I mean I want to see

THE Israeli violinist Yitzhak Perlman contracted polio at the age of 4. Ever since, he has had to wear metal braces on his legs and walk with crutches, yet he became one of the great virtuosi of our time. One one occasion, the story is told, he came out onto the stage at a concert to play a violin concerto. Laying down his crutches, he placed the violin under his chin and began tuning the instrument when, with an audible crack, one of the strings broke. The audience were expecting him to send for another string, but instead he signalled the conductor to begin, and he proceeded to play the concerto entirely on three strings. At the end of the performance the audience gave him a standing ovation and called on him to speak. What he said, so the story goes, was this: “Our task is to make music with what remains.” That was a comment on more than a broken violin string. It was a comment on his paralysis and on all that is broken in life.

- Sacks, To Heal A Fractured World, p. 222.

I think of Paul Wittgenstein, brother of Ludwig, a concert pianist who lost his arm during WWI but who continued to play, and for whom Ravel, Prokofiev, Richard Strauss and Benjamin Britten wrote works for the left hand.

Happiness, these lives seem to say, is not the absence of suffering but the ability to take its fractured discords and turn them into music that rescues from the darkest regions of the soul a haunting yet humanising beauty.

Jonathan Sacks’ powerful and insightful book. “We worship God not only in prayer, but also by how we act in the world…To know God is to act with justice and compassion, to recognise his image in other people, and to hear the silent cry of those in need.”

ISBN 0-8264-8622-3

God exists, therefore there is justice. But it is *divine* justice — justice from the perspective of one who knows all, sees all, and considers all: the universe as a whole, and time as a whole, which is to say, eternity. But we who live in space and time cannot see from this perspective, and if we did, it would not make us better human beings but worse.

To be a parent is to be moved by the cry of a child. But if the child is ill and needs medicine, we administer it, making ourselves temporarily deaf to its cry. A surgeon, to do his job competently and well, must to a certain extent desensitise himself to the patient’s fears and pains and regard him, however briefly, as a body rather than as a person. A statesman, to do his best for the country, must weigh long-term consequences and make tough, even brutal decisions: for soldiers to die in war if war is necessary; for people to be thrown out of jobs if economic stringency is needed. Parents, surgeons, and politicians have human feelings, but the very roles they occupy mean that at times they must override them if they are to do the best for whom they are responsible. To do the best for others needs a measure of detachment, a silencing of sympathy, an anaesthetising of compassion, for the road to happiness or health or peace sometimes runs through the landscape of pain and suffering and death.

If we were able to see how evil today leads to good tomorrow — if we were able to see from the point of view of God, creator of all — we would understand justice but *at the cost of ceasing to be human*. We would accept all, vindicate all, and become deaf to the cries of those in pain. God does not want us to cease to be human, for if he did, he would not have created us. We are not God. We will never see things from his perspective. The attempt to do so is an abdication of the human situation.

p. 22

What distinguishes the concept of tzedakah is, firstly, an absolute refusal on the part of the sages to romanticise poverty. It is not, for them, a blessed state. It is an unmitigated evil. “Poverty,” they said, “is a kind of death.” (p. 34)…There is nothing inevitable or divinely willed about social and economic inequality. Judaism rejects the almost universal belief in antiquity and throughout the Middle Ages that hierarchy and divisions of class are written into the structure of society. What human beings have created, human beings can rectify. (p. 36)

What matters is not how *much* you give, but *how* you do so. Anonymity in the giving of aid is essential to dignity. The poor must not be embarrassed. The rich must not be allowed to feel superior. We give, not to take pride in our generosity, still less to emphasise the dependency of others, but because we belong to a covenant of human solidarity, and because that is what God wants us to do, honouring the trust through which he has temporarily lent us wealth in the first place. (p. 38)…The rabbinic insistence that the community provide the poor with enough money so that they themselves can give is a profound insight into the human condition. So too is their understanding of wealth. As I noted in the first chapter, a series of research projects has shown that happiness is correlated not with what we possess, but with what we give. The privilege of wealth lies not in what it allows us to do for ourselves, but what it enables us to do for others. (p. 39)

