CLXXI - to know is to be glad

i know you looked gorgeous today. well, especially gorgeous.

to say i know is to say that i had true and justified belief, and that this belief is itself based on reliable sources, and that this knowledge is sensitive to the truth (the last requirement is a little bit sketchy, ontological-analysis wise). but that is the gist of what i mean when i say that i know.

tomorrow, after the stars go out, the sun will rise, the rains will ease and the winds will sail.

i have lived too long on these premises that i can hardly be said to be unhappy now.

so long, so long.

CLXX - secret

i have decided and have begun to start writing. i hope to be devoted to it. it will take time and i will give it time. it's actually pretty tiring. but the process has turned out well so far. and that's not too bad. sometimes i wake up and write down something that occurred to me in that mid-stream between dreaming and stirring. sometimes i feel like i'm into a secret, a secret that binds every writer in the course of history, great and small. and the secret is that our words are shared at some remove from our own piddling and miserly little lives, that our words exist on their own two living and breathing feet and that they may matter, at some far and obscure remove.

someday people die. someday the things you own will belong, if they are lucky, in the hands of another owner. the vulgar things will survive in their own vulgar little ways. i mean money and all such countable things. obviously money buys everything in so far as it is a thing. but money cannot buy meaning, meaning is invested. that is clear. but returning to the point of this, i wish to say that someday the things you own will either be lost or belong to another. yes. the book that you love will be read by someone who reads with clumsy eyes and rough, unpracticed hands. the pages will fray and the words will not mean to another's obtuse heart what they mean to you. perhaps that is why some of the old kings buried all their treasure with them. anyway, the fates of these things are little bound with ours after we have passed on. to some extent, there is to me some smidgeon of regret about someone being unworthy of my things. my things, my things which i have deemed worthy of curating and collecting. my things which i have once truly loved. someday someone will trample on the things i once held dear. but by then i will truly have died.

p.s. Sunday, 14 December 2014. the second paragraph does not end well. that is because i started writing it with one intention in mind but i lost the spirit of it in the writing. i may have been tired or the words may have jaded me. i wanted to say that we need to trust the people that follow us with our things. and one way to accept such a proscription is to put some effort into those people. in a way we need to see some reflection of ourselves in another before we can get to some point of trust. but is that good and necessary? i am not so, i hope, proud as to always think so. therefore what i wanted to say was that we need to have some faith in our fellow man, to take over this world, over our lands. so you see, at least our words, inscrutable, ancient, lost, are some kind of guardian spirit to men. that is the secret.

CLXIX - chemistry

I met a girl today. I think she and I had something, well, a little or almost something which I like to call chemistry. At the end I said goodbye. She smiled and did the same.

Maybe I should have tried a bit harder. Part of me feels that way, and strongly. But at least now I know what I'm doing. It's what I might without irony call my Florentino Ariza moment. Not quite the epiphany. But still.

And so that is something, something good.

And I think that's life. In a way we sometimes have to reinvent ourselves a few times in our lives, as my favourite author, Senor. Marquez has noted.

See you!

CLXVIII - to the hon. dead

One of the colder nights in Takayama, I was reminded of what Isaac Newton once said to a friend. He said, if I have been able to see far at all, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants. Isaac f'ing Newton.

The Shinkansen was built in the '50s by a man and his chief engineer at Japan Railway. As I gather, it is by all accounts an absolute success. However, that man and his buddy sold the idea of building high speed rail by putting forward to the politicians a lower price than they knew to be true. A sleight of hand involving a loan from the world bank was also effectuated. The idea passed and the country never looked back. When the costs were eventually revealed, they accepted responsibility, they also resigned.

I salute you, Shinji Sogo, Hideo Shima.

The word Japan and the words war atrocities are sometimes regarded relatedly. Yes. The tension will never fully dissipate. It will remain relevant as long as men bear arms. But there is shame and there is honour in all things. As knopfler says, we have just one world, but we live in different ones.

If I did not believe in my God, I suspect I would say a prayer to the dead men (and women) before me. In short, I would say, let me be a worthy son to you, my fathers. Let me be worthy of your shoulders.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of_giants

CLXVII - the tinder power

Today is my second day on tinder. I have come to learn some things about what I think of dating in this way. For instance, I am reinforced in my opinion that dating begins almost entirely by visual attraction. It is too apparent as well that I have my preferences. Again, I wonder how truly I adhere to the things I say about destiny and its place in my system of para-beliefs. I shan't be cryptic, what I mean is that I wonder if it is time to make something of my own destiny. I also wonder if I am actually as handsome as I think I am. Do not be mistaken, I think it no great loss if I am no good looking man. I mean that it would be some relief to know exactly what a reasonable representation of the public might think of my appearance. And so on. This mode is thus interesting in itself, whatever else it may lead to.

