Translation -> the Cinderella of Literature?

It was said, in publications from two sides of the Atlantic, that native speakers of English have little interest in works that are not written in English. I am not sure if it has more to do with lack of curiosity than ignorance on the existence of such works. Hence, translation is of vital importance. However, good translators are seldom recognised and their work is usually unheralded.

British Council has this very interesting site that talks about translation of original works into other languages. I think anyone seriously interested in literature pay this site a visit.

http://www.literarytranslation.com/

And I recommend reading this highly interesting, and illuminating article on translation of Arabic words to English. And the author mentioned n author's translated works sold more than all his works in Arabic. Talk about international recognition, eh?

"The Cairo trilogy of the Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz has sold more copies in English than the whole of Mahfouz’s work in Arabic."

Click here for the full article.


I personally would continue writing in two languages, for different audiences. And I would love to translate pieces originally written in one language to the other.

My review of Isabel Allende's My Invented Country

This came out in The Star today. I apologise for my rather unwieldy language structure. Should had edited this piece more rigorously. I've taken the libery to amend here, some glaring grammatical mistakes that are found in the original copy.
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Bookshelf
Friday April 14, 2006

A life bound to homeland

Review by CLARISSA LEE

My Invented Country – A Memoir

Author: Isabel Allende

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 224 pages



THIS mesmerising memoir of Isabel Allende allows us a peek into the forces that have shaped the woman into a well-loved storyteller, who, despite meandering in and out of her main tale with little anecdotes and asides, never loses track of her original narrative, but masterfully weaves all the bits and pieces into the mother tale. She is just at home writing tales of epic proportions such as The House of Spirits as she is in giving us little tales of love and food through Aphrodite: The Love of Food and the Food of Love.

In this memoir, Allende superbly balances between revealing details that might be considered intimate, of some of her relatives and friends, but not unmasking them completely or depriving them of their privacies. It is as we know so much about them, while not really knowing them. It is the same when she talks about herself, or her innermost thoughts. But it is her style of keeping the reader in suspense as she brings us closer and closer to her psyche, often pulling us out without our realising it until we notice that she has ceased speaking of the intimate and are regaling us with tales of her native country and its people.

Yet it is in her telling us of the little known aspects of her country (to foreigners) that inevitably bring us up close with her unpredictability, to the capriciousness of humanity, and unveil to her readers the soil of her roots that is firmly packed at the core of her being. In reading Allende’s description of Chile, I am reminded of how like Malaysia it is in terms of its hospitality, its vastly uncritical society and the people’s strong patriotrism that brooks no insults or criticism from strangers to the land. Every social trespass is heavily frowned upon, the Chileans make a national pastime out of complaining about society and themselves, inefficiency and bureaucracy are a way of life, and patriachalism reigns supreme.

The people are stoic and perhaps fatalistic in their view of life, and most are highly religious. Divorce in Chile is near impossible, due to the insurmountable red tape and apathy, so couples seeking formal separation are caught in a legal bind. Moreover, Chile is still in the grip of class-consciousness, whereby the more European you look, the better your pedigree is considered, whereas if you look completely “native”, you are considered inferior. Such an attitude is not alien in many former colonies. However, make no mistake, Allende loves her native land, for all its faults and blemishes.

The memoir does not go in a linear order, even if it is chronological in detailing the events of her life, and of her people. We get an idea of Allende’s early years that have shaped her to be the kind of writer she is today. We know that Latin America has been successful in bringing forth great writers who are loved the world over, and from Chile, besides Allende, we know of Pablo Neruda and a few others.

Allende alludes to an oral tradition of poetry and folklore that has never been lost to its people, and thus it was but a small leap to go from that to writing modern poetry and novels. She also paints for us the beauty of the Chilean landscape, the beauty that had made it the muse of its literature, universally understood by readers worldwide.

Neruda, Allende and many Latin American writers have been translated into many different languages, and as I read her memoir that has been translated from Spanish to English, the lyrical beauty of her language, as well as the unrelenting and profound narrative, remain intact and forceful.

More importantly, she talks about how being uprooted and having to live life over more than once, in different countries, from the time of her youth, have made her write compulsively in order to grasp an identity that is altogether tenuous and elusive. Her notion of the “invented country”, her memories and inventive attribution to her former homeland, to the Chile she has left behind physically but lives on in her imagination, is reminiscent of Rushdie’s anecdote of the “childhood” home he had never been in, but which became very real to him by way of the sepia photograph he gazed at daily as a child.

The imaginary homeland gave such writers, who have the perspective of outsiders, the freedom to place the beauty of a homeland in the foreground while engaging with its reality from afar. While remaining loyal to the spirit of their homeland, they give it critical consideration.

On hindsight, a newcomer to Allende would definitely get a good introductory account to her literary motivations (and be entertained by a remarkably entertaining writer) and her fans will get an ever closer view of the writer whose stories they adore.

A story of LM Montgomery's extraordinary career

If Malaysia has an author who could describe its landscapes as beautifully as she did Prince Edward Island in Canada, we wouldn't need the simpering Ministry of Tourism and its tired "tourist attraction" packages. Or waste so much money rewriting copy to tell people why they should visit Malaysia. But then again, the latter provided income for the likes of lesser souls like myself. :D

Click here to read about what this great writer had to say about her career.

