the pencil reads

"Mrs Ramsay, who had been sitting loosely, folding her son in her arm, braced herself, and, half turning, seemed to raise herself with an effort, and at once to pour erect into the air a rain of energy, a column of spray, looking at the same time animated and alive as if all her energies were being fused into force, burning and illuminating (quietly though she sat, taking up her stocking again), and into this delicious fecundity this fountain and spray of life, the fatal sterility of the male plunged itself, like a beak of brass, barren and bare. He wanted sympathy....

He was a failure, he repeated. Well, look then, feel then. Flashing her needles, glancing round about her, out of the window, into the room, at James himself, she assured him, beyong a shadow of a doubt, by her laugh, her poise, her competence (as a nurse carrying a light across a dark room assures a fractious child), that it was real; the house was full; the garden blowing. If he put implicit faith in her, nothing should hurt him; however deep he buried himself or climbed high, not for a second should he find himself without her. So boasting of her capacity to surround and protect, there was scarcely a shell of herself left for her to know herself by; all was so lavished and spent; and James, as he stood stiff between her knees, felt her rise in a rosy-flowered fruit tree laid with leaves and dancing boughs into which the beak of brass, the arid scimitar of his father, the egotistical man, plunged and smote, demanding sympathy." (44, 45)

THE FLAT EARTH THEORY

The earth is round and flat at the same time. This is obvious. That it is round appears indisputable; that it is flat is our common experience, also indisputable. The globe does not supercede the map; the map does not distort the globe.

Maps are magic. In the bottom corner are whales; at the top, cormorants carrying pop-eyed fish. In between is a subjective account of the lie of the land. Rough shapes of countries that may or may not exist, broken red lines marking paths that are at best hazardous, at worse already gone. Maps are constantly being re-made as knowledge appears to increase. But is knowledge increasing or is detail accumulating?

A map can tell me how to find a place I have not seen but have often imagined. When I get there, following the map faithfully, the place is not the place of my imagination. Maps, growing ever more real, are much less true.

And now, swarming over the earth with our tiny insect bodies and putting up flags and building houses, it seems that all the journeys are done.

Not so. Fold up the maps and put away the globe. If someone else had charted it, let them. Start another drawing with whales at the bottom and cormorants at the top, and in between identify, if you can, the places you have not found yet on those other maps, the connections obvious only to you. Round and flat, only a very little has been discovered.

Sexing the Cherry, Jeanette Winterson, 87-88

From this point onward, apart from a few inevitable comments, the story of the old man with the black eyepatch will no longer be followed to the letter, being replaced by a reorgainsed version of his discourse, re-evaulated in the light of a correct and more appropriate vocabulary. The reason for this previously unforeseen change is the rather formal controlled language, used by the narrator, which almost disqualifies him as a complementary reporter, however important he may be, because without him we would have no way of knowing what happened in the outside world, as a complementary reporter, as we were saying, of these extraordinary events, when as we know the description of any facts can only gain with the rigour and suitability of the terms used. (120)

In the rushing reverberating express, noise was so regular that it was the equivalent of silence, movement was so continuous that after a while the mind accepted it as stillness. Only outside the train was violence of action possible, and the train would contain him safely with his plans for three days...

So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

1. Figure out what is your company's core ideology.

Only two or three at most. Core ideology has to be something that does not change no matter what, even if it affects profit.

2. Ensure company practices are aligned with core values.

That means, for example, if your company values team work, rewards and compensation should not benefit individual initiative.

3. Stimulate progress

Work hard! Try everything! Change anything and everything that doesn't go against the core ideology!

4. Don't become complacent

Never get the mentality that you have reached, even after you've become number one.

Hugely popular, controversial, a bee in the church's pants, I simply
had to read this novel at some point.

I wasn't too disappointed. The first half of the book was fast-paced
and immensely riveting. It started with the murder of a prominent
curator and I was quickly baited by strange details surrounding the
murder. As it wore on though, Dan Brown's liberal use of italics to
show the thoughts of his characters irritated me. Every few lines you
get bombarded with The key to the Holy Grail! or A scroll! or The
divan it is. Seriously! Gag. By the second half I was sick to death of
the melodramatic italics! and the flat characters.

Da Vinci Code had an interesting plot though, but Dan Brown was helped
along by the intrinsic intrigue and mystery surrounding this topic. As
far as the supposed heresies of the book, well, Brown says nothing
new. I will have to tackle these at a later date.

