude but loaded Americans with useless but titled Britishers.

At times I found the Duchess character far too strident, but I did laugh at this scene:

[M. le Duc, mon cher époux] apprit dès ce moment à me connoître. Je commençai par lui prouver, d'un ton encore plus fier que le sien, qu'il n'y a de vraie grandeur que celle de l'ame; que nous sommes tous égaux dans le premier principe, & que l'incomparable Métastase n'a jamais mieux parlé que lorsqu'il a dit il nascere e caso, & non virtu: la naissance est une chose fortuite & non une vertu : je terminai la leçon par me faire apporter des sacs d'or, par en répandre les rouleaux avec profusion sur la table & les remuer à grand bruit, tout en disant, voilà mon aïeul, mon bisaïeul, mon quadrisaïeul, &c.

Le stratagème réussit, comme je m'y attendois [. . .].

In English: "[The Duke, my dear spouse] learned to know me from this moment. I began by proving to him, in tones prouder still than his, that there is no true grandeur but that of the soul; that we are all equal in the foremost principle, & that the incomparable Metastasio has never spoken better than when he said il nascere e caso, & non virtu: birth is a fortuitous thing and not a virtue. I concluded the lesson by having sacks of gold fetched, by profusely spreading the rolls on the table and stirring them with great noise, whilst saying, here is my grandsire, my great-grandsire, my great-great-grandsire, &c. The stratagem succeeded, as I had expected [. . .]."

After this the booklet, the author shedding the lusty persona of the duchess, takes a detour into a gentle allegory. A king is contemptuous of commoners (roturiers) until the day when he lands in a pool and is on the point of drowning, the gentlemen of the court standing about impotently since they cannot swim, until a couple of low-born men dive in and fish him out.

Much surprised to find that his valiant courtiers had not come to the rescue, he listens with interest as his jester suggests that the Third Estate does quite as much for him as the nobility, and decides to test this idea the following day. Of course the moment he awakens the servants are already pulling open the curtains, lighting the fire, bringing his clothes, cooking his breakfast, etc., and when all dressed he goes to conduct business with his two secretaries, of course these are commoners. Later he reads books and wanders in the gardens tended by, and hunts with the assistance, basks in the art and architecture and theatre, and listens to the music of commoners. In the newspapers, written by . . . commoners, he is instructed of the grand patriotic contributions of . . . commoners. When narrative expediency ignites a fire underneath the king's window, it is extinguished by . . . commoners. Etc.

Overwhelmed by the burden of empirical evidence, and not much impressed by any magnificent contribution on the part of his courtiers, the king is converted to an admirer of the Third Estate. But when during a hunt his life is imperilled at the tusks of the boar, a gentleman leaps in to save him, and the king recognizes that the First Estate likewise serves its purpose and has its merits. ("[ . . ] alors il reconnut que toutes les classes des citoyens sont également nécessaires; qu'il seroit absurde d'en rejetter une, pour en élever une autre.")

The narrator draws this lovely — and, in my opinion, very thought-provoking — tale to a close, and then goes on to paint a highly improbable (satirical?) picture of the saintly commoners, who are kinder to the impoverished aristocrat than many of his peers, etc. And then he describes the meek ambitions of the Third Estate and its absolute respect for the nobility:

il sait que la Noblesse a des priviléges incontestables auxquels les Rois mêmes ne peuvent ni doivent toucher. Eh! qui doute, que les Gentilshommes sont les remparts de la Monarchie, qu'ils l'ont toujours soutenue aux dépens de leur propre vie, & qu'il n'y a rien de plus respectable & de plus grand qu'une longue succession d'aïeux, qui, de père en fils, maintiennent la Couronne, & sont les suppôts de la Royauté. L'histoire se plaît à rapporter les epoques honorables pour la Noblesse, & le Tiers-Etat se plaît à les lire. Loin d'en être jaloux, il se félicite d'appartenir à une Royaume, où des noms consacrés par une antique bravoure éternisent sa splendeur.

In translation: "it knows that the Nobility possesses incontestable privileges which the Kings themselves neither can nor may touch. Well, who doubts that the Gentility are the ramparts of the monarchy, which they have always supported at the expense of their own life, & that there is nothing more respectable & greater than a long succession of ancestors who, from father to son, tend to the Crown & are the supports of the Monarchy? History pleases itself by reporting the honourable periods for the Nobility, & the Third Estate pleases itself by reading them. Far from being jealous, it felicitates itself upon belonging to a Kingdom, where the names consecrated by antique bravery immortalize its splendour."

It must be confessed that, while copying out this passage into my notes, in between the first sentence and the second, I inserted a note:

[N.B.: Choppy, choppy.]

Simply to evoke what precisely happened in the years after M. de Caraccioli or whoever published this effusion, and how the Nobility escaped this time without a hair on its collective head being hurt and with its inalienable privileges being preserved with utmost care.

Either way I like being made to think about the role of the aristocracy, and the role of the working class, and the ideal role of both. Besides which the booklet is an insight into the snobbery which characterized some of the upper class, and is in my view, though firmly entrenched in the mentality of the former, poised on the knife-edge where the Ancien Régime ends and the Republic begins.

***

I could go on and on. But I won't, for now. (c:

Euterpe and the Toad

2010-06-08T18:50:00.017-07:00

It's late or early enough that the birds are twittering in great concentration and the sky has turned a bluer shade of midnight, and I guess that the volume of street traffic will swell soon.

This afternoon Uncle Pu came to visit, and to the accompaniment of chocolate and ice cream (I poured a little cognac over mine as an experiment and liked it) we all talked about matters political and otherwise for hours as usual.

Then Pudel and Papa and I had a chamber music session for the first time in months. First there were Haydn's trios in C, D and G major, and then a movement or so each of two Beethoven trios. Haydn went swimmingly and as far as I could tell we were easily and wholly absorbed in the congenial music. The portions where the piano has the melody didn't inspire as much terror because of the pressure to be note-perfect as they once did.

But the first Beethoven trio we tried was confusing. I don't know it well and didn't have the melody of the opening movement in my ear. Besides I found the theme of that movement a trifle meandering and boring. Whereas Papa and Pudel clearly like it. I guess that when playing chamber music it is harder to indulge one's enjoyable prejudices without trampling on the joy of other people. Zut alors!

Fortunately the Archduke trio is familiar. But in the Andante there are broken arpeggios in triplets or whatever they're called, which I had to painstakingly play through and couldn't fudge because the violin and cello were depending on me to keep the time (why are you asking me of all people to do that? was my unspoken question) and deliver the right cues.

In one of the Victorian/Edwardian-era books on music at gutenberg.org, I (mis)remember reading something to the effect that everyone has a scale or two which he plays unusually well. I like this positive outlook on the music pupil's capacities, meant to describe the humble beginner as much as the great performer, but it must be confessed that the reverse side of the coin is hopeless mediocrity in certain other scales. I am terrible at playing arpeggios, so they straggle along in ungainly manner and rarely if ever attain the dignity of melody. There is a Scarlatti sonata whose second half I often cravenly avoid playing just because the left hand is full of arpeggios and so it is usually twice as slow and half as delightful to hear as the rest of the piece.

Playing an instrument is a cycle of thinking and feeling the music, hearing the music as it is played, and the fingers carrying it out; one confirms the other, and problems that appear trivial can throw a decisive spanner in the works. As far as I can tell it doesn't matter if you are animated by the purest wellspring of inspiration which ever swelled the song of Euterpe, if your fingers are having a clumsy day; you feel the clumsiness, hear the clumsiness whereby it interferes with your guiding idea of the music and erodes your confidence, and so the clumsiness infects and muddies even your inspiration until everything is middling. Or, the other way around, if your fingers are nimble and ready, they can ignite an inspired mood even if you sat down at the piano with the soul of a disgruntled toad.

E.T.A.: The titles of these blog posts appear to be becoming very pretentious. My apologies.

A Mile-Long Essay by the Wayside

2010-06-07T14:07:00.004-07:00

Over the weekend we celebrated J.'s and Gi.'s birthdays. The feasting comprised above all a chocolate chip cake, lemon cake, and marble cake, decorated with Smarties or M&Ms as the tradition demands.

Then I also spent much of Saturday baking Bienenstich, a pastry which is very popular in this household and which is concocted of a biscuity or yeasty dough, cut in half and filled with vanilla pudding, and topped with a caramelized layer of sliced almonds. I use the recipe in the Dr. Oetker Grundbackbuch. The pudding filling is too much of a fuss for me, so we always have pudding on the side. My preparation of the yeast dough (which intimidates me despite the dozens of times I've made it) was eccentric and would have struck horror into the soul of any professional baker, but once it was out of the oven the taste, texture and appearance were so perfect that they honestly did embody the Platonic ideal. We had no almonds so I substituted ground hazelnuts, which were equally delicious and looked like a baklava filling after they were mixed into the butter and sugar and milk.

***

At the piano I've been looking at Chopin's ballades and études and so on, but haven't so far managed to sightread the first pages or two with much justice, so I mostly give up and leaf on to the Raindrop Prelude and try yet again not to overpedal and to slur the chords in the left hand properly. Then, after coming across Schumann's Piano Concerto in a minor maybe a week ago (it's undoubtedly a major work, but I was ignorant of its existence) and bookmarking the recordings by Dinu Lipatti and Sviatoslav Richter on YouTube, I found a score in a pocket-book-sized edition on top of the piano, and played bits of it today for the first time. It is kind of fascinating seeing what all the other instruments are doing, especially because the scores for the other concertos I practice are all transcribed so that the orchestra's part is smushed into a second piano part. (Some day I'll have to learn the proper musicological terms for that.)