I have to say that I always feel inspired when I read her stories, in a way that I do not get when reading girl stories by many other authors, including British ones, even if I find some of her ideals "Victorian", to quote Ilse Burnley of the Emily Books.

If you have not read her, you should. You can find some of her books in e-text at http://www.tickledorange.com/LMM/Writings.html

Endlessly waiting

That's what I'd been doing where my MA results are concerned. In a way, that irritates me greatly, because I'm not able to go away or make any concrete plans until then. All these uncertainty can sometimes be so galling, especially since I've been living with uncertainty for the past three and a half years. Never knowing what will happen every month. In fact, the most stable months I had was when I was doing my thesis, since I couldn't quite go anywhere. It was then a rather frustrating period, because I have to write but did not quite have anyone, other than occasionally my supervisor, to engage in depth discussion of the issue. Of course, I do know someone who was into the kind of stuff I was doing, but he was usually busy and his location was a little inaccessible to me, especially since I was at that time working far away from the rest of civilization. I longed for the kind of campus life of the mind, which I think I hardly ever get, even when I was doing my undergraduate degree. But I know that someday, real soon, I will achieve that.

On the other hand, things are going well creatively. When I started writing creatively again this year, after months of hiatus, I initially found the words stuck. Though I have had interesting ideas, I found myself unable to formulate them into interesting stories. It was as if I had this writer's block. But thank goodness I was able to ovecome it and had since written another short story. Not that I should since I've got two book reviews to complete. Egad! And I still need a lot of work in the technicalities of writing a story. I am beginning to read writer's guide, on top of the primary works themselves, just to get some tips on what constitute good structure. I have to be the journeyman before I can be the master and create my own form of story-telling. As to whether my stories are Malaysian, well, I'll let the readers decide. I believe that if one were to properly understand postcolonial theories, it works on the idea of subverting a particular narratorial hegemony to allow for the manifestations of greater possibilities and probabilities in the act of story telling. It is supposed to give voice to the subaltern and to remove the shroud of taboo from any subject or issue, especially issues that had made many people uncomfortable or afraid. It is not meant to create any sense of narrow nationalism, though I know some postcolonial theorists and literary academics are guilty of that.

This year I am aspiring to read more fiction, modern and classics, and so far I had succeeded, though in a smaller scale than I have hope. It is tough, especially since I've got loads of non-fiction and theoretical works to go through as well. I think it is about time that I take up less commitment in order to give my time freely to the few important commitments I need to prioritise for this year.

newspaper stories

There is two side to Malaysian newspaper articles. On the one hand, the stories are so repetitive that one can merely glaze over just from looking at them. Different players, similar mise-en-scene. Especially the political news. Even the speeches by the ministers are predictable. I wonder if they all have a pool of speechwriters that they share?

On the other hand, the story that lies behind every local Malaysians news has a possibility of the invisible narrative, that could be either more thrilling or less sensational that that which the newspaper had made up. But, when one does not know the real story behind the story, it is possible to let the imagination run wild with speculation, and when you do that, the little short story or novel is born. Like Capote's "In Cold Blood".

And sometimes, there are so many layers to a possible narrative, that a plain news story can be transformed into a gothic tale of human bestiality or hidden neurosis.

Here, we have all those tabloids, where stories can be rewritten to become bestsellers, and serious news that seem to try to beat the tabloids in their game.

V For Vendetta and Munich -tales of the two movies

I'd watched V for Vendetta on Friday, at a cinema, with a friend, and Munich yesterday, at home and alone. Different styles, different directions. Yet, a similar theme ran through both, which is violence used as means to an end. I have to give it that Spielberg's movie pays better attention to details compared to McTeigue's but both are similarly charged. It is an unfair comparison, seeing that Spielberg has had more experience but McTeigue is definitely at home in the science-fiction/fantasy genre, and knows how to tie in the loose ends, and made the action-packed movie a substantial one.

There is so much that can be reviewed, or critique about the two films (one made it to Malaysia, the other did not, maybe because of the subject matter) but I am merely making notes here of my observations, that might be usable in future articles, or writings.

Both were about fighting for a cause, and both involved the use of murder and violence. While the human element is played to the full in Munich, it is played out pretty well in V for Vendetta by Weaving and Portman, though sometimes, I feel that V was more like a very well-groomed automaton who always knew the right things to say. But His voice, I have to say that I was transfixed by the well-modulated voice, not something you hear everyday if you live where I do. The only time I saw any semblance of actual love for humanity, was the anguish he felt when Evey told him that she was leaving him. It was then that you realised that he actually had REAL feelings. In fact, the problem I would have with the movie, other than it being a rather unevolved political skit, is that we don't get to see more of the characters feelings, though I believe Weaving did a superb job, as did Portman. What is more, there seems to be too clear a demarcation between the good and the bad. And the bad seems almost mad and monstrous, all with the exception of Finch, the head of the police department, who despite being initially on the side of the "bad guys" (but one can see that he had a heart, as he wanted to save Evey from possible torture and death if she were to fall into the hands of the secret police, the "fingermen"), soon sided with the "good guys" towards the end of the movie, and helped toppe the government ala Guy Fawkes by bombing the Parliament. Maybe I'll read the graphic novel before I comment further, and that would require me to try fnding it in a bookshop. (:

As for Munich, I am sorry that it did not make Malaysia's cinema. Though a Hollywood movie, it does not have many of the irritating qualities of the current breed of movies from Tinseltown. I am so glad that Spielberg did not try to distinguish between the good and bad guys, and the beauty of the movie is how multi-faceted his characters are, even those who made but cameo appearances. It is a story about the aftermath of the 1972 Olympics in Munich, where 11 Israeli atheletes were massacred by a bunch of Palestinian freedom-fighters. There were as many violent scenes in the movie as there were tender moments.

