CCXI - empire

Kishore Mahbubani, writing on western geopolitics (vis-a-vis China, Russia, the Middle East, etc.) observes,

"What explains these failures? It is surprisingly simple. After two centuries of success, the region’s leaders assume their role is to sustain the expansion of western power. Not one of them has wrapped their heads around the new undeniable reality: the real challenge of the west is to manage decline."

(http://www.mahbubani.net/…/Look%20to%20China%20for%20wisdom…, 21 March 2014)

Perhaps one should be hesitant to carry this sentiment too far past the context it originated in. But it seems to ring a faint, evocative bell, at this time. Perhaps something has broken, perhaps our onlooker's faith in the rationality of things eventually turning out right, given recent events, has gone slightly askance. Or can it simply be that this is, after all, the end-game of western political art; that this is, for the happy fatalist, the inevitable outcome of such as democracy untrammeled, the good/evil polarisation of a two-party republic, the final renaissance of populism, capitalism, individualism, demagoguery, and all that?

If this is true, then perhaps it is not that such and such a man steps into the space, it is that the space was always there for such a man as him. Yet that is perhaps the common, unitary truth behind any form of politics, any form of government over a polis - that in the end the guardian who guards the guardian is at best some kind of man, or men. Socrates argued that it was essential for the guardian class of each polis to be specially educated and nurtured for rule, and rule be reserved to such as these. Wishful thinking, but probably the only good prescription.

The troubling thing, in my view, is that I'm not entirely sure this particular man has realised that he has to, whether he likes it or not, manage something that seems to be a little on the decline.

CCX - at a last moment, realisation

Little birdie, did you not know?
Did you not know that the road you lie on is rough and ugly
That the great hulking shapes that roar by your body are unkind
That while you have grown from so small a birdling
Warmed by the golden, sometimes waning autumn sun
And the horrid rain so cold and discomfiting to your nest of patchwork twigs
Picked and weaved with careful beaking
That the wind that sings grand themes to your kinfolk
Reminding them of grandfathers taking wing on lesser plumes
Now carries tidings of their children, where they lie
Little birdie, did you not know?
That if you miss the sudden turn
That so often you managed so well, and so deftly
Carving so freely your arcing paths in the sky
And near the ground, and past the columns and trees
Tracing paths of joy and being
Little birdie, did you not know?
Your chest of feathers are soft and furry
They glow softly in the evening sunlight
Your dark wings now fold across your eyes
And the life you once held spreads now to the earth
That the sequence of your final tumble
Spiralling, collapsing, crumbling
Will not be mourned
Little birdie, did you not know?
Such as you now know, little birdie.

CCIX - stranger things

I find it so frustrating trying to explain Latin American literature. It's inexplicable.

In a way I've always felt frustrated trying to describe things. It's a frustration that has many sources. First, you're trying to describe an idea, a concept. I don't think it's a failure of the English language itself, but in general, there are some things which defy easy description. I think most of the time what we're looking for is just that, short, clear, precise description. That's the holy trinity. If it's done just right it has a self propagating kind of assuredness about it. A bit, one-eighth bites, just enough to grasp someone's attention, good enough to get the essential core idea across, maybe even a little to get someone to think of the nascent possibilities.

And I think that the older I've gotten, the more I want to understand something right down to its core, right down to what it essentially means. I want to know it, I want to hold it in my mind like I hold a stick in my hand. I want to feel it, grip it, heft its weight, sense its range of motion in my wield, swing it around a little, feel the world bend a little around its whip. I just feel like that's how I want to know things. Put two and two together once in a while. Think the way these things should be thought. But (and!) it's hard, and it's even harder after that to do justice in a word.