The reason why I've been playing the piano more than usual is because the attack on the Gaza flotilla knocked me for an emotional loop. After brooding about politics unhealthily during the Bush years I don't want to say or think hateful things, or lose sight of what actually goes on, or feel terrible every day again. So instead I played Beethoven's early sonatas, Chopin's Polonaise Héroïque, and Rachmaninoff's Prelude in g minor.

***

To return to politics, I thought a lot about writing to the Israeli government, simply expressing sorrow at what occurred, but vacillated too much and ended up not sending anything. Reading commentary on Gawker and Jezebel (especially the latter) lowered my blood pressure because it was often clear-eyed and sympathetic, and the news coverage in general reassures me that the press is fulfilling its task and that governments like the UK's, Spain's and Greece's are adequately defending the law. (Even the New York Times forbore from muttering about bad public relations in its first editorial on the subject, but instead wrote fairly and reminded its readers about the poverty and hunger in the Gaza Strip.)

But I am disappointed in the American and Canadian governments for suggesting that the Israeli government carry out its own probe into the incident. Practically no government could be trusted with such a probe at any level, and even the courts often fail with such cases. An example that comes to mind (though maybe there are extenuating circumstances I don't know about) is when New York police officers got away with shooting 50 bullets into an unarmed man (Sean Bell). So the suggestion is stupid, biased, and callous toward the people who died and their friends and relatives. It's not that I want to see revenge done; I just think that the propaganda must be effectively disproven so that the memory of the dead is not traduced, and perhaps some remorse instilled in the people who are responsible.

I'm surprised anyway that an Israeli voter would put up with the country's soldiers being ordered to commit outright piracy. But too many people evidently subscribe to the brainless belief that you can "ambush" soldiers who are illegally trying to take over your ship in international waters. Assigning the aggression to the people on board the Mavi Marmara is like walking into the wall of a library and then suing the municipality for building the wall there in the first place.

Which is not to say that I don't have huge problems with calling oneself a peace activist and then hitting someone with a baseball bat; I think if an activist does not decide to unresistingly endure imprisonment and ill-treatment should the situation befall him, he cannot call himself a peace activist. In this case I especially see a problem with hitting soldiers who are bearing weapons and boarding your ship but have not physically assaulted you (yet) or unequivocally signalled their intentions to do that. But maybe the "peace" label was fixed on the activists by someone else. Besides I don't quite understand why it takes 600 people to deliver the aid, except if they are trained in its distribution or if the principle was to have safety in numbers (that went well).

I think that a pragmatic approach to aid is best, basically acquire the supplies and make sure that they will actually be useful, find a direct and safe way to deliver them, deliver them, then leave. Besides I think that ordinary people can participate in cultural and other exchanges to relieve the isolation of those who live in the Gaza Strip. Political pressure has to go through diplomatic channels behind closed doors, I guess, and though I'm not sure if it has much of an effect in practice I think that unbiased reporting on events in Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip is intensely valuable. But I think that personal pressure might work, too; if you're friends with an influential member of any government, I think that letting him or her know quite clearly and unaggressively what you've observed and which conclusions you've drawn, and if he really makes a wrongheaded decision making your disappointment succinctly but decidedly clear, could have a good effect on policy. Sensationalism and opinionmongering and righteous ranting are sometimes justified and effective but they do make something of a circus out of the suffering of others, the irony being that many people seem to like this circus and wouldn't care much about politics if that aspect were missing.

Anyway, I hope these thoughts weren't too inaccurate or offensive.

***

As for my French Revolution research (I could probably have led into this subject in some subtly clever way, but anyway), I've gone off on a tangent to read up on horses. It's reminding me of the two weeks spent in a children's horseriding camp with T. when I was ten years old or so, on the initiative of my grandmother. The camp was run a little like a cult: the trainers were hierophants, the older children or the ones who already had lessons the knowledgeable acolytes, and we the lowly neophytes. We had to navigate the intricacies of grooming and caring for the horses, and were threatened with dire anecdotes of wrongdoing which led to injury and death in the complex and fragile animals; I didn't like this fear-of-God pedagogy so much and would have liked friendlier explanations of how to treat horses kindly and without making honest and disastrous mistakes. What also played into the hierarchical character of the camp was the presumptive fact that many of the children were in private schools and wealthy, and rightly or wrongly I had the impression that they were a little snobby and spoiled and prone to Gossip-Girl-style backbiting, and frighteningly self-assured and well-educated, as the stereotype goes.

Either way it is unsurprising that I never caught the horse fever, though I did start drawing horses, diagramming the "tack" (saddle, girth, bridle, etc.), and borrowing a handful of relevant books from the library. Which effect even the moving literary travails of Black Beauty never had.

But considering how integral transportation by aid of horse was historically, I thought it high time to learn about it, and besides I still harbour fantasies of spending three to six months working on a horse or dude or cattle ranch in Australia or New Zealand or the US, or any kind of farm in North America or Europe outside of Germany (for reasons of the grass seeming more exciting on the other side of the border). Being jobless first of all it's difficult to grasp the reality of hard work, and secondly one feels the need to overcompensate for the inactivity. I've recognized to a degree that I genuinely prefer to sit around at home, but I think that this very preference is a problem in itself, though not one which I care for people to sit around in judgment on. The principal cause is that I don't expect to find anything worthwhile if I emerge from the apartment, because I've tried it and it wasn't fruitful; and until there is a job description or a job interview or anything that convinces me otherwise, that's the way it will remain.

An Epistolary Flower by the Wayside

2010-06-04T03:40:00.010-07:00

Discovered this afternoon in the course of further French Revolution research:

Lettres de la Marquise Du Deffand à Horace Walpole, Tome III
(published in Paris, 1812)
Extract from a letter, CLXIII, written on Sunday, October 25th, 1773

Mon projet est de vous envoyer toutes sortes de rapsodies par M. Craufurd; je ne pénetre pas ce qui le retient ici [en France] si long-temps; ce n'est certainement pas parce qu'il s'y amuse. Il s'ennuie à la mort, et prétend toujours être fort malade; il n'y a jamais eu deux êtres plus différents que vous et lui. Je le vois tous les jours; je me crois un prodige de raison en comparaison de lui.

Source: Gallica.bnf.fr

Rightly or wrongly, Mme. du Deffand reminds me a little of my paternal grandmother. Certainly she is an ideal letter-writer and wit and warm friend to Walpole, even if the constant ego-stroking seems indelicate. When glimpses of sentimentality appear, it is neither sickly nor exaggerated.

I like the passage quoted above because it is so blunt but finely expressed, and does awaken some curiosity as to the personality of "M. Craufurd" even if based on the brief description his particular brand of recalcitrant obstinacy sounds like the petulance of a thoroughgoing bore.

But if he is (as a cursory websearch leads me to suspect) indeed Quentin/Quintin Craufurd, his life — spanning a sojourn in India, literary pursuits, and being a cook in the broth of the French monarchs' flight to Varennes — must have been lively.

In hasty, 18th-century-esque translation:

My project is to send to you all manner of rhapsodies by M. Craufurd. I cannot discern what retains him here [in France] so long; it is certainly not because he is well entertained there. He is languishing of boredom and always pretending to be greatly ill; never have there been two beings more different than you and he. I see him daily; I believe myself a prodigy of reason in comparison to him.

To Become a Birdbrain

2010-05-25T14:53:00.006-07:00

While I'm still sleep-deprived and therefore less inhibited I thought I might as well announce my foray into the ranks of Twitter. Two weeks ago I hadn't the slightest intention of following in the footsteps of Twitter users who, according to the scathing stereotypes, inform their beleaguered friends and the world of such thrilling events as "Just had a sandwich!!1!" whilst littering these effusions with typos and horrendous contractions like "lol."

But Facebook is royally peeving. The reason I went on there was mainly so that people could keep up contact with me if they wanted to, and because I needed closure on high school. On the other hand it disturbs me that the information I give the website is so voluminous and personal in nature, and that access to it can be left wide open to the general public whenever a brilliant redesign of the privacy settings occurs; it disturbs me to know how much I could find out about other people, and so far I've religiously only looked at photos, etc., where I was wholly sure that the person wouldn't mind; and I don't like the compulsion to chase popularity just like in the high school I was trying to get closure on, nor the fact that a "Facebook friend" is a very different thing from a real friend. As therapy to overcome feeling despised and isolated in school, Facebook has been great, just because I have to confront it and because if someone picks up contact it seems like they can't entirely hate me, but I find it difficult to write updates or notes about links as naturally as I would if my Facebook friends were, let's say, my brothers. Besides it's depressing to be aware that the things that really interest and inspire me may be received as deadly dull and irritating clutter in the newsfeed of someone else.