I have to say that it is the dialogue that made the characters come alive for me, and I almost wished that the "terrorists" (Palestinians in this movie, according to the Israeli government) that were being hunted would escape unscath, because they were so kind, gentlemanly and courteous in person. They were loving to their families, they obviously love their people and shared in the sufferings of their predicament, despite living bourgeoisie lives in Europe.

One must remember that the events that took place in this movie was just slightly after the six day war in 1967, which heralded the drawing up of West Bank border. It was also not too long after the repatriation of the Jews to Israel. Violence was then escalating as the stateless Palestinians fought to regain their land. It is important to mention that when the word "terrorist" were used in the film, it was not to influence the perception of the audience towards the Palestinians, but rather to let us view them through the eyes of the Israelis who were then at war with them. But when we observe individual interactions, and there are so many such instances of such in the movie, we soon realised that, if not for all these political hatred, these people could had been very good neighbours and friends with one another. Just like how the Bosnians and Serbs were friends prior to the Balkan conflict.

There was a scene showing Avner (the hired assassin, formerly of MOSSAD, the Israeli secret police) having a pow-wow with Ali, a Jordanian, who freely told the former that he hated the Jews, after having mistaken the former for a German. The latter did not love the Palestinians any better, but they were considered preferable to the Jews because the Arabs felt that the Jews had be the cause of their destabilisation. A few scenes down, when Avner was shooting Ali in the former's attempt to get away after assasinating the man the latter was guarding, you could almost see in Ali's eyes, the look of sadness and betrayal. And one sees that anguish in Avner's eyes (or maybe I'd imagined it) as the cameras did a close-up. The Israeli assassins were ethical in their attempt to inflict minimal damage while ridding themselves of their targets. One of the assassins, the bomb-maker Robert, was trying to get details of the telephone of one of the targets to plant a bomb, the target's daughter saw him doing that as she came in to practice on the piano. But the girl was unsuspecting and even smiled at Robert. He must had felt terrible then, knowing that he was soon to make her fatherless, and the anguish was apparent later, when he lost his appetite after having successfully killed the target at last. There was a scene where they found out that she was still in the house, and had picked up the call that was meant for her father. They attempted to delay the assassination until she was safely out. But was indeed a very sad scene, for the viewer knew what will soon come to past.

There were many scenes of brutality, but also many scenes of tenderness. Avner's love for his family saved him from becoming a victim of another assassin masquerading as a prowling man-trapper. I saw him cried as he spoke to his little daughter on the phone, and I wondered how he felt then about the men he had been assigned to destroy, the men who were also husbands and fathers. Towards the end of the film, the audience is shown how much toll such a life had had on him, renderind him paranoid and giving him the equivalent of a post traumatic stress disorder. From the time he decided to undertake the mission, his life changed, and would never be the same. But he began then to open his eyes to the futility of brutality as it begets more brutality (something that we get to see through the news that came on a few times in the movie). His previous unquestioning loyalty towards his homeland took a turn when he realised how much of a pawn he was to his country's politics. The movie succeeded in portraying the weaknesses and cruelties of both sides, as well as the humanity that exists in each individual person. Unfortunately, since the focus of the movie was on the Israeli, we did not get to see really what goes on in the minds of individual Palestinians and Arabs, but from the short exchanges of dialogues, and from the various scenes, we get a notion that they too have a heart. We are reminded of the fates of the refugees after the Palestinians were rendered stateless, and it is clear that the movie aspires to tell both sides of the stories as well as it could. We also get to see the kind of impression PLO had on the world back then, and how easily they were confused with HAMAS (maybe because of the ties to both organisations by certain individuals).

Hence, I think it is shallow prejudice that kept Munich from being screened in Malaysia. Anti-semitism, unfortunately, is still pretty high in this country, and that had kept many worthy movies from being shown. We are in some ways worse than terorrists who had become such due to their despair, because we are blindly prejudiced in our complacency, only because it is easier to be prejudiced along with the majority rather than to question it. I suspect that V For Vendetta was allowed to be screened because it had been categorised as some movie version of comics, despite its obvious political content and unrelenting criticism of establishments. V, the man who is liberator of the masses, as had been said in other reviews, is also highly individual, in that he has tastes that could not be considered "popular", with the exception maybe of the jukebox. He does remind me of Eric in the novel Phantom of the Opera, though perhaps a more highminded version?