Don't get me wrong, I love describing things. Way down deep in my soul there's something that gets very satisfied when explaining something, and doing it right. I feel when I was younger there was probably something like that in me, but I couldn't always do it right, and that was usually both a little embarrassing and a little frustrating. It didn't come from a desire to be smarter than the next guy, nor to be a little stranger, nor to be deserving of a little more attention. And I'm glad it wasn't these things. In some ways I think it's a curiosity that my books have given me. Books can give a lot of things, and all you have to do is sit back and think a little. Sometimes I wonder what people actually think when they read what I've written. It's a little hard to imagine that the ideas that sprout out of their minds are the same ones that I have; after all, everyone's wired a little differently. We're not reading code with the same programming language and instructions, we're all a little different. What's evoked in each of us? The prejudices, memories, lingering tastes, blind spots, haunted senses. What music we listen to. I mean, it's pretty incredible. Nobody reads the same thing out of the same written words.

And sometimes ideas are very complex. Some ideas take a lot of introductory understanding. It's hard to describe a car to someone who's never seen a wheel, so in the same way it's hard to describe, I suppose, Kafka to someone who's never really been introduced to the core philosophical concepts. You can't just hand someone five thousand lego bricks and ask him to build a battlemech. I'm not even saying Kafka is a complete car. But not everyone has a really robust, intuitive sense of, say, validity and soundness. You know, I've always felt that the most dangerous thing in the world is to draw the wrong conclusions from given premises. That, and the danger of mis-describing something, are basically the evils which the whole house of philosophy was built to fend against. The most important thing in the whole wide world is to correct incorrectly drawn conclusions, no matter how strongly someone feels about them. The problems philosophy usually runs into is that a) certain premises which philosophy relies on are essentially contested, and b) some core concepts are metaphysical, so that it may seem as if the "best" and most commonly accepted answers are given short shrift, while really our dear philosophy people aren't able to produce sufficiently beautiful (short, clear, precise) answers in return, and they claim that they'll never be able to. So that seems to give us nothing, which is more beautiful than the deception, but not always. I think what they label absurdist existentialism is basically a paradigm example of this sort of philosophical terminus.

But you know, that's beautiful, if you can live without having to embrace something. It's not easy, but that doesn't mean such nothingness is meaningless. Better to be a "fool"? Well, I can't say. Camus discusses the myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus was from the old Greek legends, a king (there were many kingdoms during the period these legends were set in) who was supposedly very intelligent, very curious and perhaps a little audacious. I kinda get the impression he was a little morally ambivalent. Well, in the Greek mythology conception, morality is basically heroic deeds and worship of the gods. Anyway, Sisyphus does a bunch of things which infuriates the gods, makes them look foolish. That's the one thing they really don't like! The dead can't go to hell because he tricks and binds Death, something like that. Hades gets pretty angry. They catch him and force him to roll a fucking boulder up a hill. When it reaches the top it rolls back down. It's an eternal sort of punishment, a warning to fucking humans not to mess with the gods. In a way it echoes Prometheus, who is chained to a rock while an eagle eats his liver, which grows back every day. Anyway Camus says, well, we're all like that a little, really, it's an analogy of ourselves. We go through these incredibly taxing routines, and some of us don't really realise the futility of it all in a way. But Camus also said, sure, of course Sisyphus is wise enough to recognise the irony of his labour, the asinine futility. Roll a fucking rock up a hill, only to have it roll down. But Camus says, hold on, once he's reached the top, he's man over himself again. His feet plop down the sides of the hill after the boulder, and in that ease he's fully alive, fully aware, cognisant of the triumph of that moment. I was riding my bicycle one night. Rolling downhill, not having to fucking pedal, I realised exactly what that felt like. I don't know that it was "worth" it to have pedaled all the way up that hill, but that moment of pure recognition felt like a special, purified through fire, kind of breaking the n^th wall. Maybe that's all existentialism is, really.

And I mean what kind of music do you listen to? Shit, man. That's a wonderful example. Some music is simply way too hard to grasp. A lot of classical is like that. Some people just don't like rock the way that I shun balloons. Too unpredictable, too rude. Hell, it's pretty impossible for me to identify a Miles Davis tune. What does that make me? I don't know. Music sounds different at each time of the day. In the evening, jazz makes sense, not while the sun shines. It's bizarre. What does that make us? We're not computers and programs, moods matter. What is that, what is mood? It's so bizarre.

