I have a private, perhaps subconscious way, with which I learn things quickly - I use my intuition to map out a tree. Take a word or a phrase, assign it to a discipline, and assume it has the trunk and branches arising from classical understanding of that discipline. If I can't, if my knowledge of that discipline is lacking, then I take the next most analogous discipline I have knowledge of, and I assume the unknown discipline has the trunk and branches of that analogous discipline. Then I test out the tree (whether from my actual knowledge and applied to that word or phrase, or from an analogous tree) by asking questions. I ask questions which I expect, based on the tree, to have predictable answers. The more that the true answers match my predictions, the more safely I can assume to know that thing; the less, the more that I have to throw away the assumed analogy, or to learn a new tree entirely.
As Brian Skinner, associate professor of physics and blog author of Gravity and Levity, writes, it is "one of the most important strategies in physics: solving by analogy." (see link). Thus, "[t]his is the best form of cheating that I know: you show that the hard problem someone is asking you is identical to a hard problem that someone else has already solved, and you look up the answer. You come away looking clever without having to do much difficult work at all." For the great Feynman once wrote, "Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry."
The great thing about this method, this intuition-rubric, is that if it works, it works really effing well.
The problem with this approach is at least threefold:
1. Conceit - I stop listening to an explanation faster than I should - partly because I am thinking of the tree (this takes time), and partly because I am relying on the borrowed tree to plug in the meat of the explanations. It is also perhaps because the explanation is delivered by a non-expert, or in an uninteresting manner. This is remedied by making sure to learn from credible, clear sources.
2. Mistake - I pick the wrong analogy, or worse, I pick the wrong questions to ask. Or perhaps I misinterpret the answers, and draw incorrect conclusions from those premises. All this is very difficult to remedy, and takes time to learn from. Also, carried away with my own genius, I tend to assume the gaps between the actual tree of knowledge and the presumed tree are smaller than they are, and paper over cracks. But analogies must fail sometimes, and the more tenuous the analogy, the less useful the tree (and I may not realise the error until too late).
3. Ignorance - It takes time and learning to develop intuition - to amass knowledge of disciplines, to build trees of knowledge, and to learn how analogies should work.
The interesting thing out of all this, is that errors and mistakes can be wonderful, wonderful things. Novelty comes from having a solid core of knowledge, but with imagination in application, derivation and expansion. So often we have this beaten out of us! And the most important things in all of learning are curiosity and creativity. Even if a guess is wrong, it is interesting to consider the conceptual steps that led to that guess; even if intuition is wrong, it can reveal that the world is stranger than we think it is. Not being afraid to be guided by one's own intuition, and being proven right or wrong, is surely the most intellectually satisfying thing.
Thursday, September 19, 2019
Friday, August 16, 2019
CCXXXVIII - Paris, Vendredi, 1 August 2019
All photos can be accessed at: link
Ah, August has come, and the last day of my adventure has arrived. Searching my thoughts, I find no sadness; all things are as they should be, serendipitously. I'm - so happy. Naturally, the arduous parts, I wish had gone a little better, but I can think of only two moments where I'd felt a little discouraged, and they were not long in being remedied either. Every minute of every day was enjoyable, and the days have been kind to me. And how beautiful the feet of those who are sent - most of the people I've met have been decent and hospitable, even warm.
Today was probably the most relaxed day I've had while out here, and it's a nice way to end. Capping it with the Musee d'Orsay was probably the best planning decision I've made, however fortuitously. It's a beautiful, simple museum in itself - five floors, two of them mostly structural, and the whole simply laid out in a large rectangle, but not so plainly as to be like an exposition floor. This museum's travelling exhibit was to be start of my love for art, when it came to Singapore. My first moment of awe was in seeing Cabanel's The Birth of Venus - a lovely nude woman lain on the waves; and I was also struck by the painterly sensitivity of Hans Thoma's Siesta, of the delicious sunlight falling over the trees and on the meadow. Well, crazily enough, that first exhibit also had Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night over the Rhone, to my mind the first great piece of art I'd seen. The play of the various lamplights over the slipping waves, the dark, deep blue of swirling night, and the soft blooms of starlight glimmering over the darkness. The one kept in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Starry Night, would be famous for its brazen curls of yellow moonlight and evening cloud over the dark, sleepened landscape.
The famed impressionists! The past couple weeks of Rome, Firenze and the Louvre had mostly early 15th and 16th century classical and renaissance paintings, which you know, is awe-inspiring but not terribly soul-inspiring for a twentieth century man such as myself; although I certainly had my moments, especially with Andrea Del Sarto's Christ as the Man of Sorrows. But the religious iconography and all that, I mean, it takes so much effort to be steeped in that culture, to appreciate it as more than just "old stuff" - I wince as I say that. Well, even for me, that old stuff is hard. And in comparison, the Orsay had all the great painters I know and love, you know? Every work here deserves at least fifteen minutes' contemplation, not that I could have physically done that. I simply had to breeze by at some points, stopping here and there, and correct myself by returning to certain rooms.
The crazy thing is that most of these artists were rejected out of hand - they were simply deemed too sloppy by the old standards, too spontaneous in light and colour, too sentimental, too vulgar (as in vulgus, or common). Why would you paint simple farmers and watery landscapes and, for goodness sake, nude commoners when the whole idea of high art is to draw vast and visionary pictures, to give tribute to God and his great works, and the high Greek and Roman ideals and allegories? Well, all that sort of wishy-washy art was brought into a sort of underground movement, defended by Degas and Renoir, among others, and allowed to flourish by Napolean III in a newly established, aptly-named Salon des Refusés. Certain criticisms included: "Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that [Monet] seascape." Women as well were invited to join, including one Berthe Morisot, later the sister-in-law and close friend of Edouard Manet. Manet is, I think, my favourite painter - he paints so plainly and so expressively, so caringly. A whole room was given to Manet, and a short term gallery of six rooms to Morisot. Cezanne had one, Pisarro, Monet, etc. Well, I had a ball of a time. All these wonderful painters, and so much of them! Oh, my dear and esteemed painters.
Okay, so I managed to finish up around five thirty. Well, I went home and had pasta and sausages, and went out for a jaunt to buy some souvenirs. I realised that there was a nicer supermarket, a carrefour near my place, where I could have been getting much better supermarket fare, ah the deuce. Well, I walked into a department store type place which had a whole level just for food and snacks. It was wonderful - La Grande Epicerie. So I got some mini paninis with olives, gingerbread with caramel and pistachio flavoured madeleines to bring back. Supper was mostly the same, with wine. Ah, the gentle peasant life.
Well, what a simply lovely way to end. The weather was nicer too, for a summer. On the whole, I think the schedule might have been taxing for anyone else, and being alone, I wouldn't have had to worry about soldiering on. Soldiering on was just right for me, actually, I don't like not having anything to do, and having to improvise too much would have been more tiring than following a regimented sort of plan. Well, perhaps I will look forward to travelling with companions in the future. But perhaps not in the heat of summer! Ciao, Italia! and au revoir, Paris.
----
I spent (in EUR):
8 - food
15 - Musee d'Orsay
26 - two calendars of Van Gogh's work
26 - paninis, gingerbread and madeleines
52 - apartment in Duroc
329 - flight on Etihad Airways from Paris to Singapore, stopping over in Abu Dhabi
Ah, August has come, and the last day of my adventure has arrived. Searching my thoughts, I find no sadness; all things are as they should be, serendipitously. I'm - so happy. Naturally, the arduous parts, I wish had gone a little better, but I can think of only two moments where I'd felt a little discouraged, and they were not long in being remedied either. Every minute of every day was enjoyable, and the days have been kind to me. And how beautiful the feet of those who are sent - most of the people I've met have been decent and hospitable, even warm.
Today was probably the most relaxed day I've had while out here, and it's a nice way to end. Capping it with the Musee d'Orsay was probably the best planning decision I've made, however fortuitously. It's a beautiful, simple museum in itself - five floors, two of them mostly structural, and the whole simply laid out in a large rectangle, but not so plainly as to be like an exposition floor. This museum's travelling exhibit was to be start of my love for art, when it came to Singapore. My first moment of awe was in seeing Cabanel's The Birth of Venus - a lovely nude woman lain on the waves; and I was also struck by the painterly sensitivity of Hans Thoma's Siesta, of the delicious sunlight falling over the trees and on the meadow. Well, crazily enough, that first exhibit also had Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night over the Rhone, to my mind the first great piece of art I'd seen. The play of the various lamplights over the slipping waves, the dark, deep blue of swirling night, and the soft blooms of starlight glimmering over the darkness. The one kept in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Starry Night, would be famous for its brazen curls of yellow moonlight and evening cloud over the dark, sleepened landscape.
The famed impressionists! The past couple weeks of Rome, Firenze and the Louvre had mostly early 15th and 16th century classical and renaissance paintings, which you know, is awe-inspiring but not terribly soul-inspiring for a twentieth century man such as myself; although I certainly had my moments, especially with Andrea Del Sarto's Christ as the Man of Sorrows. But the religious iconography and all that, I mean, it takes so much effort to be steeped in that culture, to appreciate it as more than just "old stuff" - I wince as I say that. Well, even for me, that old stuff is hard. And in comparison, the Orsay had all the great painters I know and love, you know? Every work here deserves at least fifteen minutes' contemplation, not that I could have physically done that. I simply had to breeze by at some points, stopping here and there, and correct myself by returning to certain rooms.
The crazy thing is that most of these artists were rejected out of hand - they were simply deemed too sloppy by the old standards, too spontaneous in light and colour, too sentimental, too vulgar (as in vulgus, or common). Why would you paint simple farmers and watery landscapes and, for goodness sake, nude commoners when the whole idea of high art is to draw vast and visionary pictures, to give tribute to God and his great works, and the high Greek and Roman ideals and allegories? Well, all that sort of wishy-washy art was brought into a sort of underground movement, defended by Degas and Renoir, among others, and allowed to flourish by Napolean III in a newly established, aptly-named Salon des Refusés. Certain criticisms included: "Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that [Monet] seascape." Women as well were invited to join, including one Berthe Morisot, later the sister-in-law and close friend of Edouard Manet. Manet is, I think, my favourite painter - he paints so plainly and so expressively, so caringly. A whole room was given to Manet, and a short term gallery of six rooms to Morisot. Cezanne had one, Pisarro, Monet, etc. Well, I had a ball of a time. All these wonderful painters, and so much of them! Oh, my dear and esteemed painters.
Okay, so I managed to finish up around five thirty. Well, I went home and had pasta and sausages, and went out for a jaunt to buy some souvenirs. I realised that there was a nicer supermarket, a carrefour near my place, where I could have been getting much better supermarket fare, ah the deuce. Well, I walked into a department store type place which had a whole level just for food and snacks. It was wonderful - La Grande Epicerie. So I got some mini paninis with olives, gingerbread with caramel and pistachio flavoured madeleines to bring back. Supper was mostly the same, with wine. Ah, the gentle peasant life.
Well, what a simply lovely way to end. The weather was nicer too, for a summer. On the whole, I think the schedule might have been taxing for anyone else, and being alone, I wouldn't have had to worry about soldiering on. Soldiering on was just right for me, actually, I don't like not having anything to do, and having to improvise too much would have been more tiring than following a regimented sort of plan. Well, perhaps I will look forward to travelling with companions in the future. But perhaps not in the heat of summer! Ciao, Italia! and au revoir, Paris.
----
I spent (in EUR):
8 - food
15 - Musee d'Orsay
26 - two calendars of Van Gogh's work
26 - paninis, gingerbread and madeleines
52 - apartment in Duroc
329 - flight on Etihad Airways from Paris to Singapore, stopping over in Abu Dhabi
CCXXXVII - Paris, Mercedi, 31 July 2019
Man, what a day. Well, since I wasn't going to the Louvre at the original time of nine am, I decided to head out to the Picasso museum. You know, that dude is a little weird, a little bizarro, and I say that with true esteem. His quotes profess that he sees things in terms of their essential forms, lines, shapes and volumes, he tries to picture the essential egg - the term he uses to describe the inner essence - of each character, and then flesh out into the true portrait by adding the superficial lines and textures; but pausing at the artistic moment, thus furnishing his work. The world and all that is in it are shapes, intersecting lines and angles, abstract curves and surfaces, interconnected facets; and yet somehow it comes together on the canvas, the whole dysfunctionality captivates. It's not immediately a work that lends itself to visual appreciation, it's not beautiful, but it shines with a different sensitivity, its own beauty in spite of asymmetry and unnaturalness. It has its own special sensuality, sense of self-awareness and purposeful identity. It's so hard to explain - it's almost a deeper, elemental metaphysic which still charms the viewer enough, invites him/her to relax his own norms of appreciation. It's also not ridiculously post-modern, which to me is often more anti-art for its own sake. But perhaps that is harsh. In any case, it was almost a sort of relief to leave Picasso behind, and return to the more recognisable types of art in the Louvre.
Well, as I was walking through the Louvre today, it kinda occurred to me, hey, that's my third Cezanne today. That was pretty funny: what a preposterous attitude. Yeah, I should have been trying harder with Cezanne. His is a sort, if I may be so bold, his is a sort of splotchy melded textures in the way he depicts surfaces. It looks a little like every surface has a sort of patchy liquid sheen, swathes of strokes blending into each other to depict the play of light over rough surfaces, rocks, roads, trees, walls and buildings all have their own magical coat of interweaved colours. Well, the way he does shadows and the edges is magnificent. Up close, it doesn't seem to work, like why would anyone put a dash of purple there next to the brown, blue next to beige, green next to white, but you know, you take a few steps back, find a sweet spot at medium range before the whole picture, just before it becomes an icon, and the image simply forms, with all its painterly charm intact - perfect. It's magic, simply magic.
Breakfast was pasta with curry sauce. I put in too much salt. That was lame. Anyway, it was ok. After the Picasso, I went out for lunch at the famous Paul Bert Bistrot. It had a set going for twenty two euro, which was okay. I think it was good for value, not like the one I had in Firenze, but still it was worth the cost. Starter was zucchini with sour salad, main was mashed potatoes with fish and crispy bread, and the dessert was raspberry sorbet with a delightful honey crispy biscuit. I could have had steak for the main, but I didn't feel particularly like having steak. And the mashed potatoes were very tasty and sufficiently filling. I packed a little of the bistrot's bread with me for a snack in the Louvre. That really helped later on, actually. I even bought another chicken baguette for tea.
The Louvre is a really big place, well, that almost goes without saying. It's actually slightly confusing in its layout. I want to say it seems to have three nicely separated wings, each with different portions dedicated to different segments of art history, but it wasn't easy knowing where one floor started and another ended. Well, it had the same sort of decorated ceilings that the Chateau de Vesailles did, having itself been a royal palace at one point, but unfortunately I didn't pay too much attention to the ceilings. Anyway, yeah, I really liked the ancient art on display, the Egyptian artifacts, the ancient Middle East, Babylonians and Persians, the ancient Greeks stuff. That was actually all very exciting. Hieroglyphic writing, cuneiform script, it really blows me away, stuff that freaking ancient that was once part and parcel of everyday life. A little edict from a king to his courtiers, a little religious diatribe from a priest to his servants. Naturally, the museums had translations of those languages, mostly in french - and isn't it amazing that there exist people in this world that can read this stuff, understand the whole syntax of the pictures and the grammar of the scripts? Well, these things are so old that most of the stuff is reconstructed around the original fragments. Some have survived for four thousand years. I can't even say that figure without feeling awe, four thousand years of bloody, awful, irreplaceable human history.
The Mona Lisa was okay. I thought the copy of Da Vinci's Leda and the Swan was better, and his John the Baptist was a lot more expressive, the whole intriguing smile and secretive gesture. And the whole Louvre being that big, gee, it was just walking past the masters like Delacroix, Ingres, Raphael, Cezanne, Sisley, Rubens, Titian, David, like it was nothing, you know. And the Louvre is my fifteenth museum on this trip, counting cathedrals and palaces. I've been true all this time to my word - I love museums. I've been stuffed with art, but I'm not in peril of losing the thrill of seeing art. Well, my favourite today was David's portrait of Madame Verninac, who as it turns out, is the elder sister of Delacroix. It's just a perfect painting, it's simply flawless, so warm, so delicate, so sensitive, so beautifully painted in the light and shadow of her curves, the folds of her garments. It's so whole, so perfect.
Well, tomorrow is going to be a little more perfect. The final boss, the Musee d'Orsay. In some ways, the starting place; my first love for art began with the exhibition they had at the National Museum. Goodnight.
----
I spent (in EUR):
15 - Picasso museum
22 - Paul Bert Bistrot lunch
6 - train
4 - supporting a classical ensemble in the metro
6 - baguette
20 - Louvre
52 - apartment in Duroc
Well, as I was walking through the Louvre today, it kinda occurred to me, hey, that's my third Cezanne today. That was pretty funny: what a preposterous attitude. Yeah, I should have been trying harder with Cezanne. His is a sort, if I may be so bold, his is a sort of splotchy melded textures in the way he depicts surfaces. It looks a little like every surface has a sort of patchy liquid sheen, swathes of strokes blending into each other to depict the play of light over rough surfaces, rocks, roads, trees, walls and buildings all have their own magical coat of interweaved colours. Well, the way he does shadows and the edges is magnificent. Up close, it doesn't seem to work, like why would anyone put a dash of purple there next to the brown, blue next to beige, green next to white, but you know, you take a few steps back, find a sweet spot at medium range before the whole picture, just before it becomes an icon, and the image simply forms, with all its painterly charm intact - perfect. It's magic, simply magic.
