Happy Hari Raya Idul Adha

Happy Eid to all my family, friends, brothers & sisters. Apologies to the goats and cows. Let's hope you did not give your lives in vain & those who were hungry managed to eat because of your sacrifice.

Two poems about the sacrifice at the heart of Eid Adha: 

The Parable of the Young Man and the Old

By Wilfred Owen

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned, both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake, and said, 
My Father,Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets the trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

Bismillah

By Rumi

It’s a habit of yours to walk slowly.
You hold a grudge for years.
With such heaviness, how can you be modest?
With such attachments, do you expect to arrive anywhere?

Be wide as the air to learn a secret.
Right now you’re equal portions clay
and water, thick mud.

Abraham learned how the sun and moon and the stars all set.
He said, No longer will I try to assign partners for God.

You are so weak. Give up to grace.
The ocean takes care of each wave
till it gets to shore.

You need more help than you know.
You’re trying to live your life in open scaffolding.

Say Bismillah, In the name God,
As the priest does with the knife when he offers an animal.

Bismillah your old self
to find your real name.

Kids, Philip Larkin & Rilke via Bly

Two of my favourite poems to think about, contrast & compare:

Story

Tired of a landscape known too well when young:
The deliberate shallow hills, the boring birds
Flying past rocks; tired of remembering
The village children and their naughty words,
He abandoned his small holding and went South,
Recognised at once his wished-for lie
In the inhabitants' attractive mouth,
The church beside the marsh, the hot blue sky.

Settled. And in this mirage lived his dreams,
The friendly bully, saint, or lovely chum
According to his moods. Yet he at times
Would think about his village, and would wonder
If the children and the rocks were still the same.

But he forgot all this as he grew older.

Philip Larkin

Sometimes a man

Sometimes a man stands up during supper

and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.

And another man, who remains inside his own house,
dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children have to go far out into the world
toward that same church, which he forgot.

Rainer Maria Rilke

translated by Robert Bly

Flux Realities, Borges & Shakespeare

A few weeks ago, we went to Flux Realities at the Art Science Museum at Marina Bay. For me, the images that stood out were Wang Ningde's Some Days.

"From the beginning, I was interested in the issue of time. There are three possibilities with these images: it could be something that happened, something that was recreated, or something that was completely imagined. But suppose these were events that happened in 1975, is it possible to recreate all the details? Can you get the exact flower that was there, or have the sun shining exactly where it was? It's not possible; so perhaps it's just the essence of a memory."

Interview: Wang Ningde in TimeOut Shanghai

"I don't think I have simply copied the mnemonic moment. What I have done is to let it remain as it is. Let me give you another example. Your boyfriend and you had a dinner together ten years ago and someone snapped without anyone knowing it. Later on both of you split up so the memory of that night would be fading away. After ten years, you saw this picture all of a sudden. You found it wasn't that night in your mind. Memory is becoming interesting at this stage, which one is more worthy of being remembered? The true feeling of today or the night when thing was happening? Everyone must have his own view of it. To me, this ever changed today's memory has been closer to me since it is carried by time. And no matter what the change is good or not."

Dialogue with Fu Xiaodong in Platform China

I liked the exhibition and the images which played in the space between the 'actual' moment, the memory of that moment and the images of that moment.

By chance, I have been rereading Shakespeare's Memory by Jorge Luis Borges which plays around with the notion of the self, the nature of the mind and what happens to the narrator after he has been gifted the memory of Shakespeare. Which brings me to a sonnet to be read in the light of Borges.

"When to the sessions of sweet silent thought 
I summon up remembrance of things past, 
I sigh the lack of many things I sought, 
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste."

William Shakespeare, Sonnet XXX

Addendum: 

Lewis Bush in an exhibition The Memory of History & on his blog also looks at the nature of memory. What he is attempting to show in his exhibition resonates with the work of Wang Ningde & Borges.

"Rather than attempt to select a single idea that seemed to definitively match my own vision of the past, I sought to integrate multiple competing and at times contradictory ideas into the texts that accompanied my photographs. The aim in doing so was to show history as a fragmentary, nebulous blurring of different ideas and processes. I wanted to show the past as something understood very differently by different people, and also to demonstrate how that understanding is affected by less commonly acknowledged factors like human psychology and the sheer randomness of the universe."

Lewis Bush, The Memory of History: Looking On, Disphotic, 22 Sept 2014

And so in closing on this Saturday, 27 September 2014, I watch the AFL grand final and remember as a teenager watching men in tight shorts and mullets kick a small rugby ball around a large paddock. My memories of that time are not accurate but they demonstrate the aspects of that experience that remain important to me now. In years to come I will remember this Saturday when I wrote in this blog, ranted on social media, wore a green spinach t-shirt and facetimed with a 4 year old in her mother's office in Jakarta.

There will be details of this Saturday I will remember, and things that never happened, but I think happened, and those memories will be the ones with the most meaning entering like cuckoos and staying wherever they wish.