1. Form possessive singular nouns by adding 's.
Follow this rule whatever the final consonent. Thus write,

Charles's friend
Burns's poem

9. The number of the subject determines the number of verbs.
A common blunder is the use of a singular verb form in a relative clause following "one of..." or a similar expression when the relative is the subject.

Wrong
One of the ablest scientists who has attacked this problem.

Right
One of the ablest scientists who have attacked this problem.

Flammable. An oddity, chiefly useful for saving lives. The common word meaning "combustible" is inflammable. But some people are thrown off by the in- and think inflammable means "not combustible". For this reason, trucks carrying gasoline or explosives are now marked FLAMMABLE. Unless you are operating such a truck and hence are concerned with the safety of children and illiterates, use inflammable.

1. You pick up a watch on the pavement.
2. Because of the intricacies of design and workmanship, you know that the watch has a watchmaker.
3. You look at the intricacies of the world we live in.
4. You conclude by saying the world has to have a maker too.

1. An enquiry into knowing is immediately beset by doubts – does the instrument used to grasp reality distort reality? Take for example the way modern physicists find it impossible to observe the speed and location of subatomic particles because the act of observation interferes with them.
2. One way to discover the true nature of reality is to subtract the distortion. For example, if you know the law of refraction you will be able to calculate the angle of a stick by observing the bent state in water.
3. However, Hegel says knowledge is not like seeing. It cannot be subtracted from. Without knowledge, we would not know the stick at all. If we were to subtract, we would know nothing at all.
4. Should we embrace the sceptical notion then that there is nothing we can truly know? But that in itself is self-refuting. If we are to doubt everything, why not doubt the claim that we can know nothing? Our scepticism also has its own presuppositions, such as there is such a thing as reality, and that knowledge is some kind of instrument by which we grasp reality.
5. Therefore, we ought to plunge boldly into the stream of consciousness that is the starting point of all that we know.

Not as good as Equal Rites, but perhaps it may be just that I like witches. This novel by Pratchett is about how belief shapes reality. The pyramids warp time, which is a very interesting concept. Religion plays a large role in this book too.

(Am apparently on a light-hearted reading roll.)

I love the opening paragraph.

There was once, in the country of Alifbay, a sad city, the saddest of cities, a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its name. It stood by a mournful sea full of glumfish, which were so miserable to eat that they made people blech with melancholy even though the skies were blue.

Rushdie wrote this story for his 10 year-old son while he was in exile. The characters are quite extraordinary -- perhaps similar to the characters Alice meets when she falls through the looking glass in Alice in Wonderland . The story line is unique too. It is a quest to save the power of stories and imagination.

Haroun and the Sea of Stories is also an allegory of the Kashmir dispute. Rushdie openly champions the freedom of speech in this story in the fight between Gup and Chup. It is the story of light against darkness, speech against silence, and in the midst of this, Rushdie also pokes fun at hierarchcy, political figures and the election process.

Perhaps I've been spoiled by Tolkien. Rushdie's story-telling doesn't come near the fluidity and power of Tolkien's prose. Nevertheless, it was an entertaining read.

Did you know that Rushdie is married (for the fourth time) to Padma Lakshmi, a very sexy Indian model? See her photos here and tell me she is not gorgeous. How did Rushdie pull that off? I guess intellectual men have their own appeal. Or perhaps men on the death row by Islam... Ha!

Anyway, back to the book, the stories are grouped in three sections: those set in the East, those set in the West, and those with an infusion of both. In the East section, there is the story of a young jaunty woman at the British immigration who deliberately messed up her chances for a visa. In the West section, there is "At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers", a pretty damning piece of social commentary. The last story "Courter" was really quite sweet -- the Aya of the story and the courting Grandmaster porter won my heart.

After reading this collection, I realised that my idea of East-West relations may be somewhat naive. I relate easily to this passage:

Or was it that her heart, roped by two different loves,was being pulled both East and West, whinnying and rearing, like those movie horses being yanked this way by Clark Gable and that way by Montgomery Clift, and she knew that to live she would have to choose? (209)

But I don't anything about the assasination of Indira Ghandi by her two Sikh bodyguards, or the insidous side of colonialism. I would like to read up more on both of these topics. Meanwhile, the next book by Rushdie I would like to read is Haroun and the Sea of Stories.