Latin American literature is impossible. I love it all, and I don't think I'll ever be able to describe it. There's no way to give an accurate summary of Rulfo, Borges, Marquez (might be the easiest of the lot, but still), Llosa, Cortazar. The last guy is maybe the best. I thought Rulfo and Marquez were the best, but I don't know what I don't know and I know nothing. Cortazar might be the best. Why? I can't explain it. You have to read it, and not only that, you have to fail pretty hard. Then you have to go away for three years, and read him again. That's what I did. I get him, but barely, not very well, but enough to see the little strings. Hopscotch. Have you ever heard of a book that could be read once through, and also by a certain determined sequence of chapters, 1, 27, 2, 28, 3, 46, and something like that? Christ. Cortazar might be the best. Characters both self-aware and ridiculously self-complicated, entangling with others who kind of are a little insane as well. The best thing about really good books is in my opinion the way that separate individuals appear to "understand" each other, and then whether these fictions of understanding are believable. Take A Hundred Years of Solitude. The strangest, most withdrawn, most singular characters, surrounded by other individuals who grasp what they are, internally come to terms (or simply have from the beginning), and leave them to be. How is it you understand me? I've always felt a little strange in that sense, that it was just an impossible thing for anyone to get me. I embrace that a little. A sense of otherness, a not-here kind of feeling. Just enough to stay true to a little something within.

Trust me, Latin American stuff is the best. Why? I can't tell you. I don't really want to. It's a secret, actually. But I'm telling you, it's the best. You should never expect me to explain it. I can't, and you deserve better. It is the best.

CCVIII - on lawyering

I'll be honest, I think lawyering is bullshit.

That's actually the number one answer I should be giving when I'm asked why I'm out of commercial practice. But I don't, because I have a very advanced idea of what bullshit is, and I hate to gripe, for many reasons, chief of which being that I think to gripe is to be extremely ungrateful. But let's look at all the things I didn't like about it.

OK well, at my first job I worked in a pretty cramped office. I had a computer, a desk, and high bookshelves, stuck in a wedge end facing the center of a circular floor. I think it sucked, I think it was a miserable place to sit and work. The chair I had, well, that we all had, was awful, it probably looked old when it was made, and that was probably in the early nineties. That's good in a sense, I didn't want to stay there at all. I remember sleeping on the stiff carpet once, over a weekend. That doesn't exactly make for pleasant memories, I suppose. But walking around the floor, it was a pretty sombre place, a little cold and hushed. I did not like it. I did not like the meeting rooms, well, most meeting rooms anywhere are pretty terrible, funnily enough, and I did not like the so-called partners' rooms. There was just something about that office that didn't scream fun, and coming from the university, where we were used to having beautiful spacious rooms, large tables, high windows, and corridors and halls in the pre-war style, well. It was like living in an enclosed tenement, next to crotchety landlords. I did not like it, and I felt bad for people who had been there longer than I had, which is a little strange way to be for a first year associate. When I drive by the tower I give it the finger, for old times' sake.

OK, next, I did not like three out of four of the partners I worked with. We worked for all of them at once, and immediately you might think, Oh God, that sounds awful in practice, and by and large it is, when you're at the plump end of the paddle. We had to fill in hours, which was extremely not fun. If I had one thing I would never do again in my fucking life it would be filling in my god forsaken hours. I would rather clean toilets than fill in hours. Part of the reason we filled in hours was for the partners to figure out how we were partitioned out. That is a fucking lame reason. Trying to fix a workload coordination problem between partners by having your employee report his functional hours is in my view getting it ass-backwards, given that time-spent is a function of multiple variables, including not least difficulty, efficiency and appetite. In my view it's impossible for any employee to objectively or accurately represent to one partner the task given to him by another partner; conversely, it's arguably far more effective for partners to either inform each other of the amount of work partitioned out to each employee, or to be more or less responsible for assignments to selected employees. Of course, the first option requires diligence and transparency, and the nature of a partner's work or preference for employee may make the second option unpalatable. In short I think the pool system referred to here requires far better partners' coordination than was apparent at my first job.

