Crawling out of the wreckage

The wreckage of the Indian Ocean rim is presently all over the news - in another week or so, it will simply be, to us, all over. Such is the longevity of our attention, and the market-mindedness of the media.

As my christmas passed with modest cheer, and little event, I have spent a while contesting the situation in my mind. After the donation to an aid agency has been placed, and as the news is digested, it has been intriguing how we in the safety of the western hemisphere have responded. Have you ever noticed how our media coverage reflects our measurement of the disaster's scale in terms of death toll? It is our guiding integer, the which we place against a scale of zeros (hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands) to determine impact. It's curiously, but so particularly, our style to be capitalistic and utilitarian in our quantification of even such a disaster. In a bizarre sense, we look to volume as the term of value - and it makes things faceless. Perhaps, in some way, it is our means of distancing ourselves emotionally - bigger scales mean it is impractical to engage with any single loss. I doubt if, for the victims, volume has anything as much to do with the pain. I cannot imagine feeling the colossal scale of the disaster, of thinking of others, where the lethal abduction of deep personal loves occurs, and where children, spouses, and parents are involved.

How do we react in the prosperous, safe West? I struggle sometimes even to be just thankful for what I have - the comfort of our relative safety makes me uneasy. That this has happened at a time when we indulge in our novelty and luxury, makes this doubly disturbing. I am not trying to beat up the prosperous people of the Western nations - I recognise that beyond giving money and supporting aid efforts, there is little that can be done. I think that deep down, in most of us, there is a very human, silent trauma occurring, where we bury our seeming powerlessness and internalise it. I ask myself - under what circumstances could we envisage ourselves howling in anguish at the visions of disaster that we have ready access to in our media? Why did thousands line the streets and wail for princess Diana, yet release but a mere sigh at the catastrophe beyond our immediate view?

It is not something we do readily - grieve for others. I think we are in this sense deficient. We are so far away from a true sense of global citizenship - a feeling of community, with all its emotional bonds and protections, across the topographical divides.

As I read and am wrung by the terror of our wealth, it seems to me that the importance of global citizenship, as a philosophical tenor as well as a practice in consumption, waste and charity, has never been more stark.

Christmas Spirit - 70% proof

What a day. I made the colossal mistake of agreeing to drive down to the Tesco and grab the last-minute extras that we forgot to pick up over the past three weeks. Whereas I had anticipated a tranquil break, it turns out we may be descended upon by "the clan" and hence it was necessary for me to gather cans of coca-cola, booze and microwaveable volume-produced sweetmeats. The roads were hell - cars bumpered to a standstill, frustration overflowing from driver to driver, prompting acts of consummate stupidity. I actually saw someone with a "baby on board" car sticker perform a highly precarious (yet wonderfully entertaining) weaving manoeuvre between a double-decker bus and an articulated lorry - whilst simultaneously barking into a mobile phone and cutting up pedestrians at a pelican crossing. Not the greatest advert for compassion and parental responsibility. This act of stupidity and modern cruelty was nothing compared to what I saw at the store.

Having battered my trolley through the clogged arteries of the Tesco superstore, I fought my way to a checkout where I was unfortunate enough to witness an oaf of a 40-something man verbally abusing a young mother who he claimed had purloined some of the contents of his trolley. Perversely entertained by the "mise-en-scène" that was unwrapping itself like Broadway before me, I switched into People's Court mode. There was no way she was guilty. She was pretty (dark hair, blue eyes, petite) and fragile - qualities enough to absolve her, surely?. The guy was Chaucer's Miller come to life. Red-faced, with timber hewn hands and a crust of a beard, he had heavy, earthy wares in his gatherings, of the sort that she would not possibly have chosen for herself (bottles of brown ale, potted cheese, mini pork-pies). It got ugly - she didn't retaliate, probably because she was more startled and disbelieving than anything else, and that just pissed him off even more. He opened up on her. I swear, the I thought the woman was going to burst into tears - the edges of her eyes reddened and there was a faint quiver of her lip. I was mortified. When the guy turned around for the third time to inflict further abuse, I was mustering gallantry to intervene - but an attendant shopfloor assistant stepped in to arbitrate and the drama melted back into the ambient stress.