Breakfast was pasta with curry sauce. I put in too much salt. That was lame. Anyway, it was ok. After the Picasso, I went out for lunch at the famous Paul Bert Bistrot. It had a set going for twenty two euro, which was okay. I think it was good for value, not like the one I had in Firenze, but still it was worth the cost. Starter was zucchini with sour salad, main was mashed potatoes with fish and crispy bread, and the dessert was raspberry sorbet with a delightful honey crispy biscuit. I could have had steak for the main, but I didn't feel particularly like having steak. And the mashed potatoes were very tasty and sufficiently filling. I packed a little of the bistrot's bread with me for a snack in the Louvre. That really helped later on, actually. I even bought another chicken baguette for tea.
The Louvre is a really big place, well, that almost goes without saying. It's actually slightly confusing in its layout. I want to say it seems to have three nicely separated wings, each with different portions dedicated to different segments of art history, but it wasn't easy knowing where one floor started and another ended. Well, it had the same sort of decorated ceilings that the Chateau de Vesailles did, having itself been a royal palace at one point, but unfortunately I didn't pay too much attention to the ceilings. Anyway, yeah, I really liked the ancient art on display, the Egyptian artifacts, the ancient Middle East, Babylonians and Persians, the ancient Greeks stuff. That was actually all very exciting. Hieroglyphic writing, cuneiform script, it really blows me away, stuff that freaking ancient that was once part and parcel of everyday life. A little edict from a king to his courtiers, a little religious diatribe from a priest to his servants. Naturally, the museums had translations of those languages, mostly in french - and isn't it amazing that there exist people in this world that can read this stuff, understand the whole syntax of the pictures and the grammar of the scripts? Well, these things are so old that most of the stuff is reconstructed around the original fragments. Some have survived for four thousand years. I can't even say that figure without feeling awe, four thousand years of bloody, awful, irreplaceable human history.
The Mona Lisa was okay. I thought the copy of Da Vinci's Leda and the Swan was better, and his John the Baptist was a lot more expressive, the whole intriguing smile and secretive gesture. And the whole Louvre being that big, gee, it was just walking past the masters like Delacroix, Ingres, Raphael, Cezanne, Sisley, Rubens, Titian, David, like it was nothing, you know. And the Louvre is my fifteenth museum on this trip, counting cathedrals and palaces. I've been true all this time to my word - I love museums. I've been stuffed with art, but I'm not in peril of losing the thrill of seeing art. Well, my favourite today was David's portrait of Madame Verninac, who as it turns out, is the elder sister of Delacroix. It's just a perfect painting, it's simply flawless, so warm, so delicate, so sensitive, so beautifully painted in the light and shadow of her curves, the folds of her garments. It's so whole, so perfect.
Well, tomorrow is going to be a little more perfect. The final boss, the Musee d'Orsay. In some ways, the starting place; my first love for art began with the exhibition they had at the National Museum. Goodnight.
----
I spent (in EUR):
15 - Picasso museum
22 - Paul Bert Bistrot lunch
6 - train
4 - supporting a classical ensemble in the metro
6 - baguette
20 - Louvre
52 - apartment in Duroc
Wednesday, August 14, 2019
CCXXXVI - Paris, Mardi, 30 July 2019
I've been doing the home-cooked pasta thing again. It's a slightly more advanced cuisine of the two stuffed pastas, ravioli and tortellini, and I'm mixing up the sauce, alternating with quattro formaggi and curry. It worked! it's pretty good. It's a simple to prepare, hearty meal. Pesto looks ugly, but it tastes good and fresh.
We didn't cycle out of Paris all the way to Versailles, which is what I initially thought we were going to do. Instead, we took an express train somewhere into the neighbourhood of Versailles, and picked up our bicycles from a little underground garage. Well, even with the shorter cycle to the Chateau, we would end up doing enough of the bicycle for the day. So at first we had breakfast at a nearby market, where the bakery had the most delicious Feuillette Jambon Fromage, which I think loosely means pastry with pork and cheese. I would bet a reasonable amount of money that it had lard plastered on the crust - that crust was so wonderfully browned and tasty. After getting lunch - I bought stewed eggplant with minced beef and a quiche - we headed out to the nearby gardens to the Chateau, as well as the grounds and apartments which lodged the royal mistress.
For the group's picnic lunch, we sat at a shaded spot along a huge canal, a cross shaped monstrosity of a canal. It was as far as the eye could see from the Chateau grounds and out over the canal, it was breathtaking. With lunch, some of us took a little nap, others chilled around and chatted. Unfortuntately, we couldn't get wine into the Chateau grounds. I went around the canal on the bicycle, and it took me twenty minutes, so it had to be two kilometres long by one wide. That was a lot of water for a canal. Our guides for the day said that it took half of France's total GDP to turn out that Chateau and its grounds, which is of course, completely insane. But that was France in the glory days under Louis XIV. Apparently, it needed more water than the city of Paris. Well, on the whole it didn't really commend itself to me, it was just too grandiose, too ostentatious, and to my mind, fairly unimaginative. Maybe I'm ignorant of its architects and artists, but to my amateur eye they don't seem to be of the calibre of the Florentines. Well, the citizens of Paris didn't take too fondly to all its trappings and comforts either, as they stormed it while Louis XV hid in it in 1789.
The tour was okay enough on the whole. I went back to the apartment for pasta with pesto, and decided to head out for a nice easy run before going to another jazz club. I hadn't run in two weeks! The evening was pretty inviting, a little cool and breezy. Well, I ended up running past some fields somewhere towards the river Seine, and some guys were playing touch rugby. They were short a man, so I asked to join and they were cool with it. So yeah, I had a lovely time playing. They were real rugby players as well. It was a beautiful rosy pink sunset evening, with the golden dome of the Musée de l'Armée behind us, and some of the heritage buildings around us, there was a good breeze, and the game was hard and friendly. It's beautiful, like the Padang, but more European.
I bought some moussaka at the store - eggplant, cheese, beef, tomato, etc. - potato and ham salad, and yoghurt with passionfruit, to heat up with the microwave in the apartment. Box wine as well, to round off supper. Well, that didn't have much soul in it, but it was okay. I got a big box of wine for six euro, and I'm going to try and drink enough to put a small dent in it. It was cheap, and from being in Australia, I know box wine is generally decent even if it seems really cheap.
Okay, gonna head to the Picasso museum and the Louvre tomorrow. The guides earlier today said that it was going to be crazy busy at the Louvre, and since it was open till nine forty-five pm, it was no point heading there early at nine am. Fair enough.
Well, I'm beat. I've really enjoyed all the apartments I've stayed in so far, so I'm definitely well in favour of the airbnb thing; since hotels would have been twice as expensive. It's nice to think of it now, but I've been rather fortunate on this trip so far. Well, goodnight, folks.
----
I spent (in EUR):
135 - Chateau de Versailles tour
11 - pastry, quiche, aubergine
8 - store groceries
52 - apartment in Duroc
We didn't cycle out of Paris all the way to Versailles, which is what I initially thought we were going to do. Instead, we took an express train somewhere into the neighbourhood of Versailles, and picked up our bicycles from a little underground garage. Well, even with the shorter cycle to the Chateau, we would end up doing enough of the bicycle for the day. So at first we had breakfast at a nearby market, where the bakery had the most delicious Feuillette Jambon Fromage, which I think loosely means pastry with pork and cheese. I would bet a reasonable amount of money that it had lard plastered on the crust - that crust was so wonderfully browned and tasty. After getting lunch - I bought stewed eggplant with minced beef and a quiche - we headed out to the nearby gardens to the Chateau, as well as the grounds and apartments which lodged the royal mistress.
For the group's picnic lunch, we sat at a shaded spot along a huge canal, a cross shaped monstrosity of a canal. It was as far as the eye could see from the Chateau grounds and out over the canal, it was breathtaking. With lunch, some of us took a little nap, others chilled around and chatted. Unfortuntately, we couldn't get wine into the Chateau grounds. I went around the canal on the bicycle, and it took me twenty minutes, so it had to be two kilometres long by one wide. That was a lot of water for a canal. Our guides for the day said that it took half of France's total GDP to turn out that Chateau and its grounds, which is of course, completely insane. But that was France in the glory days under Louis XIV. Apparently, it needed more water than the city of Paris. Well, on the whole it didn't really commend itself to me, it was just too grandiose, too ostentatious, and to my mind, fairly unimaginative. Maybe I'm ignorant of its architects and artists, but to my amateur eye they don't seem to be of the calibre of the Florentines. Well, the citizens of Paris didn't take too fondly to all its trappings and comforts either, as they stormed it while Louis XV hid in it in 1789.
The tour was okay enough on the whole. I went back to the apartment for pasta with pesto, and decided to head out for a nice easy run before going to another jazz club. I hadn't run in two weeks! The evening was pretty inviting, a little cool and breezy. Well, I ended up running past some fields somewhere towards the river Seine, and some guys were playing touch rugby. They were short a man, so I asked to join and they were cool with it. So yeah, I had a lovely time playing. They were real rugby players as well. It was a beautiful rosy pink sunset evening, with the golden dome of the Musée de l'Armée behind us, and some of the heritage buildings around us, there was a good breeze, and the game was hard and friendly. It's beautiful, like the Padang, but more European.
I bought some moussaka at the store - eggplant, cheese, beef, tomato, etc. - potato and ham salad, and yoghurt with passionfruit, to heat up with the microwave in the apartment. Box wine as well, to round off supper. Well, that didn't have much soul in it, but it was okay. I got a big box of wine for six euro, and I'm going to try and drink enough to put a small dent in it. It was cheap, and from being in Australia, I know box wine is generally decent even if it seems really cheap.
Okay, gonna head to the Picasso museum and the Louvre tomorrow. The guides earlier today said that it was going to be crazy busy at the Louvre, and since it was open till nine forty-five pm, it was no point heading there early at nine am. Fair enough.
Well, I'm beat. I've really enjoyed all the apartments I've stayed in so far, so I'm definitely well in favour of the airbnb thing; since hotels would have been twice as expensive. It's nice to think of it now, but I've been rather fortunate on this trip so far. Well, goodnight, folks.
----
I spent (in EUR):
135 - Chateau de Versailles tour
11 - pastry, quiche, aubergine
8 - store groceries
52 - apartment in Duroc
CCXXXV - Paris, Lundi, 29 July 2019
Paris! It's such a relief to see a nice, clean city after Firenze. Looking back, Firenze felt really hemmed in, oddly laid out, tangled, and strangely claustrophobic. I mean, the old city has its charms, but maybe in the heat and the deluge of art to see, I missed the forest for the trees. Well, anyway, I'm glad to see Paris. Out here in the little neighbourhood of Duroc, the streets are nicely laid out, wide, the trees are friendly, it's not too hot, everything looks a little, well, cleaner, people sit out in restaurants and bars imbibing wine and having a brioche - it's all so inviting. I would later learn that I had dodged the Paris heat wave while I was in Italy. Well, it is what it is. And Paris has its charms, but you know, cities grow slowly on me.
I took a walk today after pasta at home - pasta was three kinds of store-bought ravioli and tortellini with pesto sauce. It was a beautiful day, the sun set at eight forty-five. It's still a little crazy to me, but since it wasn't too hot, it was pretty lovely. The apartment is an old two roomer on the seventh floor - it used to be servants' quarters. It was nice; I could see the Eiffel Tower and the Musée de l'Armée from the apartment. Since the day was so long, I went out. Walked past Notre Dame, and boy, it sure looks like it's missing something. All along the banks of the river Seine, people were sitting out, chilling, chatting, having drinks and food, totally relaxing. It was that kind of day. Well, I think the women of Rome are still more beautiful.
So along the river there were little restaurants, and at one of them, you could sit at a kerbside to listen to a little jazz bandstand. Well, they weren't so good, and the restaurant goers didn't really pay all that much attention to them. Still, it was nice sitting there in the shade, while cyclists, skaters and joggers breezed past, and children ran helter-skelter along the little road. Boy, it got a little warm again. Well, after that ended, I made it to a nice jazz bar, Sunset Sunrise, named perhaps after that crazy little jewish song. Well, the band they had tonight was fabulous. I would later learn from reading the program that a lot of bands came through Sunset, and most of the time, you'd have to pay like thirty euro to get in. I'm not sure if it came with a drink. Well, anyway tonight was free! and the music was great. Trumpet, guitar, double bass, piano, and a bunch of artists came by to get their jam on. Sitting where I was, I could see them come in and watch the band, and you know, they didn't all look too much like they could play, but boy, they could all play. It was really nice, I liked it a lot. I ordered a double Nikka from the barrel, and it was at least a triple. I drank and drank and drank for two hours and when I looked at my glass, it felt like I'd barely put a dent in it. Way too big for a double. In my mind, bartenders admire double orders, no rocks. And they should. Jazz and whiskey - it sounds like a cliche, but it was a beautiful night. I wished, as I often, often do, that there was a real jazz bar in Singapore, like good old Jazz at South Bridge, that moved and didn't survive. Well, I had to leave at midnight, as I was sloshed, and those guys looked like they wanted to keep the jam going.
Tomorrow is the cycle out to the Château de Versailles. Bonsoir!
----
I spent (in EUR):
128 - Air France from Firenze to Paris
3 - breakfast
27 - metro tickets
21.5 - supermarket groceries
26 - double Nikka
52 - apartment in Duroc
I took a walk today after pasta at home - pasta was three kinds of store-bought ravioli and tortellini with pesto sauce. It was a beautiful day, the sun set at eight forty-five. It's still a little crazy to me, but since it wasn't too hot, it was pretty lovely. The apartment is an old two roomer on the seventh floor - it used to be servants' quarters. It was nice; I could see the Eiffel Tower and the Musée de l'Armée from the apartment. Since the day was so long, I went out. Walked past Notre Dame, and boy, it sure looks like it's missing something. All along the banks of the river Seine, people were sitting out, chilling, chatting, having drinks and food, totally relaxing. It was that kind of day. Well, I think the women of Rome are still more beautiful.
So along the river there were little restaurants, and at one of them, you could sit at a kerbside to listen to a little jazz bandstand. Well, they weren't so good, and the restaurant goers didn't really pay all that much attention to them. Still, it was nice sitting there in the shade, while cyclists, skaters and joggers breezed past, and children ran helter-skelter along the little road. Boy, it got a little warm again. Well, after that ended, I made it to a nice jazz bar, Sunset Sunrise, named perhaps after that crazy little jewish song. Well, the band they had tonight was fabulous. I would later learn from reading the program that a lot of bands came through Sunset, and most of the time, you'd have to pay like thirty euro to get in. I'm not sure if it came with a drink. Well, anyway tonight was free! and the music was great. Trumpet, guitar, double bass, piano, and a bunch of artists came by to get their jam on. Sitting where I was, I could see them come in and watch the band, and you know, they didn't all look too much like they could play, but boy, they could all play. It was really nice, I liked it a lot. I ordered a double Nikka from the barrel, and it was at least a triple. I drank and drank and drank for two hours and when I looked at my glass, it felt like I'd barely put a dent in it. Way too big for a double. In my mind, bartenders admire double orders, no rocks. And they should. Jazz and whiskey - it sounds like a cliche, but it was a beautiful night. I wished, as I often, often do, that there was a real jazz bar in Singapore, like good old Jazz at South Bridge, that moved and didn't survive. Well, I had to leave at midnight, as I was sloshed, and those guys looked like they wanted to keep the jam going.
Tomorrow is the cycle out to the Château de Versailles. Bonsoir!
----
I spent (in EUR):
128 - Air France from Firenze to Paris
3 - breakfast
27 - metro tickets
21.5 - supermarket groceries
26 - double Nikka
52 - apartment in Duroc
Tuesday, August 13, 2019
CCXXXIV - Firenze, Domenica, 28 July 2019
The big camera I borrowed stopped working yesterday. It made me very annoyed. Three museums to see today, the Louvre and the Musee d'Orsay next week. I don't know what to say. I tried to search YouTube for ways to fix it, but naturally, it was beyond me. So I am now in a bad mood.
Well, allora. Luckily, the phone camera isn't terrible, although it is slow to focus. So I will have to get on with it and appreciate the stuff a bit more in person - which is probably the whole point anyway. I suppose I can just buy a book of the art if I wanted something to remember. Well, it is what it is. Still annoyed, though.
I had a moment midway through the second museum today, the Uffizi, where I honestly started getting a bit short of breath, a bit woozy. That museum is enormous, and the memory of it now is daunting. Of course, over this trip I've had to will myself to keep going a little, but right then I had a moment where I thought I was going to give up, at least after this one was over. Yeah, three museums today almost had me beat. Physically, and I don't really want to complain, my upper and lower back hurts, my neck is tired, most parts of my legs are a little achey from all the standing. Mentally, I'm just about stuffed to the gills with the art. Well, I had to keep going. They say that your brain naturally reverts to long, slow delta waves, even if you close your eyes for a minute - that's the sort of resting brain wave pattern that dominates in sleep, and which helps to reset the neurons and mental apparatus. Yeah, I managed to sit down and close my eyes for a while, and you know what, it helped. So I managed to gird myself a little and make it through the Uffizi, which is a really big museum. I probably didn't enjoy it as much as all the other museums, and I don't really have fond memories of it, which is a shame, but on the whole I still managed to see all of it. So that's ok, for me.