Of course, the hours system is also a way of checking each employee's, broadly speaking, efficiency, and for partners to figure out how much clients can or should be billed. Both of these two things is, in my opinion, rubbish. Efficiency in legal work is not something that can be intelligently measured (except in conjunction with other considerations, and then strictly only as a minor factor) by hours spent. Work must chiefly be assessed by the quality of the product, and forcing employees to think in terms of duration, imposed terms of duration, mind you, is in my view counter productive to a very great degree. We are intelligent people, and we broadly know whether or not we are working well in any set of circumstances. Of course, the nature of practice is extremely difficult, but I strongly doubt any notion that we have no clue about time-efficiency. I mean, come on, we've done exams all our lives under timed conditions, are you kidding me? We get it, trust me a little, OK. Well, you can guess whether or not time is a factor the partners tend to emphasise when it comes to efficiency. As such, this sort of emphasis would encourage associates themselves to be selective with their reported hours, and that would be stupid on so many levels. And conversely let me tell you this, it takes a lot of inefficient struggling to get to a certain competency. That's actually essential, believe it or not. We need time, in somewhat nursery conditions, to figure it out.

As for per-hours' billing, it's all rubbish anyway. It's estimated, given a fee cap, then the partners' hours are somehow magically massaged to make it look as if the partners spend as much time, if not more, than the associates on each file. OK, you gotta play your game, I get it. But you know, all things considered, as a reason for filling in hours this becomes rubbish.

A vast amount, a vast amount of time is spent waiting around court to be admitted into the judges' chambers. I don't even want to go into it. Every damned hearing means time wasted. I hated that feeling, it gave me a nervous, resigned anxiety. With the advent of technology this felt stupider with each passing day. I remember once taking a taxicab in this sort of mood to court, and hearing the Gypsy Kings on the fucking radio. It changed my life, man, it snapped me out of a funk, a fugue.

Anyway as for the three partners I did not enjoy working with, they were demanding, unpleasant, and curt with their time. That's fine, but I did not enjoy it. Cao Cao once wrote, 疑人不用, 用人不疑, which is to say, if you doubt someone, don't employ him, and if you employ someone, don't doubt him. Henry L. Stimson said much the same in 1945 when he wrote, as the US Secretary of War, to his President,

"The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way you can make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show your distrust."

I'll admit, I was a pretty terrible associate in my first year. But you know, I think the firm could have been more responsive. There are reasons why a first year associate struggles, these aren't fucking mysteries. But I guess it's fair enough that if at first I don't impress someone, then it becomes harder, all things considered, to turn out right in their eyes. I get it. In my mind, I know that I'm pretty bad in my first year at things, just like in school. I wish I'd done better, but I hadn't, so that's the truth of it. It helps to have a little faith in people is all I'm saying.

There was also another so-called consultant in the firm who was basically the lady boss, and boy she acted like it. Working for her made my skin crawl. At some point she actually told me and another associate, well I was doing this just to test you, and you guys did a good job, you passed the test.

As for expenditure, well, at some point our claims for transport allowance home was curtailed. That kind of blew it for me. I mean, we're not fucking around here, we too want to go home, and that goddamn eighteen or twenty dollars these guys weren't willing to give out is just pathetic in my view. And not to mention that disbursements can and should be claimed from a client, given that a judgment sum usually includes a small mention for disbursements. That kind of blew it for me.

The hours and the pay, well, it ain't nothing. I get better of each, easy. I never regretted neither. And I need my own time out of work. Work isn't important enough to define me, and it never will. Most days I went home asking myself, did I earn the two hundred and fifty dollars of pay that I'm owed for today? And if I did, fuck it, that's all I wanted to know.