I read this novel in two parts due to unforseen circumstances. But I finally finished it this weekend, and it was a wonderful read.

The setting of this novel is really quite something. Ralvelstein is set in New York and Paris; Herzog in the suburbia and countryside, Henderson is set in the heart of Africa. The textures and smells of this novel are fascinating. Bellow's descriptions of the two tribes E. H. Henderson encounters in his journey of self-discovery are so life-like that I googled the two tribes in the novel -- "Arnewi" the cow lovers and "Wasiri" the lion tribe -- to see if they had any ties with real tribes, but the search came to naught. I also googled "Grun-tu-molani", translated as "Man wants to live."

Another interesting element in this novel is the journey Henderson makes to find himself. He is driven into Africa by a voice that says, I want I want I want! But the voice never says what it wants. Later in the novel, there is this passage:

"I had a voice that said, I want! I want? I? It should have told me she wants, he wants, they want..." (286)

"All you hear from guys is desire, desire, desire, knocking its way out of the breast, and fear, striking and striking. Enough already! Time for a word of truth. Time for something notable to be heard. Otherwise, accelerating like a stone, you fall from life to death. Exactly like a stone, straight into deafness, and till the last repeating I want I want I want, then striking the earth and entering it forever!" (297)

Henderson is like a microcosm of the world we live in. He takes on the desire, the fear, the preoccupation with death, and the suffering of the entire world. He suffers more than anyone else, perhaps like how Christ suffered for the sake of the whole world, except that Henderson contained within himself both sin and redemption. Dahfu alluded to the great figures of history as model forces:

"Do you think that Jesus Christ is still a source of human types, Henderson, as a model-force? I have often thought about my physical types, as the agony, the appetite, and the rest, to be possibly degenerate forms of great originals, as Socrates, Alexander, Moses, Isaiah, Jesus..." (303)

Even with dead persons in the past there are connections! Gmilo the lion is Dahfu's father, as Suffo the lion is Gmilo's. It is altogether extremely thought-provoking.

Frank Abergnale is really quite a remarkable man. He has guts like a bullet train, and is not totally without morals. For example he never cheats individuals, only large banks and MNCs. There is something Robin Hoodian in this policy that is very appealing to the working class. Surely the public will cheer if I were to cheat LTA or ST or GV of some money right now. But I have too many scruples.

Take this: the ring of power symbolises the will turned in on itself. It is empty in the middle, the gradual but sure erosion of the true self. Wearers of the ring become invisible, cut off from all normal relations in the world.

Or this: Samwise Gamgee represents all the readers. Like us, he loves to listen to stories, and he is pulled in by his ears by Gandalf while listening at the window. Near the end of the novel, he wonders if others will speak of his and Frodo's stories as well, linking this story into the larger narrative of myth and reality.

Or Lambas as the eucharist.

Or Frodo being the chosen one to destroy the ring -- hobbits being the shortest, weakest, humblest, simplest creatures -- just as the last shall become the first.

Or how the heroes pass through a kind of darkness and death experience to new life -- Gandalf on the narrow bridge of Moria, Aragorn in the Paths of the Dead, and Frodo when stung by Shelob.

Or the prevailing sense of hope even in utter despair.

NB: This is a collection of writings on JRR Tolkien's works and the spiritual values that undergirded his imaginery Middle-earth. It is edited by Joseph Pierce and the essays include the following: Recollections of J.R.R. Tolkien, George Sayer; Over the Chasm of Fire: Christian Heroism in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings, Stratford Caldecott; The Lord of the Rings - A Catholic View, Charles A. Coulombe; A Far-Off Cleam of the Gospel: Salvation in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Colin Gunton; Tolkien and C.S. Lewis: An Interview with Walter Hooper

1. It is completely in Spanish. (The only parts I understood without the help of subtitles were bits you taught me 8 years ago!)
2. It captures life in South America in the 50's and is full of regular folks going about their everyday lives, like mechanics, nuns, miners, farmers, etc.
3. It is about passion and justice.
4. The nuns are funny.
5. Awesome scenery.
6. Machu Picchu!!!

What more can I say? I really liked the show - it was both thought-provoking and funny. The soundtrack was neat too - a lot drums in the background, as if the show was a precursor to something much bigger, building up to a climax outside the film.

Do you have a VCD player? If you do, I can send it to you when it comes out. Hmm... come to think about it, I don't think your country does VCDs, only DVDs. Aw well.

Love,

L-