So much for the Christmas spirit! I drove home livid at the impatience of society, but kept telling myself to just cool down and focus on enjoying the weekend. The thought of the jingling bottles of champagne in the back served to do just the trick. So, I anticipate a gentle softening of the soul this year, remembering that the festivity celebrates the promise of redemption.

Wishing everyone a fantastic christmas weekend!

Civil Rights in the UK

An observation on the current controversy on summary detentions under the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act.

The government's use of internment without trial is something that has troubled me a lot. It's the kind of specious "greater good" argument that dictators such as Pinochet, or (dare I say) Saddam Hussein, used to validate their crimes against humanity. For such a thing to be happening in the UK is terrifying - thank god the Law Lords have not shied away from declaring these laws unsound.

The Home Secretary has suggested that the government will not react to the Law Lords' rulings, on the basis that the detainees are simply too dangerous. A stand-off is coming, which the government will probably win for now - however unrighteously. Theirs is the mantra: "We know more than you do, and if you knew what we knew you'd do the same."

If these people are a danger to society, there are very clear options: charge them as criminals or deport them. The current argument by the government against deportation is that legally these detainees cannot be deported to states where the regimes are known to have human rights abuses. Er... did I miss something? We won't deport the suspects to states where human rights abuses are known to be practised, but instead we'll just practise our own here in the UK by giving the detainees no indication of what it is they would be accused of. The absurdity is patent, and frightening. It's Kafka. Now, it has been pointed out that the issue with deportation is due to the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into our law. The startling aspect of this argument is that it treats the enshrinement of human rights into law as the root of the problem - as though it is a troublesome technical mistake we have assumed. The convention is there for precisely this purpose - to stop us taking the easy way out and forcing us to confront the principles we claim to uphold. We are failing this challenge with no small amount of ignominy.

To be honest, I do not think there is any obscurity in this case. The government can claim to protect us, but doing so by compromising on the basic rights we claim to defend is simply untenable. This may be a controversial thing to say, and I do not want to tempt fate, but I would rather live at risk than start down the path that leads to a society demonised by its own sense of fear. If we embark on this road, it will lead us to repression - and this is no exaggeration. The laws, presently restricted to non-UK nationals, will be extended to others - justification will be wrapped around actions with the barest tape. I am sure the Home Secretary believes that he would know the limits when he comes to them, but that is the kind of arrogance for which the government is rightly criticised. Corruptibility should never be underestimated, the way it can creep and slither and take hold, all the while deluding the authority into believing in its own righteousness.

Belmarsh Prison is being called UK's "Guantanamo" - I'd be intrigued to know what the American perspective on Guantanamo is, seeing as they've lived with this before. I accept that the psyche of the US will be different - we in the UK have not (yet) been hit by the devastation of the Al Qaeda terrorists, and who knows how we would react were it the case.

Ultimately, I accept that there are things we cannot know for security reasons, but the problem for me is that the government is prepared to accept that the measure of internment without trial is simply a regrettable necessity. Worse still, they seem to be comfortable with the "indefinite" terms of internment. There is insufficient urgency to extract us from the shame of this regrettable necessity.

All these things

I've been thinking about something a friend said to me in an email: "I'm getting to know about you more through this site than in face-to-face conversation". I was startled to read this comment, but it underlined something I have been starting to feel recently. That is, from being originally an undertaking of novelty at a low point, my blog is becoming something reassuringly close to me. Writing it is something I look forward to, and I love it being read by others. So, a couple of months into this practice, I have been asking myself just how much am I as I am through my blog, rather than "in person".

Let's start by making the following assumption - when we write, we do so consciously for an audience. Be that in a letter, a report, a story, a schedule, an application, we usually have an idea of who will read these words - ourselves, friends, authorities, etc. - and this naturally influences the tone, register and diction.

This gives rise to the first significant question - who reads this blog, anyhow? The audience that I am aware of is confined to a small web coterie: my close friends, bloggers from Stateside (the USA is way ahead of us in terms of general web literacy), and maybe some other randoms from across the web. So, only a few people, their readership mostly solicited and certainly selective. Are there any people I have deliberately chosen not to publicise to? Certainly - the content is usually free from directed bile, but I know that most people would simply not be interested. Yes, the site is public access, but somehow I doubt there'd be much traffic even out of general interest.

