CXCIII - filled with silences

A few weeks ago I thought to myself, it would be nice to finish reading Pedro Paramo one more time before I died.

I feel a little tired. I have often felt that life is an unending series of minor disappointments. In all this I don't know if I'm a good guy, or not.

Does beauty and virtue only seem to be meaningful? What are we in our quiet moments? I don't believe in myself much. Is this self loathing? I think I begin to see what Josef K sees. And if I am not whole as myself what then for the others of the future? Very poorly, it seems, very poorly.

CXCII - Farewell, old man

My first grandfather was on my dad's side. He passed away when my dad was young, fifteen, I'm told. I have often asked my great aunts and my dad what he was like. By all accounts, he was intense, intelligent, compelling, charming, passionate, and taken to drink. I quite like the tales. His gravestone carries a photo which I often recant as resembling a famous actor, Chow Yun Fatt: thick, black hair, black glasses, a full, white Chinese face, dressed smartly in a shirt and dark tie. My dad isn't the type to praise another man too keenly. But from what I suppose to be his reserve about my granddad I figure my granddad must have been a strong character. I wonder if he had Chow's on-screen intensity, his great, almost frightful grin. Yes, my great aunts often say that he was a wonderful man, gregarious, effusive, and perhaps they are disposed to fondness, to nostalgia. They said he was at Raffles, survived a bombing that nailed his entire classroom, worked as an editor at the Straits Times, died when his liver gave out. My dad's brother, my uncle, says that intelligence sometimes skips a generation. I hope he doesn't mean I'm smart. But the stories end there. I have no one else to tell me about him. In a way it's difficult to treat seriously a person you only hear about. But I think often about what a grandfather of mine would think of me, whether he would be proud.

My second grandfather stayed with us when we were young. We had a mansionette, if that's what they're called, a little two storey flat in Hougang. We slept upstairs, parents and children two to a room each, and my step-grandfather downstairs, his grilled window towards the corridor. I think we were on the third floor. I remember he had a tummy, he yawned loud enough to be heard throughout an entire bus, no mean feat to a child. He often went shirtless while sitting at home, and I remember amusing myself by poking and prodding his chest. He drove a van and it made warning beeps at a certain speed. The story most told of him and me is that he once sent me to school and being displeased at sitting in his van instead of my dad's car I stepped out and kicked his van. He drank soda water, which tasted awful, and he watched wrestling, which was fucking awesome. We weren't allowed to watch but the rest of the time we saw the undertaker on this little ten inch tv, a cathode ray tube thing. I don't know what he was like, except that he spoke less than I remember, and made more grandfatherly sounds in replacement. When he passed away my sister said that he told her which of his big rings on his hands were real and which were not. They were ugly, garish things. He passed away and I don't remember much more than that, other than wearing socks and walking down the road at his funeral. I remember my dad sitting at a table, tired. Strange, I don't remember it as a sad occasion. Maybe it had some air of inevitability toward it. I haven't recollected my thoughts about him until now, and that makes twenty plus years. When my mum came back recently we went to a temple on a really hot day, where a little ensconced portrait of his was kept with many others, in a side hall where recorded prayers were played on repeat. I remember my mum crying, saying that she had returned. I don't remember what he looks like from the photo. I guess that means his memory is well treated.

My third grandfather lived in a one room flat in Chinatown. My parents referred to him as the Chinatown Gong Gong (not to be mistaken with the Hougang Gong Gong). We visited him three times or so, not more, as far as we were children. I once bought a cup for him, when I was eighteen or so, and I remember feeling extremely put out that he didn't seem too enamoured to receive my present. My mum who was there chided him, a little roughly, that he hadn't seemed too appreciative. We rarely visited him; when we did, it was usually at night, and we usually didn't stay too long. Nothing much was said, except my mum who spoke to him in Hokkien, a dialect I could not fairly grasp until more recently. Over the past year or so I visited him three times. He seemed worn out, a little threadbare. We had dinner, we had hor fun downstairs. He spoke in a chesty, reticent, and simple manner. I read him his letters, explained the damned CHAS scheme to him in Hokkien. I brought him a bottle of Yomeishu, and he chided me for it, embarrassed to receive a gift. The second time I went to visit him I knocked on the door for a really long time. I wondered if he was there, or however else it might be. After a while the door opened. He was hard of hearing, and he was about ready to turn in for the night. He had a radio and a television, a lot of video CDs which he showed me, and a lot of photos of him and his friends and family, travelling in various parts of China. They were exactly what they were, photos of people, old photos. He had a window which faced the back part of Havelock Road, towards the Ministry of Manpower. It was quite a good view from the flat, to be honest, and the wind came through, wu hong or hong beng dua, as was polite to say. He worked in a hospital as a janitor for forty something years, and my mum said that he used to prepare the hot powdered milk for her. He divorced my grandmother, I am told because she gambled too much, and she stayed in the flat that they bought. He still wore the wedding band on his left ring finger. He was hard of hearing but he understood just fine. He had vision problems, but in his resigned way he would say that it was sometimes worse, and sometimes not so bad. All this in Hokkien. After a few visits I stopped. When my mum asked if I still visited him I said that I didn't feel like visiting him, I don't feel that I should be visiting him. It's difficult to explain things to my mum. I didn't want to sit with him, grandson to grandfather, and feel like a stranger, given the distance our lives had taken. I didn't want to sit there and feel pity for him. It was a difficult emotion for me to deal with. There was little I could have done. He was happy to have someone to visit him. I don't know if I felt that I did so as his grandson. That was the difficult part. Today, I was about to go home when I thought of him. I thought, hey, I should ask him to stay with me in the flat I'm buying, at Bedok. That will fix everything, that's obviously the right thing to do here, to ask him to stay with me. At his door, the gate was broken apart, the door handle chained to the nearest part of the gate. Partial boot marks marred the exposed tiles at the front of the door. It was all there, and clear. I knocked and shouted to him, hoping he was in there, and he wasn't. The police said they had taken him that day. It seemed a matter of fact, a coincidence. Years ago, I stood in a burned out room when an enormous fire had ravaged my grandmother's flat. It was blackened, completely destroyed, what a war zone might have seemed. The scene at my Gong Gong's door was just the same, it was completely evident. I offered, on perhaps my second or third visit, to take him to a church. Where there would be other lao lang. He declined. I think in my mind I was, alright, maybe next time. May God have mercy on his soul. God is a merciful God. What does that mean? That means that God cares. I hope that's enough.