*

What is hessed? It is usually translated as “kindness” but it also means “love” — not love as emotion or passion, but love expressed as deed. Theologians define *hessed* as *covenant love*. Covenant is the bond by which two parties pledge themselves to one another, each respecting the freedom and integrity of the other, agreeing to join their separate destinies into a single journey that they will travel together…Unlike a contract, it is an open-ended relationship lived towards an unknown future…(p. 45) It is love moralised into small gestures of help and understanding, support and friendship: the poetry of everyday life written into the language of simple deeds…Where *tzedakah* is a gift or loan of money, *hessed* is the gift of the person. It costs less and more: less because its gestures often cost little or nothing, more because it takes time and attention, existential generosity, the gift of self to self. More than anything else, *hessed* humanises the world. (p. 46)

Tzedakah (charity) is done with one’s money; while loving-kindness (hessed) may be done with one’s money or with one’s person. Charity is done only to the poor, while loving-kindness may be given both to the poor and to the rich. Charity is given only to the living, while loving-kindness may be shown to the living and the dead.

p. 50

Morality refers to the universal principles we use in dealings with humanity in general: our relationships with strangers. Ethics, by contrast, refers to our relationships with those with whom we share a special bond of shared memory and belonging: family, friends, fellow countrymen, or people with whom we share a faith.

…Justice demands disengagement (Adam Smith spoke of adopting the standpoint of an “impartial spectator”). Hessed is an act of engagement. Justice is best administered without emotion. Hessed exists only in virtue of emotion, empathy and sympathy, feeling-with and feeling-for. We act with kindness because we know what it feels like to be in need of kindness. We comfort the mourners because we know what it is to mourn. Hessed requires not detached rationality but emotional intelligence.

(p. 51)

*

I find this poem from the Writer’s Almanac today very lovely:

Letter To My Unborn Child

by Young Dawkins

Someday you will want to know
and I might not be here,
so
this is how you were made.

It was a soft night
near the back of June,
clear, for a change, no rain.

Old women were out
gathering healing herbs,
fennel, dog rose and rhu.

Bonfires burned on all seven hills,
drunken young men
leapt through the flames.

Down in the bogs
the foxfire glowed,
will o’ the wisps edged the meadows.

In our bed my wife laughed out loud
at the loving pleasure
of being a woman.

Like any man, I suppose,
I was proud,
and we fell to our sleep both smiling.

You were created
of passion and magic,
in Scotland, on Mid-Summer’s Eve.

Here in the North,
that augers you special,
your mother and I believe.

“Letter To My Unborn Child” by Young Dawkins, from The Lilac Thief. © Sargent Press, 2009.

Ithaka

As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.^*

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I FEEL suffocated when people hover over me, but I’ve learnt social niceties. Still please, please read this.

I’ve been slowly stretching the “time spent with others before I wilt” period, but I need my time alone. I need silence. I get drained by crowds. Commuting, before I trained myself to ignore, shut out, and wall, was hell — I dislike noise, I dislike crowds, I dislike messy emotions, I dislike scenes, I dislike tempers, I dislike egos, I dislike tentacles, I dislike demands, I dislike chatter. And when I come back sometimes all I want to do is to go back to my den but no, I’ve to deal with concerned parents.

And if you’re trying to get information from me, please please don’t cross-examine me, not in my personal life, anyway…I’m generally pretty forthcoming but I dislike aggression, and there’s some information I don’t feel like sharing. I do not like to talk about my exes. I do not like to gossip. I do not like to talk about some parts of family life. You might think you’re being concerned by probing but it’s actually adding to the stress.

Sometimes I just come back home in a stupor and I just want to be left alone. OMG I pass off as a babbling bimbo/social escort/geisha/performing seal well enough and I enjoy other people, but I get overstimulated and have to make a whirring noise and shut down. It’s literally torture when I can’t have my silent time. I am an only child. I am an introvert. I am happy in my own world.

I’m actually very strongly introverted but I’ve been well trained by all my extroverted friends. If given a chance I can go for days, months without speaking a word. I can be a Carmelite nun.

So when I say I need to be left alone I mean it — I don’t break the iron-clad social facade till I’m at the end of my tether, but OMG please don’t keep calling me and e-mailing and leaving messages and feeling offended when I switch off my phone.