Well, I decided a did need a real break, so it was time for a good lunch. It turned out really well, actually. I ordered quattro formaggi spaghetti, but they mistook the order and pesto spaghetti came out. Well, it turned out well, because I noticed that they had a bistecca steak for twenty euro, and promptly changed my order. It was great. I got salad, cold meats, bread, and a five hundred gram t-bone steak - for the record, that was a big steak. Decided against a glass of wine, cos' I honestly didn't want to get too rosy before the last visit to the Palazzo Vecchio.
I liked the Vecchio; the lunch probably helped. There was a lot of the whole epic art murals, grand architecture and heroic sculptures. Not for the last time, I thought to myself, it's amazing how the old artists can be that good in different artistic fields. Like you think of Michelangelo, his painting, architectural works, and sculptures, and it just astounds, you know, like how much talent can one man have? Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Titian, Caravaggio, not to mention the countless other great Florentine and Venetian artists, and that's just the popular Italian guys. It's crazy how just good they were in Europe, the French, the Dutch, the Flemish, and so on. To see something in the flesh, to stand before the actual paintings and admire them, albeit inevitably restored here and there, it's so beautiful! So moving and emotional, so much depth and technique and artistic sensitivity. All the descriptions and analyses are unimportant; standing there and taking it in, reading the colours and strokes, the paintwork, the characters, the themes, messages and portrayed emotions, that's so much more enjoyable, so invigorating.
The Palazzo also had a tower, and that was lovely. It had a sheltered gallery area which offered all-round views of Firenze. As the sun was slowly hanging in the mid evening sky, and the wind puffed gently, I sat down on the stone benches and had a little nap. Boy, it was beautiful. It would have been spectacular if I've had waited until the sun actually set, as there were clouds girding the day, but that would have been an hour of hanging around, as the sun sets at like eight thirty. Anyway, I took my time there in the tower, which I'd probably love to visit again, honestly, then went down for some gelato and a view of the sunset from the bridges over the river Arno.
After that, back to the apartment. It's a really neat apartment actually, very classy and intelligent - there's a ton of books; it has Ai Weiwei and Honoré de Balzac, for heavens' sakes. I enjoyed the apartment, aside from knocking my head on a low beam. Well, I hope I'll get over the camera soon. Flying off to Paris tomorrow. Ciao, Italia. Arrivederci.
----
I spent (in EUR):
7 - breakfast
23 - Galleria dell'Accademia
21 - Galleria degli Uffizi
21 - steak lunch
18 - Palazzo Vecchio
4 - gelato
53 - apartment in Firenze
Well, allora. Luckily, the phone camera isn't terrible, although it is slow to focus. So I will have to get on with it and appreciate the stuff a bit more in person - which is probably the whole point anyway. I suppose I can just buy a book of the art if I wanted something to remember. Well, it is what it is. Still annoyed, though.
I had a moment midway through the second museum today, the Uffizi, where I honestly started getting a bit short of breath, a bit woozy. That museum is enormous, and the memory of it now is daunting. Of course, over this trip I've had to will myself to keep going a little, but right then I had a moment where I thought I was going to give up, at least after this one was over. Yeah, three museums today almost had me beat. Physically, and I don't really want to complain, my upper and lower back hurts, my neck is tired, most parts of my legs are a little achey from all the standing. Mentally, I'm just about stuffed to the gills with the art. Well, I had to keep going. They say that your brain naturally reverts to long, slow delta waves, even if you close your eyes for a minute - that's the sort of resting brain wave pattern that dominates in sleep, and which helps to reset the neurons and mental apparatus. Yeah, I managed to sit down and close my eyes for a while, and you know what, it helped. So I managed to gird myself a little and make it through the Uffizi, which is a really big museum. I probably didn't enjoy it as much as all the other museums, and I don't really have fond memories of it, which is a shame, but on the whole I still managed to see all of it. So that's ok, for me.
Well, I decided a did need a real break, so it was time for a good lunch. It turned out really well, actually. I ordered quattro formaggi spaghetti, but they mistook the order and pesto spaghetti came out. Well, it turned out well, because I noticed that they had a bistecca steak for twenty euro, and promptly changed my order. It was great. I got salad, cold meats, bread, and a five hundred gram t-bone steak - for the record, that was a big steak. Decided against a glass of wine, cos' I honestly didn't want to get too rosy before the last visit to the Palazzo Vecchio.
I liked the Vecchio; the lunch probably helped. There was a lot of the whole epic art murals, grand architecture and heroic sculptures. Not for the last time, I thought to myself, it's amazing how the old artists can be that good in different artistic fields. Like you think of Michelangelo, his painting, architectural works, and sculptures, and it just astounds, you know, like how much talent can one man have? Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Titian, Caravaggio, not to mention the countless other great Florentine and Venetian artists, and that's just the popular Italian guys. It's crazy how just good they were in Europe, the French, the Dutch, the Flemish, and so on. To see something in the flesh, to stand before the actual paintings and admire them, albeit inevitably restored here and there, it's so beautiful! So moving and emotional, so much depth and technique and artistic sensitivity. All the descriptions and analyses are unimportant; standing there and taking it in, reading the colours and strokes, the paintwork, the characters, the themes, messages and portrayed emotions, that's so much more enjoyable, so invigorating.
The Palazzo also had a tower, and that was lovely. It had a sheltered gallery area which offered all-round views of Firenze. As the sun was slowly hanging in the mid evening sky, and the wind puffed gently, I sat down on the stone benches and had a little nap. Boy, it was beautiful. It would have been spectacular if I've had waited until the sun actually set, as there were clouds girding the day, but that would have been an hour of hanging around, as the sun sets at like eight thirty. Anyway, I took my time there in the tower, which I'd probably love to visit again, honestly, then went down for some gelato and a view of the sunset from the bridges over the river Arno.
After that, back to the apartment. It's a really neat apartment actually, very classy and intelligent - there's a ton of books; it has Ai Weiwei and Honoré de Balzac, for heavens' sakes. I enjoyed the apartment, aside from knocking my head on a low beam. Well, I hope I'll get over the camera soon. Flying off to Paris tomorrow. Ciao, Italia. Arrivederci.
----
I spent (in EUR):
7 - breakfast
23 - Galleria dell'Accademia
21 - Galleria degli Uffizi
21 - steak lunch
18 - Palazzo Vecchio
4 - gelato
53 - apartment in Firenze
Monday, August 12, 2019
CCXXXIII - Firenze, Sabato, 27 July 2019
A beautiful week has passed out here. Well, it's no point being nostalgic; it's important to live in the present. So far, everything has gone just about as well as hoped for, and every day has been special. It has been wonderful. Yes, I have had to toil a little bit, but nothing that was truly worth complaining about. The trains, the moving between places, the roads, the daunting museums, it sometimes feels arduous, and I'm quite glad with my general positivity. Of course, I've also been fortunate on this trip; one thing in particular stands out - when intending to reverse, I accidentally stalled the car out just in time before my excess acceleration would have made me hit a parked van behind me. The manual car! I probably shouldn't have taken it, in hindsight. And on the whole, I've probably packed too many museums into this trip - which is fine doing solo, but not with companions. I've enjoyed the museums a whole lot though, and I've tried to place chill-out things to do in between.
Driving is fun; but it's tough to do so in Firenze. There are so many one way streets, packed-in buildings, and an odd circular laneway that runs around the city, with lots of tunnels and turnoffs so it is pretty hard to get a gauge of where to go and where to turn. Especially, driving right handed. The GPS I got on the car was also outdated, naturally, so it sometimes asked me to take one way streets the wrong way. I didn't much like the whole crowded feel I got in Firenze. I did get to meet a Norwegian family while queueing outside the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, a couple travelling with their boy. They said they see the auroras all the time from their place, and there's good hiking out where they stay. That's crazy. So I might plan a visit sometime; I've kept their contact.
Driving out to a farmhouse vineyard in Greve in Chianti was so much fun, I really enjoyed the whole experience being out there in the country. The winemakers were really nice, and they explained the winemaking that the grandfather started, and the olive gathering and pressing, and the vegetable garden. It rained a little bit while we were out there, but I still saw a bit of the earth, the cultivated hills, the whole rustic charm. Driving up and down the hills on winding paths was very fun. We had a little dinner as well, pasta, cold meats, and their wine, which unfortunately I couldn't bring with me. I would probably really enjoy being out there at harvest time, between August and October.
Well, I have to get to the Galleria dell'Accademia at eight fifteen am tomorrow. I don't remember why. To bed, then!
----
I spent (in EUR):
36 - car rental
7 - breakfast
17 - parking in Firenze
18 - Il Grande Museo del Duomo
3 - risotto for lunch
14 - tolls
23 - Greve in Chianti winemaker visit
30 - petrol
53 - apartment in Firenze
Driving is fun; but it's tough to do so in Firenze. There are so many one way streets, packed-in buildings, and an odd circular laneway that runs around the city, with lots of tunnels and turnoffs so it is pretty hard to get a gauge of where to go and where to turn. Especially, driving right handed. The GPS I got on the car was also outdated, naturally, so it sometimes asked me to take one way streets the wrong way. I didn't much like the whole crowded feel I got in Firenze. I did get to meet a Norwegian family while queueing outside the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, a couple travelling with their boy. They said they see the auroras all the time from their place, and there's good hiking out where they stay. That's crazy. So I might plan a visit sometime; I've kept their contact.
Driving out to a farmhouse vineyard in Greve in Chianti was so much fun, I really enjoyed the whole experience being out there in the country. The winemakers were really nice, and they explained the winemaking that the grandfather started, and the olive gathering and pressing, and the vegetable garden. It rained a little bit while we were out there, but I still saw a bit of the earth, the cultivated hills, the whole rustic charm. Driving up and down the hills on winding paths was very fun. We had a little dinner as well, pasta, cold meats, and their wine, which unfortunately I couldn't bring with me. I would probably really enjoy being out there at harvest time, between August and October.
Well, I have to get to the Galleria dell'Accademia at eight fifteen am tomorrow. I don't remember why. To bed, then!
----
I spent (in EUR):
36 - car rental
7 - breakfast
17 - parking in Firenze
18 - Il Grande Museo del Duomo
3 - risotto for lunch
14 - tolls
23 - Greve in Chianti winemaker visit
30 - petrol
53 - apartment in Firenze
CCXXXII - Monterosso, Venerdi, 26 July 2019
I was gassed out today. Paddling was great fun, it was a lovely clear summer day for it. The mild rocking made me a little seasick two hours in, but it was not too bad. Thankfully, we stopped after the first long leg for a picnic lunch at a little grotto along the rocky coast. It had a little waterfall, which was a treasure to stand under and get a little shower. Despite Julian, our guide's, cautions, I still managed to slip on it and fall on my bum. Snorkeling from that little spot was good fun as well, the water was cool, clear and refreshing, with light currents. The fish darted about in little pockets, seeking food amongst the brown sea-grass and moss, the little blighters. Julian was great, actually. He'd lived all over Italy, and was now in Monterosso along the Cinque Terre, so he told us a little about its ancient history, its terraces, and its hardy inhabitants that had build stone walls and hamlets here over five hundred years, rock by rock. And it was nice to listen to a local talk a little bit more about Italian history, his thoughts on the catholic church, and so on.
I met a couple of friends as well, a Londoner and a Frankfurter. They were both travelling alone too. The German had seven weeks away from work, imagine that! We got along really well, so we went off to have a gelato, a couple of beers, where they also gave us pickled olives and something like a salty pickled pea-sized fruit, and we had a seafood pasta dinner as well at a nice restaurant near the water. It was nice and balmy in the evening, so we went out for another dip in the water right around sunset. Ah, it was beautiful. It was good fun talking about about travelling with them, and a very nice evening to have company for dinner, and on the train back. Dinner was pretty good value too, for what we were served with. Naturally, we dodged the conductors.
I decided to skip the train interchange into Firenze tomorrow, and just park in a paid garage. The whole train changing thing is too tiresome. Well, I've had a long day. Ciao!
----
I spent (in EUR):
36 - car rental
2 - breakfast
100 - paddle tour in Monterosso
4 - gelato
15 - beers
20 - seafood pasta dinner
70 - apartment in Vernazza
I met a couple of friends as well, a Londoner and a Frankfurter. They were both travelling alone too. The German had seven weeks away from work, imagine that! We got along really well, so we went off to have a gelato, a couple of beers, where they also gave us pickled olives and something like a salty pickled pea-sized fruit, and we had a seafood pasta dinner as well at a nice restaurant near the water. It was nice and balmy in the evening, so we went out for another dip in the water right around sunset. Ah, it was beautiful. It was good fun talking about about travelling with them, and a very nice evening to have company for dinner, and on the train back. Dinner was pretty good value too, for what we were served with. Naturally, we dodged the conductors.
I decided to skip the train interchange into Firenze tomorrow, and just park in a paid garage. The whole train changing thing is too tiresome. Well, I've had a long day. Ciao!
----
I spent (in EUR):
36 - car rental
2 - breakfast
100 - paddle tour in Monterosso
4 - gelato
15 - beers
20 - seafood pasta dinner
70 - apartment in Vernazza
Sunday, August 11, 2019
CCXXXI - Vernazza, Giovedi, 25 July 2019
Driving today was quite fun - a bright sunny day, Italian radio stations, even the Scorpions' Winds of Change came on the radio. The GPS I had on the car got me on the expressways mostly, but I tried to take a couple of turnoffs to see some of the narrow country roads. It was nice to get off the expressway, but I didn't manage to do that much. I had a train to get on when I reached la Spezia, and the train would take the coastal track out to Vernazza. Again, it was a very hot day. I only managed to get into Vernazza at about 3 pm, after missing a train or two. It's so nice though, to see the ocean from a train, it always feels nostalgic.
The places where the sea meets the coastline here are generally rocky. They don't have the soft white faux beaches we do in Sentosa and the East Coast Park. So out here, it takes a lot more clambering and slipping around on large, wet rocks, most of which have cracked off and tumbled down the cliffsides, and once in awhile, slipping through the clear blue, salty water. Dodging the intense sun, I managed to find a couple of shady spots to sit and watch the ocean a little. The sun sets at like eight thirty pm, so at like seven pm it might as well be four pm; it's crazy. It was nice to have a breeze as well, to keep the land mosquitoes away. I had to tie my shirt around my head to cover it. That whole ocean watching thing, man, it gets old very, very slowly.
Vernazza is a smallish coast-side town. It used to be one of five shrines kept by ancient peoples on this coast, and later inhabitants hewed out terraces on the steep hills to grow grapes for wine. Well, in the modern day, the trains and the tourists keep this Cinque Terre region going. It's still fairly tidy, colourful, and vibrant. There was a festival to a Saint Giovanni Battista, i.e. John the Baptist, tonight in Monterosso, the neighbouring town, and where I would be paddling tomorrow. It had the most amazing fireworks display from the coastline, and it went on and on from eleven to midnight. Some of the fizzlers I'd not seen before, and it was terrifying because it was so close! Some of the fireworks bursts set off car alarms, and the crowd would gasp and shudder as the explosions rocked the sky. And right after the fireworks, there was a giant beach party with club music - it was awesome. I missed a train stop on the way back, and had to dodge a lady conductor at one thirty in the morning. Well, that was not so fun.
----
I spent: (in EUR):
20 - train from Verona to Firenze
36 - car rental
7 - breakfast, quiche, water
15 - expressway toll fees
6 - train from la Spezia to Vernazza
4 - pizza
4 - train from Vernazza to Monterosso
70 - apartment in Vernazza
The places where the sea meets the coastline here are generally rocky. They don't have the soft white faux beaches we do in Sentosa and the East Coast Park. So out here, it takes a lot more clambering and slipping around on large, wet rocks, most of which have cracked off and tumbled down the cliffsides, and once in awhile, slipping through the clear blue, salty water. Dodging the intense sun, I managed to find a couple of shady spots to sit and watch the ocean a little. The sun sets at like eight thirty pm, so at like seven pm it might as well be four pm; it's crazy. It was nice to have a breeze as well, to keep the land mosquitoes away. I had to tie my shirt around my head to cover it. That whole ocean watching thing, man, it gets old very, very slowly.
Vernazza is a smallish coast-side town. It used to be one of five shrines kept by ancient peoples on this coast, and later inhabitants hewed out terraces on the steep hills to grow grapes for wine. Well, in the modern day, the trains and the tourists keep this Cinque Terre region going. It's still fairly tidy, colourful, and vibrant. There was a festival to a Saint Giovanni Battista, i.e. John the Baptist, tonight in Monterosso, the neighbouring town, and where I would be paddling tomorrow. It had the most amazing fireworks display from the coastline, and it went on and on from eleven to midnight. Some of the fizzlers I'd not seen before, and it was terrifying because it was so close! Some of the fireworks bursts set off car alarms, and the crowd would gasp and shudder as the explosions rocked the sky. And right after the fireworks, there was a giant beach party with club music - it was awesome. I missed a train stop on the way back, and had to dodge a lady conductor at one thirty in the morning. Well, that was not so fun.