But the true purpose of this post is this. One of the girls had in her profile this question, which asked what one thing I would change about my life if I had the power to do so. This is an excellent question and it led me to, after considering her appearance, "like" it as well.

To my mind I am absolutely certain that this extraordinary power could be ably put to right any number of the myriad things I think insufficient or hapless in my life. Any number. And I can think up such an esteemed list without serious effort. Such a list would contain the shallow as easily and as naturally it would the significant. I could be half a foot taller and be an absolutely devastating sportsman. I could never have lost the first love of my life. I could live in a beautiful family. I could have stayed at my old firm as the bosses' favourite. All these are wonderful things. But the philosopher in me would revolt.

And philosophy is love of knowledge. Philo-soph-y, exactly. This may seem too abstract and far removed from wanting to change something unpleasant in one's life, but the distance is only in the distinction (and the consequent derivation) between principle and act-decision. The classic teacher Socrates would say that every effort should be made towards only the search for wisdom, and so let come the vissicitudes what may. The existentialists would say that life is too absurd to take so seriously, and so one would do better to consider one's given position and thus also how one understood life to have meaning, crucially, quite apart from the whims and prevarications of life's provision. So that would be, very briefly, a sufficient mention of philosophy. How then could I insist on any of the things I have listed, and many more besides those?

Of course, I might make some purely altruistic use of the power, and even nobly. But I am doubtful whether even then it would be correct to do so. After all, the question is interesting only in so far as it it concerned with what I might change in my life. And in principle I think I ought not wish for anything to change in my life. It would be cowardly to do so, I think. In every sense. And if anything, I refuse to admit this cowardice.

So the truth is that my life is sufficient to me, at least in the account that I have thus given. Accordingly, any such power given to me must be used and have effect only towards the lives of others. And only with their consent, surely.

Ok. Seriousness aside, the one thing I would like to have changed in my life is this. I have always thought that I would love to have been born in 1955. And my being born in 1987 gives me no great advantage over being born in the earlier time. Imagine all the great music I've missed! Oh! And so I wish for the life of me that I could have been born in 1955 and thus have caught all the wonderful music produced in the late 60s and the golden, golden 70s. Oh lord! What I wouldn't give!

CLXVI - spaghetti and tomatoes

i realise that my earlier post on what i took to be love might well be described as being normatively hollow, in the sense that my account of "love" does not, in itself, profer something so, one might say, important, as romantic fidelity. at the moment, i have not considered what else the account might be said to lack. but fidelity! surely fidelity is to love as tomato is to spaghetti.

i think this is a fair point. one may yet resist the charge by saying, one must by caring, as the first limb of my account, naturally consider fidelity. but i shall resist this temptation. this is a very fair point, and must be very fairly considered.

i remember a passage in norwegian wood which had reiko explaining to toru that loving two women at once was okay. it goes like this:

"things like that happen all the time in this great big world of ours. it's like taking a boat out on a beautiful lake on a beautiful day and thinking both the sky and the lake are beautiful."

i believe that's true. i mean, people do lose their spouses. and they do fall in love again, and they do get married again. this may be a bit of my inner libertarian tendency coming through, but i believe that love is a wonderful thing that can be had at any time in any place (and almost, with any person). so the crux of it is then how we act according to the feeling of "love", i.e. of liking and then of caring. and fidelity at its most complete should, in my opinion, have very little to say about who we "love", but very much to say about how we act according to that "love". accordingly (and by god, woohoo!), my account of "love" is in a domain prior to and separate from that which fidelity is concerned with.

in fact i think norwegian wood explored the idea of loving two women at once beautifully, and to my mind, responsibly as well. but this is toru in a nutshell - midori told him that she loved him because he only acted when he felt sure of what he was doing.

so i have described spaghetti as flour and eggs (and seasoning). tomato is merely in the sauce. and who has not had, say, squid ink spaghetti? but i am partial to tomato too.

by the way, the following is, to my mind, the most accurate song about love i have ever heard in my life.

the darkness, love is only a feeling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSGa1dW_KoE

CLXV - the process

I have realised that life for me is a process, a process not of achieving, or of attaining, or of arriving, but of waiting.