As for the good work we did, I had a couple of pro bono matters that I remembered well. But given the rather meagre standing I had at the firm and the attendant pressures, so much for it, you know what I mean?

Did I become a better lawyer? Yes. Would I have a better run of it now if I went at it again? I'm pretty sure of it. Is it worth my time, is it worth me getting back in it? Absolutely not. Commercial practice is the pits and little in the type of industry that was the subject matter of disputes was essentially interesting. Now law school was tremendously interesting, and as a student it was about the most fun thing I could have done. But lawyering was bullshit. I'm not cynical, as you can see. I have my reasons, and that makes me a critic, not a cynic.

The industry is in a pretty weird state at the moment, as the middle section of lawyers has gone completely thin. It goes to show you that the golden days have gone, and that in the past, being a practicing lawyer for the long haul was a far more palatable notion than it has been for recent years. Take efforts to increase the numbers of graduating students with moderately unenthusiastic growth, exports and all that internationally and you get the sort of conundrum we apparently face today, where there aren't enough spaces for first year associates, but the third to tenth year lawyers have disappeared. Well, I'm on the outside looking in, chuckling sarcastically. So screw you, practice, you were bad for me, and it doesn't take much of a man to know himself well enough to figure that out.

CCVII - hidden mirth

东风夜放花千树，更吹落，星如雨。
宝马雕车香满路。
凤箫声动，玉壶光转，一夜鱼龙舞。
蛾儿雪柳黄金缕，笑语盈盈暗香去。
众里寻他千百度，蓦然回首，
那人却在，灯火阑珊处。

辛弃疾 (1140 -1207) - 青玉案·元夕

The east wind breezes through evening fields of flower-laden trees, sweeping stars low like drops of rain.
Handsome stallions and shimmering carriages glide effusive through scented streets.
Mellow flutes lead softly, a moon of fragile jade waxes in motion, and whirling lanterns mirror in play the night's movements.
Exquisite in finery and colour, gentle women dissolve tittering into the evening, trailing fragrance and intrigue.
Perplexed, amidst the thronging crowd she is vanished and lost.
Yet at last, under a mirthful lantern's glow, her beauty emerges, complete.

Xin Qi Ji (1140 -1207) - An evening of the Lantern Festival

[my translation from the original in Chinese.]

CCVI - the idea of freedom

I was driving down the expressway to town today at noon when the fact that I didn't have to show up for work, or do something scheduled in that sense, actually fully made sense to me. Rolling roads, idle traffic, sunlight through filtered shades, the wind rushing by, the bends and the curves, it was all there for me, throttling through my fingers.

I'm not typically the kind that worries about leaving a job, but I have to admit that even subconsciously I was a little sombre about the idea. It's a little funny that back when I was younger and I left my first job, I left with no worries at all, and bummed for as long as I did, and even went travelling a little before starting on the next job. I mean, that's the right idea, right? To live a little while you can, figure out what you're about. I think I did that. I read, played, exercised, thought about girls, you know, I tried writing, and that's been left aside for awhile, but I think I still have some unfinished business there, and which I might turn to in time. I figured out myself to a very good degree; to quote a great old boxer, I did the best I could with what I had. And of course having had to work for these past two years I left a little of what I was behind.

I'm a little caught up, I think, with the idea of what I'm expected to do. That's a little different from the idea of what I'm supposed to do. I think what I'm supposed to do comes as a reflection of what I'm actually fucking good at doing. But I have been thinking that what I might do before that is to work as a lawyer a little while longer. I mean, it's a real fucking career, isn't it? I don't know if I'm ready to say, well, I used to be a lawyer, and now, dot dot dot. And I'm actually not bad at being a lawyer. I'm actually not bad, and that gives me pause, it gives me a great deal of pause. But the days that I think to myself, I'm fucking dying here, outnumber the days that I leave thinking that all this still makes sense. I say to myself all the time, to varying degrees of gravity, that I'm fucking dying here. I'm fucking dying.

