From Tikal to The Wall: Sunday Documentary Films

Last night I spent hours watching documentary films on the website of Arte, the German-French broadcaster that was bought by Germany's largest media channels a few years ago and hasn't been as independent-spirited since. That said, the films that I watched, about Mayan cities up to the 17th century, the urban development of New York and London and Amsterdam from the Gold Age or to the present, Mont St. Michel at the border of modern Brittany and Normandy, Nadia Comaneci, and the experiences of border guards at the Berlin Wall from the 1960s to 1989, were all (it seemed) generously funded and broadly researched and interesting.

There are stages in history I thought I knew, but that after watching the documentaries I knew I didn't. The exceedingly gruesome chapter of prisons in 18th and 19th century France, for instance. I had gathered from other reading that cruel and unusual punishment were genuinely and consistently frowned upon in the Revolution, although not during the Terror; and that Napoleon's laws cemented this tolerant attitude in law. Instead, Mont St. Michel in the 1860s was still apparently a place where people were thrown into dark stone cells in awful conditions.

And I knew about the Great Stink that encouraged the British government to embark on building a proper London sewage system in the mid-19th century. But I didn't remember reading anything about the steam ship Princess Alice that sank in the Thames, terribly polluted and the source of the Stink, at the loss of over six hundred lives.

The metamorphosis of Manhattan from a pastoral island of farms and less than four-story-tall brick buildings, modest even when the Brooklyn Bridge was built (when the bridge looked far larger than anything else in sight); a metamorphosis driven especially because of all of the property speculation by e.g. John Jacob Astor; makes me think again of the quotation from Sophocles:

Πολλὰ τὰ δεινὰ κ' οὐδὲν ἀνθρώπου δεινότερον πέλει.
('Many are the great/terrible things, but none is greater/more terrible than man.')
I'd never seen this line before in Friedrich Hölderlin's translation into German, and I think his whole translation of the passage is worth quoting:

Ungeheuer ist viel. Doch nichts 
ungeheurer als der Mensch. 
Denn der, über die Nacht 
des Meeres, wenn gegen den Winter weht 
der Südwind, fährt er aus 
in geflügelten, wogenumrauschten Häusern. 
Und der Himmlischen erhabene Erde, 
die unverderbliche, unermüdete 
reibt er auf; mit dem strebenden Pfluge, 
von Jahr zu Jahr, 
bricht er sie um mit dem Rossegeschlecht. 
Leichtträumender Vögel Welt 
bestrickt er, und jagt sie, 
und wilder Tiere Zug, 
und des Meeres salzbelebte Natur 
mit gesponnenen Netzen, 
der kundige Mann. 
Und fängt mit Künsten das Wild, 
das auf Bergen übernachtet und schweift. 
Und dem rauhmähnigen Rosse wirft er um 
den Nacken das Joch, und dem Berge 
bewandelnden unbezähmten Stier.*

*From "Liste griechischer Phrasen/Pi" on Wikipedia (DE), here

I think that in the New York-London-Amsterdam documentaries there was a sub-thesis about Industrialization and Capital, carried on mostly through the musical score and contradicting the narration of the documentary itself. The sub-thesis cast these two forces as unfeeling juggernauts that trampled everyone in their path. The way that the lavish art and public philanthropy of Gilded Age New York were all the peculiar fruits of the hardest exploitation of labour and capital and the utter degradation of the tenement-dwelling needy, reminds me (perhaps arbitrarily) of another quotation:

                                                  adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head

I was really in the wrong frame of mind to watch these documentaries, though, as I was on the point of shedding tears every time a new hardship arose. (The lachrymose mood reminded me of the cartoon about an overly empathetic paleontologist who laments, at the sight of a freshly excavated dinosaur skeleton, 'We've arrived too late, again!'.) These hardships are, of course, hard to avoid in history.

But finally I went to sleep in a different mood, i.e. a thoroughly disgusted one, after watching the Berlin Wall documentary. I felt it was an unedifying series of tales about how self-righteously a German individual can betray his fellow citizens, their rights, and every worthwhile ideal that has ever existed. I don't much like the habit of some internet commenters in the US of saying, every time a policeman shoots and kills someone, that this person must have 'not been obeying the instructions.' In their words, impromptu capital punishment is an 'inevitability' in these cases; and any discussion of or resistance to misapplied authority is not a civil right or a duty, but lawlessness and 'stupidity,' for which the dead person is as much to blame as if he had personally requested his own execution. Professionalism and coolheadedness in a police force seems like such an unpatriotic concept that no American citizen should dare to imagine its existence. But it appears that this delightful train of reasoning is by no means present in the US alone; it was also common in East Germany, and it was applied by the government and the propaganda to unarmed Germans who were trying to flee East Berlin.

On Squeaking, and Arnold's Questionable Sweetness and Light

Yesterday I slept well and practiced scales, played 'stock' pieces that I memorized as a child, and *cough* 'exploring' the first and second Kreutzer études on the violin before I went to work. Admittedly there's a problem with playing the E on the A string, presumably because my pinky finger is not strong enough to hold down the note properly. It is generally quite off-pitch. And since that seems to be largely the point of learning the second étude, it is another puncture to the balloon of my ego.

Last evening I had another happily dazed YouTube session: this time I 'rediscovered' the performance of Mendelssohn's violin concerto with Yehudi Menuhin, and Antal Dorati as the conductor. I heard a weird militaristic strain in the orchestral part, which repelled me at times; but Menuhin himself was fantastic, and made me ashamed of my lackadaisical approach to the violin. He seems so terribly convinced in the superpowers of his instrument, if that makes sense. And I've been watching bits of his 'violin tutorial' filmed for the BBC; I find it pedagogically vague but personally charming. He seems a little flustered, and very proper — proper even when he upends himself into a yoga pose in the middle of the proceedings, as his pullovered young pupils, an ornate-looking side table, and four ascetic blank walls encircle (or should I say, ensquare) him.

Today the work day was not as stressful as it's been in the past weeks, and at the same time I think the hyperactive state into which the workload has pushed me is persisting. I still feel like beginning a hundred new projects at once. It's also as if my brain is rarely turned off, even if it isn't running at its finest quality.