I say this despite the fact that it is in our nature to strive for the objects of our desires. So there are generally speaking two phases in this mode, well, the desiring/creating of desire comes first, but I refer here to the striving and then the attaining. For me, I feel that we tend to lose perspective when we strive. I think we neglect (even ignore) a very vital existential attitude, which basically should tell us that we may die in the next instant. And so we create priorities for ourselves which tend in the larger picture to be myopic. We sometimes lose that spark of our humanity, which is compassion. So much for the ills of striving. And is not attaining the lesser of striving? Much the lesser I say! Who has in attaining ever been satisfied in his soul? None, for the soul stirs, whether in straining or in joy, by endeavour. And many have realised only dismay at the final reckoning of the measure and costs of their attainments.

So what is better? I say waiting is better. And here are two phases to waiting, one I shall call the accepting, and two, the enlightening. Accepting is a simple idea made simpler by realisation of the true precariousness of our situation. What we are, and to some extent, what we have become and where we hope to go, in truth, are entirely and profoundly not up to us to decide. Life is crucially and fundamentally whimsical. Take a moment to consider this. You have five fingers, do you not? And which of those five fingers did you decide to grow? And what will your hands and feet do tomorrow? If thought is to precede action, it is not sufficient for us to insist on action as a meaningful end in itself. Accordingly, no amount of striving can overcome the fact that life is entirely whimsical and gives little regard to our efforts. So that is acceptance. Acceptance at its strongest provides that we cease to desire. Instead, we abide.

But we do not merely abide. For enlightenment yet remains. This consists of gratitude and of seeking betterment. Gratitude in that we have so many things that few in this world can do without. Fingers, air, shelter, education, hope, love, and so on. For God has tried but apparently man was not worthy of a perfect world. So we must be grateful for all that we have been given in this imperfect world. And certainly we must on that basis also have compassion.

To me, I seek betterment because I subscribe to Socrates' idea of the good. I think that knowledge, truth and wisdom are ends in themselves. And so I believe that there is fundamental meaning in desiring to behold the good. Not to use these to further my own purposes, no, but to surpass myself and to fully and bravely live as an intelligent human in this wonderful world. Thus also may I do justice with what I have been given and be some model or encouragement to those around me.

Socrates also argued that it was necessary for the good of each city to be guarded and ruled by men who desired the good. Transposing this, betterment is necessary because there is so much we can do with what we have to help this world. If we are unable to see above our own mean desires, we will scarcely be able to lend aid where it is needed. And if we do not become better in every way, we will squander the fleeting opportunities we will be given to do good work. Betterment is to me the single most important facility we must busy ourselves with. Not attaining, bettering. What we hope to be is to be better and thus to be worthy, presently or eventually, of guardianship and of husbandry of the things (or people or places) that will be entrusted to us by destiny (or, if you will, the higher power). And so the question here is, are you good enough and are you wise enough to take your place at this seat? If not, are you at least worthy of the apprenticeship? Can you one day be fit to "serve"?

So this is waiting. I wait, and I remind myself not to worry. I am, I hope, worthy of waiting.

CLXIV - "love"

i have decided on my understanding of love. it is this.

love is caring about (someone, something, someplace) as much as you like (them, it, him, her).

this definition (well, loosely speaking it may be called a "definition") may seem spurious in the sense that a person's liking or disliking tends to vary (and understandably so) according with circumstance. so, a child may well dislike his parent when he is scolded for dropping his apple. are we then to understand that the child no longer loves his parent? no. but for my purposes, i believe i need not provide the most exact phrasing (exceptions and all) of how i understand love, so long as you understand that by "like", i mean a deeper sense of "liking" than passing emotion. a dropped apple leads to chagrin for all, but the child still understands that the apple (and the reproach) was handed over in fondness.

as i thought about it (and obviously about my love), i had this fleeting, tremendous shiver through my frame as i thought about when (and how much) i cared for you.

it is so hard to move on, it's funny in a way. you and the loss of you have become something that is always with me, a bit like a shadow. i don't know whether i drag this shadow or whether it is just a sort of material that is me in a different way. peter pan tried to re-fix his shadow with a bar of soap. so the idea is not quite heresy or nekulturny (which means loosely, uncultured). in the book, wendy fixed it by sewing it back to him. to his foot!

as an aside, i love peter pan. in a way, peter pan, alice in wonderland, the little prince, these books are a lot more important than we realise.

the problem with men is that we are, i would say, characteristically good at liking someone or something without caring for them (or it). this is, of course, among other things, men going to ktvs. we do. we are men. in a way, we have to say for ourselves what is or is not in accord with our own moral compass. no one can (and indeed, no one should) intervene at these moments of maturity. so much for ktvs. in a word, they are fun. it's true. fun tends to excess, that is also true. and so, moral compass, gentlemen, moral compass. also, negative externalities. as phil jackson once said, paraphrasing, as a basketball player, one must learn to have compassion for the opponent as well as for oneself.

love! it seems simple enough! i leave you with an anecdote. one of the things i remember about an interview will smith did was when he was asked about his marriage of seventeen years. he said he had to work at it and improve himself, sacrifices things, etc. continuing, he also said that he estimated his record to be 15-2. so out of that seventeen years, he considered that he had two losing seasons. i mean, to me, that's a wonderful record, but to lose in those two years, that's also something else. who can say that, though, to look back at x years and say, i'm fifteen and two. goodness, that's fantastic, and also scary.

so that's "love".