Chinatown Gong Gong, Chin Swee Road Gong Gong. Farewell, old man.

CXCI - winhill

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzZSaFHjOVE&t=57m11s

RIP, my friend, my beautiful, handsome friend.

CXC - my fathers before me

One hundred and ninety in roman numerals is written as CXC. Isn't that beautiful? I mean I'm no number fanatic myself but I guess the simplicity and the symmetry of that has just the right amount of elegance, of élan. In a way it also hints at the syntax of Latin (of Latium, the province of the city of Rome), which works, basically, in a subject-object-adjective way, so that the sentence has to be grasped front to end before the complete meaning becomes clear. But I guess this simply devolves from the inherent limitations of the Roman numeral system, i.e. in comparison with the decimal Hindu-Arabic system. But consider "CXC": in a way the beauty of it is essentially human, although numbers perhaps have in some sense a priori existence, or even self-evidence; to be beautiful in spite of and also on account of its limitations.

I thought recently about the three written works I would most like to take along with me to a desert island (assuming that all other conditions are reasonable). There is no particular order of merit, but if pressed I would like most to take these in order.

1. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's collected works.
2. Jorge Luis Borges' collected works.
3. Friedrich Nietzsche's collected works.

If these may seem perhaps too ungainly to clutch desperately to one's bosom when threatened with desert island maroonment, the following are the specific works I shall prefer:

1. Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.
2. Borges' Collected Fictions (only 576 pages, after all).
3. Plato's The Republic (alas, my dear Friedrich, alas.)

This is the extent of my great love for these works: that I do not consider my adult life to have begun until after having read these. And perhaps an item on this list may yet have to make way for one or another of Rowan Williams' works.

A few words on these writers might be given here, although one might hope to be forgiven for fumbling about in trying to quite describe what is wonderful about these works. In a way this feels a little like those horrible little quotes that are published quite crudely on the back of some immodest books.

Marquez is for me the master of exploring and portraying the singular romantic, heroic, pseudo-epic visions, fixations or delusions a person might have, and his writing embraces the thesis, the leitmotif that every person must in the end admit and relinquish himself to the particular, solitary and necessarily individualistic core of the eccentricity, and hence meaning, of his own existence. And this is not a comedic obsession, it is a deadly serious Quixotic enterprise.

Borges is perhaps more fantastic: his stories are of men as effigies, infinite libraries, an imprisoned beast visited by God. There is a touch more of the mystical, of the unending search for meaning in the enigmatic and the abstruse, of the riddle of existence. And in his stories the characters transcend that dissonance between reality and the veiled, the unfathomable; they seem to have come from that other side, speak that other language, they search for the return to that other life. There is hidden in his stories a kernel of that understanding, of reality as an illusion, a dream, a projection.

Plato, and his master Socrates, are perhaps the founding figures in philosophy, in the search for meaning through reason, logical analogy, and an unrelenting dedication to the application of the mind. We must through these works remember that everything that we see, that we use and that we believe must not be closed to probing, to questioning, and if need be, to refutation. And we must in that search not forget as well to be generous, for we, as the masters before us, must seek to search, learn and be brought together to wisdom. What is more, we must, as these masters, learn to live frugally, and well, to be virtuous, moderate and respectable.

I am exceedingly glad to more recently have found my way into the works of Williams. I think his foremost quality is in his sensitivity. His intellect is perhaps unquestioned, but I think his organisation and the phrasing of his thoughts to be so delicate as to be quite enthralling. It is also said in some quarters that his eyebrows are thought to be the finest by some measure, a comment I find both preposterous and strangely quite endearing for the man. What a wonderful man! To quote from John Wesley on fellowship, Wittgenstein on language, Marilynne Robinson on prodigality in literature, Augustine on ... heaven knows what, goodness, I think Williams' work is finally God's answer to me.

I seem to have left out Nietzsche. But my courage has deserted me: I cannot bear to describe him. I am certain that I will never understand the greater part of his writing, Never. He is too deep. His language is certainly marvelous as well; I have quoted in a previous post a passage of his in which he laments that his thoughts, whereas at conception seem to be quite wonderful, when written, have lost much of their vivacity, like a bird trapped in one's hand. But I cannot quite say, with conviction, if at all, that I will ever read Zarathustra with any firm notion of what Nietzsche was driving at. Beyond Good and Evil was slightly more comprehensible. But I have listed Nietzsche's works as something I think I would profitably spend the rest of my days mulling over in solitude, and I quite stand by that.

CLXXXIX - (soft) voices

I often have conversations in my mind.