Writing my blog often feels like an act of self-definition - by, in and for itself. Is that to say, I am inventing myself in the writing of its content? Perhaps, but not entirely. I'd like to think that my blog is a place for unfettered self-expression. It has become a mode of expressing my sense of self, whatever that may be. For the deconstructionists out there, the idea of expressing self immutably would appear shaky at best - so perhaps I should say that my words are remnant: a mere carcass clothed in the flesh of the reader's mindcasts.

Like any piece of writing, there is editorial control - things get written, mostly published, some rejected. In this sense, the content of my blog is not a pure window into the mind. Face it, how unrealistic would that be, in any case? It is, however, more open than a journal. Let's draw a distinction between the blog and a personal diary. Unlike a journal, the likes of which I have kept before (and done so with no intention of sharing with anyone), the fact that my blog is in the public domain necessarily forces a different perspective. This is not to say that I am less likely to be open. In fact, I feel less the need to be guarded with a blog than with journal. A journal that's written as an analogue of one's inner privacy means that it is inevitably shadowed by the possibility of unwanted revelation - the journal could be lost or stolen, its contents exposed and its privacy compromised. Hence, the irony is that the journal ends up being more tightly controlled, and as it becomes more populated with words there is a tendency to be more circumspect, to protect against risk.

Stylistically, my journal was pretty awful. Its poverty found expression at two competing extremes: there were of course the lapses in rhapsody (mostly laziness) where entries were separated by weeks rather than daily; more than this however, when in flow it took itself much too seriously, and ended up being somewhat anally retentive: I was too much concerned with releasing shit, and ended up holding back.

Where does this leave us? I say things I want to share with people, but this coincides with my current willingness to share things that I wouldn't normally. I can say things that are outside conventions of conversation, things that would be out of place or unexpected. In this sense, I am freer through my blog.

So, for now, I guess this blog will indeed be neither more nor less "me" than even the "real life" me. It'll just be me in and as myself - whatever you take that to be.

smoke and justice

Wednesday night, the apex of the week, not a night for going out. With my bro' out of town, and not being in the mood to do anything of note, I went out into the garden and lit up for the first time in ages.

Nothing like a good smoke on a crisp, cold night. It's a balm for the soul, a stimulus for memory, and who could but feel only love for the immediate, heady spin after the first deep draw. A smoke reminds me of Helen; of the evenings when the two of us would be banished out to the driveway in Leamington Spa when our housemates caught us lighting up a digestive smoke. Those were the best conversations, the most honest, the most love-inducing, that sent me to sleep that night in a well of longing. We talked about dreams, the Renaissance, song lyrics, politics, favourite foods and drinks. The silence between us for the last couple of years remains a scar.

I'm experiencing a sense of drift this evening. Earlier on, I was feeling angry - I thought today's entry would turn into a rant. What was I angry about? Stupid stuff. Frustration at the world, the lack of progress. A bit of first world guilt. I saw discarded food, people buying trivia for inflated prices, the press trying to misinform us all again, and it angered me. I was angry about injustices, about the evil back-stabbing and the dishonesty, hidden agendas, the dispassion, the ethical lassitude, the moral ambivalence. I'd like to think that it's a reminder to myself that the inner indignation is still there - my moral compass still ends up pointing toward the distant pole of right rather than wrong, despite the virulent consumerism that surrounds and sometimes infects me. Someone quoted Dr Martin Luther King recently: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it does bend towards justice".

Perhaps it's also the end-of-year sensation that's putting me in this frame of mind - with another milestone approaching, it's natural to think about what the year has brought. That'll make for a longer entry as New Year approaches, I guess.

And finally, a word of solidarity goes out to the Abster - prayers offered up to Providence, and for good Fortune to find you.

A life less ordinary

So, I had the interview today. It didn't go very well - not because I didn't take opportunities to show my intellect, but more because there was no chemistry generated at all. I was really disappointed with the people interviewing me, a deputy director of the unit and a senior civil servant. There was no warmth or engagement, or even a proper grilling, and it felt... banal. The questions were unsettlingly mundane, and it felt as though they were both just trying to get to the end of a long, hard day.