On Twitter, by contrast, I am a total stranger and I (not being a celebrity or being connected to a network of friends there) don't have to prove anything to anybody. If the mood strikes to "tweet" something myself, I can practice condensing thoughts into short and entertaining sentences, which is especially good practice for someone who writes longwindedly and likes to qualify her statements. If people like what I write I earn their attention and (virtual) conversation fairly. Aside from that, and as importantly, I can keep up to date on magazine and newspaper articles, press releases and other information from charities, and publicly available videos and event announcements from cultural organizations, governments, etc. Besides I can remain in touch with the projects and thoughts of actors and other famous people whom I admire, and be certain that the information they are sharing is not unduly personal and is freely given to the world at large, and that I don't have to be a pain in the neck or support the tabloids and other intrusive press to find it.

So far among the people whom I follow on Twitter the most consistently amusing is Armando Iannucci; most gently didactic Martha Stewart, who is currently travelling in southeast Asia and whose reports and photos are National Geographic in miniature; most informative of events like a press conference with David Cameron and Angela Merkel is Downing Street 10 [Number10gov]; most filled with righteous indignation the Reverend Al Sharpton; and the most absorbed in peace and love and projects for furtherance of the same is undoubtedly Yoko Ono.

There are plenty of other interesting people, like Karl Lagerfeld who in resemblance to Carine Roitfeld and Anna Wintour writes brief declarations of his life and fashion philosophies with a humourlessness which in his case is imbued with what I consider as Eeyorish gloom; actors like Susan Sarandon or authors like Zadie Smith who have sadly tired of their Twitter accounts already; and pop culture entities who figure prominently in Gawker and Jezebel and whom I happily avoid like the plague in any other context, e.g. Perez Hilton (Paris doesn't annoy me, since I think she has a real sense of humour) and the Kardashians and Lindsay Lohan (whom I like in any capacity other than her tormented tabloid persona).

Much as I have loved to watch America's Next Top Model, despite the shame of it, I have not seen the last two seasons beyond one to four episodes, and even the lure of André Leon Talley (who is also on Twitter) did not cure my thorough disenchantment, and I am following neither OfficialALT nor Tyra Banks. But I am following Toccara Jones, a third-season contestant who had an understated manner subtly concealing a vast aplomb, and who had a spread in Italian Vogue's (*sigh* ) "black" issue.

Apart from that, the humanitarian organizations and NGOs which I follow include UNHCR and UNICEF and NAACP, and it feels jolting but very good (though of course I haven't lifted a finger to help anybody yet) to be aware of what is happening in the world at large again. Then, as a cultural calendar, I follow museums, musicians, symphonies and magazines.

I'm relaxing my death grip on Anglosaxonia and specifically American culture a little, but frankly Twitter seems far more developed on that continent and the scepter'd isle than in Germany and Europe on the whole. So while I can heartily recommend Twitter feeds for continental museums like the Prado and Rijksmuseum, I have limited my German followings to Tip magazine.

Anyway, I've enjoyed myself hugely so far, though trawling through the lists of people whom famous interesting people are following in order to find more famous interesting people to follow one's self can be not only an odd (and seemingly hoity-toity) thing to do but also a major pain. Fortunately I already know what hashtags, etc., are and how they work, and have no trouble on that count.

P.S.: One must be aware, of course, of imperfections like spam Twitter accounts and stolen identities. At least the stolen identities can be highly amusing and essentially benign, like "Mrs. Stephen Fry," whose bewigg'd daguerreotype already hints that something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

A State of Rudeness

2010-05-25T00:11:00.008-07:00

Whether it's interesting or not is (almost) impossible for me to say, but I feel like a ramble about the research I've been doing for the French Revolution story. I still don't anticipate writing the story itself for years. In my view literature, and art itself, are most worthwhile when they are the thoughts and experiences and knowledge of years, encoded (in a way) by the author or painter or musician, and then left to the reader or spectator or listener to decode over years with the help of his own thoughts, experiences, and knowledge. So, also because I like a finely wrought piece of work for the superficial immediate enjoyment of it, and out of undistilled curiosity, I am taking pains to build up a very thorough understanding of the state of France before and during the Revolution and possibly up to the exile of Napoleon to the island of Elba.

A priority is to understand where the revolutionaries were coming from. The more I learn [largely, I admit, from Wikipedia] the clearer it is that they fell into very diverse factions — the apparently bloodthirsty hébertistes, Montagnards, Jacobins; sympathetic clergy and aristocrats; ambitious and resentful minor aristocrats and lawyers and so on —and that certain ideas of the revolutionaries regarding the rights of man and the injustice of the tax system and so on were actually quite in vogue in higher circles. Honestly I think that it was the ambition and class resentment from those who were or felt snubbed by the upper class which had far more to do with setting the events of the Revolution in motion than the oppressed peasantry. In Brittany this seems to be even more the case, where the king was respected as a very distant entity, the Catholic church was strongly engrained in the fabric of society, and taxes like the gabelle (salt tax) were not as harsh thanks to the late accession of the province to France and I think to the favourable terms wrung out by Anne de Bretagne.

Personally I am skeptical as to the degree to which the droit du seigneur was exercised — it appears to be a propagandistic gimmick, like the much-touted "bra burning" of the 1960s and 70s which never happened once — and I think I read that the corvée, or mandatory labour exacted of peasants for the building of roads and other infrastructure, was essentially gone (at least in Brittany?) by 1789. But it is clear that the tax system was ridiculous and injust. First of all, that it was weighted so that the great majority of the burden fell on the poor. Secondly, that it was gathered by private contractors who apparently had free rein in exacting higher sums than the royal treasury would ever demand or receive. Thirdly that the taxes were so complicated; besides the gabelle there was the capitation (head tax), the vingtième (property tax), the octroi (I think the English term is market tax; it was levied of peasants entering cities to sell their produce), and the taille (church tithe), to name four examples. When this joke was rendered utterly humourless by bad weather, crop failure, and the shortage of bread and other staples, of course the fat was in the fire.

The monarchy itself was bankrupt thanks to decades (or centuries, depending on how one sees it) of warfare whether direct or indirect as in the case of America's War of Independence, Louis XV had squandered the prestige of the throne through his reckless spending and menagerie of mistresses and presumably his disenchanting descent into bawdy old age, and Louis XVI was an ineffectual figure whose questionable advisors quite overshadowed him on policy questions. In the course of the Enlightenment the superstition which may have propped up the construct of divinely appointed kings was eroded, new ideas arose on points of law and governance and the social hierarchy, and the staunchly successful Glorious Revolution (1688) in England and even the very fledgling American republic which the French king had supported pointed the way to a different course. Besides the system of buying positions in government invited nepotism, laziness, and a continuing or even expanding gap between the powerless have-nots and the powerful haves.

Anyway I imagine that drafting a virgin government in one's mind as the government one grew up and possibly suffered under edged closer and closer to obsolescence must have inspired feelings of considerable giddiness. (Kind of like when Obama succeeded Bush.) I am trying to follow the mental processes of those who did it back in the 1780s and later. So, aside from toiling through Rousseau, I want to read Montesquieu (I just found out about De l'esprit des lois and have downloaded it onto the computer to read at leisure) and other more contemporary or at least French philosophers, and go back to the Roman and Greek models of government as described in Plutarch's Lives and elsewhere.

Either way I have actually read documents on Gallica, the website of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, in their entirety, and it's nice to have a goldmine of primary sources at my fingertips. Jacques Necker's history of the Revolution (which I have admittedly not read in its entirety by a longshot; but what I wrote about the causes of the Revolution above is largely informed by the book's opening chapters) is most approachable. Even though it's tied up with a tragic massacre in Avignon which prefigured the Terror in Paris, I enjoyed, too, a speech by the Abbé Mulot in rebuttal to a Sieur Rovère (a revolutionary who had apparently falsely masqueraded as a marquis), of which I copied out my favourite insults. He calls Rovère "one of those low intriguers who know the tortuous paths which lead to crime but not to the scaffold" ("bas intriguans qui connoissent les routes tortueuses qui conduisent au crime sans arriver à l'échafaud"), which strikes me as a truly lovely turn of phrase. Later, and less imaginatively, he exhorts Rovère to "Blush, then, once, sieur Rovère, for the impudence of your lies" ("Rougissez donc une fois, sieur Rovère, de l'impudence de vos mensonges."). Evidently what the church gained in Mulot, the eloquently hyperemoting tradition of lofty French tragedy lost.

[Disclaimer: the above translations from the French are obviously my own and likely inaccurate. And I hope the final remark does not sound unkind.]

Rousseau persists in being a pain in the neck. The quirky view which philosophers like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke had of man in a state of nature rather amuses me — though if I had ever taken the pains to slog through the Leviathan instead of knowing of it through pleasant, civil, and short references this may not be the case — because it lines up so funnily with modern conceptions of prehistoric man. And because it's nonsense and at the same time a weird instinctive understanding of a scientific phenomenon, like the idea of the atom which certain ancient Greeks had formed millennia before Niels Bohr, or John Dalton, for that matter. [N.B.: We learned about Dalton in school, which is to say briefly and long ago, and if he did help determine our modern understanding of atoms it's purely a fluke that I vaguely remembered.]