In a way they occur organically. Like the pulses of a crystal following some stochastic irrythmic, glowing rays expelled in idiosyncracy, interfering in secret patterns. A quanta of image, sound, smell, or touch funnels, finds its way mechanically, then chemically, then who knows? into the mind, bing! a memory, a tape rewinds and then plays back (or perhaps is recorded, or recorded over?). In some sense the moment pauses, the world stops writhing, suspends mid-breath (or perhaps it carries on, muted, dull, uninteresting).

And a little conversation transfolds. No magic, just two, three characters in a space, talking. I may be there, usually, perhaps because I would like to be there. Let us be honest. These conversations are strong dreams, strong in the sense that I would like very much for them to be real, dreams in the sense that they are not. And one more thing separates these from dreams, dreams over which one has no apparent control: there is no, or rather I endeavour seriously not to be afraid. In that way I temper myself against fear, paralysis, doubt, trepidation; by pre-enactment, or perhaps, post-enactment: I would like very much to speak on these things, to these people, to be heard. And then to hear, to be understood, grasped, embraced. To be loved.

It is thus almost always solipsistic in a weak sense, i.e. like a small, imagined play, like a dream that is not horrible, not volatile, not capricious as a swirling wind. So to describe it more accurately I am perhaps always there - I do not, I think, think seriously about conversations happening without me, because, perhaps, I almost never care what others may say when I am absent. That is one of my maxims, or at least it appears here in its converse form; its original form being never to speak (at least, poorly) of one who is not present.

This internal conversation, dialogue, in that sense I practise talking, thinking, formulating, delivery, but not listening. And listening is boring, of course, in large part due to the many who speak; but true listening requires skill and imagination. The trick in these internal conversations is thus to imagine what someone says in reply, or how someone might think, might listen. This of course requires faith, my faith in the general sympathy of the created listener; in a way, like prayer: God is our created listener in the merely formal sense that unless we speak (or at least think our concepts to God) we cannot have a listener. Or perhaps more, as Voltaire thought: "si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer" (if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him). But as it is reassuring to assume (or trust) that God is sympathetic, it is reassuring to assign some measure of sympathy to a conversa-persona.

But the thing, I think, the key thing about an internal conversation is not to be dictatorial (ironic as it may seem, after all, no one else exists to disagree), but rather, to be self-aware, to truly grasp that one's listener, one's conversa-personas, are to be assigned intelligence, rationality, truly-formed human conceptions, and that they cannot be pounded into submission (or lied to, or deceived, or misled, or chagrined), rather they must be persuaded, Socrato-Plato style. Yes, one must believe that no one, to whom everything is properly shown, will choose wrongly. And thus one should strive always to guide and be guided by a sense of pedagogical benevolence, patrimony, an aristocratic (aristo - of the best) noblesse oblige (nobility obliges). And it should not surprise anyone that this approach is as germane to children as it is (or should be) for adults. In one sense children are far superior: it is that children point out when the emperor is naked.

I think this is key. An internal conversation is probably one of the strongest tools one may employ in reflection. On the one hand, to strive always to be heard, to speak louder, even loudest, is but a virtue of the most unabashed, and this should never by itself be a sufficient barometer as to the validity of one's argument. One should not by internal conversation prove to himself that he deserves, having thus had the benefit of rehearsals, always to be heard (or herself, she). Rather, internal conversation should remind you, me, one, that our thoughts and our voices must be reasoned, careful, accurate, and sympathetic, bearing in mind the vast ignorance(s) we necessarily toil under.

And of course it is of sometime importance that one should not be overcome by nostalgia, or excessive sentiment ... in their futility. I remind myself, sometimes, yes, not to think, to dream, not to get carried away ... and not to hope wistfully.

CLXXXVIII - c'est que j'ai vécu

" ... Le doge a ses chagrins, les gondoliers ont les leurs. Il est vrai qu'à tout prendre le sort d'un gondolier est préférable à celui d'un doge; mais je crois la différence si médiocre, que cela ne vaut pas la peine d'être examiné."

" ... The Doge has his troubles, the gondoliers have theirs. It is true that, all things considered, the life of a gondolier is preferable to that of a Doge; but I believe the[Pg 132] difference to be so trifling that it is not worth the trouble of examining."

Voltaire, Candide (1759)

CLXXXVII - buena música

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ryXdDjn1X8

There is for me something deeply mysterious, deeply nostalgic and wonderful in the flamboyant music of the Gipsy Kings. With my utter incomprehension of the Spanish language (and perhaps I should here greatly despair, given as I am a terrible lover of Latin American literature), it forms in me a profound longing, an almost ethereal yearning to be something, to be somewhere.

I remember hearing it on the taxi radio on the way to court once. It reminded me that life was irrefutably beautiful. I left the firm soon after that. I would like to think that there is perhaps some correlation there.

The Gipsy Kings are a favourite of my dad. That alone makes me think well of him, of our past family life.

Isn't that wonderful ... Isn't that wonderful music.

CLXXXVI - in sepia

You know, when I watch old people, when I sit down with them, ease into a sort of quiet space, calm, homely, unadorned, I like to think of what they were like thirty, forty, sixty years ago. You find out that most people, when they get old, don't have pretension in them, they don't have that nervous self awareness, the sort of anxiety about their clothes and hair and how they carry their physical bodies. I mean yes they are very proper and decently dressed, but beyond that it's all just trappings, you get the sense. Old people have this calm, maybe which comes partly out of resignation, a sense that time, having passed them by, is thereby no longer urgent. But I would like to hope that that sort of resignation is not always in them a negative one.