Sri Mariamman Temple & Clive James

Clive James has a sad wonderful poem in The New Yorker.

He has been dying for some time (he was diagnosed with Leukemia in 2010) in a very public fashion and has written wonderfully in the shadow of the inevitable.

"I still make plans to live forever: there are too many critical questions still to be raised. Most of them can never be settled, which is the best reason for raising them. Who needs a smooth technique after hearing Hopkins’s praise “All things counter, original, spare, strange”? Well, everyone does, because what Hopkins does with the language depends on the mastery of mastery, and first you must have the mastery. And how can we write as innocently now as Shakespeare did when he gave Mercutio the speech about Queen Mab, or as Herrick did when he wrote “Oberon’s Feast”, or even as Pope did, for all his show of craft, when he summoned the denizens of the air to attend Belinda in Canto II of The Rape of the Lock? Well, we certainly can’t do it through ignorance, so there goes the idea of starting from nowhere. Better to think back on all the poems you have ever loved, and to realize what they have in common: the life you soon must lose."

TLS, 14 May 2014

Enough has been written about his dying, so I shall reproduce one of his funniest poems below.

The Book of my Enemy Has Been Remaindered

The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am pleased.
In vast quantities it has been remaindered
Like a van-load of counterfeit that has been seized
And sits in piles in a police warehouse,
My enemy's much-prized effort sits in piles
In the kind of bookshop where remaindering occurs.
Great, square stacks of rejected books and, between them, aisles
One passes down reflecting on life's vanities,
Pausing to remember all those thoughtful reviews
Lavished to no avail upon one's enemy's book --
For behold, here is that book
Among these ranks and banks of duds,
These ponderous and seeminly irreducible cairns
Of complete stiffs.


The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I rejoice.
It has gone with bowed head like a defeated legion
Beneath the yoke.
What avail him now his awards and prizes,
The praise expended upon his meticulous technique,
His individual new voice?
Knocked into the middle of next week
His brainchild now consorts with the bad buys
The sinker, clinkers, dogs and dregs,
The Edsels of the world of moveable type,
The bummers that no amount of hype could shift,
The unbudgeable turkeys.


Yea, his slim volume with its understated wrapper
Bathes in the blare of the brightly jacketed Hitler's War Machine,
His unmistakably individual new voice
Shares the same scrapyart with a forlorn skyscraper 
Of The Kung-Fu Cookbook,
His honesty, proclaimed by himself and believed by others,
His renowned abhorrence of all posturing and pretense,
Is there with Pertwee's Promenades and Pierrots--
One Hundred Years of Seaside Entertainment,
And (oh, this above all) his sensibility,
His sensibility and its hair-like filaments,
His delicate, quivering sensibility is now as one
With Barbara Windsor's Book of Boobs,
A volume graced by the descriptive rubric
"My boobs will give everyone hours of fun".


Soon now a book of mine could be remaindered also,
Though not to the monumental extent
In which the chastisement of remaindering has been meted out
To the book of my enemy,
Since in the case of my own book it will be due
To a miscalculated print run, a marketing error--
Nothing to do with merit.
But just supposing that such an event should hold
Some slight element of sadness, it will be offset
By the memory of this sweet moment.
Chill the champagne and polish the crystal goblets! 
The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am glad.


Clive James

Favourite Podcasts & New Bridge Road

The simple pleasures are always the best. Especially if they are free too. For example, when I am travelling, jogging or walking home, I listen to the following:

• New Yorker Fiction

In the most recent podcast, Nathan Englander reads John Cheever's "The Enormous Radio" first published in 1947 but still wonderful after all these years

• Read Me Something You Love

Like an honest conversation between friends. People read out poems, stories or essays that they love and explain why. Emily Dickinson is discussed in the most recent podcast.

• BBC World Service Book Club

Maya Angelou is featured in an interview from Autumn 2005.

• Slate's Audio Book Club

Very American, brash and . Roxanne Gay's Bad Feminist is feature in a recent podcast. 

• Desert Island Discs

There is something so English about DID. I can remember listening to this show when I grew up in England in the 70s. Music makes people open up and present a different aspect to the world. Recently from the archive I listened to Philip Larkin taking the complete plays of GBS to the desert island where he wished spend his time trying to write a novel.

• Nikesh Shukla

This guy is cool and a wonderful writer.

• New Books In East Asian Studies

About to listen to 'White Lotus rebels & South China Pirates'. Hmm … exoticization, anyone? More thoughts soon.

Bloke Sleeping & Hafiz of Shiraz

One day the sun admitted.
I am just a shadow.
I wish I could show you
The Infinite Incandescence
That has cast my brilliant image!
I wish I could show you,
When you are lonely and in darkness,
The Astonishing Light
Of your own Being

Hafiz of Shiraz

Bloke Playing Checkers & Singapore Literature Prize

The biennial Singapore Literature Prize 2014 shortlist is out.