But I was thinking of ending Culture and Anarchy as my U-Bahn reading. I've been worried about being a snob all my life, and yet this book is a consolation. All my pettiest and most fastidious moments are puny infantile efforts in the face of the author's supreme patronizing disdain toward such large masses of British, American and Continental society, that so far only Goethe, Wilhelm von Humboldt and his own illustrious self have apparently survived the selection process.

His tendency to glowingly picture a world where everyone wears a Matthew Arnold intellectual and theological straitjacket or sleeps in Matthew Arnold's Procrustean bed — witness his insistence that everyone in Britain should really be an Anglican (or Catholic, or Jew, just not a Dissenter, whom he persists in considering as Anglicans manqués) — is truly bizarre in a grown man.

So when I stepped into the U-Bahn this morning, I wasn't feeling too bad. But when I stepped out again, having read this balderdash, I felt like I was frowning sourly enough to curdle milk. And I tried to avoid making eye contact with passersby for fear of burning figurative holes through them with my fiery gaze.

When Unwise Sleeping Hours Succeed

Early this morning I decided to watch the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice series on YouTube. I sped up the episodes, and they were abridged episodes, so that in the end it was before 5 a.m. when I went to sleep. But it was a lovely experience: I was feeling woozy but happy as a clam; and I soaked up the music*, the historic details, the acting, the scenery, the scripting, and the recollections of first seeing it with my sister and brothers as a ten-year-old(?), when it appeared on television in Canada, and being excited for the next episodes — like a sponge.

And, despite the sleeplessness, I was actually cheerful at work.

I even managed to wake up promptly enough to have a shower, pass on a telephone message, remember to pack my ballet clothing and slippers, and practice the violin again! And I did do my work, go grocery shopping, clear up the work kitchen a little, read and fume over more Culture and Anarchy, dance ballet, and go on a 10-or-longer minute walk through 1°C temperatures at nighttime, so it was a well-rounded day.

* (It struck me more than usual.)

Springtime in Embryo

Today I was an ingrate. The weather, despite it being the month of February, was not too bad. It was still daylight, dry, and cold but not so cold that my down jacket wasn't snuggly enough. Two of my brothers and I went to the Volkspark for a long promenade. But the light emphasized, perhaps rather like the morning light in a messy room when the evening before it hadn't looked so bad in the gloaming, how bare and wintry everything still is.

At the Rathaus Schöneberg I saw one pale pink rose on the bushes. In the park itself, there was English ivy, boxwood and yew and snowberries, and a few sprays of leaves on the bushes, and tiny spears of daffodil and hyacinth and tulip leaves perhaps as tall as my pinky finger. Ice lay on a few of the puddles and groundwater pools that disappear later in the summer, and the undergrowth had died away so much that one could see through almost any forested area.

At least hundreds of neighbours were on the go. There were joggers, of course; the soccer court was full of players, and the children's playgrounds were full of families; and birds were hopping along branches and railings. So it wasn't a wasteland. Many years ago I read that William Blake wrote in a poem, 'Where man is not, nature is barren.' I thought, given the realities of modern ecology, that this was tosh — man makes nature barren; but now perhaps I understand what he meant.

In Wilmersdorf we saw miniature stands of snowdrops and infinitesimal huddles of yellow winter aconites, looking (to be brutally frank) like the most pitiful assemblage of spring flowers I remember seeing in my life.

But Japanese quince blossoms were peeking out on one bush, and beautiful lion's-manes of yellow flowers were decorating some variety of hazel, that were more or less a respectable size.

And it snowed on the way home from the park. When we reached a staircase with an intimidating tuft of funereal yew at the top, it had a Narnia feeling to it. There was also metallic red heart confetti that was likely left over from a wedding ceremony at the Schöneberg city hall, and seemed less than biodegradable.

Later at home, Gi. made crêpes that were tender and thin and delicious; I made incredibly healthy beluga lentils that had the nice peppery taste I like; and although we were back from the walk late, we still ate oat cookies and almonds and dates (the latter two a present from an aunt) together with uncles M. and Wi., who were visiting.

If it weren't for the thronged, rush-hour like traffic stream that we crossed on the way back to the apartment, and all of these irritatingly critical observations of mine, it would have been an ideal Sunday!

A Minor Exodus from the Embassy, and Violin

In preparation for travelling to Canada this year (or afterward, as the case may be) I went to the embassy this morning to submit applications for the 'proof of citizenship' that we'll need before we can even apply for a passport. But after trying to clear matters up with the guard at the door, he said that I needed a Canadian passport or an appointment, or I wasn't getting in. (My brothers and sister had no problems getting in without them.)

It was disappointing especially since it was a large sacrifice of time, anxiety and effort in the morning before another intense day at work. Due to an accident, the team I work in had to sort through over ten thousand pictures in three days, and also sometimes research them further on the internet, in addition to the usual workload. It caused considerable pressure and I didn't enjoy it.

So I have felt insecure and perturbed all day...

That said, the colleagues cheered me up a bit, and at lunch I was able to practice more violin. While I do have a little time to practice before work, I tend to not want to practice too early so as not to disturb the neighbours. Beginner's violin being particularly risky, I think. So I asked a human resources colleague if she knew where I might be able to practice, and there's a small conference room that, when it's not otherwise in use, I can take. The point of the whole thing is that I want to try playing in an amateur orchestra in less than a month's time, and until then I feel the need to make rapid progress in acquiring a few rudiments. Contrary to my insouciant approach to the formal requirements of piano performance, I want to make this work, because not being able to count beats well or produce a proper tone would be an infernal mess in an ensemble. Which admittedly hasn't inspired me to similar efforts when playing piano trios and the like... mostly because the piano score helpfully shows everyone else's part of the music, too, so that I almost always know where to chip in my part.

In the evening I listened to Bruch's violin concerto, with Yehudi Menuhin, and otherwise tried to forget that this morning ever happened!

Matthew Arnold, Sweetness and Light

Today I picked up the essay collection Culture and Anarchy again, and the time seems ripe for my rant.

Arnold's writing raises doubts about how often he set foot outside his study door to behold the plight of the unwashed British masses in person. His criticism of America is daringly trans-Atlantic. But the last time I read the book I was glad I never published any criticism on those points. Because Matthew Arnold's contemporaries, as he mentions himself, already dissected those points eloquently in the 1800s; and I am late to the party.