And so I like to imagine what they must have been like, in their twenties, their thirties. Young, full of vigor, chasing the things we now chase. With time perhaps their handsomeness has faded, but I like to think of them returned with youthful faces, supple limbs, perhaps the impatience of their past lives. What they must have been like in the glorious old days, for I take for granted that everyone must have had something they were once proud of. It's not so hard to imagine, is it? That once upon a time this old lady might have been young, with I suppose some coquetry in her ... Once upon a time this old man wore a sharp suit and shiny black shoes. Once upon a time these people seated relaxedly at this table were young, chatty, happily active, listened to deng li jun, went to the opera together, worked as clerks and secretaries, nurses and accountants, lived, had lovers, married girls, boys, bought houses ... did all the things we hope to do, before growing old.

Old people aren't old man. We're the ones that are ... fools.

CLXXXV - love is nothing

To have been spared my harshness, coldness, weakness, and most shameful, is that not something?

A long time ago, I did what I felt was right. I doubt I could have been any more in love than I was then. I failed. I took failing as it was, failing. It took a long time for me to understand what happened, what I did, what failing meant. For a long time, I wondered if I fucked up, if I was destined to be fucked up. For a long time, I fought to remember who I was. And finally it was revealed to me, and finally my mind could see, that my love was nothing. I hated that ending, that despicable, bastardly ending, but I knew that I could embrace it as it had embraced me. My love was nothing.

The next one, I don't know what the next one was. In a way it felt like a giant wave had ruined me, and as the waters receded I could not quite prevent it from slipping through my grasp. Oh, it is one thing to feel deadly angry, it is quite another thing to understand that in the end, love was nothing, again.

All this time, I always managed to somehow drag myself back onto a little rocky outcrop that refused to crumble away. On it was written, in the sand, a few symbols which would depict a man in a man that would not die. I traced it often with my finger and repeated the motions on my breast. There, he was meant to be, and not to die.

And now I realise that I have no idea what I'm fucking doing. And even that doesn't matter, maybe never will. Maybe that man cannot be put to death, maybe the man must live, must overcome, cannot be shut out from the light. Maybe I am he all this time. Maybe I don't know what I'm fucking doing, and it is no bad thing, in the end.

In consolation, then, to be spared all my villainy, all this time, is that not something?

CLXXXIV - paradigmatic beauty

Each one of us is, at the same time, a human soul, not less by one part in any part than any other human in the whole of any intelligible account of history (think then of how much we are obliged to one another!), and, an amalgamation of billions and billions of atoms and molecules, each obedient, precocious little block sitting next to each other in just the right configuration, each asserting its own identity and peculiarity, in accordance with the foremost laws of the natural world (think then of how much we are obliged to nature!).

Imagine that; how beautiful is that? What is beauty, if not that!

CLXXXIII - loss

Given sufficient sympathy, I think we all can roughly grasp the quite plausible state of every individual person's having experienced some kind of loss.

What is loss? Loss to me is the qualitative or quantitative reduction of something of worth, whether objectively valued or not. Perhaps more excruciatingly, in the case of the latter.

And therein lies an interesting, if ironic dynamic. Loss is something, strangely enough, universally prevalent, and yet exceedingly individualistic, so much so that we have but futile claims to true understanding of the quality or extent of loss (and suffering, which is the reaction of the individual to loss) each individual experiences. For who can say that he has known the desolate pain of a man whose children starve? Or the man whose relative is treated cruelly or shamefully? And by man I of course mean woman, as well. And how then can we, who know so little of loss, of suffering, make claims to what is good and what is right and what is proper?

But I do not mean to pontificate. Rather I think that loss has been my master, and I quite honour the bitter things it has taught me. In a way I think one of the cooler (or better) things about me is that I have, I think, a strong sense of what loss is to someone else. Put another way, I think that my sympathy is genuine and, as far as it can be, helpful. But nevermind that. Perhaps I am a long way yet from any sort of related aspirations.

But still I would conclude by saying that loss has taught me that I could never wish (much less visit) loss on someone else. Of some of the kinds of loss I have been given, I could never wish them on someone else. This is not to be dramatic. Rather I think that loss teaches ultimately no lesson in virtue or health that cannot be better taught by some other more benign means. On the contrary, loss hardens and it makes cynical people, vulnerable, good hearted people. I think that loss should not be necessary. But that is all by the by. I just have this perhaps naive, perhaps foolishly serendipitous belief that people, given sufficient assurance, can be so much better than as they are, burdened with loss and all that.

I just could not wish the losses I've known on anyone else. Do you get what I mean? It makes no sense to do otherwise. It's Kantian in a way, ethical universality. What good could it do to know the loss of another, after all? I should not think it only for the sake of empathy. And so what is the point of all this BS in this world? I don't know, honestly. Loss as a concept is meaningless in a way worse than loss itself. And so I think we live in this terrible paradigm, and yet at the same time, we who have plenty are often so petty, so mean, so self-centred, so ignorant. It's unbelievable, right. We're such poor representatives of our species.

Oh well.

CLXXXII - meten is weten

"Das Leben ist werth gelebt zu werden, sagt die Kunst, die schönste Verführerin; das Leben is werth, erkannt zu werden, sagt die Wissenschaft."

Life is worth living, says art, the most beautiful seductress; life is worth knowing, says science.

- Friedrich Nietzsche.

CLXXXI - Can a bear have a sense of humour?

1. A bear vs “the Bear”

We shall discuss not one bear out of many but “the Bear”, being the ideal bear that our minds can perceive, a bear from which all bearhood is obtained; for it does not seem useful to discuss the characteristics of an individual bear out of a demography of bears. I note in passing that some have argued that there is no such ideal “Thing”, being as it is that sense-data from the material world alone does not (and cannot) allow us to posit the existence of ideals; nor, indeed, does Plato make any strong claims of our intellectual ability to grasp such a world of ideals. For these philosophers, what makes a “thing” a “thing” is merely what we are accustomed to mean when we call it a “thing”. Leaving that aside, I will refer to “the bear” as a shorthand description for “the bear which lacks no things bearly”.