----
I spent: (in EUR):
20 - train from Verona to Firenze
36 - car rental
7 - breakfast, quiche, water
15 - expressway toll fees
6 - train from la Spezia to Vernazza
4 - pizza
4 - train from Vernazza to Monterosso
70 - apartment in Vernazza
CCXXX - Bologna, Mercoledi, 24 July 2019
It finally, finally feels like Italy. It's a combination of my kinda being out here on holiday long enough, and of kinda being able to relax since the whole day's program is more or less decided. And being out of the city, moving around and seeing the sights on the bus, it feels like I'm finally getting to know Italy. And what a day it's been, I couldn't be more thrilled with how this day has turned out. I'm pretty excited with the photos on the DSLR as well, I'd estimate most of them are usable.
The tour today took us to several places in the nearby Emilia-Bologna region. We went to a parmesan cheese making factory. It's incredible, they take the milk, boil it for awhile in large copper vats, and then basically use cloth nets to lift out huge, seventy kilogram blocks of cheese. Then they take those blocks, cut them in half, and slide them into rounded wheel containers, where they sit for a few weeks. It's nice how you just need milk and a parmesan cheese process, and the cheese basically makes itself. Those rows and rows of stacked cheese, like a Tom and Jerry cartoon episode, the smell of it is so rich and strong - sharp, salty and tasty. The cheese tasting we had after that went over well with the group, and the sweet, bubbly red wine was a big hit.
The next stop was a meat curing house - Prosciutto de Moderna, by Nina Gianfranco. I may not have eaten a whole lot of cured meat in my day, but god, that prosciutto was the best I've ever had. It's unreal how tasty and fragrant it is, not salty or overly porkish, just wonderfully tasty, delicate and soft. Those hindlegs! I took some home with me, but I'm not too sure where I'll get the meat sliced up.
Well, there's more after that. We went to a balsamic vinegar house - I mean, we call it vinegar, but really the Italian is Aceto Balsamico Naturale. Which is fine because all they do is they boil the grapes a little longer until the juice is very fruity and flavourful, kinda like a soft, sweet strong port. There was the fifteen and the thirty year aged versions, and the latter was very thick and wonderful. It goes well with gelato, naturally, but I didn't think it needed it, because it's wonderful by itself. It's pretty expensive for the thirty year one; there was even a one hundred and fifty year aged version, but it didn't have a price displayed. Well, I liked the flavour, but I didn't take any because it's pretty expensive (and deservedly so).
The Ferrari museum after that - well, it's all the old and fast cars. It's no secret, I love bikes more than cars. But this was still impressive, of course. The 2002 Enzo Ferrari is the coolest cat I've ever seen though, yes, cat. The Spider parked outside was nice too, curves and all. A test run on that baby, on normal streets, not the track, was a hundred and twenty euro for ten minutes. Well, I can't afford that, guys.
Finally, we had a long lunch at a country restaurant, Ca Bianca, the white house. It was very, very good. We had three types of pasta, including tiny tortellinis, all fresh and hand made. Then we had this incredibly soft, warm tissue sheet-like pastry with prosciutto on it - that was fabulous! I wish I'd asked what that pastry was. For the meat course, they brought out roast beef, which was delicious! I ate a lot of that. We also had desert, chocolate cake and ice cream I think, I can't remember, and coffee. There was plenty of food for the group, and we had a good long talk over lunch, with lots of good wine. I enjoyed the crap out of that. Our super cheerful tour guide, Andrea, mentioned that the price of lunch might have been about forty euro, which I think would have been good value.
That was a lovely tour. I really did enjoy having a few chats with an Italian, our guide Andrea. That was a nice thing to get out of my system - to kind of be, well, connected. And Andrea was warm and wonderful, like a jovial uncle who praises everything effusively. After the tour ended, I walked around the city centre a little bit, and some of the cathedrals. Bologna is nice. I would totally visit again, knowing a local or two. But I'd have to reconsider coming in Summer. Well, a drive to Vernazza tomorrow. Ciao!
----
I spent (in EUR):
160 - Ferrari and food tour
9 - prosciutto
1 - water
2.5 - lighted a candle, and donations
46 - apartment in Bologna
The tour today took us to several places in the nearby Emilia-Bologna region. We went to a parmesan cheese making factory. It's incredible, they take the milk, boil it for awhile in large copper vats, and then basically use cloth nets to lift out huge, seventy kilogram blocks of cheese. Then they take those blocks, cut them in half, and slide them into rounded wheel containers, where they sit for a few weeks. It's nice how you just need milk and a parmesan cheese process, and the cheese basically makes itself. Those rows and rows of stacked cheese, like a Tom and Jerry cartoon episode, the smell of it is so rich and strong - sharp, salty and tasty. The cheese tasting we had after that went over well with the group, and the sweet, bubbly red wine was a big hit.
The next stop was a meat curing house - Prosciutto de Moderna, by Nina Gianfranco. I may not have eaten a whole lot of cured meat in my day, but god, that prosciutto was the best I've ever had. It's unreal how tasty and fragrant it is, not salty or overly porkish, just wonderfully tasty, delicate and soft. Those hindlegs! I took some home with me, but I'm not too sure where I'll get the meat sliced up.
Well, there's more after that. We went to a balsamic vinegar house - I mean, we call it vinegar, but really the Italian is Aceto Balsamico Naturale. Which is fine because all they do is they boil the grapes a little longer until the juice is very fruity and flavourful, kinda like a soft, sweet strong port. There was the fifteen and the thirty year aged versions, and the latter was very thick and wonderful. It goes well with gelato, naturally, but I didn't think it needed it, because it's wonderful by itself. It's pretty expensive for the thirty year one; there was even a one hundred and fifty year aged version, but it didn't have a price displayed. Well, I liked the flavour, but I didn't take any because it's pretty expensive (and deservedly so).
The Ferrari museum after that - well, it's all the old and fast cars. It's no secret, I love bikes more than cars. But this was still impressive, of course. The 2002 Enzo Ferrari is the coolest cat I've ever seen though, yes, cat. The Spider parked outside was nice too, curves and all. A test run on that baby, on normal streets, not the track, was a hundred and twenty euro for ten minutes. Well, I can't afford that, guys.
Finally, we had a long lunch at a country restaurant, Ca Bianca, the white house. It was very, very good. We had three types of pasta, including tiny tortellinis, all fresh and hand made. Then we had this incredibly soft, warm tissue sheet-like pastry with prosciutto on it - that was fabulous! I wish I'd asked what that pastry was. For the meat course, they brought out roast beef, which was delicious! I ate a lot of that. We also had desert, chocolate cake and ice cream I think, I can't remember, and coffee. There was plenty of food for the group, and we had a good long talk over lunch, with lots of good wine. I enjoyed the crap out of that. Our super cheerful tour guide, Andrea, mentioned that the price of lunch might have been about forty euro, which I think would have been good value.
That was a lovely tour. I really did enjoy having a few chats with an Italian, our guide Andrea. That was a nice thing to get out of my system - to kind of be, well, connected. And Andrea was warm and wonderful, like a jovial uncle who praises everything effusively. After the tour ended, I walked around the city centre a little bit, and some of the cathedrals. Bologna is nice. I would totally visit again, knowing a local or two. But I'd have to reconsider coming in Summer. Well, a drive to Vernazza tomorrow. Ciao!
----
I spent (in EUR):
160 - Ferrari and food tour
9 - prosciutto
1 - water
2.5 - lighted a candle, and donations
46 - apartment in Bologna
Saturday, August 10, 2019
CCXXIX - Bologna, Martedi, 23 July 2019
I'm not going to lie, today was pretty tiring. Even though I didn't have too many places to actually visit, I was pretty gassed today, especially on the bus back from the Ducati factory. I'm lodged in a sort of converted attic space which leads to a small rooftop, and no kitchen, just a small makeshift pantry. There's an iron circular staircase which leads upstairs, and I've already managed to bump my head on it twice. It's a lovely space, but it's way, way too hot to be out there before nine pm. It's enough to bake, seriously. So I took a nap in between seven pm and nine pm. I generally revile taking naps - it totally ruins the rest of the day; I wake up groggy, a little disoriented, not quite hungry, and a bit restless. But it was what it was, honestly, it was way too hot to be out between when I got back, about three pm, and seven pm.
I took a short train ride in from Verona, and after dropping off the luggage, headed straight out to the Ducati factory and museum. It's an awesome place, it's like a giant, automated warehouse with rows of jigs, workbenches and automated drones. Everybody does a small job for no longer than forty-five minutes, otherwise they start to lose focus. They churn out six hundred bikes a day in the summer, fully tested, and with a zero point eight percent error rate - I'd hate to be the guy who screwed up assembling a bike by forgetting a washer or something. The bikes on display were astounding, fierce, beautiful racing machines. They just look fast, and devastating - and the classics look really cute actually. But when you take the seat of one of the monsters, it just feels radical, the throttle feels different in your hand when you roll it - slick and ready for real action. We saw Casey Stoner's bike, but not Rossi's, and so far, not Lorenzo's. Well, only the champs made it to the showroom, and Rossi never got used to the Ducati. Lorenzo showed promise on the Ducati, but of course, he took his talents to Honda. Well, they had the Kentucky Kid's bike out there. The aerodynamics they were working on, state of the art and all that - it was pretty fantastic. Gigi Dall'Igna, the team boss, was pretty proud of the work they did on those winglets.
Bologna is very much a university town, at least in the summer - they have the University of Bologna not far from the city centre. For quite a stretch between the university and the city centre, there are lots of bars, kebab stores, pizzerias, and the like. In the evening, the youthful crowds mill about, doing their thing, having a drink and a good chat. Up until eleven, it was still pretty warm and stuffy out there, but that didn't dampen the crowds' enthusiasm. It got a little bit rowdy, but on the whole, everybody was quite calm, no excess silliness. I had a dinner tonight at a nearby trattoria, pasta with parmesan, peas and tomatoes, some kind of braised barley with olives, and fried pork mincemeat patties with fried potatoes. It was alright, but not superb, okay for fifteen euro. Well, there were a few locals there. No complaints, but I might try something more obviously crowded next time. The Ferrari and food tour is tomorrow, well, I hope the weather is kind.
----
I spent (in EUR):
20 - train from Verona to Bologna
5 - bus
32 - Ducati tour
22 - store groceries
4 - doner kebab
3 - gelato
15 - trattoria dinner
46 - apartment in Bologna
I took a short train ride in from Verona, and after dropping off the luggage, headed straight out to the Ducati factory and museum. It's an awesome place, it's like a giant, automated warehouse with rows of jigs, workbenches and automated drones. Everybody does a small job for no longer than forty-five minutes, otherwise they start to lose focus. They churn out six hundred bikes a day in the summer, fully tested, and with a zero point eight percent error rate - I'd hate to be the guy who screwed up assembling a bike by forgetting a washer or something. The bikes on display were astounding, fierce, beautiful racing machines. They just look fast, and devastating - and the classics look really cute actually. But when you take the seat of one of the monsters, it just feels radical, the throttle feels different in your hand when you roll it - slick and ready for real action. We saw Casey Stoner's bike, but not Rossi's, and so far, not Lorenzo's. Well, only the champs made it to the showroom, and Rossi never got used to the Ducati. Lorenzo showed promise on the Ducati, but of course, he took his talents to Honda. Well, they had the Kentucky Kid's bike out there. The aerodynamics they were working on, state of the art and all that - it was pretty fantastic. Gigi Dall'Igna, the team boss, was pretty proud of the work they did on those winglets.
Bologna is very much a university town, at least in the summer - they have the University of Bologna not far from the city centre. For quite a stretch between the university and the city centre, there are lots of bars, kebab stores, pizzerias, and the like. In the evening, the youthful crowds mill about, doing their thing, having a drink and a good chat. Up until eleven, it was still pretty warm and stuffy out there, but that didn't dampen the crowds' enthusiasm. It got a little bit rowdy, but on the whole, everybody was quite calm, no excess silliness. I had a dinner tonight at a nearby trattoria, pasta with parmesan, peas and tomatoes, some kind of braised barley with olives, and fried pork mincemeat patties with fried potatoes. It was alright, but not superb, okay for fifteen euro. Well, there were a few locals there. No complaints, but I might try something more obviously crowded next time. The Ferrari and food tour is tomorrow, well, I hope the weather is kind.
----
I spent (in EUR):
20 - train from Verona to Bologna
5 - bus
32 - Ducati tour
22 - store groceries
4 - doner kebab
3 - gelato
15 - trattoria dinner
46 - apartment in Bologna
Friday, August 9, 2019
CCXXVIII - Verona, Lunedi, 22 July 2019
The trains were delayed heading out of Rome and into Firenze today. Thank goodness, by pure fortune, I had nothing on right after the train ride. So, no disaster, I hope my luck holds. Travelling went quite smoothly today, which was good because it was a real stinker of a scorching Monday in Verona. I finally scrounged together the three euro to buy some gelato in Verona, and it was delicious. Grappa and pistachio. In the intensely sweltering heat, the ice cream started running almost immediately. Well, I really enjoyed that. I'll tell you what else I enjoyed - going to the PAM supermarket and getting some sandwiches. Verona is a lovely city. Compared to Rome, it's cleaner, less hustley-bustley, and the buildings are little colour-blocked low-rise flats. It has nice back-streets, relatively well-lit and quiet, which makes for interesting meandering. I stayed slightly farther out, which is quite interesting, a bit like the quieter suburbs.
I'm not really fully convinced that the time has come to open up the wallet for a relatively pricier meal, nor do I think I have the patience to sit down and be fully committed to enjoying the relatively better fare. I'd rather be out there tramping! Luckily, there was not that much to go and see today. The next two days, in Bologna, should be relatively quiet as well. Then the coast - Vernazza, Monterosso, and then back to the museums again in Firenze and Paris, oh dread joys!
Knopfler was absolutely golden. He was in rich, rich form tonight, the last stop on the Europe leg for him on this Down the Road Wherever tour. Great tone and playing all round, it felt good being there. He spent a lot of time talking, actually. The mostly Italian crowd probably didn't get all his words, but they laughed at the wry, self-deprecating humour, and cheered when he said he was considering retirement, but that he loved this too much. I wish he'd played Telegraph Road, cos' I knew he wasn't playing Sultans of Swing, nor Brothers in Arms; but no big deal. He was superb tonight, cheerful, and all the feels came out for me. Romeo and Juliet! and Money for Nothing, and ending with the Geordie tune, Going Home: Theme of the Local Hero. I bade goodbye to Mark, for what felt like a last time, as he waved to the Verona crowd. Goodbye, Mark! I tell you what too, I really like the piano player, Jim Cox, who also played a bit of the accordion tonight.
----
I spent (in EUR):
60 - train from Rome to Verona
4 - bus tickets
8 - sandwiches, coffee and water
3 - gelato
177 - Mark Knopfler, Down the Road Wherever tour
53 - apartment in Verona
I'm not really fully convinced that the time has come to open up the wallet for a relatively pricier meal, nor do I think I have the patience to sit down and be fully committed to enjoying the relatively better fare. I'd rather be out there tramping! Luckily, there was not that much to go and see today. The next two days, in Bologna, should be relatively quiet as well. Then the coast - Vernazza, Monterosso, and then back to the museums again in Firenze and Paris, oh dread joys!
Knopfler was absolutely golden. He was in rich, rich form tonight, the last stop on the Europe leg for him on this Down the Road Wherever tour. Great tone and playing all round, it felt good being there. He spent a lot of time talking, actually. The mostly Italian crowd probably didn't get all his words, but they laughed at the wry, self-deprecating humour, and cheered when he said he was considering retirement, but that he loved this too much. I wish he'd played Telegraph Road, cos' I knew he wasn't playing Sultans of Swing, nor Brothers in Arms; but no big deal. He was superb tonight, cheerful, and all the feels came out for me. Romeo and Juliet! and Money for Nothing, and ending with the Geordie tune, Going Home: Theme of the Local Hero. I bade goodbye to Mark, for what felt like a last time, as he waved to the Verona crowd. Goodbye, Mark! I tell you what too, I really like the piano player, Jim Cox, who also played a bit of the accordion tonight.
----
I spent (in EUR):
60 - train from Rome to Verona
4 - bus tickets
8 - sandwiches, coffee and water
3 - gelato
177 - Mark Knopfler, Down the Road Wherever tour
53 - apartment in Verona
CCXXVII - Rome, Domenica, 21 July 2019
Domenica, the day of the Lord. Rome - what a city. Following the run of the river Tiber north, walls, foundations, arches and brickwork stand out from millenia past. I do not exaggerate; the parts of the Roman ruins still existing were themselves built on the foundations, sealed up in subterranean layers, of even more ancient peoples, the Etruscans, them of the bygone tongues and forgotten faiths. And the classical Roman architecture is absorbed and refashioned into the palaces and lavish buildings of those in power - artists, merchants, bankers, senators, military men, consuls, cardinals, popes and the like. With all the numbers at play, thousands and centuries beyond count, to me it starts to become just another set of numbers to mark off; without historical narrative, without being steeped in the proper context, and time to place it all, it's hard to draw the all important threads of history, of the develop of series of events, of the flows of power and fortune. Well, the narratives that survive were paid for by the once-great houses, and naturally, the artists pay generous homage to their patrons.