*

How can I let the introvert in my life know that I support him and respect his choice? First, recognize that it’s not a choice. It’s not a lifestyle. It’s an orientation.

Second, when you see an introvert lost in thought, don’t say “What’s the matter?” or “Are you all right?”

Third, don’t say anything else, either.

These arts, especially literature and painting, show us the peculiar sense in which the concept of virtue is tied on to the human condition. They show us the absolute pointlessness of virtue while exhibiting the supreme importance; the enjoyment of art is a training in the love of virtue. The pointlessness of art is not the pointlessness of a game; it is the pointlessness of human life itself, and form in art is properly the simulation of the self-contained aimlessness of the universe. Good art reveals what we are usually too selfish and too timid to recognise, the minute and absolutely random detail of the world, and reveals it together with a sense of unity and form. This form often seems to us mysterious because it resists the easy patterns of the fantasy, whereas there is nothing mysterious about the forms of bad art since they are the recognisable and familiar rat-runs of selfish daydream. Good art shows us how difficult it is to be objective by showing us how differently the world looks to an objective vision. We are presented with a truthful image of the human condition in a form which can be steadily contemplated; and indeed this is the only context in which many of us are capable of contemplating it at all. Art transcends selfish and obsessive limitations of personality and can enlarge the sensibility of its consumer. It is a kind of goodness by proxy. Most of all it exhibits to us the connection, in human beings, of clear realistic vision with compassion. The realism of a great artist is not a photographic realism, it is essentially both pity and justice.

- Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty Of Good Over Other Concepts
ISBN 0-19-875188-5

A: When I went back my mother was talking about sending out my horoscopes.
A, B & C discuss exes and psychos.
B: Hmm, maybe horoscopes is the way to go. Can your mother send out my horoscope too?

*

F: So my friend knows Sanskrit and she had to correct the translator during her wedding vows. He went: “You will take care of me and my friends.” She went: “It’s You will take care of me and be my friend.”

*

X: So classroom participation counts in business school and these yocks all want to go to consulting firms which look at GPA. So there’re all sorts of bullshit comments in class. At the end of term we vote for and crown the Bullshit Queen and Bullshit King. There’s cake, balloons and tiaras.

*

D: I was talking to my mother about Mr Mystery Man, and just mentioned that he’s Cantonese. Suddenly my mother started talking about how Cantonese in-laws are very difficult to deal with. I was like huh?
E: But D, you do talk about Mr Mystery Man quite a lot.

PARDON the emo-ness. I find reading sonnets therapeutic. J back in town, D getting engaged, L pregnant…changes all around, stories, stories and more stories.

cxxxix

I must not die of pity; I must live;
Grow strong. not sicken; eat, digest my food,
That it may build me, and in doing good
To blood and bone, broaden the sensitive
Fastidious pale perception: we contrive
Lean comfort for the starving, who intrude
Upon them with our pots of pity; brewed
From stronger meat must be the broth we give.
Blue, bright September day, with here and there
On the green hills a maple turning red,
And white clouds racing in the windy air!-
If I would help the weak, I must be fed
In wit and purpose, pour away despair
And rinse the cup, eat happiness like bread.

cxvi

Well, I have lost you and I lost you fairly
In my own way and with my full consent.
Say what you will, kings in a tumbrel rarely
Went to their deaths more proud than this one went.
Some nights of apprehension and hot weeping
I will confess but that’s permitted me;
Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping
Rubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.
If I had loved you less or played you slyly
I might have held you for a summer more,
But at the cost of words I value highly,
And no such summer as the one before.
Should I outlive this anguish — and men do —
I shall have only good to say of you.

I FIND it mentally, emotionally and physically draining to spar too much in my personal life…Granted I’m not always the helpless victim: I can give as good as I get, when I’m really riled I tend to unsheathe all my claws.

Anyway, I know I need some time alone to recharge when I start listening to Jewel songs (I usually avoid simpering cooing pop singers wailing “only kindness matters”.)

I won’t be made useless,
I won’t be idle with despair…
Poverty stole your golden shoes
It didn’t steal your laughter
And heartache came to visit me
But I knew it wasn’t ever after
We’ll fight, not out of spite
For someone must stand up for what’s right
‘Cause where there’s a man who has no voice
There ours shall go singing

I will get down on my knees, and I will pray.