Both movies were about fighting for freedom. One involving only one country, whereas the other involved a country that had become the source of wars between two factions. I daresay that the two movies would be interesting to explore what is means to be a terrorist, and the "black September", September 1972 and September 2001.

And if you need a refresher course on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, do check out here

What I think of the Grouchy Grammarian

Regardless of how fluent and skilled you think you are when it comes to the English Language, one is always in need of a refresher course. You never know, that very verb or classic quote you've been so fond of using may actually be off the mark (you will learn how to use may/might properly in one of its chapters). You can learn from the blunders of others, and vow to yourself never to make the same mistakes. But then, old habits diehard. Second language users will definitely benefit from this book, and many of the hits-and-misses and boos-boos were commited by professionals, some of whom use language to earn a living, and many of whom are native users. And my, the mistakes made are quite funny. I had many a good laugh (and laughter is a good antidote for stress and depression, cliche I know) over them, even late into the night (I wonder what my neighbours had thought of all those peals of laughter).

English has always been a slippery one, what with its many past pefect tenses, past participles, progressive tenses, and having to differentiate between gerunds and infinitives, getting the subject-verb agreement right. The latter in itself can give you split ends, if not a splitting migraine. So, why not indulge yourself in some good laughs while learning a thing or two about grammar? And keep this book about you at all times.

My own little review of The Historian by Elizabeth Kostovo

I finished this book, at long last. And I feel myself much closer to the Balkan and Ottoman history than I've ever been before, and in fact, this book has created in me a hunger to explore the geography and histories of these countries with their glorious and terrible histories, which I've flown over but never set foot on.

The book comes to me in many layers. The first layer is the story itself. In documenting the history of Vlad Tepes, or Vlad the Impaler (who is the real Dracula to the Dracula of popular imagination), as well as following the lives of the various scholars who were obsessed with finding out more about him and in tracing the mystery that shrouds this cruel man. If you read the book and check out on his history, you will realise that there is as much speculation as fact, and the author has give free reign to her imagination where facts are hazy, and from that, we get an intriguing story (even if it falters slightly towards the end). It all began with the finding of a little folio of a book, with empty pages save for the woodcut of a dragon in the middle. The leaving behind of an unknown book, of ancient but unknown provenance, is a litmus test, is the Dracula's way of satisfying his hunch that he had picked the person with the qualities he was looking for. So that he may bring them into his underworld and have them serve him. Yes, historical Dracula is made the vampire here, though in a way more real and refreshing than all the tired pop-culture renderings. In fact, there was a part in his speech that is chillingly true. About how evil is more easily perfected than good, in this world of ours. And that was further emphasised through the description of the various manuals on cruelties that a human can inflcit on another in the Impaler's library. And there is a strong, yet subtle tying in, to the atrocities and politics of modern times, and the atrocious manueverings of the Impaler would not have been out of place today.

Another layer is that this is definitely a bibliophile's book. Anyone who is a self-professed archivist, historian or lover of books would find much descriptions to delight the senses. In fact, it took me back to the days when I used to explore antiquarian bookstores in my travels in England and the Netherlands. It is the marking of a formerly colonised country that Malaysia does not have much of such collections, save for that brought over by the former colonials, and perhaps bought by some wealthy and cultured collector. I was once told that there are collectors of rare manuscripts in Malaysia, by a source close to these buyers, and I hope to be able to acquaint myself with one of them. Rare manuscripts lie in abundance in this tale, and it is as much a novel as it is a story of scholarship and books as it is of vampires and obscure folk tales. Dracula himself is a biblophile, which explains his interest in anyone who handles books of any sort. The chapter describing his library was astounding, and even tempted me to join the him, had I been a character in the novel, for the sake of thumbing through the volumes, many in languages I would never had understood. Despite the professed anti-intellectualism of Medieval Europe, monasteries remained centres of learnings and keepers of knowledge.

The next layer is a sort of political commentary of the times, and of the countries traversed by the characters. Ancient political history interspersed with current affairs of the twentieth century, and as many former countries of the Eastern bloc are opening up, one wonders what it might have been back then. Today, it would be a lot easier to enter these countries than to travel to what used to be free, democratic countries, due to the change in political climate and the rise of a different sort of terrorism. The irony of it all.


The fourth layer is the religious history that lie heavy in the pages. I just hope that some of the words used by the author, whom I am sure only use them to inject realism into the story, would cause this book to be banned by certain fundamentalist and close-minded factions in this and other countries. Especially since Karen Armstrong's History of God has been banned in Malaysia. In fact, I could only read it at the library of the university I used to attend here, though sadly, I never got around to it. It is definitely interesting to explore the mystical aspect of Christianity that were very much of the Eastern Orthodox tradition, and how Kostova has cleverly foregrounded Dracula into the struggle between the Christians and the Ottoman conquerors. I do not see anything biased or judgement of her account, for she is quick to give credit where it is due, for instance, by stating, not once but a few times, to her readers, via her characters, how the Ottoman conquerors could be as benevolent to their conquests, as they were violent during the act of conquering. There were particular mention of Sultan Mehmed II as he lived during the lifetime of Vlad Tepes, this prince of the Wallachian seat. A kind of inter-faith conference seem to take place in this book, via the roundabout route of history and politics, and through the medium of the central character, none other than Dracula himself. The word 'infidel' flows on both sides to refer to the other in ancient epistles. Kostova now and then will have her characters making statements, sometimes political in nature, and at other times an affirmation of a particular person or culture's religious faith. Or maybe of the person's agnosticism. But it is through the figure of the Dracula that has united people of different political, religious and even geographical inclination into a pursuit against evil.