But! I object to being called upon to glamourize the existence of Neanderthal man and to pretending that living In The Bosom of Nature is a beautiful experience. The tableau of Man in a State of Nature blissfully grazing on a fruitful and readily accessible supply of acorns is possibly the biggest tosh I've ever read. There have been much more entertaining and convincing accounts of the Pays de Cocagne or Schlaraffenland. Besides, now that anthropology is an established field of study Rousseau's ideas on the subject are just so blatantly invalid. Besides Rousseau's ideas, though I wouldn't call them fascist because the underlying airy-fairy touchyfeelyness is so disparate, are morally repugnant and essentially eugenicist. The possession of a paper copy of the Discours sur l'origine, etc., would I think be worthwhile just so that I can fire it at the wall as soon as I read, for instance, the part where he thinks that the Spartan practice of leaving "malformed" babies out in the cold to die is peachy. In the meantime I just play out violent fantasies of him being chased by a mammoth over the hummocky neolithic tundra or something.

Then his ideal of man in a state of nature is so hypocritically snobby, generalizing, callous, and totally brutish and depressing:

Alone, idle, and always surrounded with danger, savage man must be fond of sleep, and sleep lightly like other animals, who think but little, and may, in a manner, be said to sleep all the time they do not think: self-preservation being almost his only concern, he must exercise those faculties most, which are most serviceable in attacking and in defending, whether to subdue his prey, or to prevent his becoming that of other animals: those organs, on the contrary, which softness and sensuality can alone improve, must remain in a state of rudeness, utterly incompatible with all manner of delicacy; and as his senses are divided on this point, his touch and his taste must be extremely coarse and blunt; his sight, his hearing, and his smelling equally subtle: such is the animal state in general, and accordingly if we may believe travellers, it is that of most savage nations. We must not therefore be surprised, that the Hottentots of the Cape of Good Hope, distinguish with their naked eyes ships on the ocean, at as great a distance as the Dutch can discern them with their glasses; nor that the savages of America should have tracked the Spaniards with their noses, to as great a degree of exactness, as the best dogs could have done; nor that all these barbarous nations support nakedness without pain, use such large quantities of Piemento to give their food a relish, and drink like water the strongest liquors of Europe.

Source: A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of The Inequality Among Mankind [Gutenberg]

&$%*@#! Anyway, I know that his thoughts were influential and that the Discours does capture archetypes and trains of reflection which remain and always have been relevant, but I just hate being confronted with declarative statements that are misguiding and untruthful, i.e. being lied to, especially when couched in repugnant pseudohumane sentiment.

Vicissitudes of a Night Owl on a Tuesday

2010-03-16T07:22:00.007-07:00

'Tis the day before St. Patrick's, and ever since I woke up at two-ish it has not been precisely springlike, but the cloud ceiling and light quantity are discernibly higher than they were a month or so ago. Last night I stayed up until around 6:15, then shivered miserably to sleep because the featherbed blanket had unfolded itself and I didn't want to bother doubling it up again so that its virtue of insulation would take effect. ("'Tis the voice of the sluggard," etc.) What was really irritating was when the feet tingled and itched as they warmed up again.

During the night itself I had amused myself among other things with updating Firefox to the 3.6 version, then troubleshooting for what must have been a good hour as YouTube's videos refused to load. After downloading and re-downloading Adobe Flash Player 10, restarting Firefox and the entire computer, etc., it turns out that I just had to click on the dormant Shockwave Flash in the list of plug-ins.

In the future there might be a music blog post, but in the interim I'll just say that I've been concentrating on violin music and that yesterday I went on a cello spree, and what especially leapt out at me were Yehudi Menuhin's recording of Bach's Concerto in E major, David Oistrakh's of the Concerto in a minor, Jacques Thibaud's and Jacqueline du Pré's of Maria Theresa von Paradis's (or von Weber's or whoever's) siciliana, and Jacques Thibaud's of Tomaso Antonio Vitali's famous chaconne. Besides I am fond of Pau Casals's versions of Max Bruch's Kol Nidrei and Camille Saint-Saëns's Swan, and also bookmarked the first Bach cello suite (Mvt. 1-3), even though we do have CDs of them and I played them often whilst doing homework or slacking off during the first year of university.

Besides I've been on an art spree. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's website has an art history timeline, named after one Heilbrunn, which provides thumbnails and actually useful informational blurbs of a large selection of the museum's holdings. They are classified by region, time period, etc., and what I just do is to click on a certain time period and go through all of them. During the night I went through the 20th and 21st century stuff, which was especially interesting to me because it feels peculiar to see what someone has decided are the important products of the times I've lived through.

The black-and-white photography sticks in my then befogged mind best, especially because I like what I've seen of Margaret Bourke-White, Walker Evans, Ansel Adams, Eugène Atget, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. I was pleased when I recognized a photo of a cowboy leaning against a wastebasket on a New York street and smoking a cigarette in tight jeans, plaid shirt, belt, and a Stetson, because that one came up in a nytimes.com slideshow about an exhibition of Robert Franks's oeuvre.

Then there was fashion from the Costume Institute. I don't like flapper fashion very much, though as an aesthetic I can appreciate it as well as any other, because I like couture that celebrates curves, etc., rather than obscures them and because its limpishness is annoying. So Paul Poiret, whether his fashion is technically flapper or not, was not my cup of tea; neither was most of Coco Chanel's stuff, to which I perhaps shockingly prefer what Chanel turns out under Karl Lagerfeld in the present. On the other hand I thought that the Christian Dior frocks destroy the argument that fuller figures were in vogue in the day of Marilyn Monroe, etc., because the cuts and sizes suggest corsets and diets and a slender Grace Kelly rather than steak and muscles and a subtly plump woman. But maybe the patrons really wanted something that tiny-waisted, or people were thinner back then in general.

I kind of liked the Balenciaga and Madeleine Vionnet, and with the Givenchy it was difficult to imagine Audrey Hepburn out of the dresses. Speaking of which I think the adulation accorded to that actress on the grounds of her style is irritating. When people like Victoria Beckham tamely imitate it I'm disgruntled. Frankly I would not weep if I never heard of Breakfast at Tiffany's or saw the dumb cigarette-in-holder/pearls/sunshades photo again. And the "little black dress" is an obnoxious cliché; to quote and paraphrase Marianne in Sense and Sensibility, if the construction of that phrase could ever be deemed clever, time has long ago destroyed all its ingenuity. The reason I like Audrey Hepburn is admittedly because she is beautiful but also because of her grace and interesting life and, above all, sensibility.

After that I went through the 1400-1600 A.D. period and was surprised to find that I didn't like the offerings from that time very much. Then I roamed through Wikimedia Commons in search of an illustration for an incipient Lighthouse blog post on Jane Austen's Persuasion. One problem is that I have an ideal portrait of Anne Elliot before my mind's eye, with gentle and intelligent eyes in a slender oval face, but I can't think of an actress or lady in a painting/lithograph/whatever who embodies that. Besides portraits of the time are often commissioned, and then they're of apparently self-important or blowzy or self-dramatizing (two words: Emma Hamilton, against whom I've had one of my one-sided feuds for years) women who are utterly unsuited. But I did come across portraits of well-known figures like the actor David Garrick, whom I've often heard about but never expected to see almost made alive again in a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds(?), and then hit the motherlode and was forced to reevaluate my stance on Caspar David Friedrich when I stumbled on the category of "Romantic paintings."

But what I'm mainly looking for is an illustration for a blog post about John Keats's "Pot of Basil," which I've been wrestling with for weeks and probably needs to be written afresh. Two or three Pre-Raphaelites had a field day with the poem, but I am not especially fond of the Pre-Raphaelites, since I think that their hyperstylized, immaturely moody saccharineness shows a weakspined unwillingness to cross lances with reality much like that of science fiction writers who, rather than sensibly learn to get along with other people as they grow older, prefer to premise their books on the nearly summary extinction of humanity.

Anyway, having been a total snob and trodden on many a foot, I'll just mention that J. presided over a batch of homemade marshmallows again, and we've eaten lots of them on their own and as a creamy melting mass on a cup of hot chocolate. J. uses beetroot syrup (Zuckerrübensirup) instead of corn syrup, so the marshmallows have a faint brown tinge and a nice distinctive flavour. Another option is to toast the marshmallows at our coal stoves, which works quite well as long as the coals are burning red and cleanly and not passively emitting gasolinish fumes.

A Recipe for a Non-Surprise

2010-03-12T07:31:00.008-08:00

With a grand effort I could probably find something intelligent to talk about, but in its absence I might as well share the latest evolution of a recipe for "pudding surprise." (I pronounce the "surprise" with a pseudo-French accent but that is, of course, purely an affectation.)

First of all I should own a debt to Aunt N., who used to make pudding surprise for us children when we came over every Saturday back in the early '90s. The constant in her recipe was the pudding and the sherry-soaked biscuit at the very bottom, generously soaked, but I think she enriched it with sliced bananas and other improvised ingredients too.

Since I don't know exactly what she did, and other ingredients are at hand here in Germany, I've turned the recipe into something like this. (The optional steps are in italics.)

1 package ladyfinger biscuits
1 jar cherries (Sauerkirschen/Schattenmorellen)
4 pkg. vanilla or chocolate pudding
+ ingredients listed on package (milk, sugar)
1 pkg vanilla sugar, or regular sugar
sherry
bittersweet chocolate or cocoa powder or both

Prepare the pudding as described in the instructions on the package; you could add a teaspoon or two of cocoa powder to the recipe. Since the milk takes so long to heat the rest of the pudding surprise can be prepared in the meantime.

First, drain the cherries, reserving the juice.

Then, neatly lay out as many ladyfinger biscuits as desired on the bottom of a large dish (I prefer a glass bowl); because of the dimensions of our bowl I put in two layers and there are always some left over.