I'd like to think that interviews are an opportunity to try and create a spark, to uncover a hidden gem, to reveal the flash of talent. If the job at the Institute comes off, I will be ensuring that I take ALL interviews and I'll look to give people as many chances as possible to shine.

On a more lyrical note... It has been a bizarre weekend and start to the week. I've been taking in the season. On my way to Admiralty Arch, I stopped at Trafalgar Square, and watched the peoples for a while. Taking a hiatus from it all opens up the mind's eye, something magnificent. This is never more so than at the festive season.

It's the xmas period, and all over London, people are waltzing to a tune of merry abandon. Workers scurry from office to party, from party to each other's beds, sighing and smiling. Misdemeanours, adultery, and in some cases the expression of true love - where for months interest has been rarified into angelic stand-off, the xmas (alcoholic) cheer presents opportunities for the lovelorn to declare newly unbridled passion with impunity.

The suicide rate rises at Christmas, according to figures by the Samaritans, on account of the accentuated effect on the lonely. Whilst the fortunate amongst us are guzzling warm cinnamon wine and egg nog (yuk!), or wallowing in the refuge of our families, the less fortunate are ruing their lack of such warmth, and terminally so. Ironic, therefore, that at a time of year when society should define itself in the enfranchisement of the isolated and marginalised, that festivity becomes lethal to the excluded.

Tonight, the air was crisp and smokey, the windchill numbing my fingers and watering my eyes on Waterloo Bridge as I trod to the south. In the underpass by the IMAX, a homeless guy with a paper cup was unwrapping a fresh pack of Camels, and lighting up with a fumble of grubby fingers.

Future imperfect

My eyeballs are aching.

The xmas party last night overspilled into the Motion bar, and had me rolling home at around 4am, not getting to sleep for another hour, then getting up for work at 8am. I had a lucozade and some toast, but that gave me a burst of energy that lasted until 11am. At 11.01am the turbo lag kicked in and I was rendered almost useless. Today was not the day to be off form.

My boss decided to talk to me about my future at the Institute. Assuming we get the funding for this big project, she has offered me a post as Programme Director. I get a salary that's just under what I got in corporate (and damn good for the public sector), and I get to run a team of about 15 people - my way. That's the bit I like - MY WAY. After busting my bollocks working for the Man, and having to follow the intellectual inferiors, I could get a chance to play MY game. It's attractive as an offer, but I haven't committed to anything yet - and then I have the interview at the Cabinet Office next Tuesday, and who knows what that might throw up...

At the moment, however, I just want to get to the new year, head over to Mauritius in January and decide when I get back.

A brief tear in the fabric of denial...

Rewind to Saturday night.

Standing in the basement bar, with the fine music ("She lives in my lap"), tall long island ice teas in hand, surrounded by hot clientele, but nonetheless my mind was far from where I was in the moment.

How can it be that on a night where all circumstances, environment, ambience and climate appear so conducive to oblivion, I still felt so distant?

Nothing could move or animate me. Not even the presence of my closest friend and confidante, nor the unexpected presence of an obscure object of infatuation from a remote period in the mid-nineties.

A couple of days' rumination has spawned a sparse theory - maybe this sense of the vacuousness of the moment was a revelation. A spontaneous, unsolicited confrontation with the dystopia of which I am in constant denial. A revelation of wastage, at the most inopportune moment - I'm wasting myself, my youth and the meagre talents bestowed by nature in her unforgiving mockery.

That night, as I left and made my way home early, a cut from the film Raising Arizona dropped into my head and decided to squat for a while. Utterly incongruous to the milieu, but it invaded my mind, and felt sorely relevant:

PAROLE BOARD ROOM

Hi faces the same three PAROLE OFFICERS across the same table.

CHAIRMAN
Well Boy, you done served your twenty
munce, and seeing as you never use
live ammo, we got no choice but to
return you to society.

SECOND MAN
These doors goan swing wide.

HI
I didn't want to hurt anyone, Sir.

SECOND MAN
Hi, we respect that.