Running through all these heavy layers are individual love stories, which are rather tragic, as the characters in love are star-crossed, and circumstances act to separate them. For the hopeless romantic, there is a story in which one of the main characters in the story, who having met the love of his life while on his trip to Romania to follow the trails of the undead Impaler, swallowed a drink in Greece that made him forget his research and the fact that he had ever set foot in that country, thus leaving the poor young girl (who as you will read further, is pivotal in this tale, because of her ties one of the two main protagonist of the tale)alone and pregnant. It is opened to speculation as to whether his being given this drink had been intentional, since the author never explored this option further. Or that the married life of the two protagonists, having fallen in love during their pursuit together after the trail of Dracula's tomb, because of the contamination of one of them, and Dracula's relentless pursuit of them through their lives, were separated, and even after being reunited, never lived long together in happiness. In fact, despite the rather bland ending, the reader is left guessing as to whether Dracula is well and truly gone. That despite the fact we see him disappearing into dust. However, the drama of the previos pages more or less make up for the anti-climax, as the reader will still find it throbbing in his or her head, and that more than anything make-up for the disappointment.

There are many more minor layers in this book, but I hope that the mention of these existing layers would have convinced a person with a love for history and books to begin reading. Perhaps I might have given some of the plot away, but that is no help to that since I am not really reviewing this book here, but talking about areas of it which intrigues me. The artificial divide of the oriental versus the occidental seems to dissolve under the narration, even if the description occasionally bring them back.

A short review of Tues, 14 Mar 2006, Of Descartes "Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and seeking Truth in the Sciences"

There is not much that I wish to say here, other than the fact that the discussion went on well, and even generated much heated debate from one or two of its members who decided to argue for or against Descartes's personal maxims to approaching philosophy, though of course, I think there is a certain degree of misunderstanding of what the poor man might had meant in this treatise, seeing that some of us are too set on our own preconception (something which Descartes did warn against) to try to work out what he might had been saying. However, as one of the discusssants point out, it is important that we can process what the person whose work we are studying has to say, so that we can utilise that in our own thinking, rather than blindly regurgitate the maxims and theorems of the said philosopher. Of course, there might be certain amount of misinterpretation and oversubjectivisation by the person reading Descartes, especially when he or she is ignorant of the tradition from which Descartes has risen from (though this has been severely argued and counter-argued by structuralists and post-structuralists in their deconstruction of the text and the author)

The natural scientist in me rebels over subjectivisation. Despite my personal subscription to the philosophy of quantum mechanics, where there are many uncertainties and errors in human measurements of its functions and variables due to our ability to be doing more than one thing properly at the same time, there are certain levels of precision and arbitrary laws to denote it. Or better yet, a particularly fixed model to which to base all the less easily measured models.

This particular work of Descartes is like a little manifesto that he wrote for himself as a reminder on the method that worked best for him in his dissertation the sciences (sciences here means body of knowledge). Descartes separated "pure philosophy", that which enumerates the truths of the world independent of subject-matter, from "applied philosophy ", that which is the philosophy derived from a particular science (my jargons) and we will see more of this as we study into his other works. We know that Descartes subscribed to the dual mind-body model, and
that he separates the corporeal from the material in his philosophy. Some might consider him an empiricist in his dissection of the material, but was less given to questioning when it comes to dealing with the unseen. Perhaps an area which escaped us that night, which I only realised as I write this, is that the text of Descartes allows us into the limits of the person's mind, and also a peek into the psychological conditioning he has had from his Jesuit education. I see now that his arguments over his religion, which he accepts unquestioningly as the ultimate truth, is reminiscent of the same acceptance of many scholars and philosophers of their religion today.

Quite a number of us who attended this discussion had a real interest in philosophy, and had read into the field, though most of us are not really knowledgeable on Descartes's philosophy. I think at least one of us mixed up epistemology with ontology when he decided to get into an involved discussion on existentialism and God (perhaps a precursor to future discussion on ontology?). I am guilty of encouraging this digression and for not trying to steer it back to the discussion of Descartes's four maxims (please refer to text, Part II, II and IV for more details). The unfortunate part is that not everyone read the text prior to the discussion, so there is no real space for more indepth discussion.

Our next discussion will still be on Cartesian philosophy, this time examining some other texts. I will put up a notice on that later. This time round, different people have volunteered to read different texts and to present their findings to the rest for further debate and discussion. I will put a list of the selected texts up later and say which have/have not been taken up, and you take your pick from texts that have not yet been taken-up.

And let us not get into the bad habit of going off tangent, however learned you might be in the topic you are digressing into, but stick to the agenda of the night, unless you can provide a substantive link between topic of discussion and your examples. And please read the text, or you will not get the fullness of the discussion. Since there might be more than one this time, you might not have time to read them all, but please read the ones you have volunteered to present, and scan through the rest as you have time.