IT IRRITATES me to no end when Singaporeans moan about foreigners doing well academically & financially in Singapore. Come on people, you’re on home ground and you’ve home ground advantage.

Make friends with that Chinese/Vietnamese scholar, and be inspired by how hard they study! Get to know that Indian lawyer/banker friend (I’m looking at Abu/Jit) and learn more about their culture! Organise trips to Ubin/Southern ridges/the Botanics and show them what we’ve got! Go travelling to SE Asia spots together, hike in Borneo, dive in Manado, etc!

The older I get, the less patience I have with complainers.

Doniger would be widely and enthusiastically agreed to be one of America’s major scholars in the humanities, wide-ranging, unusually imaginative and poetic, capable of illuminating fundamental issues through a deft use of comparative analysis…Doniger’s joie de vivre, humour, and earthiness — combined with a beautiful, deep voice and an imposing physique — make her a natural target for the combination of innuendo and sexism that many of the attacks on her display. She is a sui generis combination of the delicate and the vulgar: she can imitate Mae West, and yet she has insights of the greatest refinement and subtlety.

Martha Nussbaum, The Clash Within
p. 249, ISBN 978-0-674-02482-3

*

Nothing is more crucial to democracy than education. Through primary and secondary education, young citizens form, at a crucial age, habits of mind that will be with them all through their lives. They learn to ask questions or not to ask them; to take what they hear at face value or to probe more deeply; to imagine the situation of a person different from themselves or to see such a person as a looming threat to their own projects; to think of themselves as members of a homogeneous group or as citizens of a nation, and a world, made up of many different people and groups, all of whom deserve respect and understanding.

p. 264

*

…the capacity for critical examination of oneself and one traditions, for living what, following Socrates, we may call “the examined life”. This means a life that accepts no belief as authoritative simply because it has been handed down by tradition or become familiar through habit; a life that questions all beliefs, statements, and arguments and accepts only those that survive reason’s demand for consistency and for justification. Training this capacity requires developing the capacity to reason logically, to test what one reads or says for consistency of reasoning, correctness of fact, and accuracy of judgment. Testing of this sort frequently produces challenges to tradition, as Socrates knew well when he defended himself against the charge of “corrupting the young”. But he defended his activity on the grounds that a polity needs citizens who can think for themselves rather than simply deferring to authority, who can reason together about their choices rather than just trading claims and counterclaims.

…Critical thinking is particularly crucial in a society that needs to come to grips with the presence of people who differ by ethnicity, caste, and religion. We will have a chance at an adequate dialogue across cultural boundaries only if young citizens know how to engage in dialogue and deliberation in the first place. And they will know how to do that only if they learn how to examine themselves and to think about the reasons why they are inclined to support one thing rather than another — rather than, as so often happens, seeing political debate as simply a way of boasting or getting an advantage for their own side. When politicians bring simplistic propaganda their way, as politicians in every country have a way of doing, young people will have a hope of preserving independence only if they know how to think critically about what they hear, testing its logic and its concepts and imagining alternatives to it. Such learning also teaches a new attitude to people with whom one disagrees.

pp. 291-292

I LOVE to go cycling in the mornings, and sit by the beach with books. Reading on adat and land law now since my curiosity was piqued by the priest of Para, Father Henri Des Roziers.

Visited Pulau Semakau yesterday with friends and had a good time mucking around in tide pools. The guide’s extremely knowledgable and we’d a good time chatting about otters, dolphins (yes, folks, you can see dolphins in SG waters), turtles, crocodiles and other wildlife in SG. Pictures soon.

I wonder where I can get those construction boots…& I want to organise a cruise to the southern islands.

*

After wading in shin-high tides, the group was brought to landfill HQ and taught how to recycle, including examining the number on the bottom of the bottle.

A: Hey B, what happened to your shoes?
B: Oh they’re in my bag, I haven’t decided if I want to throw them away.
C: After what we were taught??
B: Yeah I should actually look at the soles and see if they come with a number.

A: I’ve just arrived from another meeting that decided to spawn more meetings. Now I’ve to call for meetings about this meeting so as to prepare for future meetings.
B: How about calling for a meeting to discuss how to reduce meetings?