As a reasonable person I feel that what Arnold writes is more sensible and well-considered than it seems, but it's sometimes hard to see the evidence.

But this evening I reached an especially badly-thought-through part that — I think — justifies me in abandoning any attempt to make my reactions more reasonable, at present.

It also made me remember these three quotations:

1.

"Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed; for every one thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess."

(René Descartes, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences - his Discours de la méthode [1637] in translation, at Project Gutenberg)

2. 

"Then," observed Elizabeth, "you must comprehend a great deal in your idea of an accomplished women."

"Yes; I do comprehend a great deal in it."

"Oh! certainly," cried his faithful assistant, "no one can be really esteemed accomplished, who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved."

"All this she must possess," added Darcy, "and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading."

"I am no longer surprised at your knowing only six accomplished women. I rather wonder now at your knowing any."

(Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice [1813], at Pemberley.org)

3. Bertrand Russell, on the Confession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar:

"the reader finds with surprise that the voice of nature, when it begins to speak, is uttering a hotch-pot of arguments derived from Aristotle, St Augustine, Descartes, and so on."

(History of Western Philosophy, 1945)

I find it very curious that Matthew Arnold's idea of 'sweetness and light' is the idea that everyone should 'democratically' think exactly as he does, as the one higher truth.

On the Threshold of February

I frankly dread the months from January to March every year, ever since I became a teenager. But one advantage of working with many others is the feeling that all of us are in the birdcage of darkness and cold and seasonal illnesses together, and longing for springtime to open the door latch. It's worse, of course, to colleagues who come from friendly climates than it can be for me. It still is nightfall before 5 p.m., the mornings are still half-lit, and it is only in the past week where I noticed the song of one or two birds and the yellow-green catkins in hazel bushes. Otherwise the only green at the street side is the funereal ivy and half-dead grass and evergreen trees, although even needle trees can be a disappointment like the leafless larch I passed this afternoon. Courtesy of my aunt, I've seen the latest cover cartoon of the New Yorker, which is an annotated calendar of the dismal days of January, and it is quite accurate.

In the morning I woke up between 9 and 10 a.m., I believe, and felt that I had slept enough, rest being important to me to help recover from the work week. Then I made a 'healthy' brunch of couscous: couscous made in salted water without butter or oil, onions and yellow bell peppers and sticks of zucchini fried with paprika and dried basil and black pepper, vegetable bouillon, and two poached eggs. Much to my surprise, since the healthy food that I improvise is generally a thing not even its cook can love, two of my brothers liked it and ate the rest.

Then the siblings and I travelled to the Bergmannstraße to get our prerequisites in order for a planned trip to Canada. I think I'm becoming parochial and unused even to other quarters of Berlin, because I had a powerful 'I'm in hell' feeling again. The area around the Bergmannstraße is gentrified, to seize the first word that might come to mind, and I think that creatives and intelligentsia flock to it. But its fashion boutiques, craft stores, children's toy stores, cafés, expensive import shops, music shops, etc., also pander to almost every First World Problem you can think of. As I was beginning to insist — tediously — to my family, pure beef is not good enough on this street. It needs to be grass-fed beef prepared by a world-travelled chef who sears it on a specially crafted Italian gridiron and flavours it with green peppercorns that are only grown (organically, like the cattle) on a single field in Nepal, and a black-aproned, experienced waiter presents it fashionably on an elegantly rustic black slate.

***

In the late afternoon, my brother and sister and I went to the birthday party of a colleague, which I much enjoyed; and I read a little more of the introduction to Aristotle's Politics on the way there; we walked all the way home; then Mama and some of us filled out newspaper crossword puzzles at home; Ge. heated a pot of hot chocolate; and now I'm wasting time on the internet.

A Helping Hand From A Colleague

I've been feeling great self-pity due to work. Despite coming in a little more than half an hour early, I stayed an hour and a half late at work again today, and bemoaned the loss of exercise, fresh air, ballet classes and free time that I've felt obliged to give up these past two weeks because there is genuinely too much to do. That said, a colleague told me today that I always seemed so calm in stressful situations and how do I do it? (To be fair, she has been in another continent for the past months, and unable to glimpse my antics with her own eyes.) Undeserved as it is, this compliment cheered me up and made me determined to live up to it in future. Especially at home, where I've been a misery-guts and have regaled Mama and the siblings with long laments and the sight of an equally long face!

An Overstuffed Book Bag

Last week I went to the German-Polish bookstore during the lunch hour at work, and picked up We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates. I've been reading his Twitter feed and, more enterprisingly, a few of his Atlantic articles for a while. The book began with a brief retrospective on the Restoration era directly after the Civil War, where for a few halcyon years African Americans enjoyed the political franchise not only as voters but also as congressmen. Then it moved to a personal perspective on the author's life in 2007, when nobody would hire him and he was officially unemployed.

Because of my own 'funemployment,' I didn't want to linger on these passages much. It is still a sore subject. For example I find that a lot of knowledge I gathered then is useful now, and that I am happier being employed but haven't blossomed into virtue I didn't already have. So: maybe I should have been less harsh on myself, instead of thinking that when I am not working I am the worst, laziest, and least competent person in existence. — For many unhappy years, as I wrote about in this blog back then and would rather not dig up again.

On a happier note, I think I have more than enough books to read on the U-Bahn now. To recapitulate: Structure and Evolution of the Stars is an ongoing struggle, and I have Aristotle's Politics where I am reading the introduction at present, Augustus' record of his achievements in Res Gestae Divi Augusti,  Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy, and then this.

I have been burning to write about Culture and Anarchy. But I feel badly informed about the Victorian-era religious and political environment; and, secondly, feel too grumpy through no fault of Matthew Arnold (since he is not a contemporary figure, much less a work-related Client From Hell), to do him justice. So... maybe some other time?

Battling with the Quill and Self

I woke up closer to noon this morning, but at least I put the rest of the day to good use. I vacuumed two rooms and dusted one, washed two panes of the windows in my room, and scrubbed the bathtub; washed a load of delicate laundry and managed to shrink a sweatshirt that was already too small for me; and then went shopping and brought home a lot of ingredients for the '18th century' meal I want to make tomorrow. Late in the evening I made hot chocolate by heating, but not scalding, milk and then melting a chocolate bar into it. On the one hand, I was too lazy to whip it into the really nice froth that was I believe really one of the points that made hot chocolate so attractive three hundred years ago. On the other, it was still tasty.