CHAIRMAN
But you're just hurtin' yourself
with this rambunctious behavior.

HI
I know that, sir.

CHAIRMAN
Okay then.

Cup of kindness

All this talk of single malt has put me into a story-telling mood. With the power of the internet at my calloused fingertips, and aware as I am that this would otherwise be deadly boring(!), I have added colour and dimension to this post with a few lame pictorial aids - enjoy!

OK, my love affair with single malt begins in 1995 at Warwick University, when a sophisticated finalist bought me (a lowly, vulnerable and impressionable fresher) my first measure. I cannot remember what brand the stuff was, nor how many measures we sipped down, but for you to picture the scene here is a shot of the bar where it happened:


Warwick bar 

Despite the further drinking and laughter that ensued, alas I regret that no intimate mischief took place - something for which I am forever regretful, as she was 3 years older than me, and damn foxy with it too (sigh)... All the same, she who will remain nameless takes the credit for undoing my single malt virginity.

Fast forward to 1997. I am living in Blois, France. My regular watering hole is the legendary "Orangerie" bar in the Rue St Lubin. Set in the bowel of the old town, it was tucked away perfectly in a sleazy cobbled back street, with a long-established brothel upstairs. It was there that my drinking buddies and I would adjourn after the day's work, buy drinks and banter (innocently) with the "putes". The table in the centre is where I first tasted what was to be the love of my life:


orangerie 

Yes, it was in the Orangerie that my lips were first made wet with Oban. I remember the night well. As was our custom, the trip to the bar began at 11pm. We would rock up to the door stone sober, and within half an hour (and several choice tipples later) we'd be lulled into happy abandonment and beseeching the barman to play Sneaker Pimps or Robert Johnson. I remember at the time we were partial to dark tequila, complemented with slivers of sweet mandarin orange and a dusting of cinnammon. But for some reason, on this occasion we elected to draw whiskey - kick it back easy, we thought. Barman pops out the Oban on his own recommendation, takes 35 francs from us for a decent measure, and then settles back to ring up a few more when seeing my face collapse into unfettered joy...


oban 

I won't pretend I could detect peat or spice or any such gustatory refinement. The whiskey just went down without a perceivable burn - I waited for the back of my tongue to arch, for an exhalation as the sting hit, but instead there was just warmth, and a fumeless smokiness. Thus, in an evening of indiscriminate pleasures, Oban leaves an impression that will persist - others will come, some with more frequency, others with greater labels, but I am left forever in thrall to Oban.

Fast forward again to 2001, and I'm working in Munich. Although the tech stock crash is dawning on everyone, for us it is still a time of plenty, and the expenses policy is at its peak. My colleagues and I spend our evenings in the bar of the Arabella Sheraton Grand, where we are staying:


arabella 

The bar is shameless sleaze, masked as class. The routine is simple - cocktails are tabbed and put on room numbers whist a lounge singer called "Jerry C" regales us with Lionel Richie covers and scrounges drinks off us. One night, Kris and I finish up at the office at about 11:30pm, jump in the chauffeured Benz and head back to the Arabella. Pleased with our evening's work, Kris suggests we treat ourselves to a Cuban - being from Dayton, he's making the most of the Cubans with impunity. Never having smoked a cigar in my life, I'm nonetheless game for anything. We're on the verge of ordering a Bush Mills to accompany, when I spot a fresh bottle of Oban on the rack. Duly ordered, I settle to experience a pairing of sensuous enjoyments incomparable to anything.

Now, I make no apology for the what appears an incongruously luxurious image when you consider my present, much more modest, circumstances - not yet 30 years old and already harping on about whiskey and cigars? It sounds very old world, with fat, old fucker bankers farting about in some members' club. Let me say this, people: those fuckers don't do it for no reason! A smokey amber in one hand, and a rich burnt flavour of rolled leaf in the other... you just close your eyes and forget everything else. Hell, if I could afford it, I'd probably dispense my pocket money happily on the combination - albeit in much lighter surroundings.

With or without the cigar, single malt has been, is, will remain the rinse of this sullied, penitent mind - nothing betters it. It punctuates great moments, more than be recounted here; happy times, comfort, loss of self, abandonment, retrieval, rescue, the throb of temples and eyeballs in the morning, but never regrets.