My point of this review is not to report on what happened that night in detail, coz that is too much work and takes too much time (this is voluntary after all). So if you really want to know, come join us. It differs each time, depending on who turns up. There were seven of us that night, though two turned up late.

No date has been fixed for the next meeting. Coordinator, yours truly, might be too busy next month. Will let everyone know later.

A bientot

Ways of Understanding

Understanding, an act we participate in without much conscious thought. An ability that we have been schooled to utilise in our nascent years, and is perhaps the key to our learning of new skills and comprehension of new subject matter. Perhaps the differentiating factor between passing or failing our exams, or being competent at our work. This and its partner, the short term memory, so essential to learning, prior to its confirmation among the filing system of the long-term memory, create a fine line between a person with aphasia or other cerebral dysfunctions, and a person with normal brain function.

Yet, even those of us who believe that we are utilising our brains optimally, we often fail to realise how inefficient we really are, and how often it is that we fail to understand even the most basic of matters. While it would be catastrophic for a doctor, engineer, architect, or any professional dealing with precise sciences, to misunderstand the area of their provenance, more subjective areas (and despite the specificities of the legal system, many laws are more subjective in their interpretation than we think)are where we see the slip-ups and complete miscomprehension of its human actors. Below are some examples of what I meant

1. In the world of political debates, when an issue is at stake, we can find supposedly intelligent people completely misunderstanding an issue that is the topic of their debate, and instead spend their entire time during the debate, moving up the wrong alley. Some of these people are what Descartes would call, those who consider themselves to be cleverer than they are, and are precipitious in their judgements and avowals. Yet, they believe that they have impressed the audience with the pedantry of their arguments. Or that they have fight a good fight.

2. In the corporate world, even in the most highly regulated arena like banking, there is always much room for misunderstanding from different sides. Perhaps they are spurred by an inability to continue their emotions, or are overly easily agitated by perceived slights. It is not unknown for the superior to be inconsistent in their directives, nor for the quacking staff to fail to elicit clarity of a vague instruction given by their superior. Nor is it uncommon for the staff to communicate instructions to each other in such a way that the instructions function more to confuse the communicatee than to shed light on anything. Sometimes, the receiver of the message has to undergo much cognitive decryption to make sense of the message that is trying to be communicated, and when he/she actually make the effort to find out, find the effort to be an almost pointless exercise.

3. A university professor who misunderstands a particular theory or does not fully understand what he/she is trying to communicate to the students tend to confuse the latter, and hence lead to more disinformation. What is more dangerous would be disinformation of the most fundamental of axioms and concepts since these are the foundation to the building of analysis. To base an entire analysis and spurious/erroneous concept is not merely a time-wasting exercise, but could become dangerous when these analysis are used as building bricks to formulate policies that would have its effect on the lives of the masses. A student who fails to clarify or check on the received information, but to continue in his/her miscomprehension, and to accumulate knowledge with perceptions that are skewed, is but building a house on quaking sand.

4.Another common and probably dangerous method of understanding is to see truth as relative, and thus forsake instances when truth might be arbitrary. Whether they be religious precepts, or the laws of physics. Should we build our interpretation on matters over which no authority could certify, because the shifting paradigm necessitates that truth shifts at all times, if it is but an exercise on intellectual play, might be a harmless, and perhaps rejuvenating to the mind. But, it starts becoming dangerous when we use our own subjective understanding (or misunderstanding) to influence and teach minds weaker than ours. Where then is our accountability to them.

At the end of the day, perhaps it is best that we bring the act of understanding into a more conscious position, and to observe ourselves as we enter into the motion of comprehending something which is new, something which we are reading, or information that are entering by way of our senses. Perhaps then can we really understand how and how much do we understand.


The above are partial examples of how understanding courses through human life. The entry is inspired by Descartes's "Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting Reason".

The ways of a(n)(un)thinking person?

This abstract act has fascinated people through the centuries, so much so that scholars, philosophers, writers, scientists, artists, and such like-intellectuals have tried to define this process, or at least have attempted to do so, without ever cracking the concept.

However, I am not going to play the philosopher here, but instead would like to use tangible examples on what actually goes on in the mind of an average person, and does the person'a thought become manifested in his/her actions.

Howard Gardner proposed 7 types of human intelligence . Hence, just because that person performs poorly in one area of intelligence does not negate his intelligence completely. So, would it mean that a person who is a fool in his chosen profession means that he has chosen the wrong profession? Likely. Unless he/she was a fool to begin with. (:

While some might argue that intelligence is innate, there are certain psychological factors, as well as training that can influence the way a person react to situation.
Let's take learning martial arts, yoga or even an intricate dance-step. How does a person actually memorise all the right poses, footwork or even handwork? Firstly, there is a need to have visual-spatial intelligence, to be able to easily gauge and therefore memorise the coordinates of each position of the hand, feet and body. And there is a need to think through logically using one's bodily-kinesthetic intelligence. However, could a person who is able to think logically from one action to the next, have difficulties solving more abstract logical-mathematical problems? Highly likely, because some people with high logial-mathematical abilities are not physically coordinated (which would mean that the body does not wire so well with the brain). I myself very well understand how it is to watch a demonstration of an action and to think it either looks really easy only to realise that I am having spatial-directional problems when trying to replicate the process I have just seen. Or even find out that intricate steps, however confounding they look, actually are manageable and even easily emulated once broken down.