My resolution for the New Year was to finally write a long story that I might want to have published. But today, aside from realizing that I will likely find my ideas running out by the end of the first chapter, I was also worried that maybe I've become a lousy writer for lack of practice and that I am by no means ready to write at greater length.

Besides it is lovely to put no pressure on one's self to write anything that anyone will ever see. It takes away the urge to consider one's own writing great even if it's frankly horrible, out of sheer stubbornness and a wish to save face about something one put a lot of time into. My ego seems more healthy and bulletproof without it. There is no sense of competition in a dog-eat-dog market. And if I can't produce anything nice at present, nobody cares. And if I disapprove of a book or a poem or something, I can say so without worrying too much about succumbing to sour grapes.

But I think as I did as a teenager or even a child: it's frustrating to be somewhat good at something and yet to have no respectable plan how to improve in it. One thing that has helped with growing older is that there is more material, subject matter and abstract knowledge and personal experience, to rely on as fuel for a story. But the mental discipline to round out the knowledge and think it thoroughly through in a short period of time (instead of riding the same train of thought off and on for months or years, and finally reaching a breakthrough because of a coincidence) is lacking.

Perhaps it's a disadvantage of breaking off twice at university, to fear that I dabble in a lot but don't pull much through, and I feel a bit like I'm telling tall tales when I list all of the eclectic subjects I tried studying ever-so-briefly. Fortunately, at work, I've been able to feel that I do have a good work ethic once an evident need for it arises. A thing that Papa told me that helped me as a teenager, dragging myself through half-finished homework that I never found very helpful to the greater world and ending up feeling that I was a lazy bum who could never achieve anything, was that he thought I would be good for 'mission-critical' work. If there's anything that really, absolutely needs doing, I can do it. I need to find a worthy purpose for writing. But I think the danger is to believe that an egotistical manifestation of my self is God's gift to the greater world. So perhaps I just need to wait until I find the story, and honestly acknowledge that, whose purpose is just that it is important to me individually. In which case, pursuant to my past practices, I don't need to push myself to put anything out in public.

Lastly, I think that stories should ripen fully before they are plucked, so even if good ideas come, I will have to wait a long time before I'm happy with the way they've been worked out.

Ramblings About Winter Floristry And Classic(al) Politics

It has been cold and dry enough lately to freeze a rock, figuratively speaking. But I keep in mind that it will be spring in a couple of months, despite the darkish mornings; and fix my eyes on the figurative afterglow of Christmas (like the last yellow trace in the sky after the sun has set) as well as the life and bustle in the streets around the workplace. In the florists' shops there are zinnias and amaryllises in pots and laid in caskets, evergreen bushes with specious dustings of 'snow' furnished by a spray bottle, Christmas roses, white and almost purple cyclamen, azalea shrubs that had white markings on pale pink flowers. The pink, good-luck piggy planters with green micro-clovers? have vanished since New Year's Eve. But, although the hyacinths that were sold beside them haven't shot up far from their bulbs yet, I saw yellow narcissi growing flowers in the U-Bahn shop this evening.

In the U-Bahn train I read again today, and instead of Matthew Arnold I read parts of the introductions to the Res Gestae Divi Augusti by the Emperor Augustus (who, because of his census, was relevant to the Christmas season, at least) and Aristotle's Politics. The Poetics, which I tried to read in the U-Bahn during my 20s, inoculated me against Aristotle for years. But both of these books are of a piece with my continuing French Revolution research. I want to know what political thinkers in the late 18th century read, and how the Roman models and Greek thought on political aims and functions were in contrast to the Ancient Régime.

In the Candide edition that I'd been reading before, the notes argue that, unlike the Revolutionaries, Voltaire (perhaps because as well as a philosophe he was also the not-so-suffering 'millionaire of Ferney,' who did not need great revolts in the socioeconomic order) did not appear to even entertain the idea that the solution to human suffering lies in nobler, more effective forms of government. He believed instead, it appears, that brutality and inequality are the inevitable characteristics of human nature. ("Croyez-vous, dit Martin, que les éperviers aient toujours mangé des pigeons quand ils en ont trouvé? Oui, sans doute, dit Candide. Eh bien! dit Martin, si les éperviers ont toujours eu le même caractère, pourquoi voulez-vous que les hommes aient changé le leur?" (Chapter 21 in Candide, Wikisource)*) Candide's idyll in Peru is a pipe dream that he does not expect to see in reality. I thought this was funny because as an inhabitant of modern Germany I certainly, and perhaps too uncritically, believe that there will be progress, thanks to rationality and good will but certainly rationality, through the government.

But the Res Gestae argues the antithesis, perhaps. The foreword describes in detail how the Romans defined the rights, privileges and power limits of their statesmen. They claimed to ensure that the people's will was represented, and that no one had more power than his due. It is as if the Romans felt that everything could be regulated and bettered with the right governance. But I suppose that the separation of powers was a 'shell game'; people pretended a great deal that everyone had equal chances, but in fact underneath the equal positions, votes, etc., the rules were rigged in favour of the one who ran the game (i.e., to a degree, the Emperor).

It's true I was not fond of Augustus personally after learning about him in the first year of university, and after reading Suetonius's biography, although I've forgotten about the important details why. But I picked up the Res Gestae under the impression that they were Julius Caesar's, put them in my bag for work, and that was that. Anyway, the foreword praises Augustus's straightforward writing style, so that's one thing to expect happily.

Which reminds me of Ron Chernow's far more modern biography of Ulysses S. Grant. Barack Obama recommended it in his year-end summary of his favourite music and books of 2017. So I read a few pages of a preview today.

(I thought of ordering the book in print, but it's over 1,000 pages and not deliverable through the service that the bookshop near work uses. Instead I ordered Fire and Fury in person earlier today.)

I had read a paragraph or two of Grant's memoirs once, and at least didn't remember them unfondly. But Chernow emphasizes that he had a remarkably direct writing style. And that is what the former General and American president had in common** with the Roman Emperor.

Besides, I liked the quotation that Grant — who did not want to vaunt himself and was not loquacious as a rule — 'knew how to be silent in several languages.' It reminded me of my father.