Carefully pour over the sherry enough to wetten the entire surface of the biscuits, and after that add as much and let as much splash down into the bottom of the bowl as you like. (To prevent the alcohol from evaporating too much, I put a large plate over the bowl, but I doubt this makes a difference.)

Then I spread all of the drained cherries over the biscuits, and pour over enough of the juice to ensure that the biscuits soak well.

After that I sugar the cherries to concentrate the flavour; if you have a package of vanilla sugar you might as well use up the whole thing, otherwise I refer the question of quantity to the individual cook's excellent judgment.

When the pudding is finished, I pour it over the biscuits and cherries. The last time I made it I stopped part-way through, laid down another layer of ladyfinger biscuits, and then poured on the rest, but this is of course entirely optional. The biscuits are less dense than the pudding so they eventually rise to the top like a baleen whale surfacing from the briny deep, unless ingeniously soaked or weighed down for instance by cherries, but last time I didn't care.

Lastly I chop the chocolate (what I did last time is to leave it in the plastic packaging and vigorously whack it crosswise with the back of a heavy carving knife so that it fractured into little pieces, before taking it out) or spoon the cocoa powder into a sieve, or both, and distribute it lightly but evenly over the pudding. This is a trick to prevent a tough skin from forming; it isn't 100% effective but it's still helpful.

I like to eat and serve it hot.

The End.

The Evening of the Little Gold Man

2010-03-08T00:34:00.006-08:00

After spending the night before at the computer, then going to sleep in the late morning, I woke up just as the customarily painfully embarrassing Academy Awards red carpet interviews of the Pro7 channel ended. Then Papa and Mama gradually returned to the corner room and Gi. finished preparing a generous quantity of popcorn. On the television the coverage switched to its American counterpart, with the ex-supermodel Kathy Ireland (whose greyish dress was taller than most of the ambient humanity), an entertainment writer named Jess Cagle, and Sherri Shepherd of the talkshow The View. The actors who ventured within reach of their professional claws obligingly reeled off the clichés about being excited and feeling honoured "to be here" and wanting to enjoy each moment as it comes, and succeeded in pretending as if they feel happy when total strangers are clamouring for their attention like badly raised two-year-olds, and in this case demanding gracious responses to a shopworn set of officious questions. ("Who are you wearing?" = *groan*.)

Then the Academy Awards began as the nominees for best actor and actress took to the stage and stood there in the ~~circus ring~~ sight of the spotlights and cameras and auditorium hoi polloi. Once they had flocked back into their seats in the privileged front ring, Neil Patrick Harris emerged back centre stage and began a musical number most of whose lyrics I couldn't distinguish, whilst the ostrich feathers and (figurative) monkey suits of multitudinous dancers hearkened back to Old Hollywood showbusiness glamour. Then we were introduced to the hosts, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, who dutifully made reasonably polite and amusing jokes about or around the different acting nominees. They came across as relaxed and likeable, in my view, and it was nice not to have to wince either at a seriously off-colour or cruel joke, or at excessive attempts at ingratiating themselves with the audience.

The first pair of awards went to the best supporting actor and best supporting actress. Christoph Waltz won the first for Inglourious Basterds, and possibly his visible discomfort beforehand had sprung from the fact that being broadcast in the guise of a Nazi on a gigantic film screen is not anyone's idea of a shining moment. His speech was a jewel of succinctness and finely worked metaphor, and it wrapped up before the procrustean 45-second time limit so the orchestra music did not ignominiously cut him short. Mo'Nique, white flowers adorning her hair in hommage to her distant predecessor Hattie McDaniel, then won the best supporting actress award for playing a monstrous mother in Precious; this was equally expected. After her acceptance speech the cameras cut to Samuel L. Jackson, presumably to capture the "moved African-American" reaction, which he duly noted and rewarded with a mocking grimace into the camera. (Upon which my high opinion of him climbed another amused notch.)

After that came the techy awards, like screenplay and film editing and sound, and the awards for the little and foreign films. Avatar and The Hurt Locker divided the lion's share between them. I was happy whenever the latter won because of my one-sided feud against James Cameron and against Avatar. (Presumably I will call off said feud in due course, as has happened in the past with such entities as Tom Cruise and Richard Gere, but it is enjoyable to provisionally dislike people I've never met and films I've never seen.) The film's pop culture impact is obvious, but that doesn't prevent me from giggling when people describe it as "Pocahontas acted out by Smurfs."

Intermittently there was a tribute to John Hughes, a director who made films about teenagers in the 80s/90s and of whose oeuvre I have seen The Breakfast Club and Home Alone, whilst it is practically impossible to avoid hearing about Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Pretty in Pink. There was also a montage in honour of the horror film, where every few seconds one of us would remark, more or less, "That's not a horror film. That's more of a thriller." (Like Jaws and Psycho.) I looked away for most of the time since the horror genre is not at all my cup of tea. There was also a resumé of honorary awards that were presented in a different ceremony, and one of the recipients was Lauren Bacall. The sight of her elegantly accepting the standing ovation that came the way of her and a fellow honoree was uplifting (especially since The Big Sleep and To Have and Have Not and Murder on the Orient Express (1974) are much beloved in this household), even if the momentary doubt if many younger actresses are in her league was not so much so. As for the Na'vi skit that introduced the best makeup category, it went on too long in my view.

Finally we arrived at the mighty four awards for best actor, best actress, best director, and best film. Five actors assembled on the stage to pronounce a laudatio (as these things are called in Germany) for each best actor nominee: Michelle Pfeiffer for Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore for Colin Firth, Vera Farmiga for George Clooney, Colin Farrell for Jeremy Renner, and Tim Robbins for Morgan Freeman. It was terribly awkward at moments, for example when Vera Farmiga harped on Clooney's looks. But I liked the two last tributes, though I suspected that despite the film they both acted in Renner and Farrell (whom I rather like as far as his personality is discernible) don't know each other sufficiently to give the requisite profound insights into each other's artistic and personal merits. (Which was also a problem with Julianne Moore and Colin Firth.) Jeff Bridges won, of course, and it was amusing when this exponent of a showbiz family took the stage like a seasoned denizen of the West and cheerfully drawled unaffected thanks to all the relevant parties, interspersed with celebratory whoops and languid ", . . . maaan"s.

The formula was repeated with Michael Sheen speaking for Helen Mirren, Peter Sarsgaard for Carey Mulligan, Forest Whitaker for Sandra Bullock, Oprah for Gabourey Sidibe, and Stanley Tucci for Meryl Streep. I didn't recognize Forest Whitaker and was even more puzzled to find out that he had directed one of Sandra Bullock's romantic comedies, Hope Floats. Either way I had no idea who was going to win. Gabourey Sidibe or Carey Mulligan or Helen Mirren looked likeliest, since from what I've read Meryl Streep's portrayal of Julia Child is an enjoyable gig rather than an impassioned dramatic role, and Sandra Bullock's films are popular but have neither artistic pretensions nor great range.

But . . . Sandra Bullock won, and her speech was so characteristically warm and normal and funny that my surprise that she was considered good enough even to be nominated was forgotten. In any case the films she has been in are consistently watchable — I've watched a lot of them, from Miss Congeniality through Two Weeks' Notice to The Net — though The Proposal and All About Steve sound borderline. (She won a Razzie award for All About Steve, also for "worst screen couple" with Bradley Cooper, which reverse accolade she gracefully accepted in a speech available, if only sporadically audible, on YouTube.) But I haven't seen her performance in The Blind Side and had only assumed based on one or two reviews that the film on the whole is nothing special. It was nice, too, that the family on whose experiences the film is based were in the audience and that she gave them a satisfying "shout out."

At last the evening ended as Kathryn Bigelow was declared Best Director and The Hurt Locker was crowned as Best Film with tremendous speed. Needless to say I was muchly pleased (and from the critics' film reviews I reread post facto the award was also pretty well deserved). So the whole thing did take about four hours but it was time well spent, and even if it hadn't been, all's well that ends well!

The Astronomer

2010-03-02T07:10:00.001-08:00

Undeterred by the paucity of material, I will probably write a new blog post later today. But for now here is the fruit of my latest poetic mood, in second draft form. The rhythm and rhyming are incidental, the excess conjunctions will have to be weeded out later, and I had two philosophical stanzas towards the end which need to be replaced or totally discarded eventually and have therefore been left out here. What can't be changed is that the whole poem is a cliché. The scene is an indeterminate Italian town roughly during the Renaissance and the protagonist is (obviously) Galileoesque.

* * *

Spirally he treads the steps
between the quadrant of the stony walls
where the torches’ twisted circle
flickers in the gusting evening wind.

The streets are dappled by the moon
and here and there an estranged sheen
points to eave or weathercock
or the shining fissure of glassed window.

The rim of hills lies weighty
and the church’s domes rise firm
as beyond the sea the seeping sun
leaves behind its trace of green.

The noise of day has ceased to be
though the wavering drone of revelry
may fill the taverns and trickle into streets
and furtive carts may straggle by.

So the hollow suffering of the wind
the creak and groan of distant door
and the muffled shuffle-shuffle
of his slippers are the only sounds he hears.

He rises in the tightwalled tower
with much less ease than long before,
the cobwebbed corners not alone
in bearing marks of bygone years.