Boy, what a city. It's bursting at the historical seams. It's a small shame that its inhabitants don't do something about the trash and traffic, at least during the summer, tourist-filled months, but, what can you do. Perhaps I'm too used to things back home, relatively well-spaced out, regular, cleaned-up. Rome is so historic, but so unkempt. The airport, and the train from the airport to Rome were pretty underwhelming, and it makes a difference in terms of a visitor's impression.
The buses - I did not do well on the buses today. The less that is said about that, the better, I think. I did the Palazzo Barberini, the Galleria Borghese, and the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art. Trust me, three in a day is plenty, and it was a hot time of it as well. Pure, straight summer heart, walking through a nice park around the Borghese as well. Well, having said that, the museums were all wonderful. I felt like Heaven opened a little at the Barberini. All this art from five hundred years ago, it's almost too much to behold. I overheard a little about the Borghese-s being a bunch of dirty, thieving power brokers, which of course, shouldn't surprise anyone. Well, you've got to have wealthy patrons if you want to be a painter, I suppose. I read that Michelangelo was reluctant to re-work St. Peter's Basilica, finish up the designs and all that, because, yeah of course he was busy with all the things people wanted of him, but anyway he decided to work on it out of devotion to his faith. I suppose the whole moral dilemma of choosing your patrons' commissions, bearing in mind their manner of dealings and moral bent, well, one had to be a bit careful.
Thank God I did the relatively difficult one, the Borghese, in between two relatively more relaxed places. The Borghese gives you two hours to visit, and it's a flat out sprint. It's not a very big museum, it's two stories, right, but it's packed full of art - to the extent that they don't have wall space to put placards with the name and description; rather, they have laminated posters on a self-service stand which set out the whole room's works. It's crazy, it just packed wall to wall. And they don't allow picture taking, which is fine, of course; it cuts out the huge crowds holding up space around the famous marble statues. Those were fabulous, by the way, the reclining Venus by Canova, the depression in the bed made by her feet was just fabulous. Not taking photos is great for forcing you to be in the moment, to use the eyes and the brain. So often people just say oh! and take a photo and move on. It's mind boggling to think back on it. I mean, it's so much better in the actual! take your photo, but at least stand there and look at the thing; god! And having to pay attention, I noticed a painting that looked vaguely like it had Mona Lisa's smile, and it turns out it was a copy of a painting by Leonardo da Vinci, Leda and the Swan. The actual painting is lost, but in those days, copies were made by really good artists as well, all the top guys made copies and draughts of each others' work. It had that same-ish engimatic, maternal and mirthful smile; it had "it". Then there were the Caravaggios, the Raphael, all the wonderful, flesh-like marble: flesh and bones, garments, crowns, sceptres and instruments of war, the beautiful arms and torsoes of goddesses and heroines, it made me imagine whether the David is just pretending to be frozen - at night he relaxes the pose, goes over to the room with the Venus and they do their classical lovemaking. How do you sculpt like that? It's impossible - knowing when to hew and when to shave, leaving enough to see the sinews and veins, robes and hair. Sculptors must be crazy in the head, they must dream all day of creating people, of carving men and women out of indelible rock.
I feel like I can do Rome like this, this hard, really only once. I don't think anyone would put their faith in me again if I put them through these paces. I'm not sure I trust my own planning instincts. Still, as long as I'm not feeling grumpy, things are going really well. It's easier being by myself, as long as I'm not grumpy, there's literally nothing else and nobody else to worry about. By Jove, I'm having a great time. Well, ok, that's all for today.
----
I spent (in EUR):
4.50 - bus tickets
14 - Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini
8 - paninis
14 - Galleria Borghese
3 - two postcards, Judith beheads Holofernes, by Caravaggio
10 - Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna E Contemporanea
6 - store groceries
56 - apartment in Trastevere
----
I spent (in EUR):
4.50 - bus tickets
14 - Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini
8 - paninis
14 - Galleria Borghese
3 - two postcards, Judith beheads Holofernes, by Caravaggio
10 - Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna E Contemporanea
6 - store groceries
56 - apartment in Trastevere
Wednesday, August 7, 2019
CCXXVI - Rome, Sabato, 20 July 2019
The Vatican was wonderful, of course, once I had managed to stow my luggage away in their cloakroom. I love museums. I kinda felt that the Vatican Museum's paintings were a little underwhelming - at least in terms of the types of paintings that I generally know and love. These ones today were a little more, well not antiquated, but more renaissance style, more pre-classical. Of course, the Vatican has that whole unimpeachable city-state thing going, its lovely buildings, even some cuneiform script artifacts and Grecian dark pottery in its inventory, which I was so thrilled to see in person for the first time; and it had that wondrous gem of the Sistine Chapel. It's simply astonishing, I don't know, it's unrivaled, the whole Michelangelo thing; it's beautiful, ceiling to ceiling. The latin script of the paintings - it kills me that I can only read little parts of it. I see the word Temptatio, now a painting with Christ standing at the rooftop of a palace, and an old, cloaked man standing next to him, now gesturing towards and the ground beneath them, and it makes sense. Then another portion, the old man points at stones, feed yourself, you Christ! The Sistine Chapel - just to say those words, I feel a sense of awe, reverence, and emotion. I tell you what, though, it gets really tiring staring upwards at a ceiling.
My absolutely favourite was St. Peter's Basilica - it was grandiose; such great halls and ceilings, packed with scenes, figures, saints, angels, demons, all characters. The whole TV ES PETRVS ET SVPER HANC PETRAM, it's so lovely, what a sight. And it was not too crowded, after the whole menagerie of a crowd that was in the Vatican Musems and the Sistine Chapel - I especially liked that. Leaning against a marble wall, considering the whole of the church; yes, it would have been a nice moment to have with a friend.
I'm not going to beat around the bush here - Rome has totally amazingly beautiful women. Just stunning, beautiful women, it's unbelievable. And the men they walk with, effing hillbillies. These are some seriously smoking women.
Well, I've boiled some store-bought ravioli in tomato pasta sauce for dinner today, It was very nice, actually, if a little hastily cooked. Oh and I learnt that the italian word for eggplant is melanzana. Ah, isn't it beautiful. Well, I've got many museums to see tomorrow, and the luggage is now firmly stowed in the apartment. It's going to be a real treat.
----
I spent (in EUR):
1 - train station toilet
8 - train ticket to Trastevere
12 - cab to the Vatican
21 - Vatican Musems and Sistine Chapel
11 - panini sandwich, coffee and water
28 - St Peter's Basilica, including climb to the cupola
10 - cab to Trastevere
25 - supermarket groceries
56 - apartment in Trastevere
CCXXV - Flying out, Venerdi, 19 July 2019
I got up at the exact time of seven fifteen this morning, by myself, which gives you a sense of the kind of day it was going to be. I don't want to say that some days it's a wrestle to get ready and head out, but at least for today, there was a sort of expectancy in the air. At the same time, it's a travel day, and boy, oh boy, I hate travelling. I suppose one can hardly complain when it takes only sixteen hours to step off the plane some ten thousand kilometers away, without having to contend, as in days past, with rocking and swaying below decks, stale food, dank water, leg irons, perhaps, and all that sort of unpleasantness. But anyway. I packed well enough in the carry-on for the flight this time, so it wasn't so bad.
On the flight to Rome; I am excited. There's no mistake about it. At the same time, I feel like it is a little, well, not unseemly, but not quite altogether, a little careless, perhaps, to be too excited right now. In that sense, I am reserving a little level-headedness, a little healthy skepticism about being out here on total holiday; managing the expectations, in a way. Yes, I believe it's going to be beautiful, and I'm going to have a lovely time - but I want to be appreciative, I suppose, rather than exuberant, or absolutely carefree. I'm not sure what I'm driving at. In a sense, I feel that when one travels, being alone almost compels you to be a little more guarded, a little more reserved. In another sense, I feel that I will miss seeing my friend for a short while. We had a cheerful little coffee today, and she was feeling better.
Everything's sort of scheduled, so that's something off my mind. I don't have anything that looks like it could be a concern, so I suppose it's the usual travel caveats and mental precautions. Have to keep the guard up until it's safe-ish. I suppose, on the whole, the thing I'm mostly aiming for is to be relaxed when I'm out here, and I don't think I'll have a sense for it until I get off the plane and all that. The museums and all that sort of sacred places should be marvellous, and hopefully the accommodations will feel homely enough. If those two things are alright, then the rest of it will probably be a bonus. And I am looking forward to Knopfler. I hope of course to be pleasantly surprised by the food, and the weather, and the charms of each city.
I had a little shortlist of two books to bring with me on this trip - Frank Deford and Jorge Luis Borges. The Deford sportswriting is naturally easier on the eye, more charming to read, a little lighter entertainment. Well, as you can imagine, I took Borges. He's, how do you say, he's like Paco de Lucia, Vladimir Horowitz, Titian - he's the best. From the foreword to his Historia Universal de la Infamia (1935):
I spent (in EUR):
329 - flight on Etihad Airways from Singapore to Rome, stopping over in Abu Dhabi
On the flight to Rome; I am excited. There's no mistake about it. At the same time, I feel like it is a little, well, not unseemly, but not quite altogether, a little careless, perhaps, to be too excited right now. In that sense, I am reserving a little level-headedness, a little healthy skepticism about being out here on total holiday; managing the expectations, in a way. Yes, I believe it's going to be beautiful, and I'm going to have a lovely time - but I want to be appreciative, I suppose, rather than exuberant, or absolutely carefree. I'm not sure what I'm driving at. In a sense, I feel that when one travels, being alone almost compels you to be a little more guarded, a little more reserved. In another sense, I feel that I will miss seeing my friend for a short while. We had a cheerful little coffee today, and she was feeling better.
Everything's sort of scheduled, so that's something off my mind. I don't have anything that looks like it could be a concern, so I suppose it's the usual travel caveats and mental precautions. Have to keep the guard up until it's safe-ish. I suppose, on the whole, the thing I'm mostly aiming for is to be relaxed when I'm out here, and I don't think I'll have a sense for it until I get off the plane and all that. The museums and all that sort of sacred places should be marvellous, and hopefully the accommodations will feel homely enough. If those two things are alright, then the rest of it will probably be a bonus. And I am looking forward to Knopfler. I hope of course to be pleasantly surprised by the food, and the weather, and the charms of each city.
I had a little shortlist of two books to bring with me on this trip - Frank Deford and Jorge Luis Borges. The Deford sportswriting is naturally easier on the eye, more charming to read, a little lighter entertainment. Well, as you can imagine, I took Borges. He's, how do you say, he's like Paco de Lucia, Vladimir Horowitz, Titian - he's the best. From the foreword to his Historia Universal de la Infamia (1935):
"The essential characteristic of the universe is its emptiness. They are certainly correct with respect to the tiny part of the universe that is this book."----
I spent (in EUR):
329 - flight on Etihad Airways from Singapore to Rome, stopping over in Abu Dhabi
Monday, July 8, 2019
CCXXIV - a new hope
Two hundred and twenty four. It's nice to say it, it has a nice cadence to it. Everyone wants a nice round number to hang their hat on, but when you're writing the good write against nothing of historical record to speak of, two hundred and twenty four seems like a good deal of a number. It's a lot of posts, a lot of words here and there. I don't feel like I've arrived, when I think of this number, but I feel like I'm far, far away from when I first started walking. That's the trick to it, isn't it? Putting one foot in front of the other, you get somewhere eventually. Leaving is brave, isn't it? I think the excitement of entering a different world, the joy of moving forward, being anew in the sense of stepping fresh into a new world, casts out my fear. Moving makes me feel safe. It always has.
As for moving, I think the theory is that we all live in a space-time reality, so if we don't move in Cartesian, three-dimensional space, we still "move" at the speed of light on the fourth, i.e. time axis (see: link). So imagine it as you, sitting there, warping1 ahead in time (it forms a weird little graph, fourth dimensional, can't be pictured - think melded toroids, past and future cones of information, etc.). The theory goes that the faster you move in reality, the slower you project on the time scale - since the speed of light in space-time is always constant, it acts as a limit by forcing time to vary; see: link. Well, imagine that. I once daydreamed, in a primary school Chinese class, that everybody had their own little time bubble - you could add hours if you wanted, or less, to your own bubble, but you had to sync with someone before you could be with them. It was a translucent green bubble in my mind, I think you used a sort of watch to set it. So it's interesting, years and years later, to find out that everybody has, not only a subjective (which is to say, individualistic) sense of time passing, but that time passes differently if you move at different speeds. Imagine that2. Sure, it's on a scale of 10 to the minus bajillion, but it makes a solid, physical difference (as the clocks on space satellites show). And if you kinda step a little bit further back, everyone kinda sets their own schedules in life anyway. An hour here, an hour there. Messages waiting to be read later on. We're worlds apart here, that's what I'm trying to tell you. Time is essentially, necessarily, dogmatically, enigmatic. We have conventional ways to deal with it, one moment to another3, and abstractly theoretical ways to represent it4, but that's about all we can say.
1 The metaphors are regrettably mixed - "warping" is a sometime reference to a sort of space-time skip, like the concept of a "worm-hole" connecting two parts of the fabric, rather than a smooth transition; but the streams aren't crossed (classic ghostbusters reference).
2 Can you imagine what real time passing is like? If I could paraphrase Borges, time is not necessarily an infinite line; it could be a finite line with infinite points in between, each of which is neverending and inconceivable.
3 A moment - what a shorthand! The audacity - to transmogrify the passing present into a brief amount of time.
4 It is posited that the shortest meaningful quantum of time is the Planck unit for time, i.e. the time it takes for light to move one effing Planck length in a vacuum. It's short, really short - in the sense that we cannot predict what happens on a scale shorter than that - none of our crazy theories work (see link).
I was thinking to myself, the other day, that I haven't written anything for so long. Haven't done any real writing for so long. It's one of those things that bugs you, isn't it? Beating on, rafts against the tide. Every week passes like the next, you run out of ketchup and buy another bottle. Clean the floor trap, turn on the vacuum machine, spray chain lubricant for the bike. Take grandma and the kids out to lunch, run in the afternoon, fry an egg with tomatoes. I mean, what is this? Faded, lime green table walls, office keyboards, browsing the phone in the toilet, eyes firmly on paper during meetings. What fills life with joy, when is it the time when leaving turns vital? How can I only be living between the spaces, the interstices pre/post the commute? No, no, no. Time can't weigh so heavily. A plan must be had. (Attenborough's voice: it is had).
I made a friend recently. She finds me funny. I think we're going to be alright. How do you describe feeling fond for a woman? A sense of pervading desire. I was thinking the other day of how to describe what "love" means. A self-centred desire to own something about one you love - it's a needy thing - chiefly, time and physical space, inner, secret space, suppleness, tenderness, warm scents and soft textures, coupled with a dream, an idealised future together, of what is possible, what is at hand, the appearance and form of a man and his good wife, handling the world together, forgoing other sources of fulfillment (and to the envy of all, delicious). That idealised thing is a sort of trap, one begins to suspect, self illusionment. It's not pessimism talking, it's a knowledge that idealism is always fraught with something. It carries you away. Learning to live in satisfaction with the present as it presents itself, reality per se, is a real sense of joy, plain as it is. But to give up the self-sustaining notion is also a part of the deal, to give away time spent in contemplation, a relationship one has, inner self to the world. I am afraid, I think, of being tired. In Chinese, 倦了. It's my deepest bête noire, I've always known it, the dark beast, as it knows me, as it is me. Well, we'll see. Yeah, I believe we're going to be alright.
As for moving, I think the theory is that we all live in a space-time reality, so if we don't move in Cartesian, three-dimensional space, we still "move" at the speed of light on the fourth, i.e. time axis (see: link). So imagine it as you, sitting there, warping1 ahead in time (it forms a weird little graph, fourth dimensional, can't be pictured - think melded toroids, past and future cones of information, etc.). The theory goes that the faster you move in reality, the slower you project on the time scale - since the speed of light in space-time is always constant, it acts as a limit by forcing time to vary; see: link. Well, imagine that. I once daydreamed, in a primary school Chinese class, that everybody had their own little time bubble - you could add hours if you wanted, or less, to your own bubble, but you had to sync with someone before you could be with them. It was a translucent green bubble in my mind, I think you used a sort of watch to set it. So it's interesting, years and years later, to find out that everybody has, not only a subjective (which is to say, individualistic) sense of time passing, but that time passes differently if you move at different speeds. Imagine that2. Sure, it's on a scale of 10 to the minus bajillion, but it makes a solid, physical difference (as the clocks on space satellites show). And if you kinda step a little bit further back, everyone kinda sets their own schedules in life anyway. An hour here, an hour there. Messages waiting to be read later on. We're worlds apart here, that's what I'm trying to tell you. Time is essentially, necessarily, dogmatically, enigmatic. We have conventional ways to deal with it, one moment to another3, and abstractly theoretical ways to represent it4, but that's about all we can say.
1 The metaphors are regrettably mixed - "warping" is a sometime reference to a sort of space-time skip, like the concept of a "worm-hole" connecting two parts of the fabric, rather than a smooth transition; but the streams aren't crossed (classic ghostbusters reference).
2 Can you imagine what real time passing is like? If I could paraphrase Borges, time is not necessarily an infinite line; it could be a finite line with infinite points in between, each of which is neverending and inconceivable.