* "Do you believe," said Martin, "that hawks have always been accustomed to eat pigeons when they came in their way?"

"Doubtless," said Candide.

"Well then," replied Martin, "if hawks have always had the same nature, why should you pretend that mankind change theirs?"
(Candide in translation, Tobias Smollett. Wikisource)
** As well as two eyes, two legs, etc.

With Great, or Small, Power

Last week I read the endnotes of a Larousse edition of Candide that T.'s and my former French teacher sent from Canada. They were by Jean Goldzink and I enjoyed them. The observations were less of-their-time and jargon-filled than in introductions I'd read for other French literary classics of Voltaire's time; rounded; and written in an old-fashioned vocabulary. Because I like 19th century and Edwardian literature so much, I am fond of meandering sentences and a far-roaming vocabulary. But I suspect — based on listening to British parliamentary debates, for example — that a refined and elite speaker uses a word-set understandable to everyone, which expresses ideas with structured force and economy. And his writing is a good example.

Work was a deluge from Tuesday until Thursday, but by Friday I decided that I had the right to work at a not-so-killing pace. Although I still wanted to bang my head against the wall now and then. The fact sank in yet again that with my new title came new responsibilities, but surprisingly not just the management responsibilities that I mentioned in the last post. Receiving a double workload due to requests from other parts of the company, which has grown in size since I began working there in May 2016, hammered in that point. As a result I began to concentrate far more on organization last week, filtering old messages in my email account, and creating spreadsheets for current tasks and a list of tasks to do — or to delegate to others to do — in future. This list was less than encouraging as it grew longer and longer within the space of a day, and by the time I'd reached 40+ tasks I felt exhausted by the thought. That said, there are others in the company who handle a far higher volume of requests. So in theory it's feasible to handle them all.

So reading Candide literary criticism and, now, Matthew Arnold's essay collection Culture and Anarchy (which it is fun to disagree with almost all the time) for ten minutes or so in the mornings and evenings, although that is not unchallenging in some ways, was a pleasant distraction from the fray.

A Metaphorical Journey to Tbilisi

I have grown cantankerous over the course of the last week. Whenever I excused myself from something on the grounds of illness and yet must have looked more or less fit as a fiddle, I felt guilty. Yesterday, however, it decided to manifest itself.

I shunned my colleagues at lunch and ate in my corner; a few of them have had colds as well but I wanted to be careful. And I kept restraining myself from lamenting to my siblings about feeling highly diseased; I figured that it's not news they'd like to hear. But I also decided to go to our company's Christmas event yesterday evening.

Being late to finish up my tasks meant that I could take the train to the Christmas market at the Kulturbrauerei alone, which made me happy because I think that transit is a most awkward part of any team event. Also, I had researched the routes, for once.

***

The Kulturbrauerei was a brewery, as its German name makes clear. I imagine that the yeast fumes would have thickened the air back in the day, like the Augustiner brewery I once stayed near in Munich; that delivery trucks rattled in and out leaving potholes in the muddy cobbles and truck exhaust on the bare or plastered garage walls; that steam would have flown in this cold weather from the taller chimney stacks; that buildings in back alleys might have had plywood over disused or damaged windows, and spare car parts or barrel staves leaning against them; and that oily grime and pigeon dirt hazed the glass panes. What remains is a rectangular fort that protects neat quadrangles of red or sienna brick buildings that were elaborated over decades. We wouldn't know that the stables were once the stables, perhaps, if the word weren't there in black lettering on the brick. Apparently the brewery owners afforded frills like angled zig-zag brick decorations underneath windowsills, arches and towers and a white belfry-like cupola; and its old gates and entranceways in their humble way have become the channels to literary event venues, artists' shops and, on the cobbles, market stands. After dark the glowing yellow windows and the regimented silhouettes of the brick buildings are more or less straight out of Maurice Sendak's In the Night Kitchen or a 20th century German children's book.

We were standing at a Glühwein (mulled wine) stall near one exit. Although I didn't order any, most of the colleagues did, and were sipping the dark, rum-spiked drink from cream-and-blue-coloured stoneware cups. I thought we were going to walk along the market and look at the stalls. Instead we stood and talked, which was agreeable until the warmth of walking around wore off and my feet began to feel chilled.

(An older woman came up to us, made a brief speech, and  — after we didn't ask her to take herself off — handed us greeting cards from a pacifist organization that, amongst other things, encouraged us to help achieve peace on earth by demanding of our government that the German army withdraw from its foreign missions.)

At any rate the market was traditional, surprisingly so in my view for modern Berlin. Braziers were standing nearby, and 2-or-3-foot-long split logs were burning in one of them. It wafted wood smoke into the air and scattered cinders and ash like snow over us onlookers and passersby. Many market tables where people leaned to eat their food were designed with plank tops and wood X-shaped frames at the sides, evergreen twigs fixed at the crossing — a decoration I had never seen in real life before, but only in Christmas books. There were stands with elk sausage, more mulled wine, knitted marled yarn mittens and socks and scarves and toques, cheeses, and stationery. They were often Scandinavian or Baltic: Swedish, Latvian, etc. A few young marketgoers were hopping around in safety harnesses on brightly lit trampolines. Gi. and I walked around a bit to warm ourselves up, but at the slow pace we were forced to keep amongst so many other people, it hardly helped.

***

At length three of us left on foot for a Georgian restaurant where we would be eating our Near Eastern Christmas dinner. My colleague's smartphone battery was 6% charged one moment, 0% charged the next. So the trip from the Kulturbrauerei was fraught with geographical uncertainty. When we had finally taken the U-Bahn one station and walked along the streets including the interestingly named — considering that with all his gifts he was also a politically controversial figure, but perhaps more so in the social environment of the United States — Paul Robeson St., we found the restaurant 20 minutes after we were expected.

***

But I liked the exercise and the moment we entered the restaurant, I was happy. It was bustling but you could hear each other speak, it was tasteful from its pale white-yellow plaster façade to the white napkins but not too elegant, I liked the weighty cutlery the moment I lifted it, and having wine and water at the table without asking for them was a thing I've never had before. The waitresses were whip-thin in black trousers and turtlenecks; they passed and repassed tables, pausing and skimming again like hummingbirds gathering nectar and appearing to power away on similar quantities of energy. There were photographs of old Georgian buildings hung on the walls with a touching nostalgia, and a large bar. Later I inspected the bathroom, and a colleague and I were both very pleased with the brightly patterned sink basin, which was like a Mexican pottery bowl. My colleagues were at the restaurant in great number, none of them as late as we were, and although I like all of my colleagues I sat by some whom I feel most comfortable with. Although, again, because of the cold I felt bad about not quarantining myself.