And then there is the matter of moving this new piece of information from short term to long term memory. How does one do that? Will do another post on this another time. (: But suffice to say for now that a quick memory does not always necessitate good comprehension. Some people who take longer to remember can remember well and long in the end, and with good comprehension as well. But having the ability to grasp information quickly and sort them out in your brain is a good skill to have, and which many people have been attending courses and reading books to master :)

I have experimented with different ways of thinking, have stumbled along the way, done really idiotic things I would not have done in my right mind e.g. doing something really silly when trying to imitate an action which I've just been shown. I sometimes have difficulties relating phonetic sounds to meaning (e.g. being unable to understand what a person is trying to tell me because of the accent or the modulation of the voice, or being unfamiliar with the sounds of a foreign language which I am trying to master), and have even tried to figure out a way to remember intricate poses for yoga and dances. (:

There are many examples in which people would sometimes do think without thinking (or at least without thinking it through). Hence, I will write about how to lose a guy in 10 days...oops I mean how to lose your brains in 10 ways. There are more, but these examples will do for now. ;)
1. Double-parking when they know they are not going to be within range of sight, or knowing that they won't be taking only a short while.
2. Trying to squeeze your vehicle into a tight spot and then cursing the stranger who knocks into it.
3. Driving in the middle of the road and then wondering why the car behind you is staring daggers.
4. Accelerating and refusing to give way when the car on your left is signalling to move right.
5. Throwing food into water dispenser, knowing full well that you will also have to suffer the consequences of blocked filters.
6. Cutting down trees without thinking how it might effect the ecosystem overall, and your comfortable, urban life in the end
7. Planning the town haphazardly (think of the recent flashfloods in KL)
8. Building roads anyway and anyhow you like, regardless of the effects on the community around you.
9. Students copying results of an experiment which they should be conducting on their own and thus obtain their own results. But they've been doing this all the while, from school to university. Hence, they never learnt to conduct an experiment, or even do anything properly. Which is why our industries and corporate world is so screwed up. Btw, this applies to the medical sector as well.
10. We follow the laws and rules that are given to us unthinkingly, because we have been brainwashed to do so since we were kids. We never thought of questioning the feasibility or even the rationality of such laws.

bonus point : Believing that reform is underway when all that is being done is to cover the subject over with tinsels and glitters. E.g. Does appointing women to a patriarchal system solve the problem of gender inequity? Well, only in terms of having female faces and bodies among the men, honey.

Go figure the rest.

A Statement To Clear Up The Air - Also a writer's manifesto to myself

Have been reviewing a few things, and thinking about the direction of my writing programme. I have started here and there doing some stuff in a small way, but decided that I should now focus more of my energy and shift the gear higher. The giving up of certain commitments will actually allow me more time to concentrate on more challenging writing tasks ahead rather than reverting to the comfort zone. It's a big and dangerous world out there, but I will arm myself as well as I can. Wish me luck!

A few announcements are in order to clear things up.
This article that was written at jalantelawi.com under a different name was actually written by me. Perhaps the choice of that particular pseudonym have been miscontrued as my way of undermining religions (and the hegemony of Islam in Malaysia). Firstly, I would like to say that a name has no religious affiliations. Just because it happens to be a name that came from a race where a majority of the people are muslims, it does not mean anything. I could very well use Mohamad, Ali, Yusuf, Mariam etc, and proclaim my sentiments about anything under the sun (though I have to be careful that I do not sound like I am talking through my arse), it should not be read out of context. The reason why I chose this name is because I want to use a name that is seldom used by non-Malay members of the race in Malaysia, especially since I am a Malaysian. I've been asked as to why I am "Clarissa Lee" since I am not white instead of some local name. Well darlings, firstly, I do not believe in limiting myself to anything and I am sick and tired of superficial nationalism. I damn well can call myself with some name in an unpronouncable tongue to most people in this region if I wish to. And I damn well am proud of my race and heritage (I never am "racist" but the conditions around has left me high and dry), and my name in no way detracts from the fact that I am C-H-I-N-E-S-E in every imaginable permutation even if I've been told that I don't always look THAT Chinese (and yes, my parents DID give me a Chinese name). How should a Chinese look since the nation is made up of a very mixed race and culture. Perhaps they mean I don't look very Han (the race of many southern Chinese originating from China). I can't say I like the way some Chinese have become, but we do have a strong heritage that we can be proud of in many ways. And I really dislike the ethno-centric, small-minded, and short-term thinking that do still permeate the Chinese culture of today (and of yesteryears). Anyway, I digress.

Whatever I choose has long-term implications for me and I am now too old to make choices and change directions on whim. So, one day, I decided to write using a Javanese pen-name and hence I am interpreted as an anarchic atheist. Hello, God belongs to everyone. And I never intend to be a plain jane when I write, regardless of how I might look physically. And to return to that article above, I truly believe in everything I wrote in there, even if you feel that I have mistaken notions about things. Write back and scold me with your own views and take. At worse, we can agree to disagree.