3 A moment - what a shorthand! The audacity - to transmogrify the passing present into a brief amount of time.
4 It is posited that the shortest meaningful quantum of time is the Planck unit for time, i.e. the time it takes for light to move one effing Planck length in a vacuum. It's short, really short - in the sense that we cannot predict what happens on a scale shorter than that - none of our crazy theories work (see link).
I was thinking to myself, the other day, that I haven't written anything for so long. Haven't done any real writing for so long. It's one of those things that bugs you, isn't it? Beating on, rafts against the tide. Every week passes like the next, you run out of ketchup and buy another bottle. Clean the floor trap, turn on the vacuum machine, spray chain lubricant for the bike. Take grandma and the kids out to lunch, run in the afternoon, fry an egg with tomatoes. I mean, what is this? Faded, lime green table walls, office keyboards, browsing the phone in the toilet, eyes firmly on paper during meetings. What fills life with joy, when is it the time when leaving turns vital? How can I only be living between the spaces, the interstices pre/post the commute? No, no, no. Time can't weigh so heavily. A plan must be had. (Attenborough's voice: it is had).
I made a friend recently. She finds me funny. I think we're going to be alright. How do you describe feeling fond for a woman? A sense of pervading desire. I was thinking the other day of how to describe what "love" means. A self-centred desire to own something about one you love - it's a needy thing - chiefly, time and physical space, inner, secret space, suppleness, tenderness, warm scents and soft textures, coupled with a dream, an idealised future together, of what is possible, what is at hand, the appearance and form of a man and his good wife, handling the world together, forgoing other sources of fulfillment (and to the envy of all, delicious). That idealised thing is a sort of trap, one begins to suspect, self illusionment. It's not pessimism talking, it's a knowledge that idealism is always fraught with something. It carries you away. Learning to live in satisfaction with the present as it presents itself, reality per se, is a real sense of joy, plain as it is. But to give up the self-sustaining notion is also a part of the deal, to give away time spent in contemplation, a relationship one has, inner self to the world. I am afraid, I think, of being tired. In Chinese, 倦了. It's my deepest bête noire, I've always known it, the dark beast, as it knows me, as it is me. Well, we'll see. Yeah, I believe we're going to be alright.
Sunday, April 7, 2019
CCXXIII - taking after Wesley
What is the nature of faith, and is it something which is properly exercised by man, or is it something which is prompted by the spirit of God? I have long wondered after these questions. For you see, the questions navigate a riddle of individual choice and divine election.
There are verses which state that grace is the gift of God; I do not think that the verses place faith as the gift of God (reader, bear with me as I draw a distinction between grace and faith). In Ephesians: For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. That seems to me to stand squarely with the explanation in Hebrews: that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Yes, things hoped for - hoped for by man. I have heard a preacher comment, in passing, that the spirit of God might hover over a man, in analogy as the spirit of God hovered over the waters, on the formless earth. It is a poetic case.
So it seems to go like this: one hears the message, one examines the intellectual case, and finding it incomplete, perhaps foolish, yet one might come to choose faith - confessing and believing, thereafter one is filled with the spirit, and one knows the love of God. In Corinthians: Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
I think this faith simpliciter is properly exercised by man; and, reserving room for the omniscience and sovereignty of God, I do not think faith is in any way animated by the machinations of the spirit of God. Were it not the case, I would regard that as being unfair - in the sense that choice means something. Who could resist choosing, were faith sprung by the spirit? As I see it, choice, meaningful choice, as we intellectually understand choice, is enshrined in the word, a zeroth law. In Genesis: Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness. In Deuteronomy: See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil ... therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live. I would not accept that one cannot choose to reject the spirit, even at this time. In Luke: Et noluistis. In Isaiah: I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people, which walketh in a way that was not good, after their own thoughts.
Now, this is not to be taken as any argument for the glorification of choice, no. Righteousness by faith, and not by works - indeed, choice comprising faith. It is silly to say that the exercise of choice takes away from glory of divine salvation. So the spirit, coming to man after choosing faith, brings knowledge of God the father, and shows his love.
With such sight1 2, with love at hand, faith is no longer needed, as Reverend Wesley argues: all the glory of faith before it is done away which arises hence, that it ministers to love. It is the great temporary means by which God has ordained to promote that eternal end. ... And it was only when love was lost by sin that faith was added, not for its own sake, nor with any design that it should exist any longer than until it had answered the end for which it was ordained - namely, to restore man to the love from which he was fallen. (The Law Established Through Faith, 1750) That sits well with Corinthians: And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. And further in James: Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. This seems to me to run alongside the proposition that faith is man's choice; faith being the means to the ends of love. After choosing faith, we find ourselves compelled by love. The spirit gives proximity, but only after acceptance. Can love be spurned? Surely! Hence I argue, faith is our own. Being drawn to God by volition, and not by the spirit, the sanctity of choice is preserved.
1 Wesley: Love is the end, the sole end, of every dispensation of God, from the beginning of the world to the consummation of all things. And it will endure when heaven and earth flee away; for "love" alone "never faileth." Faith will totally fail; it will be swallowed up in sight, in the everlasting vision of God.
2 In Corinthians: For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. .... For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
In other words, this argument is for emphasis to be shifted properly from faith to love, to characterise Christian Faith instead as faith and Christian Love; all of it being called, Grace. Seen in that light, it does the sovereignty of God's grace no disservice to say that this rather meagre proposition of faith is exercised strictly by man's choice. I take this view. To the patient sceptic, it may seem duplicitous to exchange terms this way, to replace something fancied, such as faith, with something corporeal, such as love, but I would say in response to such a charge that this love forever remains vulnerable to doubt - doubt of the invisible. Yet is not doubt something which all loves must in time endure, even of the invisible? Returning now, I feel it in my soul, in my following after Christ in all these years - by faith I opened a door. In Revelations: Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
========
NB. This exercise, in which I have tried to set out the plan of the bible, in single words, has prefigured the foregoing discourse. Words in italics represent the actions properly attributable to man.
beginning
creation
proximity
warning
disobedience
expulsion
death
covenant
faith
righteousness
slavery
cry
deliverance
law
temple
commandments
choice
violation
ordinances
neglect
promised land
conquer
kings
tyranny
idolatry
prophets
stubbornness
judges
wickedness
subjugation
remnant
return
messiah
sacrifice
grace
confess
believe
faith
salvation
justification
spirit
truth
know
love
obedience
sanctification
restoration
There are verses which state that grace is the gift of God; I do not think that the verses place faith as the gift of God (reader, bear with me as I draw a distinction between grace and faith). In Ephesians: For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. That seems to me to stand squarely with the explanation in Hebrews: that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Yes, things hoped for - hoped for by man. I have heard a preacher comment, in passing, that the spirit of God might hover over a man, in analogy as the spirit of God hovered over the waters, on the formless earth. It is a poetic case.
So it seems to go like this: one hears the message, one examines the intellectual case, and finding it incomplete, perhaps foolish, yet one might come to choose faith - confessing and believing, thereafter one is filled with the spirit, and one knows the love of God. In Corinthians: Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
I think this faith simpliciter is properly exercised by man; and, reserving room for the omniscience and sovereignty of God, I do not think faith is in any way animated by the machinations of the spirit of God. Were it not the case, I would regard that as being unfair - in the sense that choice means something. Who could resist choosing, were faith sprung by the spirit? As I see it, choice, meaningful choice, as we intellectually understand choice, is enshrined in the word, a zeroth law. In Genesis: Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness. In Deuteronomy: See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil ... therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live. I would not accept that one cannot choose to reject the spirit, even at this time. In Luke: Et noluistis. In Isaiah: I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people, which walketh in a way that was not good, after their own thoughts.
Now, this is not to be taken as any argument for the glorification of choice, no. Righteousness by faith, and not by works - indeed, choice comprising faith. It is silly to say that the exercise of choice takes away from glory of divine salvation. So the spirit, coming to man after choosing faith, brings knowledge of God the father, and shows his love.
With such sight1 2, with love at hand, faith is no longer needed, as Reverend Wesley argues: all the glory of faith before it is done away which arises hence, that it ministers to love. It is the great temporary means by which God has ordained to promote that eternal end. ... And it was only when love was lost by sin that faith was added, not for its own sake, nor with any design that it should exist any longer than until it had answered the end for which it was ordained - namely, to restore man to the love from which he was fallen. (The Law Established Through Faith, 1750) That sits well with Corinthians: And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. And further in James: Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. This seems to me to run alongside the proposition that faith is man's choice; faith being the means to the ends of love. After choosing faith, we find ourselves compelled by love. The spirit gives proximity, but only after acceptance. Can love be spurned? Surely! Hence I argue, faith is our own. Being drawn to God by volition, and not by the spirit, the sanctity of choice is preserved.
1 Wesley: Love is the end, the sole end, of every dispensation of God, from the beginning of the world to the consummation of all things. And it will endure when heaven and earth flee away; for "love" alone "never faileth." Faith will totally fail; it will be swallowed up in sight, in the everlasting vision of God.
2 In Corinthians: For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. .... For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
In other words, this argument is for emphasis to be shifted properly from faith to love, to characterise Christian Faith instead as faith and Christian Love; all of it being called, Grace. Seen in that light, it does the sovereignty of God's grace no disservice to say that this rather meagre proposition of faith is exercised strictly by man's choice. I take this view. To the patient sceptic, it may seem duplicitous to exchange terms this way, to replace something fancied, such as faith, with something corporeal, such as love, but I would say in response to such a charge that this love forever remains vulnerable to doubt - doubt of the invisible. Yet is not doubt something which all loves must in time endure, even of the invisible? Returning now, I feel it in my soul, in my following after Christ in all these years - by faith I opened a door. In Revelations: Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
========
NB. This exercise, in which I have tried to set out the plan of the bible, in single words, has prefigured the foregoing discourse. Words in italics represent the actions properly attributable to man.
beginning
creation
proximity
warning
disobedience
expulsion
death
covenant
faith
righteousness
slavery
cry
deliverance
law
temple
commandments
choice
violation
ordinances
neglect
promised land
conquer
kings
tyranny
idolatry
prophets
stubbornness
judges
wickedness
subjugation
remnant
return
messiah
sacrifice
grace
confess
believe
faith
salvation
justification
spirit
truth
know
love
obedience
sanctification
restoration
Friday, April 5, 2019
CCXXXII - a treatise of my being old
I have been thinking lately about what it means to get older, how I am getting older. To be specific, I have been thinking about the difference, which is a bit of a stark way to put it, between myself as I am now and myself as a younger man, coming of age. I've been reading a little of John Updike's collected works, starting with the volume of his earlier stories, as a promise to myself which has been standing for about half a year. The earlier stories he writes are typically about a male character, having either a wife or taking a fancy in someone. The male character is usually not fully composed, I would say a little self-centred, having some airs but not quite conceited, lacking a little self-control without being impulsive, judgmental in terms of social class and appearance, even a little snobbish, and yet at the same time, quietly reflective, vaguely, anxiously self-aware, feeling keenly his own conscience, and awkwardly fixated on matters of principle, sometimes short-sightedly, sometimes painfully so. As events pass and conversations transpire, with self-absorbed contemplation, and with knowing such emotions as inferiority, a little spite, and vexing desire, these male characters usually come to a sort of full-circle self-realisation, an awareness of their own emotional edges, misconceived intentions, and yet, in the self-knowledge, some part shame and some part relief. It reminds me of the Borges story of the avatar man, which ends with the words, "With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he also was an illusion, that someone else was dreaming him." (The Circular Ruins, 1940) I love Borges. I love him with a pride one has for a grandfather who writes unearthly good literature. Naturally, I have already promised myself to read Borges again, jumping the queue. The day is only so long, and only so many books can be so meaningfully enjoyed. Updike's first bound volume is a beautiful one, covered with dark blue fabric, and printed with bible-paper thin sheets. I hold it very, very carefully to read. Borges' uses stiff manuscript, and is slightly jangled on its edges, like the irregular crusts of thin, chipped rock on a high, dry mountain. It also smells a bit more paper-rich, a bit more complex, like a well kept tome in an old library.
To get older. The premise is of course, the ever-present present, the irresistible illusion that the present is wholly meaningful, necessary and sufficient, and thus also an easy source of self-irony. The past so easily seems lighter, simpler, memorable. I have thought often about the things that I have become in my older age, the things I have grown to accept as part of being thirty three, or the things that I do not even think twice about doing, about being, about adopting as part of the person I am. There is football, I was playing a simple game of "tennis" with a younger man, a game which involves shooting into the other goal from farther than half-court, and in which neither player may use his hands. The younger fellow kept blasting away at it with the ball with his stronger foot, and I kept trying to curl it gently in, alternating feet. I recognised myself in him, and I thought how ironic it is that I now try to guide the ball in. I thought of explaining to him that he probably had a better shot of it by shooting more meaningfully, more accurately, instead of spanking it and hoping it would fly in. But I felt that I should not have taken the advice well if I were him, at his age. It's just a thing where advice is not much appreciated, it brings a kind of inferiority to listen to advice, it's a kind of thievery of a means of self-expression, and of the joy in the genius of self-evaluation and correction. I say this all the time, I like to figure it out on my own. Well, as an older man, I still think it maybe one hundred percent of the time, when it comes to certain things, like football, and writing, and many other things besides. I like to figure it out, to get a rough internal measure of the thing, based on my mental-spiritual web of thought, understanding and belief, before relying on an external benchmark. Of course, the score didn't matter, but the important thing is not to show up the other fellow. Well, that probably comes from growing older as well. Playing the right way, hard, tough, and fairly, for all its utility, is appreciated only grudgingly. I think everyone should play hard, tough and fair, but it hardly happens. It is a bastard variant of the "will to power" concept Nietzsche proposes - everybody wants to show off what he can do, because he feels good doing so, but if he has to or it looks like he tries hard to do it, it becomes laborious and well, uncool. And so, God forbid, one should practice the fundamentals.
Being older. Being older means sighing a little more. My grandma used to get on me for sighing, long and sometimes relentedly. She didn't think young people should sigh, that they had little cause to regret so mournfully. Maybe it's a matter of perspective, from a woman born during the war. You know, being older means understanding that perspective is determinative, in the same way that behavioural science comprises the hugely important socio-culturo psyche that utilitarian analysis takes as assumed. My grandmother was born during the war, imagine that. Sometimes I look at the buildings around me and I think of how it would have been in the days when war seemed imminent, with all its dread. Perspective is a funny thing. From a child of the atomic age to a child of the information age, it's incredible how different our lives are. I wonder if we float a long a little too easily on these latter-day promises of connectivity, efficiency and triviality. Yes, there's that. Being old, I feel that the handphone is a plague, a crutch that has become a crux. There's this deep unhappiness I get from being with someone who looks at the phone - it seems similar to being amongst the cave dwellers Socrates and Plato described, who prefer security in ignorance and darkness rather than stepping out into the bright sunshine, into the light of understanding. The phone and all its minor distractions seem so wholly stupid, so trivial, so little worth our attentions. But back to sighing, I think sighing is great, I feel that a good sigh takes the air out of a lot of frustration, even if it sounds a little inauspicious, a little discourteous. I feel that sighing is the physical manifestation of my reconciling with events, and with a good sigh the finality of a compromise feels complete.
The truer tests of being older, I feel, are two: in cherishing solitude, and in accepting that romance is one of those helpless things you have to kind of navigate around rather than towards.
Solitude is one of those things, I think as a younger guy it's so difficult to wrap your head around it. It kind of peters around a bit of social ineptness, a shunning of multifarious social situations, requiring fluidity and calm in various masses of people. To be highbrow with the nerds and to be slapdash with the clownies, also everything else in between, and of course, not to be self-conscious. Solitude is difficult, it is different. It is a sense of self-preservation, but more than that, of the pervading importance of identity and innermost rigidity. But it is difficult to set aside the familiarity and low commonality of social interaction, it is difficult to forsake, in a way, fraternal steadfastness and brotherly bonds. To accept that never again would I turn to another person to commiserate, to mourn, to hold on to in times of trouble. Solitude is often self-fulfilling, people can sense a person who holds back in the presence of company. So that itself is delicate, to cherish solitude without being cold. Well, there is frankness, and a sense of purpose, to commend it. But there is also patience, and I think patience is one of those things which is wholly contextual. It is silly to say of someone that he is a patient man or woman, without setting out the conditions in which, presumably, one was patient. Nevermind, back to solitude. Solitude is being quite glad to be alone, and to not feel left out of something; to feel that what one has, in the present, and alone with one's thoughts, is not only better, but that it is truly good and worth seeking. To know that genuine, frank and polite disinterest is respectable is wonderful, peaceful solitude even in company. Siddhartha Gautama Buddha teaches that suffering includes these five kinds - to be born, to grow old, to grow sick, to be far from the ones you love, and to be near to those you do not love. Solitude seems to sit meditatively between the last two, but I think it underlies much of his teaching and philosophy.