The food was fresh and almost piping hot: fried rounds of dough with cheese inside, a chatchapouri spinati with flavourful spinach mixed perhaps with cilantro, a platter that was like something from the Zoroastrian feast of Nowruz. Beetroot dip, a bean dip in a pale olive green colour, and a dip that glowed green like the spinach; an orange Cape gooseberry in the centre; roasted aubergine (badrijani?); and a gelatinous cheese rind (sulguni?) with a softer cheese swirled inside it. The pomegranate seeds were sweet and bursting with ripeness, and the thin little sprouted greens were tender but crunchy and almost seemed to be woven into the dips. We even had a basket of rolls. It was such beautiful food and the very refined dishes had a stimulating variety of tastes in them.

It was all I've imagined when I see photographs of Middle Eastern food. It was comfort food, too: it had fat and garlic and salt, and the flavours were recognizable and nice ones. The chefs' techniques and the waitresses' timing were also excellent, I thought, and brought out the best in the food. Cheese that is melted and still melty, food fresh from the oven, a flavour that is not exaggerated or ruined with burnt grease or other food — I eat a lot of convenience food and hadn't realized how much I've been longing for the freshly made kind. I was almost tearful with joy. And all at once I felt that here at last I have another one of those experiences where I remember a restaurant or meal or dish decades afterward.

That said, the drawback was like Tantalus' in Greek legend: It turns out that the company had already ordered the food for us, so what my table had ordered arrived in addition to the already generous meal. (The preordering is probably also the reason why wine and water were already available when we came.) It was impossible to eat everything.

***

And, exhausted though I was, the walk back to the Eberswalder Straße and the trip home were also unusual and nice. Young people who looked like they were still in school took up part of the U-Bahn wagon. Besides rolling around an orange that had fallen to the ground with their feet in a way that somehow didn't offend me,* they began to listen to loud music. It was hip hop but, although I find much hip hop that ends up on the Billboard charts saccharine or uninteresting, I thought this was good. It was also American, whereas I find almost all German pop and rap music I hear painfully poserish and, frankly, bad. And the students knew and — aside from one song about 'bitches' that one student loudly protested against hearing again — loved the music so well that they were singing along. The adults in the train were, I think, remarkably indulgent; and the students weren't bothered by me standing right there. So nobody ruined the atmosphere. I was 'reading Candide,' but it was hard to concentrate, which in this case was not bad.

* The greater nuisances I've seen so far are people dropping the contents of a döner kebab — cucumber, tomato, maybe a little sauce — on the floor by accident; and people 'secretly' depositing their emptied bottle of beer on the floor, so it topples and rolls around making an intense racket and trickling sticky froth everywhere.

On The Traces of Egyptian, Turkish and Iranian Modernity

A rather pompous, 'lightning' book review:

Islamic Enlightenment (2017, Bodley Head), by Christopher de Bellaigue:
Voltaire also analyzed his own society; and talking about how backwards the French Catholic establishment was, was riskier but also far better informed and far more enlightened, than any tutting screed against the small-mindedness of this or that fatwa from Al-Azhar in Cairo would have been. I believe — in other words — that it's far more enlightened to tilt against snug preconceptions in one's own society than lazily to agree with many of the prejudices against other societies. So I think that this book might have been more new and interesting if it had been written about foreign interventions in Middle Eastern states at some point in the Early Modern or Modern period. Because the machinations of a London stockbroker in the tobacco market of late 19th century Iran surely continue to have many counterparts in the European financial world of today, they're likely as relevant to present-day political events as e.g. antiquated religious mindsets that already have been replaced by revisionist new mindsets. Anyway, as a primer on modern Middle Eastern historical events, and despite causing me certain flashbacks to papers I read at university, I consider The Islamic Enlightenment abundantly footnoted and respectably written.

Source: Penguin Random House UK, online

Everyday Details: Greenery, Books and Stollen

I woke up earlier today, after six or so hours of sleep, and the sky was the fuzzy, lightless grey that seems designed to nudge us back into bed, in theory. But I stayed awake and slowly got around to brushing my teeth, etc., and arrived reasonably early at the office in Kreuzberg. In the U-Bahn station near home I bought two 'peace lily' plants to brighten up the new room that I am working in; they remind me of anthuriums, sadly, but they lend grace and a much-needed, dark green to my desk.

I had another mini-breakfast at work; today it was biscuits and water and the peppermint/eucalyptus candies that I eat throughout the day. It wasn't filling and I was hungry when lunch came around: chicken, sautéed vegetables like broccoli and pumpkin and eggplant and red bell pepper, and brown-black falafel that were round and tinier than walnuts. This time I ate at the lunch table, which was enjoyable. The more new colleagues there are, the less it feels as if we were breaking off into a narrower clan for no reason, by preferring one lunch room (with one set of colleagues) over another — which has worried me in the past. Now it's more an arrangement of convenience.

Work was a tiny bit exhausting insofar as requests outside of my customary work schedule have come in, which tend to require mental readjusting; working without having any idea of how long the task is likely to take or what new events will interrupt it; and navigating daily work, special requests that are urgent, special requests that are not urgent, etc. It jars on my instincts of caution, but it is usually nicer to feel overtasked than useless. I also gave a small tutorial to a colleague and felt as if it were the most boring thing I have ever inflicted on anyone.

Afterward I peeped into a famous bookstore, on the way home. The shop itself was closed, but the windows were clear of any blinds. After looking at the Moomintroll book in one children's window and glancing at the new adult books in the adult window — Salman Rushdie, and in the past there's been Ta-Nehisi Coates in translation, etc., I went to the U-Bahn station feeling considerably happier.

There I bought pine boughs for my room, and another plant for the workplace; and along the way I had gone into an Edeka and bought After Eights (because I have a weakness for them) as well as Stollen and a few Christmas supplies.