But at the top the hobbit’s door
opens to a familiar scene
of crabbed table, chair, and bookshelf
pens and ink and telescope.

Its darkness yields to candlelight,
the startled glimmer of the mice’s eyes
as they abandon leather tomes
and seek a different stuff to nibble.

With disregard he sets his candle
close beside the telescope
and pats the coppery sheath, its dents,
and lifts his sleeve to wipe the lens.

He sets ajar another casement
snaking moonlight passes in
and with it breezes coolly ruffle
the parchment and the plumy quill.

What forces stir the light and wind,
which might controls the roaming stars,
what forces bring their lustre near
and bend the glass to such far sight?

[. . .]

He ponders but he cannot know.
For now he holds himself content
to watch the passing of the stars,
to find the laws which govern them,

To ask the questions, and to wait
until the end, to hear the truth.

(Written Feb. 22, 2010)

Bryant Park, Silver Bears, and Bach

2010-02-23T13:11:00.007-08:00

Today I woke up, reluctantly but effectively, after 10 a.m. Everyone was out of the house so I read an online book, dabbled at the blog post, and checked my e-mail and Facebook account. Regarding Facebook I had an internal debate one or two days ago whether to request people to be friends, but finally decided against it because I want to be completely sure that whoever stays in contact with me does so out of their own free will and not on humanitarian grounds.

Besides I've been visiting the Guardian and New York Times websites religiously and have even begun reading science articles as well as the arts and style and travel ones. During New York Fashion Week I flipped through two or three days' worth of slideshows; fur and grey, Suzie Bird and Chriselle Stubbs and Chantal Stafford-Abbott are apparently the big new trends. Of course I keep an eye out for a designer whom I especially like, but despite a leaning toward Donna Karan (to my surprise I also liked DKNY this season) and Carolina Herrera and even Marchesa despite its flaunting opulence, there is no one whom I'd pinpoint as a favourite. Now it's London Fashion Week, but my enthusiasm has ebbed.

Since the Olympics are being held in Vancouver and Whistler, and Vancouver is (despite the fact that I don't know it well and mostly because of my experience studying at UBC) officially one of my favourite places on earth, I should feel obliged to follow them faithfully. But I have altogether been steering clear of reading about or watching them. As for the Canadian angle, during school I was exposed to tonnes of patriotism, and didn't like it then and don't like it now. I can remember about Acadia and Louis Riel and the War Measures Act, recite the provinces and territories with their capital cities, speak in both official languages, name the Prime Minister and the Governor-General, and pick out Hollywood celebrities who were born north of the border; and at home when we're drinking a glass of wine or liqueur we toast the Queen from time to time; but that's about as far as I'm willing to go. One of the things that relieved me about moving to Berlin is that here nobody bothers to pretend that one country is superior to another, or agonizes about Our Place in the World.

The Berlinale is closer to home; we watched the closing ceremony on television, and Mama and Uncle Pu (who visited today) are better informed about it, but I missed the rest of it. I like the presentation of awards at the end of the festival. Other German award ceremonies like the Bambi or Golden Camera are stilted and longwinded and terribly awkward compared to the greased professionalism of the Oscars and Emmys, etc., besides which it seems as if the American actors/singers/etc. who receive prizes (Meg Ryan, Britney Spears, etc.) are selected by an undiscriminating 13-year-old who has lived in a cave on the moon for the past decade. But the closing ceremony of the Berlinale is not so pompous or heavy, I think also because the festival director Dieter Kosslick is pretty unpretentious, and it is more serious and international. One would have to wait a long time to hear Quechua, Romanian or Cantonese spoken at the Oscars, and it's nice when the audience isn't a begowned and bejewelled recreation of Fifth Avenue.

Anyway, I had a long piano session in the afternoon. There was plenty of Bach — Partita No. 4 and the Concerto in d minor in their entirety, and the toccata of Partita No. 6 — and Beethoven — last movement of the Tempest Sonata, the whole of the Sonata appassionata, and Mvts. 1 and 3 of the Moonlight Sonata —, but also Mozart's Concerto in G major, Händel's suite with the variations on the "Harmonious Blacksmith" (minus the part where the page is missing), Liszt's Liebestraum No. 3, Chopin waltzes Op. 64 No. 1 (i.e. Minute Waltz) and 2, Enrique Granados's Spanish Dance No. 6, and Schubert's impromptus Op. posth. 142 No. 2 and 3.

The Chopin and thornier Beethoven involved a good deal of fudged notes, but I've made a breakthrough on the Händel, the Schubert was less obscure and rushed than ordinary, and the Mozart was from time to time pleasingly friendly. Leaving Beethoven's later sonatas for months and months, and turning to other music, has resulted in a thoroughly beneficial, objective distance, though I realize that even now I haven't begun to plumb their possibilities. But what I'd really love to do at present is to improve my grasp of Bach, whom I regard as a devoted mountaineer might regard a cordillera of great dimensions and numerous challenges, which it requires much time and strength and perseverance to conquer, and even once conquered still hides unexpected facets, but which finally leaves one profoundly satisfied.

Meditations Before Spring

2010-02-23T03:34:00.008-08:00

The first cracks in the ice of winter have appeared, like sunshine and, yesterday, rain instead of snow. A blue hyacinth on our windowsill has been in flower for over a week now, and though the balcony-box looks pitiful, the heather and much flattened pansy leaves survived the snow cover.

After much soul-searching I've decided to preserve the status quo as far as working or studying are concerned, until a fitting job turns up (the daily consultation of job listings is of course being maintained). Eventually I'll panic about my bank account again, but it'll be good for ca. 9 months as long as Harpagon, Silas Marner, and Ebenezer Scrooge remain my fiscal mentors. Besides, the longer the job search continues the happier I am about not contributing to the saturation of the job market until it's absolutely necessary. Which isn't very happy at all, but then altruism and logic have their limits.

For multitudinous reasons which, again, I don't care to enumerate, I am strongly against returning to university at present. I'd much prefer to study abroad, so that the experience is well-rounded and more interesting, but that costs money. Though I began filling out an online application to transfer to Columbia University weeks ago anyway, my conscience wasn't at ease about it. I don't know precisely why and on the surface of things it seems perfectly fine to give the opportunity my best shot, but the last time such a strong unease manifested itself I disregarded it and consequently went through a very bad patch. So I've bowed to the French mathematician's dictum that "The heart has reasons which reason cannot know." Besides it was an ambitious plan and ambition is in my view a worrisome motivation.

I've come to think it is good to repose upon myself, as the French phrase goes — to remain in touch as much as possible with who I am; and to gradually and naturally find a path which can best unfold any qualities that are peculiar to me. I don't like competing with others, don't much care for a large income, have no desire for a prominent career, and have already learned that the approval of others is a fickle good and therefore not a North Star towards which one can safely orientate one's self. Of course I daydream about travelling and working in New York, Australia, Scotland, or Texas, etc., and I believe the wish for adventure and escape to be neither peculiar nor wrong, but it's more important to come to terms with quotidian reality and to make the most of such experiences when they come.

If it makes sense, I also want to slow down and do things like music and writing and learning history very thoughtfully and painstakingly over a long period of time. Firstly, surface knowledge or ability is not satisfying on a deeper level and in the long term, and as amusing as humbugging is I'd rather have substance to back it up; besides I want to have an original and consistent way of doing things. Secondly, I like the idea of emulating Sir Humphry Davy or Immanuel Kant or John Milton in becoming singlemindedly absorbed in whatever field it is that interests me and pursuing it at depth and in peace, and then coming up with something revolutionary and profound when I'm older. I'm not the best pupil and though school was a good catalyst I think I've learned much more outside of it; in the end if I'm going anywhere it has to be under my own steam.

Lastly, I've been determined since the age of sixteen (or thereabouts) to build up a stock of strength of character, knowledge, interests, etc., and become as self-sufficient as possible. For one thing, when I live alone or am homebound I don't want to be bored or feel that life is purposeless; I have found it impossible to rely on others, except in limited cases, nor do I want the embarrassment of falling apart in public; and finally, when and if I marry and have children I want to be able to transmit resilience and inspiration and fun rather than drain it. It reminds me of a Bible passage, "A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things." We learned this quotation in my Ancient Greek course; I remember it five years later because I found it quite touching. The good/evil thing is not so much what interests me about it, but rather the idea of the soul as a repository of treasures.

Abrupt Endings

2010-01-19T01:48:00.004-08:00

So much for that. The catering company lady who interviewed me on Friday has telephoned to inform me that she had talked with my supervisor and that it was decided not to hire me. She offered to mail back my application papers, which offer I accepted, and asked me to give back the company's shirt through Mama. It was a shock. I don't understand if I fell short somehow or if I'm just not what they're looking for (the latter, probably, since I didn't do badly yesterday). Cancelling a tentative work contract after a single day is not flattering. But if they didn't mean to employ me anyway it was good of them to drop me before I become more invested in the work. And it is one step nearer towards the job I actually end up doing.

On the other hand I don't apply for jobs for fun — the application process itself is, speaking from personal experience, less fun than a root canal and much longer — or without being convinced that I could and would do it competently to well. Maybe I don't seem desperate enough for work; but I have too much pride to beg or to toady to people, and it's unfair to pressure people to hire me instead of more qualified and suitable (and, possibly, poor) candidates out of pity. It's not an entirely practical attitude, but it leaves me a sustaining scrap of dignity.