Romance, probably I have had more cause to regret than take joy of, but it is not an aching kind of regret, more of a foppish regret. It's funny, the older I get, the more I think of Gatsby and his great old love. In the end, jilted, all lost. He was too late, he was too unfortunate, and his love and her love measured little. I think of Gatsby, and of Carraway's impression of his mystery, that when Gatsby looked at you, he made it seem like you were the only one in the world. And I think he meant Gatsby's genuinity, or genuineness, I don't think he meant it as Gatsby's ability to charm an illusion on someone. That's such a lovely way to be a person. Yes, I think of myself as a bit of Gatsby, with my old love, with my longing, with my solitude. Staring at a green light in the night, standing at the end of a dock, from across the water. And finally, for the dream to die, for the revelry to fall away, for the dapperness to be a final, ironic stand, hoping against impossible odds. I think of the women I have sometimes had to say no to, and a girl I long to be with, and I think to myself, God, it's a mess. It really sucks to say no, and dating is such a drag and a crapshoot. So being older, I kinda give up on the whole thing. I don't even hope for serendipity any more, I figure these things take time, and I have to be in the moment and not care about the search for romance. So, navigating around rather than towards. It's a bit monastic but I find that I manage.
I would say that the essence of growing old for me is to think wider, to see farther, in the sense of appreciating the wider world, and it's precious oddities and persons marvellous, beyond the narrower ken of my own imagination, and yet at the same time, not abjuring the weight of the inner man, of fire, dash and vigor. To live by the soul. I have often thought about these four things Nietzsche wrote about. His prophet Zarathustra gave this advice in the context of sleeping well, but of course I take him as meaning how one should live so as to live contentedly. There's something so true about this writing - to overcome thyself, to reconcile with thyself, to find truth, and to laugh. Who shouldn't sleep well, by this prescription? And I think that growing older has made sleep, regular, early sleep, quintessential and precious. I am glad for it, to wake up early, to exercise, to eat early, and to have a long, full day in the sun, until one tires out in the evening, old and with cheer.
Ten times a day must thou overcome thyself: that causeth wholesome weariness, and is poppy to the soul.
Ten times must thou reconcile again with thyself; for overcoming is bitterness, and badly sleep the unreconciled.
Ten truths must thou find during the day; otherwise wilt thou seek truth during the night, and thy soul will have been hungry.
Ten times must thou laugh during the day, and be cheerful; otherwise thy stomach, the father of affliction, will disturb thee in the night.
To get older. The premise is of course, the ever-present present, the irresistible illusion that the present is wholly meaningful, necessary and sufficient, and thus also an easy source of self-irony. The past so easily seems lighter, simpler, memorable. I have thought often about the things that I have become in my older age, the things I have grown to accept as part of being thirty three, or the things that I do not even think twice about doing, about being, about adopting as part of the person I am. There is football, I was playing a simple game of "tennis" with a younger man, a game which involves shooting into the other goal from farther than half-court, and in which neither player may use his hands. The younger fellow kept blasting away at it with the ball with his stronger foot, and I kept trying to curl it gently in, alternating feet. I recognised myself in him, and I thought how ironic it is that I now try to guide the ball in. I thought of explaining to him that he probably had a better shot of it by shooting more meaningfully, more accurately, instead of spanking it and hoping it would fly in. But I felt that I should not have taken the advice well if I were him, at his age. It's just a thing where advice is not much appreciated, it brings a kind of inferiority to listen to advice, it's a kind of thievery of a means of self-expression, and of the joy in the genius of self-evaluation and correction. I say this all the time, I like to figure it out on my own. Well, as an older man, I still think it maybe one hundred percent of the time, when it comes to certain things, like football, and writing, and many other things besides. I like to figure it out, to get a rough internal measure of the thing, based on my mental-spiritual web of thought, understanding and belief, before relying on an external benchmark. Of course, the score didn't matter, but the important thing is not to show up the other fellow. Well, that probably comes from growing older as well. Playing the right way, hard, tough, and fairly, for all its utility, is appreciated only grudgingly. I think everyone should play hard, tough and fair, but it hardly happens. It is a bastard variant of the "will to power" concept Nietzsche proposes - everybody wants to show off what he can do, because he feels good doing so, but if he has to or it looks like he tries hard to do it, it becomes laborious and well, uncool. And so, God forbid, one should practice the fundamentals.
Being older. Being older means sighing a little more. My grandma used to get on me for sighing, long and sometimes relentedly. She didn't think young people should sigh, that they had little cause to regret so mournfully. Maybe it's a matter of perspective, from a woman born during the war. You know, being older means understanding that perspective is determinative, in the same way that behavioural science comprises the hugely important socio-culturo psyche that utilitarian analysis takes as assumed. My grandmother was born during the war, imagine that. Sometimes I look at the buildings around me and I think of how it would have been in the days when war seemed imminent, with all its dread. Perspective is a funny thing. From a child of the atomic age to a child of the information age, it's incredible how different our lives are. I wonder if we float a long a little too easily on these latter-day promises of connectivity, efficiency and triviality. Yes, there's that. Being old, I feel that the handphone is a plague, a crutch that has become a crux. There's this deep unhappiness I get from being with someone who looks at the phone - it seems similar to being amongst the cave dwellers Socrates and Plato described, who prefer security in ignorance and darkness rather than stepping out into the bright sunshine, into the light of understanding. The phone and all its minor distractions seem so wholly stupid, so trivial, so little worth our attentions. But back to sighing, I think sighing is great, I feel that a good sigh takes the air out of a lot of frustration, even if it sounds a little inauspicious, a little discourteous. I feel that sighing is the physical manifestation of my reconciling with events, and with a good sigh the finality of a compromise feels complete.
The truer tests of being older, I feel, are two: in cherishing solitude, and in accepting that romance is one of those helpless things you have to kind of navigate around rather than towards.
Solitude is one of those things, I think as a younger guy it's so difficult to wrap your head around it. It kind of peters around a bit of social ineptness, a shunning of multifarious social situations, requiring fluidity and calm in various masses of people. To be highbrow with the nerds and to be slapdash with the clownies, also everything else in between, and of course, not to be self-conscious. Solitude is difficult, it is different. It is a sense of self-preservation, but more than that, of the pervading importance of identity and innermost rigidity. But it is difficult to set aside the familiarity and low commonality of social interaction, it is difficult to forsake, in a way, fraternal steadfastness and brotherly bonds. To accept that never again would I turn to another person to commiserate, to mourn, to hold on to in times of trouble. Solitude is often self-fulfilling, people can sense a person who holds back in the presence of company. So that itself is delicate, to cherish solitude without being cold. Well, there is frankness, and a sense of purpose, to commend it. But there is also patience, and I think patience is one of those things which is wholly contextual. It is silly to say of someone that he is a patient man or woman, without setting out the conditions in which, presumably, one was patient. Nevermind, back to solitude. Solitude is being quite glad to be alone, and to not feel left out of something; to feel that what one has, in the present, and alone with one's thoughts, is not only better, but that it is truly good and worth seeking. To know that genuine, frank and polite disinterest is respectable is wonderful, peaceful solitude even in company. Siddhartha Gautama Buddha teaches that suffering includes these five kinds - to be born, to grow old, to grow sick, to be far from the ones you love, and to be near to those you do not love. Solitude seems to sit meditatively between the last two, but I think it underlies much of his teaching and philosophy.
Romance, probably I have had more cause to regret than take joy of, but it is not an aching kind of regret, more of a foppish regret. It's funny, the older I get, the more I think of Gatsby and his great old love. In the end, jilted, all lost. He was too late, he was too unfortunate, and his love and her love measured little. I think of Gatsby, and of Carraway's impression of his mystery, that when Gatsby looked at you, he made it seem like you were the only one in the world. And I think he meant Gatsby's genuinity, or genuineness, I don't think he meant it as Gatsby's ability to charm an illusion on someone. That's such a lovely way to be a person. Yes, I think of myself as a bit of Gatsby, with my old love, with my longing, with my solitude. Staring at a green light in the night, standing at the end of a dock, from across the water. And finally, for the dream to die, for the revelry to fall away, for the dapperness to be a final, ironic stand, hoping against impossible odds. I think of the women I have sometimes had to say no to, and a girl I long to be with, and I think to myself, God, it's a mess. It really sucks to say no, and dating is such a drag and a crapshoot. So being older, I kinda give up on the whole thing. I don't even hope for serendipity any more, I figure these things take time, and I have to be in the moment and not care about the search for romance. So, navigating around rather than towards. It's a bit monastic but I find that I manage.
I would say that the essence of growing old for me is to think wider, to see farther, in the sense of appreciating the wider world, and it's precious oddities and persons marvellous, beyond the narrower ken of my own imagination, and yet at the same time, not abjuring the weight of the inner man, of fire, dash and vigor. To live by the soul. I have often thought about these four things Nietzsche wrote about. His prophet Zarathustra gave this advice in the context of sleeping well, but of course I take him as meaning how one should live so as to live contentedly. There's something so true about this writing - to overcome thyself, to reconcile with thyself, to find truth, and to laugh. Who shouldn't sleep well, by this prescription? And I think that growing older has made sleep, regular, early sleep, quintessential and precious. I am glad for it, to wake up early, to exercise, to eat early, and to have a long, full day in the sun, until one tires out in the evening, old and with cheer.
Ten times a day must thou overcome thyself: that causeth wholesome weariness, and is poppy to the soul.
Ten times must thou reconcile again with thyself; for overcoming is bitterness, and badly sleep the unreconciled.
Ten truths must thou find during the day; otherwise wilt thou seek truth during the night, and thy soul will have been hungry.
Ten times must thou laugh during the day, and be cheerful; otherwise thy stomach, the father of affliction, will disturb thee in the night.
Friday, March 15, 2019
CCXXXI - to live is to get older
In earlier times, there was a Borders bookstore at Wheelock Place. It's funny, I write about past things now the way that people from earlier times write about past places. You can hear about such places, and see the odd photographs, but the connection with the physical reality they once inhabited is totally gone. What it meant to be there, what it was like, how it was lived in, the familiarity and the feel, all gone. The past entails an older place, once younger, and an older cast of principals, once youthful, existing concurrently, both now forever changed. We are talking about things that were once "the present", with all the fullness and immediacy and realness that "the present" is to us, us who live in the right-now of the present. Isn't it such an odd feeling to consider "the present"? to know that the present, however total and encompassing it is right now, with all its weightiness, significance and severity, will never be much more than it is as the present? The eternity of the present! And yet, as it does, time rolls unceasingly on, fore-running its ever-marching peoples. Tiong Bahru (塚 bahru), Badok, the Padang, Jurong East, Marina Bay, Fort Canning, Pulau Belakang Mati (Sentosa) ... virtually all the old places one thinks of, of which now only abridged histories and sepia photos on plaques, slightly forlorn, carry a reminder, the metamorphosing inhabitants of which no longer have the memory or language to reminisce, to provide substantial, deeply-rooted discourses of lives and lived-in-ness. We have so little "historied-ness" in us, nor the sense that any of that matters, until it becomes our turn to comprise old news, old history. I don't know, I love the sense of being connected with a place, of sharing deeply personal, even ancestral ties to the land. To know the lie of the land. To recall in the mind's eye vistas, scenes, scapes, the chiaro of the hazy sunshine, and the oscuro of the sleepy, staid earth. Megarry and Wade were right, land, real property, is fundamentally a special thing, not what some call a bundle of rights.
Well, there used to be a Borders bookstore at Wheelock Place. I would have gone there in my school days, with not much money to buy a book. Buying actual books was never in question for me, as a child of the nineties. Well, Borders was expensive, compared to Times (not to mention, Popular). In the psychology section was a book by Sigmund Freud, the Interpretation of Dreams. This was a virtually irresistible title. Well, I eventually bought it. To some dismay, it turned out to be very difficult reading. Between reading this, and Mein Kampf, I gained the impression that Germans are not fun to read. Of course, there were other Germans, up to even Schopenhauer, or Schopi, as I call him in my mind, whom you might say was intellectually exciting, but not necessarily fun, even then, to read. But for the record, neither Hitler nor Freud is fun to read, and one of the things they share in terms of literary presentation is that they are both fond of very, very long sentences, some of which are unbearable. Anyway, Freud was in the field of psychology, naturally, and psychology is inherently a difficult field of science to grasp, not to mention that the subject of dreaming is even more so, even more illusory, chimerical. I didn't finish the book. I did get that Freud understood the dreams of his patients as being wish-fulfillments, coupling anxieties, and sensory inputs received over the course of one or two days. He posited some concepts as being symbolic, such as representing carnal desire, but those analyses might have escaped me. At any event, the book sits in a box somewhere, unexhibited. I am not sure that I will ever desire to thumb through it again.
They say that dreaming is not special to humans. They say that the platypus experiences up to nine hours of rapid eye movement type sleep a day (night, rather), which may or may not be a lot for the platypus, but that he does it the most. Perhaps he does it when the nights are longer, in winter. After all, doesn't the polar bear hibernate? Well, I often have a dream of running away. It's unpleasant, because I am not, in my dream, terrifically good at running. I manage obstacles, that is true, but I do not manage them well. I don't think the simulation includes getting caught, or perhaps I exclude it. Perhaps I manage the mounting anxiety by shifting the narrative to something else, subconsciously. That is one theme that recurs. For my own reasons, I think I have seen through this dream. Another one that recurs, with some emptiness at awakening, is of having a loved girl close by. It's not a longing per se, but a kind of wistfulness. I could go on, but the man I was at twenty, twenty-four, isn't the man I am now, at thirty-two, and no amount of gentle recollection changes that. Which is not to say that I am proud of the man I am now, but perhaps I am a little prouder. I think that this vein of dreaming, over the years, acknowledges that. This dreaming wells together now a feeling more of serenity and conviction than of desire and pining. Little calming gestures, placid comforting, resting a head together, on a shoulder, or feeling for, holding hands under a blanket, bring courage and a little joy. The rising day feels like it lacks a little something, upon waking, but not something that upon contemplation will never be found again. So I take (if unfairly) what Eliot wrote, in his Little Gidding,
Well, there used to be a Borders bookstore at Wheelock Place. I would have gone there in my school days, with not much money to buy a book. Buying actual books was never in question for me, as a child of the nineties. Well, Borders was expensive, compared to Times (not to mention, Popular). In the psychology section was a book by Sigmund Freud, the Interpretation of Dreams. This was a virtually irresistible title. Well, I eventually bought it. To some dismay, it turned out to be very difficult reading. Between reading this, and Mein Kampf, I gained the impression that Germans are not fun to read. Of course, there were other Germans, up to even Schopenhauer, or Schopi, as I call him in my mind, whom you might say was intellectually exciting, but not necessarily fun, even then, to read. But for the record, neither Hitler nor Freud is fun to read, and one of the things they share in terms of literary presentation is that they are both fond of very, very long sentences, some of which are unbearable. Anyway, Freud was in the field of psychology, naturally, and psychology is inherently a difficult field of science to grasp, not to mention that the subject of dreaming is even more so, even more illusory, chimerical. I didn't finish the book. I did get that Freud understood the dreams of his patients as being wish-fulfillments, coupling anxieties, and sensory inputs received over the course of one or two days. He posited some concepts as being symbolic, such as representing carnal desire, but those analyses might have escaped me. At any event, the book sits in a box somewhere, unexhibited. I am not sure that I will ever desire to thumb through it again.
They say that dreaming is not special to humans. They say that the platypus experiences up to nine hours of rapid eye movement type sleep a day (night, rather), which may or may not be a lot for the platypus, but that he does it the most. Perhaps he does it when the nights are longer, in winter. After all, doesn't the polar bear hibernate? Well, I often have a dream of running away. It's unpleasant, because I am not, in my dream, terrifically good at running. I manage obstacles, that is true, but I do not manage them well. I don't think the simulation includes getting caught, or perhaps I exclude it. Perhaps I manage the mounting anxiety by shifting the narrative to something else, subconsciously. That is one theme that recurs. For my own reasons, I think I have seen through this dream. Another one that recurs, with some emptiness at awakening, is of having a loved girl close by. It's not a longing per se, but a kind of wistfulness. I could go on, but the man I was at twenty, twenty-four, isn't the man I am now, at thirty-two, and no amount of gentle recollection changes that. Which is not to say that I am proud of the man I am now, but perhaps I am a little prouder. I think that this vein of dreaming, over the years, acknowledges that. This dreaming wells together now a feeling more of serenity and conviction than of desire and pining. Little calming gestures, placid comforting, resting a head together, on a shoulder, or feeling for, holding hands under a blanket, bring courage and a little joy. The rising day feels like it lacks a little something, upon waking, but not something that upon contemplation will never be found again. So I take (if unfairly) what Eliot wrote, in his Little Gidding,
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Thursday, March 14, 2019
CCXXX - Et Noluistis
Evangelium secundum Lucam
13:34 Ierusalem, Ierusalem, quae occidis prophetas et lapidas eos, qui missi sunt ad te, quotiens volui congregare filios tuos, quemadmodum avis nidum suum sub pinnis, et noluistis.
13:35 Ecce relinquitur vobis domus vestra. Dico autem vobis: Non videbitis me, donec veniat cum dicetis: “Benedictus, qui venit in nomine Domini”.
13:34 Ierusalem, Ierusalem, quae occidis prophetas et lapidas eos, qui missi sunt ad te, quotiens volui congregare filios tuos, quemadmodum avis nidum suum sub pinnis, et noluistis.
13:35 Ecce relinquitur vobis domus vestra. Dico autem vobis: Non videbitis me, donec veniat cum dicetis: “Benedictus, qui venit in nomine Domini”.
Tuesday, March 12, 2019
CCXXIX - Thermae Antoninianae, or the Terme di Caracalla
Latin! So divinely pristine.