During the lunch hour at work — inspired by a colleague who was reading Samuel Richardson's Pamela, which made me think 'better him than me' — I went to the French National Library's website and reread and re-took-notes-about three pages of a historical source. In general I believe I should begin devoting some 15 minutes of my lunch break to this task, because I might be more in the flow of working and less likely to be distracted in that interval. We'll see!

(And in the morning transit I had read more Candide.)

The Mighty Hammer of Thor

I like to hold my finger on the pulse of modern film by reading reviews on the internet: in newspapers like The Guardian, blogs, or magazines like the New Yorker. Thor: Ragnarok was unfamiliar to me perhaps because, as a second sequel, it was less of a novelty.

Perhaps because of this critic's-eye view, I tend to think of superhero movies as a self-referential, uniform genre, with a few noble examples like the Superman films and also films-as-pop-art like Tim Burton's Batman films. Wonder Woman tried to be different. While I watched it, it felt profound, afterward I didn't feel as if any great lesson had emerged from it after all. I guess it's best to watch it again to tell which impression is truer.

Wonder Woman was putatively the work of an outsider, a woman director. But Thor: Ragnarok was in fact more of an outsider's perspective, I thought. Later I realized why, perhaps; it's because the director is a New Zealander and also felt less bound or pressurized to match or criticize other American output. There was a chummy feeling to the interactions between some of the actors, probably because they had worked on the other films in the series together, which wasn't displeasing. The Australians Chris Hemsworth as Thor and Cate Blanchett as Hela, Hemsworth's brother in a brief scene, the director himself disguised as a computer-generated rock monster, were a relaxed Antipodean grouping. But Thor and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) seemed to have an unforced camaraderie that also lent appeal to the world in the film, and Mark Ruffalo was also touchingly genuine in his dishevelled, self-deprecating way.

While Hemsworth and Hiddleston played their roles with enthusiasm, as did Tessa Thompson as a Valkyrie who had turned into a spaceship's captain far away from her native Asgard, I felt (as others have said) that Cate Blanchett's role was one-dimensional, and so was Idris Elba's. His contribution was to look sapient and lead around the hapless folk of Asgard in a cloak, with walking stick in hand.

I found 'problematic' aspects, too. In Thor's world, electrocution was a comedic element in spite of its detrimental physical effects in real life. The Valkyrie's alcoholism was a harmless voluntary quirk that, while it anesthetized her feelings and banked her ambition, did no harm to her fitness, her mental health or her social interactions. The demands of superhero films on the actors were also worrying me yet again; in Wonder Woman, too, the filmmakers had eradicated any kind of physical imperfection, and I don't think it's healthy.

Amongst other aspects, I'd freely endure films in a blurrier screen resolution if it means that Hollywood can indulge its collective wrinkles. I also see no need to build masses of muscle fibre or exercise and diet off one's lipid elements before an actor or actress is allowed to appear in the public eye.

Cate Blanchett appeared to think of her role as a pastiche of fashion models, glamour models, etc., in the way that she moved and walked, although perhaps that was also edited in after her own acting. I felt that it ended up being mocking and demeaning; and that it plays into the belief that women who are sexualized in their careers freely manipulate men; but I am perhaps imagining it. (It also worried me because I think that a few established Hollywood actresses are reacting to the sexual harassment reports lately in a very uncongenial way, either because they believe that everyone must suffer as they did earlier in their careers, or because they don't want to acknowledge that even people who haven't necessarily harmed them personally shouldn't be given the power that they presently wield.) Much as I admire her as an actress, I don't know if I approve of everything.

Also (on a different topic) I did find the seamless, deindividualized computer-generated world uncanny. Aside from a few strikingly realistic ideas, like the early scene that takes into account the awkward physics of suspended objects on a chain, there was not much practical and real.

Yet I left the theatre with the happy impression that this was a thought-free film, edited with an efficiency that made a Gesamtkunstwerk, and that it was partly fun to film. The computer or set designers planned out the worlds in the film with real love (as well as, in Asgard, hints of Lord of the Rings) and I liked the dystopia, a kind of 1980s-90s wonderland that was not pretty but was at least evocative.

Curling Up At Home

Winter is breaking in like the first waves of a tempest over a berm, and it is cold enough in the mornings for frost to form. The trees have lost most of their leaves, but because of the rainy and temperate autumn there are a few happy exceptions amongst the oaks and the linden trees. A day or two ago there was a deep fog in the street, which was picturesque in its turn-of-the-century London Thames-side way, but also seemed to help the icy air to permeate into the apartment. We're firing the coal stoves at the two poles of our apartment again — although my room feels like a third, North pole because I refuse to heat it...

The workload has been pretty light the past two days, and it feels as if we had prepared well for Black Friday after all. This afternoon I left early because I felt sickly. But although I still have a bit of a headache and other unalarming symptoms, imbibing 40-proof liqueur, sleeping for two hours, and then knitting a wool scarf in the corner room while watching the city and national evening news with Mama was enough to feel better. So they were as piffling as I expected. I only regret having missed the birthday celebrations of a colleague, which took place after work.

Lunch was a yellowy-orange-coloured curry — bell peppers, orange pumpkin, what tasted like buckets of coconut milk, and tender chicken pieces in the meat-eater's serving — and, interestingly in accompaniment, gnocchi. As my uncle studied Italian, he informed us how to say the latter — there was apparently a debate about it at the lunch table in the largest room. 'Apparently,' because I wasn't present at this debate, having retired to eat lunch in the room where I work, because I don't want to 'hog' room at the communal tables. Afterward I ate a tootsie pop, which a colleague brought over from the States as a remnant of a Halloween candy trove, for dessert. This profusion of detail is not wildly interesting, probably; but if Pepys could describe his dinners, so can I.

At home I made porridge for dinner: oats, chia seeds, a red winter apple, milk, powdered sugar, cinnamon sugar, and caramelized crunchy granola. It was tasty and the acme of comfort food, if not terribly virtuous.

Anyway, I hope tomorrow I can return to the fray, symptom-free. By the way, I am still reading the physics book about stars, and the book about Middle Eastern governments in Turkey, Iran and Egypt in the 'modern era,' and am rereading Candide. It's not a terribly escapist book, because you can read versions of its sensational scenes in the newspapers almost every day, and sadly they're not imaginary and disquietingly they're not taking place almost 300 years ago. At least the annotations are nice to read and don't heap up new tales of horror...

