/meː.təmɔː(r)fiːm/

The first two lines of The Economist’s article on Malaysia’s tumultuous, yet strangely hilarious political situation:

In few countries does the word “sodomy” evoke a sense of political déjà vu. Malaysia is one.

I have to say I chuckled. More of In no other country, though.

My feet are sore. I think I spent countless hours walking up and down the lane of horror and tedium that is Orchard Road. Had a chance to practice my rusty German today. I need a cup of hot chocolate. And something to soak my feet in. Bought a copy of Samuel Beckett’s trilogy and enjoyed a 37% discount courtesy of a coupon in today’s Straits Times and my privilege card. Current read: James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds. Excellent, thought-provoking stuff.

1. Get that IB Diploma. Modest target of >40 points.

2. Start on my yearly re-reading of The Lord of the Rings. It’s become a ritual of sorts, but a ritual of great importance and almost spiritual significance. Perhaps after I finish One Hundred Years of Solitude and a piece of non-fiction.

3. Deal with everything that is not related to the final IB written papers in a satisfactory manner. This includes the spooky, lingering ghosts of World Lit, the daunting spectre of IOC and Econs IAs. Yes, wield a keen blade and cut through these foes that stand in the way.

4. Pray a lot more.

5. Write a short story or two, perhaps embark on a novel (again). No! No poetry.

6. Decide on what to do for the rest of my life, what to do to put food on the table, how to make life bearable, which university, which books to read, what music to listen to, what to buy — all up to my last breath. Oh yes. Really.

I’ve been locked up in my room, furiously investigating the patterns of Chinese history and studying the period 1800 -1960 — from the Canton trade system to Mao’s Great Leap Forward. It makes for fascinating study: we witness an insular China forcibly exposed to foreign influences, then, a degeneration, a collapse of imperial order and prestige that must have, to the Chinese intelligentsia, seemed the equivalent of Yeats’s Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/ Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. Yet after the traumatic ravishing of the Opium wars there was the catastrophe that is often understated: the Taiping rebellion. Estimates say that it took 20 million lives — that’s just as many deaths as the Great War. It all happened in one country.

A Hundred Days of building castles in the air. The shadow of China’s most fascinating and irksome woman. A reactionary Qing court that was swiftly overtaken by elements within the country, leading to an emasculated administration that was slowly losing its grip on the provinces. The rise of the gentry, the rise of the intelligentsia and that inexplicable swansong of a dying dynasty — the Boxer rebellion. Desperate fumblings, desperate attempts to restore the empire. The 1911 revolution that always seems so understated, yet it ended a dynasty and it made Puyi the last emperor of China. Yet Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s dream was betrayed, cruelly, by Yuan Shikai. Madness once again. It must have felt terrible: a dream crushed, a revolution betrayed and a descent into chaos once more. Nascent nationalism, then rage and outrage in the May 4th incident. It gets even messier from then on. Communists. Nationalists. United. Not. In 1923 the CCP had about 500 members. The KMT had 50,000. The former prevailed in the end. How?

A brigand government, hated by peasants and abandoned by the urban population that had once supported it. The legendary Long March, the rise of that repulsive yet oddly charismatic man: Mao. A civil war that gave quarters to no one. Americans fool around here. As always. A flight to Taiwan, a Chinese island set apart from the mainland. A Hundred Flowers. Bloomed and died. Communist regimes excel at creating man-made catastrophes: at least 20 million died in the Great Leap Forward. Mindboggling: how did something that excited so many, that mobilised an enthusiastic population become so disastrous for the young Chinese nation? How did a man become a monster?

The study of history is a wondrous thing, but the making of it is often a bloody, horrid process. And we speculate: we walk down the lonely corridors of what-might-have-been, a world where What might have been is an abstraction/Remaining a perpetual possibility/Only in a world of speculation. (T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton) We grieve and we laugh, for all of human folly and ingenuity is contained in history, in one hundred and sixty years of China.

Hofstadter’s Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter’s Law into account.

Parkinson’s Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

The last is courtesy of that great man, C. Northcote Parkinson, who had a strange Singaporean connection.

That small period of time, when I bemusedly shuffle about after waking up from a nap, is somewhat magical. It feels as if my soul has not been perfectly slotted back into its human form. I usually feel cheerful during that period of time, though very detached from reality.

Speaking of the magical, the read of the week is Gabriel García Márquez’s modern classic, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Márquez’s writing is distinctly foreign and brilliantly evocative. The magic of the imaginary town in One Hundred Years of Solitude, Macondo, permeates the book and eventually, the reader’s consciousness. What I find extremely intriguing is the sudden and sneaky transition from the world of the intensely magical and ancient to the world of failed states and characteristically South American insurrections, reminding the reader of Guevara, Bolívar and other merry rebel leaders. The book has provided quite a few chuckles (which has been the source of a substantial bit of embarrassment, particularly on public transport), indicating that while One Hundred Years is a great work of literature, some portions are to be taken lightly and to be laughed at. Márquez seems to think so as well:

Most critics don’t realize that a novel like One Hundred Years of Solitude is a bit of a joke, full of signals to close friends; and so, with some pre-ordained right to pontificate they take on the responsibility of decoding the book and risk making terrible fools of themselves.

All this warns us of the risks of literary interpretation and overdoing the interpretation stuff. I imagine though, that Márquez’s work is particularly fertile ground for critics and intellectuals, because there is so much to be discussed and interpreted.