2. Does the bear have intellect?

Biologically speaking, it should come as no surprise to us that the bear has a brain which is capable of neural activity. Indeed, when we think, briefly speaking, our brains are engaged in such activity sufficient for us to have a certain complexity of thought. Coupling this with what Descartes refers to as our apperception, we are aware not merely of incoming sense-data simpliciter, but also of a “self” that receives this sense-data. Now, there may be good grounds for doubting whether the bear has quite this type of self-consciousness, and therefore whether the bear can critically recognise a complex state of affairs, i.e., when he is not merely prompted by what we might fairly call his “animal instincts”. Some, such as Nagel, have put forward strong arguments that as we have no grasp of the psychology of any other animal apart from our own, i.e. what it is like to be that other animal, correspondingly, we have no idea at all what, objectively speaking, that animal’s consciousness would be. There is, however, some evidence to suggest that certain animal species are capable of solving complex problems and displaying complex emotions, suggesting some tendencies towards the intellectual. Putting aside our doubts for now, we pass on to the next question, which goes slightly more to the heart of the present query.

3. Is the bear’s intellect (and sense of humour) intelligible to us?

The chief difficulty with a discussion centred around the concept of humour in the present context is that humour is, for all our usual intents and purposes, a mental state distinct to homo sapiens sapiens. As I will argue later, even accepting that the bear might possess a mental state in which he recognises a state of affairs as humourous (and even this much may be doubted), it is quite unlikely that such a mental state is in any sense one which is intelligible to us. Indeed, as previously discussed, we harbour reasonable doubts as to whether the bear is sufficiently capable of complex thought, or indeed, self-consciousness. I note in passing that self-consciousness might fairly be regarded not only as a premise for an individual’s ability to recognise complex states of affairs, but also, as an aside, perhaps the significant element in certain types of self-deprecating humour. Nonetheless, we should begin by first discussing principal states of affairs which we might find humourous (or, interchangeably, as comedic), and then whether the bear might have both the nous and then also the emotional capacity to recognise comedy.

Briefly, Gaiman (the author) pithily describes a joke as any passage containing as necessary (but for obvious reasons, not sufficient) elements a truth and an exaggeration. More generally, psycho-sociologically speaking, theories of humour have converged around incongruity, namely, that we find funny situations which appear strange. Perhaps immodestly, we think that we can explain humourous situations by their coherence with these theories. Thus, according to Morreall, we laugh when we feel superior, when we feel relief, or when we feel pleasantly amused by the incongruous. For example, we would probably laugh if a giant pumpkin appeared in our bathtub (but not if it were a cougar).

While there is some evidence that certain species of animals display their feelings of amusement by laughter, or perhaps proto-laughter, it is not clear whether these animal species would, on experiencing superiority, relief or incongruity, engage in a display of amusement in line with these theories. The difficulty here is not with the theories themselves, but with their application: we run again into the core issue which Nagel treats, viz, that concepts of superiority, relief and incongruity are complex and sociologically informed, so that these concepts almost certainly mean different things between species inter se. As Wittgenstein put it, if a lion could speak, we could not understand him. Accepting therefore that even if the bear might be capable of complex thought and self-awareness, and even if the bear could conceivably display amusement in language or as behavior intelligible solely to his own kind, there is however no shared mode between the bear species and our species by which we can comprehend such a display. Accordingly, we cannot even begin to apply our own intuition to determine the presence of humour in the bear’s understanding. As an example, the bear might point to something with a claw and say to another bear, in his own way, that’s “beary” funny, and they might share a giggle. However, for us this is not even bad humour, this is strictly unintelligible. Put the other way around, there is no syntactical sentence, much less any joke, which we could put in words to the bear, even if the bear spoke the language, by which the bear could understand our meaning (much less our humour), no matter how eloquent we might be.

Thus, even if the bear could “have” a sense of humour, it would be a bear’s sense alone, and more significantly, there would be nothing humanly intelligible (or humourous) about it. 

CLXXX - contrivance

I would like, in my dreams, every night, to hold your hand in mine.

That would be wonderful.

And if I had to let go each morning, I would, so I would.

CLXXIX - when at the end

If I had to die tomorrow.

I think I'd be happy. I mean, I've lived twenty eight years, and you know, I think I've done about as well as I could have, day to day. There isn't a body of work per se I guess I would point to and say, look at that, that's what I've done. But I would point to, if I could, the things that I think about, the things that matter to my heart and to my mind, and of course the things I believe with my soul, and I'd say, well, consider of all that, and think, have you ever known anyone who thinks about all those things and cares about them as much as I did? You know, I've been alive for a good time, and in all this time I haven't found too many people who care about things the way I care about things. Honestly, I don't think most people, even good people, care about too many things that I care about. I think most people are too stupid, selfish or lazy. Harsh words, yes, but unwarranted? maybe not. And I don't think these are selfish or mean things I care about. I think these are good things. Compassion, self awareness, intellect, altruism, I mean, all these things, the books I read, there isn't anyone I've found who is like me, a man with a heart like mine. It's disappointing in a way, but there's no harm in solitude. There's a lot of Marquez in me, a lot of Borges, a lot of Nietsczhe. And honestly, who else can say that? I've been waiting, abiding, growing. I'm an amazing person. I believe that, and I don't say it because it serves no purpose, but you know, if I had to die tomorrow, I believe that I'm an amazing person. My understanding of my self-worth means I die happy, if tomorrow I die. I don't take life for granted, but I try not to regret none of mine either.