One Small Step for Man

2010-01-18T12:58:00.007-08:00

[Forgiveness, please, if this goes into too much detail.]

This morning I went to my first day of work at the catering company. It isn't real work yet, but a three-day training and trial period. Unluckily I arrived after 11 a.m., because while I reached the school in time it was difficult to find a proper entrance. After going to the office, I was directed to the kitchen and lunch room. There my training supervisor met me, guided me into a nice little room to change out of my outdoor shoes into my indoor ones, and out of my outdoor shirt into my cafeteria uniform shirt, and to put my things in a locker. (What I must also have along is the Rote Karte.) Besides I washed my hands, of course. It was snowing a trifle outside and the grassy areas and sidewalks were still covered. And there was still time before the food was to be served.

Then I learned the simpler tasks. Firstly we lifted the stainless steel, lidded bins out of the grey-blue styrofoam boxes, and checked the slip-tags to see that the right quantity of food had been delivered in them. (If it had been delivered to the wrong school, or there had been insufficient portions, we would have phoned the number given on the slips to correct the mistake.) Out in the lunch room a container each of tea and water, glasses, and cutlery had already been set up, and in the kitchen stacks of dishes with neat blue-and-white tea towels draped over them were awaiting use. At the window from which the food is served, there is a bain-marie, like a steel sink with at most an inch of water on the bottom, and my supervisor had switched on the heating underneath. Into this bain-marie we lowered the bins. Then, for the sake of food safety, we measured the temperature of one bin of each of the different foodstuffs with a thermometer much like the kind one uses at home for amateur medical purposes, and after the number stopped rising recorded it in a chart.

Eventually the business of serving food itself began. Since it's an elementary school, the children are for the most part friendly little characters, and as I ladled out tomato sauce and, every now and then rice with chickpea curry or the pasta with which the tomato sauce goes, I liked catching glimpses of their personalities. A couple said "danke," quite charmingly, and I was careful to recognize their effort to be polite by replying "bitte." As they grow older they'll probably find that most people aren't polite, besides which it's a bit presumptuous for me to dabble in pedagogy, but in the words of a certain Englishman, "How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world."

In the meantime I had to keep in mind that the littler ones receive more modest portions than the larger ones, and that when they ask for a second helping (which many did, because they love the noodles), this helping is slightly smaller; besides one must pay attention whether they want sauce, a little sauce, a dab of sauce to taste, or no sauce at all. For reasons of keeping demand within the limits of supply, neither third servings nor taking a portion of rice as well as of noodles are permitted. The supervisor already knew the preferences of the children and therefore had ordered a much larger proportion of noodles than rice; besides she handed out the apples to those children who weren't enrolled in day care and who wouldn't therefore be receiving them later. Surprisingly enough the children were quite enthusiastic about the apples, which did possess a pleasant rosy tinge; only one handed his back to me, and another wanted to exchange his because it was a little gnarled.

A third lady was busy in the dishwashing room, spraying off trays of dishes with a highly pressurized hose, and then setting it under the hob of a compact but impressive washing machine. The dirty dishes came in on trays set in wagons, and sometimes the children helped by pushing them into the kitchen, under the watchful eye of the lady so that they didn't roam loose. Out in the lunchroom the teachers wiped off the tables as their classes left. And the remaining business of cleaning was spared me, as I was sent off home right after the very last children had received at least their first portion.

So I'm a little anxious about the next two days, especially because I can be absentminded and forget things, and because when I'm under pressure instructions to me can go in one ear and out the other. But it seemed that today the only signs of abject stupidity were, firstly, not catching the name of my supervisor and, secondly, writing down my phone number incorrectly. Given the fact that I've thought of Proper Work with the same awed trepidation with which Frodo Baggins might have regarded the borders of Mordor, the last thing I expected was to have fun; I did, a lot.

***

It's also Papa's birthday!

From Bach to Stravinsky, Part I

2010-01-17T02:42:00.039-08:00

[The criticisms of the violin students' playing are hopefully not mean but just calling it as I see it, though if I were one of them these calls probably still wouldn't make me happy. As for the YouTube clips, I only linked to ones from 20th century musicians because that's the compromise with my conscience for illegally watching copyrighted material.]

From the 11th to the 13th I attended three masterclasses with the violinist Ivry Gitlis, organized by the Hanns Eisler Hochschule für Musik and held in the Galakutschensaal II of the Marstall.

For the first day I came far too early, since the announced time of masterclasses was totally wrong. The flyers said 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., which was evidently implausible given the limits of human endurance, but the class actually started at 2:30. So I went for an idle stroll around the Lustgarten and colonnades at the Neues Museum and Bebelplatz, and visited the Schinkel-Museum in the Friedrichswerdersche Kirche again. It was cold and the snow was deep, white or cappucino-tinted or speckled with dark gravel like stracciatella ice cream. The Spree lay bare and black and it lapped quietly against the banks; here and there birds bobbed on its waters or idled on the expanses of snow on the land. Of course these places are customarily overrun by tourists, so their solemn and solitary aspect was especially compelling. There was a series of posters for the Carus exhibition at Alte Nationalgalerie, which among other things proved that the turn of the 18th/19th century was a halcyon era for pedantic blurbs. Altogether the walk was a nice old-fashioned experience.

As for the Marstall, the Musikschule's part of it is a grey stone façade that faces the Berliner Dom and the Altes Museum over the sprawling quadratic hole where the Palast der Republik used to be and where the Stadtschloss will be rebuilt. "Galakutschensaal" sounds grandiose in German, so the room itself was a minimalist let-down, the walls brick washed with terra cotta paint on two sides and covered in institutional-beige plastic bulges along the others. It is not on the ground level either, as the name suggests to me. The floor is a luminous golden parquet, however, and toward the courtyard it rises into a low stage that is seamlessly and unpretentiously integrated into the room as a whole. The ceiling is high and the light ample. On the stage there is a harpsichord and two Augustus Förster pianos, whose sound I found artificial and curiously flat, but I can only compare it to our grand piano and a legion of aged uprights which have stood me in good stead over the years.

In keeping with the egalitarian furnishings, Ivry Gitlis forewent the stage and took his seat at the front of the audience, where his violin (a light golden-brown instrument, but what really impressed me, perhaps because I am a bit of an idiot, is the fact that the violin case also contained four bows) joined him. Regarding the chin-prop vs. sponge question, he uses a sponge affixed to the underside of the violin by two elastics, tied together at the chin rest. While everyone was getting settled a woman was setting up a video camera to film everything.

From what I gathered the masterclasses were a proxy memoir on a small scale, or at least a forum for which Gitlis conscientiously gathered his experiences and thoughts, and in which he tried to record and transmit the really worthwhile ones for the benefit of the rest of us. He is eighty-seven years old now and on the last day it sounded very much as if he felt the gnawing of the tooth of time. On the other hand, even on the second and third days, when he was tired and his voice was more raspy and unfocused, he was sharp as a tack, unpretentious and congenial, and altogether a person one would want to invite over on a weekend evening and then listen to over a glass of whisky or a cigar or something, for hours. Of course he rambled but I liked it because it wasn't gratuitous and rather made one think.

As for the stretches where he played the violin himself, three things struck me particularly. Firstly, he wasn't afraid to play in an ugly way (muffled bow, different key, etc.) to demonstrate a point of technique; secondly, he was content to let the students play without trying to outshine them or frustratedly show them how it must be done; and thirdly he has a wonderful grasp of the nuances of the music whereas the students' playing, good as it was, proved a comparatively blank slate. (Altogether I expected Gitlis to be sardonic and strict, but he is polite, quite open-minded, and laidback.)

The programme began with a student from China, whose name sounded like Ji Jong (obviously I'm really not good at catching Chinese, Japanese, and Korean names, so I'll be making up most of those). She played from Bartók's Violin Concerto No. 2. Her approach was a trifle humourless and aggressive, suggesting a musical education spiritually akin to military training, and she spooled off the piece very ably but without pausing to form a phrase or bring out quirks in the music. On the piano the accompanist didn't play with much greater variety of interpretation; it appears as if it accompanists are denied the right to imagination, and though this one evidently didn't lack sensibility her playing didn't express much. Otherwise Ji Jong played remarkably well; her tone was warm, a little dark, and interestingly shaded; and it was no task to listen as she held one's interest throughout.

After words of general praise, Gitlis remarked that her playing was "very healthy. . . . Perhaps too healthy," and then began in his conversational manner to investigate the possibilities for improvement. He asked her to tell a story, which after some hesitation and — with unexpected humour given her otherwise stony demeanour — she did. (The story: A man tells someone that he believes he's seen his face before; the other replies that it's highly doubtful since his head has never left his shoulders.) Then Gitlis explained that when we tell a story we don't just bluntly state events; we alter our voice, fill in details, and vary the pace at which we speak. He then played part of the beginning and did give it a conversational and Hungarian air, explaining how the composition is influenced by the speech rhythms of Magyar. Speaking of the advisability of stretching the rhythm from time to time, he stressed (to paraphrase) "One can be in time or one can be on time; there's a difference." It lends a sense of anticipation and heightens the tension. He also recounted what Marian Anderson had told him, "one of the most important things in music is the fraction of a second before."

[YouTube: 1. Georg Kulenkampff, Violin Concerto in D major by Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky; written in 1878, rec. 1939
(There are of course many versions available, but I decided to pick this one, whose interpreter incidentally once lived and taught in Berlin.)]