Balnea, vina, Venus corrumpunt corpora nostra;
sed vitam faciunt balnea, vina, Venus.
Baths, wine, the desire of women corrupt bodies of ours;
but vital-life is made of baths, wine, the desire of women.
- epitaph of Senator Tiberius Claudius Sacerdos Julianus, 2nd century AD.
Balnea, vina, Venus corrumpunt corpora nostra;
sed vitam faciunt balnea, vina, Venus.
Baths, wine, the desire of women corrupt bodies of ours;
but vital-life is made of baths, wine, the desire of women.
- epitaph of Senator Tiberius Claudius Sacerdos Julianus, 2nd century AD.
Monday, March 11, 2019
CCXXVIII - Skydog
Excerpts (including interviews from the book, One Way Out, by Alan Paul):
Butch Trucks (groove drummer): One day we were jamming on a shuffle going nowhere so I started pulling back and Duane whipped around, looked me in the eyes, and played this lick way up the neck like a challenge. My first reaction was to back up, but he kept doing it, which had everyone looking at me like the whole flaccid nature of this jam was my fault. The third time I got really angry and started pounding the drums like I was hitting him upside the head and the jam took off and I forgot about being self-conscious and started playing music, and he smiled at me, as if to say, "Now that's more like it."
It was like he reached inside me and flipped a switch and I've never been insecure about my drumming again. It was an absolute epiphany; it hit me like a ton of bricks. I swear if that moment had not happened I would probably have spent the past thirty years as a teacher. Duane was capable of reaching inside people and pulling out the best. He made us all realise that music will never be great if everyone doesn't give it all they have, and we all took on that attitude: Why bother to play if you're not going all in?
Reese Wynans (keyboard player): Dickey [Betts] was the hottest guitar player in the area, the guy that everyone looked up to and wanted to emulate. Then Duane came and started sitting in with us and he was more mature and more fully formed, with total confidence, an incredible tone and that unearthly slide playing. But he and Dickey complemented each other - they didn't try to outgun one another - and the chemistry was obvious right away. It was just amazing that the two best lead guitarists around were teaming up. They were both willing to take chances rather than returning to parts they knew they could nail, and everything they tried worked.
Jai "Jaimoe" Johanny Johanson (fill drummer): Duane talked about a lot of guitar players and when I heard some of them I said, "That dude can't tote your guitar case," and he was surprised. He loved jamming with everyone.
Thom Doucette (harmonica player): None of them could hold Duane's case except Betts.
Gregg Allman (lead singer, keyboard player): I walked into rehearsal on March 26, 1969, and they played me the track they had worked up to Muddy Waters' "Trouble No More" and it blew me away. It was so intense.
I got my brother aside and said, "I don't know if I can cut this. I don't know if I can cut this. I don't know if I'm good enough." And he starts in on me: "You little punk, I told these people all about you and you don't come in here and let me down." Then I snatched the words out of his hand and said, "Count it off, let's do it." And with that, I did my damnedest. I'd never heard or sung this song before, but by God I did it. I shut my eyes and sang, and at the end of that there was just a long silence. At that moment we knew what we had. Duane kinda pissed me off and embarrassed me into singing my guts out. He knew which buttons to push.
Joseph "Red Dog" Campbell (roadie): He was my hero. I mean. I would have followed Duane to the end of the earth. I was older than him, but I respected him enough and loved him enough to do it. Duane had a sixth sense - or a seventh sense, man. He just knew what to do at the right time. There’s a fork in the road, right? If you go to the left, there’s a pot of gold. If you go to the right, you’re in a pile of crap. Duane could walk right up to the fork without thinking and say "Let’s go to the left." And he’d come out smelling like a rose.
But he was fair. He was honest. He was up front and didn’t beat around the bush. You didn’t have to hear “Well, you know ... I was thinkin’ ... It ain’t really nice for me to say it, but ...” You didn’t have to hear it. He’d just say, “Red Dog, you messed up bad man. We’re gonna have to let you go.” There wouldn’t be no beatin' around the bush. I try to live like that myself. I just don’t have the tactfulness or the position in life to deal the other way. So I just hit it, bam-bam-bam.
I don’t really think you can put it into words, on Duane. He used to say, “You guys do all the work. We just come over and have fun.” That’s really what it’s all about. If these musicians say “I’m out here working my butt off, something’s wrong.” I mean, if he ain’t out there playing and having fun, something’s wrong. It’s at the stage of the game now where it’s not work. It’s “Hey, let’s enjoy ourselves and play.” The roadie’s the guy who’s doing the work to get the thing going.
Jaimoe: One morning, Duane came over and knocked and he was bouncing off the wall - full of energy, as he always was, but more so. He said, "What's up, my little chocolate drop?" He often called me that.
I said, "Nothing. Just waiting around until it's time to practice." And he said, "You want one of these?" He had a little container of something that I thought were blackberries, which were a kind of speed we took with some regularity. I said I was all right and he laughed and said, "Okay," and dashed off on his bike.
I went over to the pad to use the commode and sitting on the back of it was a little bottle of those pills - anytime someone got a little something they stored it there so that if the police came it could be flushed away. I looked at them and thought, "This is what Duane had. The way he was bouncing around, I'm gonna give it a try," and I popped three of them. God damn! They were psilocybin tablets and they slowly came on. They were real natural and earthy and pleasant, but I should not have taken three.
We got something to eat at Mama Louise's and went to practice like we did every day, but rehearsal was a waste. It had to be canceled because we had all taken some of those things. Butch couldn't play the drums because he said they were flying away. Gregory wasn't really into psychedelics so maybe he didn't take any, but the rest of us were flying, so we just called off practice and the day finally came to what it should have been, hanging out. There's been a lot of stories told about how we had this incredible jam, but we couldn't even play.
Gregg: I had mainly played rhythm guitar. That was my instrument, but the Allman Brothers had too many guitars, so they blindfolded me, took me in this room, sat me down, took the blindfold off and there sat a brand-new, 1969 B-3 Hammond and a 122-RV Leslie, with a few joints on it, and they said, "OK, we'll see you in a few days! Good luck! We'll bring you food and check back with you now and then. Learn how to play this thing."
That's only a slight exaggeration. The truth is, my brother knew I really, deep down, always wanted a Hammond. I always admired them when I saw them with blues bands and whatnot. But then I stayed up day and night, hour after hour, learning how to really play it.
Dickey Betts (lead guitar): Duane and Gregg had a real "purist" blues things together, but Oakley and I in our band would take a standard blues and re-arrange it. We were really trying to push the envelope. We loved the blues, but we wanted to play in a rock style, like what Cream and Hendrix were doing. Jefferson Airplane was also a big influence on us; Phil Lesh and Jack Casady were Oakley's favourite bassists. We liked to take some of that experimental stuff and put a harder melodic edge to it.
Duane was smart enough to see what ingredients were missing from both of our previous bands. We didn't have enough of the true, purist blues, and he didn't have enough of the avant-garde, psychedelic approach to the blues. So he tried to put the two sounds together, and that was the first step in finding the sound of the Allman Brothers Band. When the two things collided, by the grace of God it was something special. You can't say someone conceived of it all. It just happened and we all played a big part.
Steve Morse (guitar player, Dixie Dregs): [It's] a Les Paul Custom with tiger stripes and a sunburst paint job. It doesn’t have a pickguard, and the neck looks like a regular Les Paul neck, a sort of dark brown. It was cracked once, but Twiggs [Lyndon, road manager] had it fixed when we were in California. And it’s got regular humbucking-looking pickups, but the one in the lead position is so intense! It’s so powerful. Something is so right about it. That’s the main thing about the guitar. I think the reason Duane had that guitar is because it would scream so much on the lead pickup. I remember Twiggs saying that Duane used that guitar on Layla and a lot of the Fillmore East. He liked to use it for songs where he’d switch from playing regular fingerstyle to slide. I’ve used the guitar for solos on every album, just about. You can hear it on the melody of ‘Cruise Control,’ the slide guitar parts in ‘Rock and Roll Park,’ and in ‘Twiggs Approved’ there are two short guitar solos – one is in a regular style and the other is slide, and both of those are on the Les Paul.
That guitar of Twiggs’ has gone through a long journey. Twiggs traded a car to Gregg Allman to obtain the guitar. Twiggs had a lot of old-time cars, in really good shape, and it was one of those. It wasn’t like Gregg was just giving the guitar away. He knew that Twiggs would really take care of it. At a time when Twiggs was really broke, someone offered him $15,000 for the guitar, and he wouldn’t take it. Twiggs all along was planning on giving it to Duane’s little daughter when she turned 18, so the family is holding the guitar until then. The reason Twiggs was gonna wait until then is he didn’t think that the girl would realize what she had. And Twiggs was just that kind of person – the principle of the whole thing was more important than anything.
Derek Trucks (guitar player, nephew of Butch Trucks): The sound is so distinct and powerful. There was definitely some extra spirit in the room. At one point, Butch looked down, saw I was playing Duane’s goldtop and was really struck.
Butch: It was during ‘Dreams,’ And seeing and hearing Derek play the solo on the guitar Duane used was very emotional.
Butch Trucks (groove drummer): One day we were jamming on a shuffle going nowhere so I started pulling back and Duane whipped around, looked me in the eyes, and played this lick way up the neck like a challenge. My first reaction was to back up, but he kept doing it, which had everyone looking at me like the whole flaccid nature of this jam was my fault. The third time I got really angry and started pounding the drums like I was hitting him upside the head and the jam took off and I forgot about being self-conscious and started playing music, and he smiled at me, as if to say, "Now that's more like it."
It was like he reached inside me and flipped a switch and I've never been insecure about my drumming again. It was an absolute epiphany; it hit me like a ton of bricks. I swear if that moment had not happened I would probably have spent the past thirty years as a teacher. Duane was capable of reaching inside people and pulling out the best. He made us all realise that music will never be great if everyone doesn't give it all they have, and we all took on that attitude: Why bother to play if you're not going all in?
Reese Wynans (keyboard player): Dickey [Betts] was the hottest guitar player in the area, the guy that everyone looked up to and wanted to emulate. Then Duane came and started sitting in with us and he was more mature and more fully formed, with total confidence, an incredible tone and that unearthly slide playing. But he and Dickey complemented each other - they didn't try to outgun one another - and the chemistry was obvious right away. It was just amazing that the two best lead guitarists around were teaming up. They were both willing to take chances rather than returning to parts they knew they could nail, and everything they tried worked.
Jai "Jaimoe" Johanny Johanson (fill drummer): Duane talked about a lot of guitar players and when I heard some of them I said, "That dude can't tote your guitar case," and he was surprised. He loved jamming with everyone.
Thom Doucette (harmonica player): None of them could hold Duane's case except Betts.
Gregg Allman (lead singer, keyboard player): I walked into rehearsal on March 26, 1969, and they played me the track they had worked up to Muddy Waters' "Trouble No More" and it blew me away. It was so intense.
I got my brother aside and said, "I don't know if I can cut this. I don't know if I can cut this. I don't know if I'm good enough." And he starts in on me: "You little punk, I told these people all about you and you don't come in here and let me down." Then I snatched the words out of his hand and said, "Count it off, let's do it." And with that, I did my damnedest. I'd never heard or sung this song before, but by God I did it. I shut my eyes and sang, and at the end of that there was just a long silence. At that moment we knew what we had. Duane kinda pissed me off and embarrassed me into singing my guts out. He knew which buttons to push.
Joseph "Red Dog" Campbell (roadie): He was my hero. I mean. I would have followed Duane to the end of the earth. I was older than him, but I respected him enough and loved him enough to do it. Duane had a sixth sense - or a seventh sense, man. He just knew what to do at the right time. There’s a fork in the road, right? If you go to the left, there’s a pot of gold. If you go to the right, you’re in a pile of crap. Duane could walk right up to the fork without thinking and say "Let’s go to the left." And he’d come out smelling like a rose.
But he was fair. He was honest. He was up front and didn’t beat around the bush. You didn’t have to hear “Well, you know ... I was thinkin’ ... It ain’t really nice for me to say it, but ...” You didn’t have to hear it. He’d just say, “Red Dog, you messed up bad man. We’re gonna have to let you go.” There wouldn’t be no beatin' around the bush. I try to live like that myself. I just don’t have the tactfulness or the position in life to deal the other way. So I just hit it, bam-bam-bam.
I don’t really think you can put it into words, on Duane. He used to say, “You guys do all the work. We just come over and have fun.” That’s really what it’s all about. If these musicians say “I’m out here working my butt off, something’s wrong.” I mean, if he ain’t out there playing and having fun, something’s wrong. It’s at the stage of the game now where it’s not work. It’s “Hey, let’s enjoy ourselves and play.” The roadie’s the guy who’s doing the work to get the thing going.
Jaimoe: One morning, Duane came over and knocked and he was bouncing off the wall - full of energy, as he always was, but more so. He said, "What's up, my little chocolate drop?" He often called me that.
I said, "Nothing. Just waiting around until it's time to practice." And he said, "You want one of these?" He had a little container of something that I thought were blackberries, which were a kind of speed we took with some regularity. I said I was all right and he laughed and said, "Okay," and dashed off on his bike.
I went over to the pad to use the commode and sitting on the back of it was a little bottle of those pills - anytime someone got a little something they stored it there so that if the police came it could be flushed away. I looked at them and thought, "This is what Duane had. The way he was bouncing around, I'm gonna give it a try," and I popped three of them. God damn! They were psilocybin tablets and they slowly came on. They were real natural and earthy and pleasant, but I should not have taken three.
We got something to eat at Mama Louise's and went to practice like we did every day, but rehearsal was a waste. It had to be canceled because we had all taken some of those things. Butch couldn't play the drums because he said they were flying away. Gregory wasn't really into psychedelics so maybe he didn't take any, but the rest of us were flying, so we just called off practice and the day finally came to what it should have been, hanging out. There's been a lot of stories told about how we had this incredible jam, but we couldn't even play.
Gregg: I had mainly played rhythm guitar. That was my instrument, but the Allman Brothers had too many guitars, so they blindfolded me, took me in this room, sat me down, took the blindfold off and there sat a brand-new, 1969 B-3 Hammond and a 122-RV Leslie, with a few joints on it, and they said, "OK, we'll see you in a few days! Good luck! We'll bring you food and check back with you now and then. Learn how to play this thing."
That's only a slight exaggeration. The truth is, my brother knew I really, deep down, always wanted a Hammond. I always admired them when I saw them with blues bands and whatnot. But then I stayed up day and night, hour after hour, learning how to really play it.
Dickey Betts (lead guitar): Duane and Gregg had a real "purist" blues things together, but Oakley and I in our band would take a standard blues and re-arrange it. We were really trying to push the envelope. We loved the blues, but we wanted to play in a rock style, like what Cream and Hendrix were doing. Jefferson Airplane was also a big influence on us; Phil Lesh and Jack Casady were Oakley's favourite bassists. We liked to take some of that experimental stuff and put a harder melodic edge to it.
Duane was smart enough to see what ingredients were missing from both of our previous bands. We didn't have enough of the true, purist blues, and he didn't have enough of the avant-garde, psychedelic approach to the blues. So he tried to put the two sounds together, and that was the first step in finding the sound of the Allman Brothers Band. When the two things collided, by the grace of God it was something special. You can't say someone conceived of it all. It just happened and we all played a big part.
Steve Morse (guitar player, Dixie Dregs): [It's] a Les Paul Custom with tiger stripes and a sunburst paint job. It doesn’t have a pickguard, and the neck looks like a regular Les Paul neck, a sort of dark brown. It was cracked once, but Twiggs [Lyndon, road manager] had it fixed when we were in California. And it’s got regular humbucking-looking pickups, but the one in the lead position is so intense! It’s so powerful. Something is so right about it. That’s the main thing about the guitar. I think the reason Duane had that guitar is because it would scream so much on the lead pickup. I remember Twiggs saying that Duane used that guitar on Layla and a lot of the Fillmore East. He liked to use it for songs where he’d switch from playing regular fingerstyle to slide. I’ve used the guitar for solos on every album, just about. You can hear it on the melody of ‘Cruise Control,’ the slide guitar parts in ‘Rock and Roll Park,’ and in ‘Twiggs Approved’ there are two short guitar solos – one is in a regular style and the other is slide, and both of those are on the Les Paul.
That guitar of Twiggs’ has gone through a long journey. Twiggs traded a car to Gregg Allman to obtain the guitar. Twiggs had a lot of old-time cars, in really good shape, and it was one of those. It wasn’t like Gregg was just giving the guitar away. He knew that Twiggs would really take care of it. At a time when Twiggs was really broke, someone offered him $15,000 for the guitar, and he wouldn’t take it. Twiggs all along was planning on giving it to Duane’s little daughter when she turned 18, so the family is holding the guitar until then. The reason Twiggs was gonna wait until then is he didn’t think that the girl would realize what she had. And Twiggs was just that kind of person – the principle of the whole thing was more important than anything.
Derek Trucks (guitar player, nephew of Butch Trucks): The sound is so distinct and powerful. There was definitely some extra spirit in the room. At one point, Butch looked down, saw I was playing Duane’s goldtop and was really struck.
Butch: It was during ‘Dreams,’ And seeing and hearing Derek play the solo on the guitar Duane used was very emotional.
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