If I had to die tomorrow my only regret would be that I didn't put aside the time to read all my books. I would regret that entirely. Every time I look at that corner in my room I feel it, every time.

If I had to die tomorrow I would probably write a letter to five or six people in the world, in my own hand. I would tell them I loved them, I'd tell them to live bravely, happily, in God's grace. You know, I'm good with words. That's exactly what I'd do, I'd go out with words.

And then what? I might have a kopi, and wait out the day.

CLXXVIII - unfilial

you know, i once read somewhere, in a piece written by a pretty old guy at the time, that when a parent of yours passes away, no matter how much strife or unhappiness there might have been between the two of you, that all doesn't matter when he or she goes. the only thing you think is, i wish i had been a better son, i wish somehow i could have been a good son. the worst thing in the world a chinese person can feel is to feel that you were unfilial.

i get that, i think. somehow when someone's gone, forever, someone important, a strange kind of awfulness comes over every little thing you hadn't done. i know what it feels like, and maybe it's misery just kind of being self-actuating, but it really is something, a sort of cognitive phenomenon maybe, it really materialises.

today i was watching a singer's contest and one of the contestants dedicated his song to his mom. and in the pre-interview he said, translating, i love you, mom, and if in my next life it would be my great wish to be your son again, and if i get another chance i will treat you well forever.

in the two seconds that i heard that the most awful feeling came over me. honestly, i've never been so affected, and so instantaneously, in my life. i literally threw down my earphones and collapsed into my bed, weeping. that was crazy.

what a process. i felt so proud of that guy for loving his mom so, so much. i mean, thinking about it makes me shudder. but at the same time i felt, as i have for so long, that i would want never to have known my parents, both of them, if i ever had the chance. and you know, i felt immediately in my heart the truth of that profession, and i swear just the most awful feeling in the world struck me. it killed me to understand how i felt about my parents. never, i would never want to be their son again. wow, that just killed me.

you know, there's so much, i think, in all my memories of them, up to the more recent exchanges with them, where i always remember feeling so intensely disappointed, even angry at them. i can't remember ever having felt proud of either of them. i honestly can't. is that crazy, well it doesn't feel crazy to me because that's just how things are as i see it. and you know as a child how crazy it is that it's always an awful feeling when it comes to family, i mean that's just so tiring, fights and awfulness are so extremely tiring. yeah maybe i forget the good times, maybe i forget when my parents were kind and loving, and that's probably horrible of me, but at the same time, i mean, it feels like the awfulness drowns out the joy, the bad times are so much more prominent in my memories than any of the good stuff. it feels that way, it feels that way when i remember it. i hated my parents a lot when i was young. and maybe growing up i've tried to be a bigger person than that, i've tried not to judge the way they were, and the things they did, i tried to think of it as just an awful situation bringing out the bad in each of us, and probably i did or i was part of the awfulness as well. and i don't judge them now, i mean they still disappoint me but i do my best, i do my best to understand that they had to go through their own process of life, and somehow, some way by some incredible goodness of God they're in their own, happier places. and all i want to do is to keep them there, and say hey, that's where they wanted to go, and i'm happy for them, far away from me. and a lot of the time i don't want to talk to either of them, and i distance myself from them, and my thought process and the reasons i devise for my ways of dealing with them is that my relationship with them has evolved that way, it is path-dependant in the sense that today i hate them or today i love them because yesterday i felt so disappointed with them or yesterday i forgot that i hated them. i mean, that's just genuinely how i feel about them, and then i have to treat them the way i genuinely feel, that's me, so really the outcome depends on the relevant history. isn't that how we treat people? is that how i treat family or the concept of it? but that's just how it is, i mean, i remember all the times i felt sorry for them, and you know, i always felt that none of the years that they had to go through in their own wilderness, i felt that they never became better people, i had that sense of superiority-complex, as in i've become a better person and why on earth haven't you, after all that? and being disappointed with what i'd seen from time to time, i could hardly bring myself to just accept and communicate with that idea of family, to be a part of that idea of togetherness.

but i feel, thinking about it, that that's horrible, even if i feel it's one of the justifiable ways of dealing with people. it's so harsh, even if i'm right, it's just, looking at things from long into the distance, so harsh. am i harsh that way? you know, it's really possible i am, that the way i treat people is so harsh that way, justifiable or no. and so can't i just, on just the basis of i've got to be better to people than this, just forget all of that and decide to love someone with all of my personal capability? i mean yes, that's possible on one view, but that's also insane on one view, isn't it? isn't that just ridiculous, like a whipped dog returning to his master's lap? i feel that way, i feel that way honestly. it's extremely cynical, but it feels like a mindset that's justifiable to me, i feel that my way of looking at the world this way treats my idea of me with due consideration. and i think that matters, but then this harshness, too.

so i think maybe, if i did get the chance in the next life, i would accept if i had the same parents, if i had another shot with them i would take it, and i wish that in that life i wouldn't look at family the way i am, the cynical man that i am now. i think they deserve a better son, a better me. i do. and it's strange i'm saying this as if it's too late now, and i don't know if that's not the case, i don't know if tomorrow i can decide to forget everything and give them all my love, or at least more than i do now. i mean isn't it enough that they love me and are proud of me? i don't know. i might be willing to do it in my next life but i might not be able to do it in this one. isn't that strange? isn't that strange, for a guy who always preaches living in the present, isn't that just so strange?

i don't know. there's no next life the way i believe things. but i don't know if i can do it in this one. you know i'm afraid when the time comes i'll be gripped by that awfulness again, the force of that feeling that i was unfilial when it counted. unfilial. wow, that's crazy. family is crazy, i don't know how other people have it at all. it kills me, man, it kills me.