To all and any readers - if our paths should ever collide, be assured that in the spirit of warmth I'd gladly buy you what Burns lyricised as "a cup of kindness".

Unloading the burden of juvenilia

At the twilight of another lost weekend, the highlight of which was last night's visit to the Soho Bar (to be written up another day this week), a little reminiscence of an earlier period. Clearing through old files this afternoon, I came across a folder of documents I had forgotten - thumbnail sketches for my first, shortlived, and only serious escapade into creative writing.

I have wanted to write properly from my first reading age. Reading and writing were my only distinctive talents at school - I out-read everyone in the school, my mother having to buy new books for me as the school ran out of material for me to read. As a graduate student (5 years ago), I spent a lot of time writing things that weren't really anything to do with what I was studying. At the time of my writing, I felt sincerely (and I still do, although with less certainty) that I had at least one good novel in me, and with the time I had on my hands there was no reason to delay a first attempt.

I had the spines of the plots, but wrote only about 50 pages worth. In my mind, it was to be an entwining of multiplicitous strands: an examination of death and human transition, a creative reflection of how family as a structure handles that transition, with a macro plot about the implosion of the world - an apocalyptic event to catalyse the characters' vergent perceptions of the deathly. OK, so translated into layman's language, that means a moody, emotional drama combined with a disaster story, - ultimately not too distant from the cheap throwaway Hollywood movie plot that we like to sling mud at. It was also hopelessly immature, totally lacking in originality but strangely un-familiar too, even in its plainness.

I realised this after a couple of months, and destroyed most of the stuff I'd written so far in disgust. Only these abrupt sketches remain. I regret this petulance now - it was, at the time, a fucking big deal and even now I am forced into a re-evaluation. Re-reading it now, I haven't changed my mind about the immaturity, and it is largely an unrefined piece of crap.

I recognise that I chose a topic I had no right to take, but at the time, I was musing heavily on how death affects and evolves families. There was a bit of death around the family at the time, and it made me think a lot about changes and how family overcomes this (or doesn't in some cases). This was also a time when I believed all my grandparents to be deceased, little knowing (as I do now) that my father's mother is very much alive.

Anyhow, I'm sharing some of what was saved with you - let's call it a "letting go" now that this means nothing. I'm happy to accept I can do so much better, and I'm not embarrassed by juvenilia anymore. For what it's worth, here are the fragmented residues of my creative adventure in creative writing:

from "Sweet Harmony" (experimental title)

In the year leading up to his death, I asked my father what it was like to have the foresight of his own end.

It was a question that had gnawed at me since that Sunday morning in January when, freshly doused with New Year blessings from morning mass, he had marched purposefully into the dining room and given us the news. Bella and Bart held hands as they absorbed the meaning of his words; I sat rigid, gripping the arms of my chair. With the bright Winter sun splashed across his back, he had glowed like an archangel, a herald of fate embossed against the fire of divine tidings.

It seemed to me a terrifying state of knowledge, the awareness to measure the end with such exactitude. That life could be reduced to calendar planning, to a resignation of oneself to an irrecoverable deficit of time, the penance of an irredeemable series of mistakes. It appeared to me the despair of measuring the erosion of a coastline, all the while knowing when the cliff will collapse and be reclaimed by the jaws of the sea. My father had lived in ignorance of the abrasions the cancer had wrought against his liver, without an awareness of when the cliff would falter.

* * *

‘Doesn’t it scare you, not even a little?’ I asked.
‘No, not at all. Fear of death, my love, is the emotional reserve of the living. My death is an event that has already taken place. Once you learn to dismiss the possibility of the miraculous, and say “I am already dead, really”. If there is any fear about the whole business of dying, it is bereavement, and bereavement is what happens to those left behind. I came to understand that most when your mother passed. For her loss, I was not prepared. Secretly, we all dupe ourselves with the instinct that life cannot leave without our express permission. But that’s not how it ends up working. I’m lucky, comparatively. My death is a certainty anchored in a calendar accuracy. So, you see, I have already grieved before the event – I want you to do away with it also, even before the event.’