CLXIII - a strange day's

i kept telling myself today, as i kept crying, that today was a strange day.

crying is a bit strong of a word. what's better? getting teary? getting emotional? no, i cry. it is crying. i'm not bawling but i do that too, in my room. i refuse to be seen crying, so it's just a welling up type of crying.

crying feels strange. but we all do it. in fact whenever i do it i am reminded of a friend who was once so pissed with me that she said that i would never be able to truly love. as with all things said in anger, i have never failed to appreciate that it carried its proprietary kernel of truth. but that's beside the point. and the story is not a romantic one. the point is that we all cry and it feels strange. in a way, very human. vulnerable and cathartic. comforting in an uncannily strong way. it's so strange. but we do it.

i'd hate to think that the pity i feel for myself is the cause of my crying. i'm better than that. i feel like i cry for lost things. but that's too deep into the matter.

we all cry. today is a strange day. today i cried, but always to be strong. to pick something up and to live. so there is no pity in that. no matter what it is i cried for. i know what i cried for. of course i do. there are only so many things a man can live with and then also without. it's been so long, and yet it's again those goddamn chinese songs at all the wrong moments that get me welling up. fuck! those feels.

but anyway, today being a strange day and all, i tried to do right. it is difficult. but i did right. i wouldn't call it helpful. but in a way i'm doing everything i can about it. in my way, well, that's fair, i think, in my way i'm sending you my love. even though i'll never be able to stop.

so that's today.

CLXI - tragicomedic, at best

of course there is a final act. of course there was. that's how it is.

when you asked me, what was i to say?

what could i say? in my mind i knew that i wouldn't last five minutes at your wedding. oh i knew. wouldn't last five minutes. couldn't function with all that drinking, at the least.

but i've long buried what remains of it, haven't i? so the least i could do is to follow through, right. let you know that it's dead.

send in the fucking clowns.

CLX - i feel i could write

haruki murakami was interviewed once and he said that in 1978 he was watching a baseball game and he saw a ball struck to left field and he knew that he could write.

i've kinda had that feeling that i could write for a while. when i was young my mum made us write a journal. i remembered that i didn't like it very much. i remember some things that i wrote about, like how i was proud that my dad's car was faster than a motorcycle, those darn motorcycles! and how we once took a river taxi on the singapore river. my mum would review it. after awhile she didn't any more so that came to that. that sort of half-assed parenting is basically how my folks are.

but that's really just my first memory. nothing to do with my writing.

i guess it stems a little from being smart as a kid. feeling like i could write. i'll be honest, i think it's related. nobody knows that they're smart as a kid because, as you might imagine, it comes naturally. in a way it takes people to tell you. i just thought i liked reading, so i read. and i usually didn't need people to explain books to me. and as it turned out i had a couple of bright spots. so that was that, i was a smart kid. i was smart as a kid.

but that's also just i guess just the start of it. i mean, how far does being a smart kid go? i'll tell you, i wasn't the best of the smart kids, back then. so it took these years and i guess really the enlightening days of the early twenties to become i guess the more intellectual person that i am now. i think i write okay, so i think i can write. i have a feeling that i could write a decent story.

and that feeling is enough i think for it someday to happen. i'm not worried about what to write about. in the meantime i just have to keep reading. but that's the thing too. the last two authors i've read are philip roth and julio cortazar. to me if you wanted to write you would have to ask, well, can i write as good as roth? and can i write as good as cortazar? and if the answer is no, then you'd ask, well, why write at all? why be a little shit writer next to these guys? and to me that is a significant question. but you could write a million books and never touch these guys. these guys are fantastic. but i don't know if anyone who wants to do anything should ask these sorts of questions.

i feel like i could write. i feel it. i've read my murakami, borges, marquez, fitzgerald, orwell, tolstoy. it's a feeling i have. there's no impetus right now. i just feel i could write. that's it.

CLIX - there's a feeling I get

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q7Vr3yQYWQ

There's this feeling I get almost every day. Like that I've forgotten the moment. I sit down with something and I try and detach my consciousness and live in that something. To try and evoke the original and pure memory of being in the moment with that something. To remember the feeling of being alone with that thing alone in all the universe. To feel it to accept it to embrace it to sense it to resonate with it to be in it to be as it to be it. To be not me but me as it.