Of course I have the weight of my faith against all that sort of fretting. I do, it's true. I really do. From the things that I was taught, and which I believe, I accept the proposition that money (or reliance on it) is not really the kind of thing which makes us better when we worry about it. And throughout my adult life I've never had cause for concern about money. I find it very neat, and I think it's a little hard to fully understand or appreciate that without the lens of faith. Faith has been a very interesting, wonderful thing for me. It's somewhere in the back of my mind, and I think quite inspiring whenever it comes back into focus. Which is of course not to say that any other feelings of wonder and amazement, or religious-type feelings, if you will, couldn't be evoked by any other system of beliefs, or by the mere existence of beauty, surpassing beauty, in this world. It just so happens that Christianity is the one which I have adopted after all this time. Of course, I am asked to believe (and I do) that it is perhaps a rather special religion. But I think that when it comes to religion we have to look at the questions that are asked of it by first thinking about the objective of those questions. Some ask to test religion against the structures of the enlightened mind, conversely, some would like to figure out if there is such a thing as joy or peace in a divine sense, and of course many are curious in both senses. The former range may not have a definitive and intellectually satisfying end (if at least for those more philosophically cynical), and the latter reaches may bring a sense of cognitive dissonance in having to relinquish formal rationality (in the sense that a substantive leap of faith is actually required). But so much for this discussion.

The second idea that came to me when I was driving was that I have been given so many fine things that I have to make sure to use them, and also to be sure not to undermine their being used. It's something that I have been grappling with lately, the way that I often end up screwing things up by my annoyed reactions to situations which try my impatience too far. I'm actually a horrible guy. If it's a fair thing to wish, I wish that I had better role models growing up. I can read the old Chinese philosophers and their teachings on propriety and courtesy, but I need a life of learning to actually be like that. Anyway I realised that I was in this sense impairing the things that I could do, not for my own sake, but for those of others, and of the little children. And so I realised, deep in my heart, that I always had to take the high road, no matter what happened I always had to take the high road, because I had to be a person that little children, and that my friends and family, could admire and look up to. That I cared little for what people thought of me often meant that I had a very hard side to me, a horrible side. But I had to be Doctor J, or Jackie Robinson, in that sense, so that someone else might have something to believe in.

So that's the big secret. I'm actually really good with children. No, I'm the best. I'm the Doctor J of teachers. I'm not kidding, it's true. But I guess we'll see where that goes.

CCV - wild

I know that this is an incredibly irresponsible thing to say, but it's true, and there are few things more important than the truth.

I usually find myself saying that I really like being single. Well, being single means that I don't have to answer to anyone, and that I don't have to worry about anyone's safety, and by and large nobody has to worry about mine. Being single has it's wonderful, wonderful individual moments. I hate having to explain myself to people, especially knowing that a really good portion of them won't get it, even though I'm so god damn good at English (I'm actually fucking fantastic).

The apogee of being single is the experience of driving a motorcycle while drunk.

There's nothing like it. It is absolutely, terrifically fun. My god! it is so much fun. Whooo!

Unfortunately in my sober moments I know how stupid it can be. And of course, I also have the scar or two which should really inform my moments of reflection. Having said that, doing it, it's just an unbelievable, completely liberating feeling. Power, freedom, exhilaration, the wind, the scenes, the growl, the momentum. Forcibly hurling obscenities at things and people. It's everything it should be, unsafe, dangerous, criminal, and super. I would never recommend it except that someone who's actually single might figure, you know, I'll give it a go. Nobody should ever do it, but you know, my gosh, once you're in it, it's amazing. Of course not everyone drives or rides quite as well as me, so they should never, never do it.

I'm twenty nine, for god's sakes. I know that what I'm saying is really stupid. I'm not even going to lie and say I know what I'm doing. But it's the best feeling in the world.