An answer reasoned upon, a prepared answer as only the academic seasoned by many a seminar is capable. He said nothing further on the subject, the question was never asked again, and after a while accepted its terminally unanswered state.

* * *

Bella and I had never known our mother, neither as a personality nor as an icon. As young children, we had not missed her, rarely allowed her into our lives, although our father was forever making reference to her. It was as though he felt he could speak her into presence, declaring her beauty so it could appear before us, repeating her words so that her voice would usher forth from the emptiness and we might hear. At age 14, we went through a period of intense longing for her, (‘a delayed period of mourning’, Dad had called it). At that age, whenever he spoke her into being, we would memorise and trap the images like butterflies. Hoarding our harvest of father's wistful stories, we would take creativity upon ourselves, and developed a secret, shared imagination of our mother's being.

Inevitably, after a few months of expansive fantasising, our sculpting of spirit and flesh peaked and soon reached its end. Our intense imagining on the suppleness of locks or the fineness of her wrists... dwindled into tacit acceptance of the finished article. Our mother had been shaped into completion as an artifice of our minds, a synthetic memory; there was no more marble to chip away without defecting the article. Thereafter, she returned to the ghostliness of our infancy, and hovered quietly in the recesses of our twinned minds.

Now, burying my father, I thought again for my mother, and looked for her in the shadowed veils of the church. In my mind, I had liked to think of funerals as the haunt of ghosts, the weeping of unwitting mourners felt silently by the benign spectral presence of the dear ones deceased…

* * *

...I noticed that the room had succumbed to a deepening darkness. The candles around the room had begun to expire. The flames quivered, convulsed then, one by one, imploded into ascensions of pale wisps that arched up and dissipated into the heavy, empty evening.

Comparatively...

A good night - drinks at the Langley for my friend Christian who's leaving the firm and moving on to new things. Apparently, my legend still lives on amongst the team I left behind - good gossip and good humour was exchanged. Music loud, inciting dance. A succession of drinks: 4 coronas, 2 slippery nipples, 1 caiparinha, 3 glasses of cheap champagne.

It took an hour to get a cab. Walking down to Trafalgar Square, to the Strand, to Charing Cross, all I could see were tuxedo'd bankers coming out from their early Christmas parties, stealing black cabs and stumbling across pavement.

When I got home, I had a bad case of the munchies - instant noodles did just the trick. All in all, a good night's drinking, capped off with simple cardboard food, and surely this obliteration of reality is what makes it all worthwhile? So it seems when pleasantly drunk at 3am.

Then, I stumble into work at 12.30, check my mail and pick up this email from my sister:


 

That's my future nephew/niece, all of 5cm long and 12 weeks. As a cure for a hangover, it beats isotonic sports drinks with a stick.

The New York Trilogy

Finally, I am writing the long-promised words on The New York Trilogy.

First a bit of background to how I came across this book in particular. Quite simply, Paul Auster was next on the list. I keep a list in my pocketbook of the authors whose work I need to read. Incidentally, before him came Dambudzo Marachera ("House of Hunger" is superb), and after him comes Willa Cather. Of Auster's work, I chose this novel because of the title - I'm a sucker for anything to do with New York - city
of possibilities, in my (limited) experience rival only to Rome and London (my home) as big cities go.

So, having read the book, how did I feel about it? In review, I found it variously intriguing, challenging, compelling, frustrating, bleak, but infuriatingly engaging. I think what I like the most about The New York Trilogy is its sense of difficulty. Even now, having read the book, I am still left in doubt as to whether I have indeed, actually read it. That is not a paradox - it is a reflection of how unsettling I found it, and how the writing sustains its erosion of certainty.