Then a tall French student, Simon, played the opening movement of Tchaikovsky's famous violin concerto. I found his rendition very touching and unaffected (not to mention that I have a very weak spot for the music itself). On the other hand the thought crossed my mind, and it returned on the third day, that the playing sounded as if he had heard and was beautifully recreating a fine recording of it. Perhaps it was so frictionlessly perfect that it felt like a facsimile of genuineness rather than the thing itself. At any rate Gitlis, who seemed impatient for reasons I didn't understand, asked Simon why he plays music; it transpired that the student grew up in a musical family, but other than that there was no direct answer. So Gitlis asked whether he did not feel at times that music is like wandering at the edge of a precipice. He also inquired whether Simon was playing in a competition, which was however not the case; he recalled the time when he went to Budapest and heard a student who played with a great deal of fire, only to return a year or so later to find that this fire was quite extinguished, and upon querying what the reason for this change might be, he was told, "I'm preparing for a competition." The crux of the criticism was: take risks!

[In other recordings, I love Henryk Szeryng's take among other things for its relative lightness and his tone, and Arthur Grumiaux's take for the tone and its strength.]

The third student was Japanese and since his name may have started with "T" he will be known as Toshi. He played the Fuga from Bach's Sonata No. 1. His approach was in my view too North American: the rhythm was exaggerated like in pop music and he played with some self-conscious panache. But given the circumstances it sounded surprisingly unmodern and was evidently Bach; and in his hands even the harsh chords had a sonority that lent human warmth to a piece that is in my opinion timidly and then acutely woebegone, like a sparrow vainly scratching for nourishment beneath friendless drifts of frozen snow. Gitlis, on the other hand, was all for a bit of scraping, and he got Toshi to use the bow sparingly instead of drawing it along its length. Altogether he often encouraged the economic use of the bow — though as far as I can tell economy of movement is something that naturally transpires over decades and is therefore mainly noticeable in the most seasoned musicians — and imaginative bow division so that a phrase of music doesn't sound monotonous and identical with every repetition.

*

After that Tristan took the stage, and with him a second accompanist, Dana. The latter is an amusingly temperamental personality, dressed and coiffed in the style of the 50s or so, with distinct cheekbones and a habit of energetically pursing her mouth. Tristan is French, stalwart in build and not entirely at ease, and as he played Niccolò Paganini's "Campanella" he moved a great deal and struck grave poses like a turn-of-the-century actor. This energetic presence evidently distracted him from the music, which while vigorous was comparatively expressionless. Ivry Gitlis clearly thought something similar, and said that it is not necessary to move much or to announce one's presence insistently. What I noticed was that Tristan's tone had at times a peculiar clear and steely quality. Besides he played something else by Paganini, a caprice or étude, without there being much time to discuss it, but which at least demonstrated that he has obediently put himself through the technical paces . . .

[YouTube: 1. Christian Ferras, excerpt from Stravinsky Violin Concerto in D major, written 1931]

Finally there was Susanne, who seems to be German and in character diffidently nice, and she played Stravinsky's violin concerto. Said composer may have been in a Bartokesque mood when writing the concerto, because once the movements have started out with a discordant, unsubtly attention-seeking(?) bray of a chord, they wander into strains of unadorned folkish melody whilst the piano accompaniment (or, I guess, orchestra) plonks along arbitrarily. Much of modern music falls, in my opinion, into two categories: it sounds like an orchestra tuning, or it sounds like a potpourri of uninteresting and purely functional phrases lifted from the aimless stretches in a composition by Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven, or both. Even given these prejudices, however, it was no hardship to listen to the Stravinsky in its entirety. The problem was that the violinist was nervous, since she had arrived at pretty much the last moment, so her playing was (presumably) note-perfect but colourless and flustered. On the second day, however . . .

From Bach to Stravinsky, Part II

2010-01-16T23:56:00.041-08:00

On the second day Susanne repeated the Stravinsky and this time played it with varied expression and good phrasing. Gitlis was much impressed by her progress since the day before and said so. Susanne's tone was, by the way, full, and either the key was low or it seemed low, so that it sounded like a viola but in a good way. Again the advice was to use the bow more sparingly and leave time for the music to develop; he added that she should trust in her good musical abilities and feel free to go further and enjoy herself. Dana was the accompanist again, and Gitlis, who evidently found her personality striking and amusing too, remarked admiringly that she (to paraphrase) "gives better direction than many conductors."

[YouTube: 1. Yehudi Menuhin, "La Campanella" by Niccolò Paganini, written 1826 and rec. 1930]

Tristan likewise repeated the "Campanella." This time Gitlis used the analogy of dancing to demonstrate that a singlemindedly driven approach, and lack of sensitivity to rhythm, is not ideal for the music. Then he went on to defend Paganini as a musician, especially because the Italian was such an important figure in the history of music and did in very truth divide it into a before and after. While the composer is not Bach — whom Gitlis obviously venerates as a creator of music in its profoundest sense — his music is still nice music and funny music, and in works like the "Campanella" "there are jewels every second" which it is worthwhile to seek out. Then there was a lengthy discussion of technique, in which Gitlis went over the passages with skittering mordents which Tristan seems to have been phrasing inaccurately, and emphasized (as I paraphrased it in my notes) that, "not only each arm but the divers components (fingers, wrist, etc. up to shoulder) should also be independent." And, returning to more abstract questions, he repeated that there is (to quote my notes again) "no need to be too blatant," that one should "suggest rather than say outright."

After that a Korean girl, who will be named Hu Jeong, performed Brahms's violin concerto. She is relatively tiny, so she has to lower the neck of the instrument and slightly bow over it as Mischa Elman did; besides her hair was in a neat pixie cut and she had the endearing habit of hiding her face a little behind the base of her violin as she awaited criticism. But despite her diminutive size, she tackled the technical demands of the concerto very competently. It felt as if the tempo of the violin were constantly lagging behind, but I've since discovered that effect is common in recordings of the work. What also bothered me is that it was one of those times where a public performance sounds like a solo practice session; it felt rehearsed.

During the discussion of her performance the question of nervousness came up. Ivry Gitlis told us an anecdote about Sarah Bernhardt: backstage at a performance she met a young colleague, who asserted that she wasn't at all nervous, whereupon the great actress (crushingly) replied that she would be once she had talent. Then the masterclass turned to technical points again, and Gitlis tried to get Hu Jeong to shift her whole arm and not just her finger in anticipation of lower (or higher) notes. It was also rather amusing when he remarked parenthetically that he envied violinists with strong fourth fingers; he explained that for him the fourth finger is a little "verstuzt" — then he paused, laughed and said, "I have no idea what that means, but it sounds good." (The masterclasses were mostly in English, but some German and French, maybe a little Hebrew, and a Russian saying, were thrown in.) And after that there was a touching moment, where Gitlis was going over a simple and gentler phrase in the concerto, and was all of a sudden very moved by its beauty. He took a while to collect himself, and then asked the student to play the music again, and as she did so stood on the stage with her and looked her in the eye so that there was a very nice unspoken exchange, as she rendered it once again, with feeling.

[YouTube: 1. Ginette Neveu, Violin Concerto in D major by Johannes Brahms, written 1878
(There are plenty of good recordings, so I took this one at random.)]

After that a fellow Korean, Ha Lim, played the Poème Elégiaque by Ysaÿe. Here I felt that the criticism of "too healthy" really applied. As far as I could tell the piece required a clear and cooler and perhaps mournful tone, tinged with cynicism, whereas she played it quite naïvely and with a gentle and cushioned tone (which may also have been caused by nervousness, since her tone on the following day was clearer). Her accompanist — Nao, from Japan — was, I felt, quite good, playing with appropriate lyricism and bravely eschewing the Music Student's Mezzoforte. It might be partly flattery but Gitlis, when told that the student would be having a different accompanist the next day, asked why one would change accompanists when this one was doing such a fine job. (The reason was logistical.)

In answer to a question of Ha Lim's he spoke reassuringly about her tendency to use a large vibrato, which her latest teacher had apparently trained out of her; basically his philosophy is that, if it really feels right to you in a particular situation, do it. (I think the teacher's problem with her vibrato may be the modern love for "what you see is what you get" playing without adornment or romantic wallowings. To me that's one-dimensional and, in its exclusion of a worthy though aged musical tradition, no more reasonable than demanding that women never wear skirts or dresses, only pants, to suit the trend.)

Then he made a remark which I found really insightful, which is that performers often adopt a persona when performing, and that we always or often strain to be something more or other than we are. Perhaps we should accept what is and just try to be ourselves. In that context Ivry Gitlis told an anecdote of a concert which he gave in South Africa. It was the middle of winter in the hemisphere, the weather was squalid, and the highly straitlaced audience looked moribund and mummified. Evidently nobody was enthusiastic about being there. During Paganini's Concerto in D Gitlis's fingers stumbled over themselves — a minor disaster — but that brought about the realization that he could just try to enjoy it. So after that the concert improved for him, and it improved for the audience, which became one of his best ever.

The fifth and last student of the day was Ji Jong, who repeated the Bartók (and due to time constraints never had the opportunity to play the Saint-Saëns piece she had also prepared). In my notes Gitlis's commentary is summarized as "take risks — reflected risks."