On the list are some of my favourite Singaporean writers, including Amanda Lee Koe with Minstry of Moral Panic (edited by Jason Eric Lundberg) nominated for English fiction & Joshua Ip with Sonnets from The Singlish shortlisted for English poetry. It's a wonderful achievement to make the shortlist & thoroughly well deserved.

Both write with energy, invention, adventure and humor. People should be reading more SIngaporean literature.

Amanda has a wonderful story, Why Do Chinese People Have Slanted Eyes? in Asymptote. 'Dazzling' is a good description of Amanda's work. 

Some of Joshua's poetry can be found in the August 2014 Singapore Poetry special edition of Blue Lyra Review. Joshua is a prodigious and talented writer. I don't know how he fits everything in. Unfortunately, he supports Arsenal FC.

It is an exciting time for Singaporean literature in English, however I am amazed that none of Cyril Wong's poetry or fiction made it to the shortlist.

Pak Tono, Lenteng Agung

Pak Tono is a tailor and repairs the seat covers for taxis in South Jakarta. 

He spends a lot of time with his grand daughter (another picture of her is here, too) and used to babysit our niece, Laras, when she was very young.

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday Rima & what a day we have planned:

• Food: Papaya, cantelope & banana, Juice, coffee & toast
• Music: Amy Winehouse wailing in the background
• Physical exercise: Walking up and down the length of the house while clutching heavy, emerald jade lion book ends
• Shopping: Looking for a crock pot (present from parents) & suitcase (present from self)
• More food: Organic chocolate cake from Chef Icon on Kampung Bahru Rd
• Sporting interlude: Man Utd v Burnley. Let's hope we can actually win
• Further food: Dinner at Tamarind Hill restaurant above Labrador Park

Kids Playing In Floodwaters, Jakarta

If you are in Yogyakarta then head along to the Jogja Gallery for the photography exhibition Exiled to Nowhere on the Rohingyas.

The Jakarta Globe has an informative Q&A with the photographer, Greg Constantine.

Further information on the Rohingyas:

• The Rohingya are a persecuted Muslim minority community in Myanmar. They had their citizenship cancelled by the Burmese state in 1982.
• There are significant numbers of Rohingya asylum seekers fleeing Myanmar and reaching Thailand, Malaysia & Indonesia.
  • "This violence in the Burmese heartland follows on from, and is clearly inspired by, the massacres of Rohingya Muslims around Sittwe, the capital of the western state of Rakhine, that happened last year. About 180 were killed and over 100,000 Rohingyas made homeless in two bouts of ethnic cleansing. Those Rohingyas now live in squalid refugee camps, under curfew and prevented from travelling into Sittwe, let alone to anywhere else in Myanmar. Cut off from their sources of income and livelihoods, many attempt each day to flee to neighbouring countries in rickety fishing boats. Some make it, but others drown. Still more fall victim to traffickers."

The Economist, Communal Violence in Myanmar: When The Lid Blows Off

• "In the two years following the June 2012 outbreak of inter-communal violence in Myanmar's Rakhine state, some 87,000 people – mostly Rohingya but also Bangladeshis – embarked on the dangerous journey in search of safety and stability."

"In Indonesia, 60 Rohingya approached UNHCR in Indonesia between January and June – a drop of almost 90 per cent compared to the same period last year. By the end of June 2014, there were 951 Rohingya registered with UNHCR, mainly people who arrived in previous years from Malaysia. In the first half of the year, nine boats travelling towards Australia with more than 400 people were intercepted under the government's Operation Sovereign Borders. Seven were returned to Indonesia. One boat with 41 passengers was returned to Sri Lanka. The 157 people on board another boat that left from India were transferred to Nauru, pending a decision by the Australian High Court on how to process them.

All these developments take place in the context of a very challenging protection environment for refugees in the region. States, including Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, are not signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention and lack formal legal frameworks for dealing with refugees. Without a legal status they are often at risk of arrest, detention, and deportation under immigration laws. It also makes legal employment impossible and drives many people, including women and children, into exploitative and vulnerable situations."

More than 20,000 people risk all on Indian Ocean to reach safety: UNHCR report

• Their plight has largely been ignored by main stream media, due in part to the unpopularity of a 'persecuted muslim' narrative & played down by Aung San Suun Yi for political purposes in deference to the Buddhist majority as Myanmar opens up to trade and investment opportunities. 

Ali's Family, Jakarta

"It’s a little known fact that Muslim visitors first arrived in Australia well before the British established a colony in 1788. From at least as early as 1650, Muslim fishermen from Makassar in Indonesia made annual trips to Australia's far north coast in search of sea cucumbers—or trepang—which are highly valued in Chinese medicine and cooking. Indigenous Australians also journeyed to Indonesia, trading tortoise shells, tools, tobacco and other goods."

Islam & Indigenous Australia