But almost every time now I can't do it anymore. I can't lose myself in the moment. I feel I've lost the pure memories of so so many things. It comes to as if I've lost that child that is me. I just can't close my eyes and be pure again.

It feels like my adventures are over. I'm old. Some vital part of me extinguished. The gleam lost in my eye.

Doesn't that scare anyone when they think about it?

Is growing up worth all that? And where the fuck did I lose the way? Did the world want me to grow up or did I make that choice?

It feels like I've lost.

CLVIII - polemic

what kind of man am i? so eager to do good. and so consumed by anger. oh what kind of a man am i.

CLVII - this is goodbye; may we never meet again

the 4th of May 2013. it feels like a year ago. i don't know if you'll find this hard to believe, but that was one of the roughest days of my life (the next few nights, weeks, months were no ball either). i remember everything. the monstrosity of the sheer chance of seeing you there! saturday night; and i remember you wore a black dress! oh, the horror! all i wanted was to flee. and the year that followed, and the anguish. i knew that i could never do that to anybody. i could never take someone's love away.

that was my destiny. i say it all the time. i believe it, even though it would have been easier to hate it. it was my destiny to be lost on you.

i will always love you. ciao.

CLVI - libestraum without scratch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkXOrkeZyqQ

in some other world, i am holding your hand in mine and my eyes are closed and we listen to this libestraum without scratch.

CLIV - reality

not that long ago i went and floated in a big pool, easing out my mind. i must have been weary about something. the feeling of physical exertion and the lapping swaying whirling. the gentle swashing swirling gurgling. being and expanding and not being and distending. just floating.

waking up and walking in the toasty sunlight after that, i remember very clearly walking past a very pretty girl. i think we had a small look, and that was about it. i think she smoothed her hair and tucked it behind her ear. in my mind she smiled and i probably looked quizzical.

after that i had this steadfast feeling that life wouldn't pass me by.

tonight as i treaded out of the office, i looked up at the wan night sky and smelled the arid, breezeless darkness and i thought to myself, oh, what i wouldn't give to feel alive again.

CLIII - we are

every once in a while, i am reminded of a child's smile. a little girl, a little girl who became my friend one night two years ago, at a dinner event. i was to play guitar. after the playing i went outside and played with all the little kids whose parents and grandparents sat at dinner. i remember there were many children and i talked and played with all of them. we played hide and seek, i was a dinosaur, we looked at dinosaur learning cards. it was a thing that i was part of, in my place.

this little girl was very shy. some are and some aren't. usually you say hi and if they're okay it's okay and that's it. most aren't too shy when i say hi. some are but i like to talk them out of it. so i think i get on okay with kiddies. in fact i think i get on very okay.

this little girl was very shy. all the other little kiddies were yapping on and on already and this little girl was standing a little farther away, not quite ready to join in the okaying. i made sure to say hi, and ask her if she liked dinosaur cards. or something. it didn't matter. she answered, i think she answered. of course, she kept quiet for a while more, and all the while all the other little kiddies were on full okay. before long we broke into hide and seek. and she joined, and we had a lot of fun.

after that we sat down. i think we went back to just yapping. and i can't remember what i said but suddenly she said something (what it was i don't remember at all now) and she made me a smile. a smile that i will remember to my last day. it was a pure smile, a wonderful smile. the kind i suspect only children can make, and with every last bit of their little children hearts. she smiled like i was her teddy bear brother come back with a red bean potong in my hands to give her, only it came out of nothing and it wasn't in exchange for anything. it was that pure. a smile so true and so innocent and so full, a smile that she was pleased to make and which you realised was delightful for her to make. i don't believe i'll ever see a smile like it again. a man might believe in anything when given a smile like that. it was a pure human expression, and it was the best kind of all such expressions.

i think about it every once in a while. it makes me think that all of us are capable of transcending things with what we are, humanly. many things, that we can transcend many things. that with the best that we are, we are capable of transcending so many things.

CLII - to past things

how often i think of you, my brother. when have i ever been sick, when have i ever been weak? no, brother, no. RIP, my dear old friend.

but how often also do i think of you, my dear girl. i am the pieces of a puzzle that i wanted to build with you. but the puzzle is no more; yet the pieces remain, and i am become the pieces that i wanted them to be. never mind the tautological (re)construction or the misconceived teleology. what i am now is this - i am, advertently, the pieces of a puzzle that fit nowhere, because your pieces are gone. if only i had never loved you! could not less be asked of me, after all.