Just Some Thoughts

Eugene: Heh, in view of this warning, do you think that Singapore would be affronted if it doesn't get bombed, since that indicates that it's not in the big league for financial centres?...

Ian: Yes! Lush are delicious. Heh apparently you can send an SMS to them to get a playlist, but it does cost quite a lot, as SMSes go.

* * * * *

Hmm...I find it very ironic that the Federal Government seems to be more capable of sending National Guardsmen and army units to Louisiana and New Orleans, while people there are still dying for want of medicine, food and water. One wonders what they're thinking, to enforce law and order from the gun while people are literally starving and dangerously desperate. Bullets aren't going to feed the refugees, after all. A bit of ying2ren4er2jie3 seems to be in order. And if they actually begin to fire on Louisianians, then that would be disastrous on a whole new level.

It's rather shocking how easily Americans can be unhinged. One tends to think of them all as smug and complacent. But then something as momentous as Katrina happens, and you're reminded of the common human fear that unites us all. And, to be fair, most of the people stuck in New Orleans are poorer families, mostly black. Probably those who can afford to be smug and complacent had been able to evacuate before the storm arrived. But yeah...if anything, the tragedy reaffirmed the humanity of the Americans. Helped to erode their otherworldliness.

In a disturbing coincidence, hundreds died in Baghdad too, because of that stampede. A human storm to match the cataclysmic power of nature. The scenes of grief there are wrenching too, with people collapsed across coffins, a family crowded around not one but several simple wooden boxes, and the scene repeated as far as the eye can see. A city gripped by mourning. And yet, intermittently, one sees even more disturbing scenes: people who are dry-eyed. Those are the hardy ones, whose suffering and loss have been so great as to exceed any sense of human scale. They are positively transcendental, serene in their anguish. They took it and took it until all they had was this.

* * * * *

Bah, I'll be happier once the 12th comes. Then this tiresome studying will be put to good use. And the Cambridge applications will be going out beyond recall, and we can go back to worrying each other without the overt sense of political wrangling. Worrying without ulterior motives.

I wonder, if it were not for the twist of fate that put me in this strategic position, whether I would be so caught up with the maintenance of a semblance of fairness in this race. In the case that I actually will, I wonder if it is a good thing, or just a noble, suicidal and naive gesture. It is becoming really clear to me that fairness is a luxury, and when people's desire for something at any cost is married with the actual necessity of extreme measures, then all bets are off. It is important to remember all these lofty aspirations are highly conditional - I imagine that if circumstances were right, I would be able to justify being cutthroat too.

* * * * *

Well...a few happy things to report now. Silas Marner continues to be highly entertaining. Eliot's dry pastoral tone is really quite funny. And I find that, after doing Hardy, I'm able to interpret Eliot's language more easily, which really does facilitate the comprehension of her more complex ideas. Now that I reread it, everything seems to be in sharper shades of colour - Silas more pitiable, Dunsey more loathsome, Dolly more remarkable.

And finally I started redocumenting Gut Symmetries. Hopefully I'll be equipped to do the Lit S exam by Monday. Hehhehheh, Gut Symmetries is an excellent work! The starting is hilarious...her dry tone combines brilliantly with an impressive flurry of alliteration to great effect. Was doing it in the library, and sniggering away at every paragraph practically. Heh...it would be very odd if I started breaking out into giggles in the middle of the exam hall...but it's just that brilliant! And I find myself highlighting practically every other sentence, which raises the question of why I'm highlighting at all. But the book is just that rich...very much PC material. You'd be writing about her one paragraph for pages and pages.

Speaking of the library, it's rather surprising how many people go back to the school library to study. Met Kels and Soph and YS today there. And it's a rather pleasant environment, actually...for some reason they decided to turn down the aircon so the library isn't positively arctic. But it's so bleeding far away. Only went back today to renew library books, and to get the copy of Gut Symmetries from downtown, and because I desperately wanted a change in scenery.

* * * * *

Perhaps I was too hasty to regard that particular instance as unrenormalisable. As things have turned out, we've managed to slip into some sort of understanding that is not based on the extraordinary circumstances that founded our original sympathy. To my surprise, it does seem that that degree of comfort and sympathy and frankness and trust can actually be transplanted from one context into another, more sustainable, one. And it does seem that we can continue - it turns out that what we have is based not on circumstance but on something that transcends that. Or maybe it's just the trauma of relocation that has forced that transition to a higher plane to occur.

Hmm...such mystical and astrological language. I detect the influence of Winterson here =P

pondered by phoenican @ 2.9.05