CLXXVII - this is me, writing.

I might have said previously that I was writing a novel. It's difficult in the sense that I don't want to come back, tired of work, and then plug into this without feeling like I have this idea that I can put into language, this sense of me and my place in this world, through words with which I create, with which I give life.

In a way this is proof, funny as it sounds, proof that I know what I want to do. This is my proof to you, in a way, funny as that sounds. I know what I'm doing. I'm a writer. I write. I am, I do. Me. I write, don't you see.

*

“Dad, do you know what I think about when I’m running?”

He looked up at the first beckoning note in his son’s pensive lilt. Slightly toward the further recesses of his mind he grasped that his son was speaking from a faraway place. Glancing now earnestly at his son, he found in the boy’s gaze a sort of profundity, an oldness in a way that he had at first found peculiar, and then, in time, had come to quietly admire. It was weary in a way, ancient in its weariness, no, not weary, perhaps introspective, undecided, but not really those either, a sort of concentrated mindfulness in his look, straining slightly but unfocussed, as if in his mind he were deciphering abstract glyphs, shadowmarks of a race long gone.

They were in a small café, and the lingering smell of dark brew and hewed pine infused the walls themselves, dispensing in pleasant waves as if beholden to its patrons. He lowered his book to his lap, carefully replacing the bookmark where he had roughly read. He glanced now meaningfully at his boy, opening his eyes slightly wider in encouragement, “No, no, I guess not.”

“I wonder what the ocean sounds like.”

It was strange, looking back at the scene, to think of the two men staring wistfully into space. But at the time the only thing he wondered, as he sometimes did when presented with an enigmatic utterance of that sort, was whether his son meant his sentence literally, or as he probably did when wistful, predictably even, as a complete figure of speech. Savouring the opportunity to deadpan, and with an innocent, perhaps tell-tale cheerfulness ringing from his teeth, he began with honest enthusiasm the tale of his fishing expedition of yonder year, in the sharpest, bluest waters two days east of the southern peninsula, where the tuna snapped recklessly in the brilliant sunlit glints off the water.

“No, Dad. I know what the sea sounds like. I mean when you’re in the water.”

“Physically? It sounds like you’re submerged.”

“Yes, I know that. I mean like if you’re floating, just quietly floating. That’s what I imagine myself just being there, when I’m running, and when it’s quiet I picture myself lying in the water, submerged, I’m looking into the water, floating. I hear my footsteps crunching little pebbles on the ground, and that goes away, same goes the whistling wind in the trees, and then my persistent breathing, and now I close my eyes, and I listen, I listen to the sounds of the ocean, the way it sways, and swells, and then I feel a giant mass of watery bulk, a giant sweep under me, and my feet are still running but in my mind I’m in the ocean, and I understand in that moment that the ocean has completely ignored me, it has found in me nothing that is worth its tossing me away. The ocean accepts without a second thought me, my existence, as no more than a part of its distension, and in that obliviousness, that tremendousness, in its disregard and its ignorance of me I find its complete embrace, its comprehension of me, and finally its intractable acceptance of my spirit.”

“Sorta ... brain in a vat.” He nodded, sympathetic.

“No, much more human than that. Much more …”

As his son trailed off, he hmm-ed, and closed his eyes, settling back slightly as his hands wrapped lightly around his chest, book perched tidily in its crook. Floating in the ocean, listening to the sounds that must have gurgled reverberatingly through its depths. Thinking about the edges of each shore that all the interconnected water in the world slipped gently over, thinking about the clinking ice floes that bobbed and crashed at its coldest tips, thinking about the edgy plates of geological crust that must have shifted titanically every so often, the barely perceptible yet unfathomably colossal shudders that must have swelled through in waves and swirls, the incredible decaying effect of that dampening mass of water against water in motion, the infinitely silent pantomime of innumerable creatures rushing swiftly to and fro in unceasing motion below his floating, motionless body, the dark, unknowable depths of the ocean and its marvelous, impenetrable sounds.

“I mean just the silence, and then the quietness, and then as if someone had reached into a secret place and turned up the volume, the sound of an ocean suddenly just loud enough for you to hear, sounds that would have existed for all of time, sounds ancient, mystical, pangeaic, and I would just be completely lost in all that sound.”

What was the ocean, he wondered. The ocean was scary, it was big, deep, treacherous. Not made for man, nor man for it. The ocean was something he never had much occasion to think about, but he reckoned that it was a fearful thing. The ocean was something that perhaps a man might think about once in a while, when considering the great things a man might do in this world, and the ocean would, in fairness, probably have more than its fair share of unthinkably hazardous challenges a man might reckon himself worth taking up. The ocean, I mean, basically a large body of water, right? What’s in it? But he accepted that in its perplexity it mystified some, he accepted that in its inscrutability some might find a mystery kindred to the grander, more abstract queries of an existential nature. Of man’s inexorable quest to find some kind of answer, some kind of, oh, I guess that’s what this is all about.

“I think I’d like to dive in one day and just do all that.”

“I’ll take you.”

“OK.”

Outside, the afternoon sun cast its gentle warmth through the glass of the café. Staring absently at the sun’s erratic illumination through a shifting panoply of leaves, he wondered if he’d ever have to go that far into the ocean. Breathing in deeply, he shook the last blanketing thoughts from his mind, and glancing past his son, he flipped open his novel, searching for the frayed ends of some thread of the narrative.