An Essay on Relationships, or Vexatious Rambling

I've been brooding a great deal about love and relationships, and as is usually the case this takes a very moralistic aspect.

One of the great surprises to me when I was no longer a teenager is that admiration, flirting or in my opinion many relationships are not so much a free gift to the other person, as something that one desires for one's self in a particular setting.

Even younger, I already felt that I didn't approve of opportunistic friendship. In other words, a friendship that is not based on real kinship of interests or opinion or character, but rather is built on a an ad hoc frame where one ignores one's external conflicts or internal criticisms as much as one can. The compensation for this pretense being that one can have companionship whenever one wants it, and also prove one's social merit.

But I failed to realize for a while that romantic relationships can also be a great deal like that. (Or all relationships.)

As a teenager I tried to analyze and steer clear of the problems that I saw with adult relationships. I became afraid of entering a relationship where one partner moulds the other partner to fit their conception and warps their character until it becomes unrecognizable. I don't want to make people amoral and greedy through knowing me; and I don't want to lose sight of the best features of my personality either, like a John Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility. Another fear was that of making life miserable for someone by bickering with them 24/7.

Nor do I want to 'use' people as personal props or therapy. If I feel lonely or insecure, these are things I must resolve for myself. While I can imagine nothing nicer than having people around me whom I can care for, and to feel that I improve their existence, I don't want to be exploited, either.

Besides, I think that trust and loyalty are admirable things, most of all if the person who inspires them has earned them. I can't imagine why you would want to be close with someone whom, a few years later, you might despise or hate, or don't really give a darn about.

The Tale of the Mysterious Parcel

I was sitting at my desk at work when yet another of a procession of delivery men filed into our office with a cardboard parcel. The human resources colleague accepted it and dropped off the parcel into the largest room in our office, then wrote a note to all of us informing us that there was no name on the parcel.

Having read newspapers and short stories of a criminal bent in the course of my lifetime, and having watched a considerable quantity of hours of television, this inflamed my imagination.

In short order I observed that my colleagues were as fascinated.

We have a principal rival within the electronic commerce field, and a coworker theorized that the parcel was a Trojan horse for corporate espionage. Many of us wondered non-seriously whether it was what was once called an 'infernal machine,' and a colleague from the Middle East noted rather drily that in his native country one would have sent someone in to defuse the package by this time.  But one of the colleagues opened the package (I sort of wished he wouldn't, in case it was actually dangerous).

This opening took place in a different room. Our prying eyes could be of no use to us. The curiosity did not die down.

Our Australian colleague (who seemed to be, as they say, 'seized of the matter') laconically noted that none of us had exploded, so we should be pleased with the outcome.

Then a colleague who is working in an annex two floors up in our building, hopped into the conversation. She hurriedly wrote that if it was incense, it was for her. Hilarity ensued and I wasn't certain if she meant it as a statement of fact, or as a comedic anticlimax.

There was little or no discussion of the subject during lunch (as far as I could tell), although our long and satisfyingly thorough discussions mostly take place then. I presumed all questions from relevant parties — instead of insatiable snoops like me — had been answered.

Apparently not. After lunch the colleague of the incense asked what the package had been. The colleague who opened it answered, 'It should probably remain a secret package.'

Of course I believe as a morally upright individual that the post should remain secret except as the rightful recipient wishes it to be revealed. But I admit that I am still all agog to hear about what was within the secret package.

(And I contributed to the conversation by mentioning the lurid Sherlock Holmes "Adventure of the Cardboard Box.")

My Two New Boots

In the past week I've felt disgruntled as work has piled up and up, and special and important requests have flocked in from colleagues at an unprecedented rate. Because of our clients in the USA and because of the internationalization of Cyber Monday, we are beginning to feel the first simmering bubbles in the pressure cooker of Black Friday. (If this is an unknown 'holiday,' I'll explain that the Friday before Thanksgiving in the United States is popular as a day on which to buy things cheaply in seasonal sales, which means that an enormous volume of goods is sold. It is conveniently close to Christmas, so I gather that people will also buy their Christmas presents then. I have no idea why it is called Black Friday. Lately a 'Cyber Monday' has been added onto this weekend of unbridled consumption, for consumers who prefer to buy online instead of taking the trouble to travel to a brick-and-mortar store. A 'Giving Tuesday,' less relevant to my company, has entered the queue of shopping days too; consumers are encouraged to donate to charity.)

***
Today I waited for and bolted down lunch within 6 minutes: a lightning-quick time in my personal opinion. Then I excused myself for the sake of a shopping trip. I managed within 30 minutes to go to the bank, travel three blocks to Karstadt, locate the correct floor for shoes, find a pair of ankle boots in what should be the right size, pay for these boots, and travel back to work again. It was needlessly suspenseful because I hadn't tried on the shoes. In the evening I did, and they fit.

My previous shoes are black leather flat shoes that Mama bought for me in Europe in 2003. My old shoes at that time were broken and it was painful to walk in them. I did so for eight excruciating hours in the city we were travelling in. (It was Florence, which is almost apt, although I'm not silly enough to think that I really emulated Savonarola's torments when he was burned at the stake.) The next day Mama took me into a shoemaker's shop and bought these shoes. It's too much information, but we were very short on money, so it's generous that she did.

A relative told me at least three years ago that I shouldn't wear them any more; the tongue was admittedly ripping away from the rest of the shoe leather. Bah, humbug, I replied internally, still feeling deeply indebted to the footwear that had saved my sanity a decade earlier.

At work I have noticed that the shoes are squeaky. They practically echo whenever I walk in them.

And recently I felt that my feet were becoming wet when I walked to work. My feet became grubby. I was sitting at my desk at work today and noticed that my feet were still whiffy, and still wet and chilled, even though the streets had dried. Furthermore, I could feel a wintry draft seeping through the (s/h)oles. I sprayed lavender air freshener into one shoe, but I prefer to honestly neutralize the source of odours.

So I outlined the 'dangerously Victorian state of affairs' to the coworkers who would notice my absence, and went shopping as mentioned above. Tactfully, during my explanation I left out the rich detail about stink that I have described here.

***
A moral: It is obvious yet again that I will let some things escalate to a ludicrous extent before taking the trouble to do something about them. But I am proud that the events of this tale fell short of pneumonia.