AM GEEKILY surfing the net for the course catalogue (nothing for the academic year’s out yet, boo), for information on student activities, looking at maps, at policies, at the library (oh my university library access again! Hurrah!)… :) I’d been all set to go to the UK for a master’s before circumstances changed and I decided to stay home and see how it is here; I think it’ll be exciting!

I don’t think there’s a student group for mental health issues on campus (at least, not that I can find with my l337 google skills), and I’d like to set up something promoting awareness and sharing materials, with seminars on stress, on coping with life changing events, for those who are caregivers to sick parents or grandparents, for those with sleeping problems.

*

Also reading Martha Nussbaum’s The Clash Within on the Gujarati riots of 2002. And my heart is literally aching. She’s my academic hero, one of them, anyway, together with Rawls and Iris Murdoch and Amartya Sen and Byatt…I’ll put up quotations later, it’s now time to toddle off to bed in the torrid equatorial night, cupcakes.

*

A: To the women who recorded their voices for MRT announcements and ‘the *** subscriber is not available’ service provider messages: you are an android and you have no soul and anyone who makes love to you runs the risk of electrocution.

*

I like Andy’s article on astroturfing (Hacks for hire: To seed or weed — April 15, ST, page A28), which highlights how a handful of manipulative astroturfers out to foment political dissent can fan genuine public sentiments, if they can replicate what “stealth marketers” do.

“In the US, media reports suggest the private sector may have used activist groups as fronts to give the impression of widespread anger at healthcare reforms being pushed through Congress last year. Old methods (like mass mailings) and online ones like astroturfing were used.

“Convinced by such tactics, people joined the anti-reform movement. They participated in mass protests which disrupted many a town hall meeting held by Democratic legislators.”

A (trying on a new shade of lipstick): I look…like a child prostitute.

READING Zhao Ziyang’s memoirs and books on Chinese politics, as well as some textbooks…I’ll be starting school in August and have just a few months before school. Also writing, but it’s not perfect, and I’ve torn up several drafts.

The water is wide, I can-not cross o’er.
And Neither have I wings to fly.
Build me a boat that can carry two,
And both shall row, my true love and I.

A ship there is and she sails the seas.
She’s laden deep, as deep can be;
But not so deep as the love I’m in
And I know not if I sink or swim.

Somehow The Water Is Wide is stuck in my head after meeting a couple of visiting people. Fun taking a friend from Bali around, and the other meeting was bittersweet. There’s something about that sense of yearning that comes upon me when I think of the lines “The water is wide, and I can’t cross over.” It’s been sung at poignant events, such as at fundraising for natural disasters, at memorial events, even at weddings. I used to listen to it and tear up after I broke up with someone after a long distance relationship.

*

I’ve also seen some beautiful marriages at work lately…couples talking about their time in Guatemala building schools and sleeping in a flea-infested hammock, couples who garden together and provide showers for visiting sunbirds by spraying water at a particular time, old folk who take special care of the other when travelling, gently bickering and laughing…and I want something like that for myself.

B: Hey! I completed my MBA and will be back in SG for a bit, let’s meet!
A: So what SG food do you miss?
B: Your cooking.
A: You mean I can just get you a charred piece of toast? That’s good.

*

LOVE the Botanical Gardens…had a friend from Bali visit with family, and it was great fun spending time with them, with sunbirds and dogs and kingfishers making surprise appearances.

GREETINGS, cupcakes. It’s been some time since I’ve written, I was away on a couple of trips and have been busy with some other stuff…and then out meeting visiting friends and old pals and former colleagues.

Conversation topics include taking care of giant carnivorous tadpoles for a housemate while fearing for the life of the runt tadpole, how a dead bird landed on a classmate’s desk and the resulting shriek resounded throughout the school, psycho PE teachers who made people kneel on the mud, SE Asian ghosts, spiritualism, Prospero.

Reading Russian writers, and writing too. I’ve four months till school starts in August, am thinking of taking a couple more trips to Laos/Borneo…let me know if you want to join me!

Three Gorges

Fenghuang town in Hunan.

Villagers doing their washing under the footbridge in Fenghuang.

Zhangjiajie, aka home of Avatar’s Hallelujah mountain.

Fruit vendor.

Lovely red.