There are moments like these all the time. I am almost 18 years old, and yesterday I realised that my brother has grown up. I realised two things: firstly, he’s a very different creature now, different from what I thought I knew of him and secondly, the person who is the process of growing up never quite realises he has changed — those around him manage to notice it, not him. Taken aback by the enormity of my revelations, I am now viewing my brother in a very different light. My brother and I have always shared a certain level of intimacy, despite the lack of common ground. All this calls for adaptation and reaction.

On another note (literally), here’s a gem from Bob Dylan’s latest album, Modern Times, entitled Ain’t Talkin’:

As I walked out tonight in the mystic garden
The wounded flowers were dangling from the vines
I was passing by yon cool and crystal fountain
Someone hit me from behind

Ain’t talkin’, just walkin’
Through this weary world of woe
Heart burnin’, still yearnin’
No one on earth would ever know

A genuinely creepy song. Here’s a youtube link.

A spooky article from the Wall Street Journal via Arts & Letters. I don’t think we can really say that free will does not exist — scientific research is of a nature so hesitant and indecisive that it’s premature to draw conclusions now. However, we might have to change our understanding of free will and what it means to have it. Or perhaps we won’t need to change it at all, if challenges to current research occur in the future. As someone once told me, it doesn’t matter if we have free will or not: we may appear to have it and not actually have it. Similarly, we may appear not to have it but actually possess it. The bottom line is: it’s pretty impossible to know for sure. Did that make sense? Very few things said between midnight and early morning make sense.

He woke up, the room was bare
He didn’t see her anywhere.
He told himself he didn’t care, pushed the window open wide,
Felt an emptiness inside to which he just could not relate
Brought on by a simple twist of fate.

It is the end of the first week. Listening to the strains of Bob Dylan’s Tangled Up in Blue, a song I’ve neglected in recent months, I’ve come to appreciate the luxuries of exam time: leisure, a relative lack of brain work and it fills each day with a lovely fatalism that makes it exciting. As I’ve said before on this blog, it’s going to be a long five months. I take on each day with Christian conviction that God will be there to guide me, but also with the profound humility that I am one of a huge batch who is undertaking this quest. In this match between the IBO and the student there are no victors, merely grudging compromises.

After doing today’s question on income distribution, the Lorenz curve and the Gini coefficient, it is refreshing to read an article in Harvard Magazine showing some very interesting trends. The author examines the effect of increased income inequality on health, life expectancies, crime and ultimately, how Scandinavian nations like Denmark and Norway may have indeed hit upon a winning combination of capitalism and socialism. Some beliefs are in need of examining: does increased income inequality really lead to greater incentive to work harder? And is this effect outweighed by some other effects of income inequality?

It’s been a wearying day with three papers. It’s been more tiring for the hand than for the mind; anyone will tell you that tests do not require much mental work, as it is possible to detach hand from mind and just write. Write, write and write. I feel like kicking myself though; I think I could have answered the English Paper 2 question in a much better manner. The only highlight of today was finding a copy of Edgar Snow’s Red Star Over China in Bras Basah Plaza. Handsome edition, typeset in Linotype Juliana. It is over thirty years’ old, but has great character and an indubitable dash of élan. Also, some students in school were selling books, and I grabbed a copy of Eco’s The Island of the Day Before. It’s been a lovely day for books.

It’s not often one can say, “hey, they’re just like characters in a book!” It happened today, and I saw a local version of George and Lennie, the pair in Of Mice and Men. I think I giggled. Also, there were two Germans on the train. Very proper German too, stuff you don’t hear often. Hochdeutsch, as we say. Today’s papers were refreshingly non-frustrating. I hope it stays this way.

I got onto the bus, and every detail captured my eye, enthralled me to a past that I had never seen. The old leather seats, the vintage “EXIT” sign, the green lights, the odd handles — it seemed as if the bus had come from a time not too long ago, yet far back enough to enchant and engage the historian in me. I started taking pictures with my phone, trying to capture every bit that shone and gave off that scent, that aura of age, of fragility in this world. Of a past that could only be glimpsed and never completely understood.

A comforting experience from a day too strange and too tiring to be understood.

1) School’s here! Bolt the doors, raise the alarm and stop the dog from running off with a juicy bone. (Eh?)

2) Finished my re-reading of Paddy Clarke. Reading it makes me feel like I had no childhood. Singaporean children are sadly deprived.

3) “She was lovely. He was nice.” — a good quote to remember from aforementioned book.

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha is a tragedy; it is the most tragic of the four books English A1 students read and study. Paddy is not a hero who decides to embark on a journey to discover enlightenment (Siddhartha), he does not decide to escape civilisation and run away (Huck Finn). Roddy Doyle’s child narrator understands the world far less than the other two heroes; he does not seek adventure or does not willingly set out on a quest. His maturation comes as a result of an catastrophic event that comes upon him, engulfs him and forces him to react. That is what makes Paddy Clarke a tragedy. Of course, the lack of a resolution enforces this.

Unlike the other two protagonists, he does not choose to grow up. This is why Paddy draws our sympathy and empathy, while such feelings are minimal (it is possible to sympathise with Huck at times, but there is nothing as clearcut as the sympathy Paddy’s predicament evokes) when we read the other two works. It is a lovely book, unendlessly diverting, with brilliant techniques that evoke childhood without being pretentious or clunky. A lot of emphasis has been placed on the recreation of the childhood experience, the nonlinear storytelling, the register, the digressions and flashbacks, and the vivid recreation of Dublin in the ’60s. But it is important to keep in mind that the technical aspects of the book serve the thematic.

Kudos to Roddy Doyle. Clearly deserved a Booker, regardless of what some teachers feel.