Just as his fingers touched the familiar strands, he looked up again, and in that moment, frozen eternally in his mind, he remembered feeling a solid sense of peace, seated forever in a scene in which he belonged.

*

CLXXVI - meta-metaphors

i know that i have one foot planted on this ground, and one foot in the clouds. i know that.

i know what i'm doing. you may not believe that now, but i ask that you try, i ask that you try.

not everyone who has both their feet planted in this ground knows what they're doing. this is true, you know that.

i'm not fully invested in this ground. i know that. i'm fully invested in the world i believe in.

that's the difference.

CLXXV - it's too late, tonight, to drag the past out into the light

Where am I?

I am or really I realise that an abstract sort of cynicism has settled its way into my life, like a stone of anger that has plopped to the soft, irritable soil beneath the pond. I don't know if I recognise myself in the murky, unfamiliar ripples on the water's surface. The truth is that I am still subsiding. My waters are not yet clear. Minute reverberations form infinitely tessellated and cross-interfering patternic poly-panoplies as they rebound off the edges of my self awareness. Hidden in the depths, little creatures seek uncertain shelter in the doubtful crevices of my soul, wishing for light, missing always the light, once clear and strong.

I have survived the past's week-nights laced with drink and grand, grand Horowitz. In the dark, drinking heavily, absorbing without superfluous contemplation the exquisite playing of this wonderful, wonderful old man, I have somehow accepted deep within my soul that life is not horrendous, unthinkable, cruel. This man, his music, is too much, too good, universally, absolutely and undeniably perfect, overwhelming. I have been brought low and yet I turn to this heavenly playing, and it lays me down to rest. I thank God that I don't play the piano, because at this moment, with the limited understanding I have, his music is absolutely perfect.

I want you to live happily for ever. I know that I couldn't belong in that picture. I wish for you to be happy for ever, and may God's love be with you, always.

I realised today, listening to U2 on the supermarket radio, that I was me again. Part of me knows that I still miss you. Eating dinner today I realised that I was Levin and you were that girl in Anna Karenina who wanted to fall in love with a Vronsky. I know that now. And the only way I could benignly rationalise everything was to posit that you didn't believe in me enough to trust that I would be alright. I also know, sparing myself at last, that there was nothing I could have done about that. I think that I will be glad to someday, when we have departed this reality, realising everything possible about each other, to gently tell you that you don't need my forgiveness. Honestly, I love you. Goodbye.

I don't know where I am. That is the only philosophically honest answer I know, if at all. I wonder if it's strange that I'm here, lost to myself, when it seems like people, everyone else, somehow live their own lives, blissfully heedless of the things I mull, grapple with, perhaps needlessly. Yes, I wonder if my life is strange, foolish. I get that too. Admittedly, I even expect that when someone appears I will be rescued from this strangeness. And perhaps that is unlikely, wistful. I really, perhaps, am the only person who honestly, truthfully, genuinely doesn't know where he is, and isn't afraid of that warp, that paradox. And it's times like these I feel that that soft, magnificent music tells me not to be afraid, and not to fear pain.

Ok, grandfather. I will not fear pain. Lord, give me this day my daily bread.

CLXXIV - no mas

i can't imagine a more honest stretch of two weeks for which i'd been through so, so many emotions.

i wish i could have them all back.

my greatest, perhaps only, regret is that i could never explain to you the things that filled my heart, in a way that would make sense to you. that itself, for my words to have floundered, is witheringly, scathingly harrowing.

i finally understand listening to debussy. i get it now. fragility, preciousness, nostalgic echoes and evocations, courage, truth, nobility, sadness and beauty, solitude, the quietness of tranquility, gentle, wonderful, profound progressions. and music is the best.

i realise how much i want to prove to you that you were wrong. that i was right and that i would always be right, about you, about me, and maybe about us. i doubt any force on earth could convince me otherwise. but you would not see it as i saw, as i felt, believed, trusted, hoped, dared, prayed and loved.

i feel that my anger towards God has helped. i think it was part of the process, and really, that alone, i don't think i can judge that. it was necessary, and it was a process, and i think having come back to being ok through all that, i don't think i can judge that. the truth was that being angry towards God, deathly angry, has helped.

but i'm not angry anymore. some strange kind of acceptance has flushed over my soul. peace perhaps from accepting that God could only leave it to another's choice whether or not she might love me, or perhaps, that someone infinitely, impossibly more suited might love her too.

and so i prayed to God, not for my own sake, never, but for no mas.

no mas, ok, Lord? no mas.

CLXXIII - babel'ed

the key to fighting the box is to build your own box.

but even then you can get babel'ed. never forget that.

have a drink, lad. have a wee one. ;)

CLXXII - I'm going to be alright. I told you!

It's kinda funny how maybe a couple weeks back I was just thinking to myself, I might never be as me as I was last year, at the age of twenty-seven. I did really like this variant of me. I felt old beyond my years, invincible in a philosophical way. I felt that the Box had not defeated me, or perhaps I understood that I would escape it. I also wished often that life would end and that helped me to live without fear, for better or worse. And so I was every bit me. Without that solemn reverence for life beyond the now, I lived as if I had all the answers, knew all the cards.

And yet here I am, with you. You know I can't believe in this life of mine that I would ever feel that another person was perfect for my love. And yet here you are. You know when you sat down next to me that day we met I just had this unplaceable, unmistakable intuition that you meant something to me. Now, I often wish somebody was watching you talk to me so I could have someone to marvel with. You're wonderful.

The funny thing is I think you came at the only possible time too.

In sha' Allah, In sha' Allah.