When I say it's a difficult piece of work, I don't mean the same kind of impenetrable difficulty one gets from reading Heidegger's "sein und zeit", Derrida's "De la grammatologie" or Hegel's "Rechtsphilosophie". I cite those volumes as examples not only because of my less-than-simple experiences with them, but also because they
were the ones that I immediately associated with Auster's trilogy. In those formidable volumes, it was hard enough to grasp the terminology claimed by the authors, terms and ideas that appropriate a very particular language. You
could cleave open the pages only to find a wall of concrete holding meaning at bay, forcing you to wind up your mental muscles and set in for the long midnight haul. In stark contrast, Auster's text is thin, transparent, generally devoid of lyrical flourish - it seems to present no especial challenge for understanding. Yet this seeming transparency creates in the unsuspecting reader a sense of unfounded security - the perfect envrionment for a plenitude of feints, blind-side jabs, and sucker-punches (of the literary variety, naturally). Meanings gush forward, then drain, a momentary flood, conjuring up something then creating a famine of thought. This is done with meticulous engineering, a hunger baited, swiftly abated then baited further: Does Stillman exist? Is Auster actually Fanshawe?

Intertextuality is prevalent throughout the book. My academic background being heavily literary and literary-theoretical, I found this one of most intriguing elements. The novel arcs its parabola, inviting familiar tangents - resonances of names (Quinn, Stillman, Daniel, even Paul Auster himself), women as objects of desire and affection (think Virgina Stillman, Mrs. Fanshawe, Sophie), literary echoes...

In terms of pure literary intertextuality, Auster explicitly cites Cervantes and Milton but beyond the confines of the novel, I found further textual analogues. My mind fused literary experiences with Auster's textual fabric: When reading about the author's beating and expectation of death in The Locked Room, I think of Blanchot's "Folie du Jour" and "L'instant de ma mort"; when thinking on the trilogic structure, I remember going to the Edinburgh Festival in 1994, and seeing a pair of plays by Arthur Miller: "Elegy for a Lady" and "Some kind of love story", paired under the umbrella title of "Two Way Mirror". The two plays were separate, had no immediate linkage in terms of character, intrigue or context. Yet they were paired, perhaps as a challenge to the committed audience to grasp

At times, I have to admit Auster's smartness pissed me off. Particularly in the way he would forge coincidence: the emergence of a name (e.g. Henry Dark) forces a mental rewind and a temptation to flick back to earlier pages. Having focused on the Stillman conundrum in the City of Glass, his cursory appearance in the last third of the trilogy sparks a desire to break backwards and re-examine the question of who he was - Auster baits us, and we jump on it like rats on rotten meat. After, frustrated and ashamed, I found myself having to resist further temptation - "You pulling my chain, Auster, you motherfucker? Not going to flick back..."

Of the three, it is undoubtedly The Locked Room that I found the most engaging and certainly the most developed. This is logical - it was written last, it builds on its predecessors, and of course, it being the last, one would presume it promises a satisfactory resolution to the trilogy - closure, in short, an ending. Upon completion, the reader recognises that it promises no such thing. Auster doesn't allow for a simple ending; he sets the scope of his novel beyond even the paper dust jacket. It is important to note that the novel is not circular - to suggest such a thing would propose closure, a repetitive loop that nonetheless traps infinity. The novel is expansive, sets in motion a replication of thoughts, a horizon in itself - something that proposes an end in the distance but is destined to remain forever beyond accomplishment. It's as though Auster suggests - "yeah there's an ending, shithead, but it's an ending that occurs in some other sucker's nightmare". Auster's stratagem is to "fray" the ends of the stories. The reader is drawn to the brink of a vertiginous "mise-en-abime", where the undefined endings scream out like sirens to the hapless reader.

At times this book was frightening - a book can generally be controllable, closed flat, stowed in a shelf amongst other books. This was one that could not be controlled. Its lack of finality reached out beyond glass panes, beyond the tain of mirror, across the room. Possibilities seeped through my fingers, dribbled onto the floor as my mind tried to throw arms around. The fascination that The New York Trilogy arouses is tempered by doubt, always doubt, about the veracity of language certainly, but also the fact of being - it is phenomenological, with all the associated trapdoors and humiliations.

The threads have lured me to further inquiry into Auster. I am now reading "Hand to Mouth" and "The Invention of Solitude" - and expectations are high.

Bad morning

Barely a couple of hours into work, and already I am wanting to be back in bed. Slept badly, woke unnecessarily early, and am generally in a bad mood. Want to kick something, hard, but I don't think I'd be allowed to stay if I did so.

Am already aiming to leave early this afternoon - library's open until late tonight, so a few hours of refuge beckon already!