Anyway, I will be discontinuing my writing in a few places and will be concentrating on some new stuff that I have been working at developing. Firstly, I won't be writing for jalantelawi.com for now since I need all that free time I can muster. So to those who have followed my writing there (even if there were just 10 of you or less, don't miss me too much, ya? ;P). And I am also changing direction in the kind of publications I write for, as I intend to develop new platforms and maybe experiment in other places. I'll keep my faithful readers abreast of what I am up to. I welcome all forms of constructive criticism, you can even tell me you hate my style, and why (I am learning to develop a thicker skin over time and also to be even more self-critical). You can even say that you do not like the way I overuse parentheses, asides and appositives. :D
That's what I left the comment boxes for. You can even drop me emails should you not wish for others to see them. (:

The physique :It is all in the appearances

We might wish to appear fair and equitable to others, but subconsciously, our reactions and favours are directed by an innate sense of aesthetic. It is true that people do judge a book by its cover, at least where first impressions go. Yet, in that flitting second, first impressions can actually open or close the doors to getting beyond the first acquaintance, to friendship, love and maybe marriages for some. Not everyone has the chance to get reacquainted with a person again and again under different circumstances that might allow them to see beyond the polished/raw veneer.

It might be true that a good-looking man or woman has more admirers, some even from early in life. It is especially true for a woman, for it gets people to notice her. Perhaps it has to do with how civilisation has for centuries celebrated the beauty of the female form and appearance (they did do that with the male form, though it was more on the beauty of a prepubscent or teenaged boy). All the better if she has both beauty and brains, and knows how to work these to her advantage. If she has strong personal values and/or is well brought up, she will not allow all the attention to go into her head. She has to not allow her beauty to stop her from achieving her dreams of success based on pure ability, rather than take the easy way out by merely capitalising on her looks. While many people feel that a beauty with brains has it going for her in the world (and there is no denying she does), it takes a strong character, a character with depth, to remain focus on her ambitions, especially if the ambition has nothing to do with how she looks.

How does it fare then for the less attractive counterpart, and I mean physical attractiveness. She might have strong inner beauty, intelligence and talents, and a great personality, but might not attract as many admirers at first glance. However, unlike the admirers of a natural beauty, the admirers of the less naturally physically beautiful woman are more likely to be admirable creatures, one who can appreciate the person of substance, one who is likely to be more interesting and more worthy of the strong bonds of friendship. I do not include here admirers who have reached the penultimate of desperation and hence would go for any woman that comes his way. These are not true admirers, but one who fashions his admiration based on personal calculations.

The world is one of superficialities, and a person less attractively made are bound to be faced with frustrations, and perhaps insults by less sensitive creature. She might be made to feel that she is too fat, too spotty, too flat, too ugly, too everything. Yet, to be able to rise above that shows a person of pure strength. I admit to that I have my own biases, that I too, like everyone else, gets drawn to beauty. Many people have what I would call the "ugly thermometer", where they would assign a threshold to how much physical unattractiveness they will accept in a potential partner. It does take a special person to look beyond physical deformities to appreciate the person within. And this is hard to do, and I am embarass to say that I too have such prejudices many a times, unthinkingly. But let no one despair, for such a thermometer is subjective from person to person. However, it is unfortunate that there lies no instrument to measure inner beauty.


Therefore, great is the man who can appreciate the woman for all that she is worth, and to know when he has landed himself a treasure far above rubies, and to show her his appreciation in ways that would move her. And the same goes for the woman who can appreciate the man beyond his stature, his brains, his financial successes and looks. While looks might be less important to a woman up to a certain degree, they too are guilty of making judgemental measurements of their partners.

The same goes for men and women who are attracted to the members of their sex, though there might be slight differences in terms of preference and attraction. Bear in mind that I am talking about two ends of the spectrum, one who is acknowledged (almost universally) to be beautiful and one who is known to be not so. I have yet to talk about the average looking person, and those whose looks might be more subjectively defined.

Is Malaysia becoming its own caricature?

I find it hard to understand why should NST be issued a show cause letter just because it published this little comic satire of Wiley Miller. It seems that we never learn from history, but just go on and on repeating the same mistakes of our forefathers (unfortunately for us, the leaders of today are spawns of those very same forefathers). Read the rest of the explanation on NST here. I do not believe that NST need to apologise and I think it is mendacious for the Informations Minister to arm-twist it into doing so.

In many ways, NST has become more interesting and newsworthy in the last few months, and it is sad if it has to regress back to a former shadow of its recent past.

I tried looking for the cartoon in the Feb 20th issue of NST's Life&Times but failed to locate it. Can someone tell me whether it might had been in the 13th Feb issue?

Strictly speaking, I think Malaysians in general lack the ability to understand satire, and it kinda shows how we have not moved much, intellectually, from our mud-racking days.

Fathi Omar Aris does an interesting dissection of this issue in his latest blog entry.

What maketh an intellectual - santai salon

This time around, we were at Prof SHA's house, enjoying the delights of a salon atmosphere with dimmed lights and black coffee (for the record, I am not really a coffee person but it was good enough coffee nevertheless).

The night started off slowly, with discussions about the current issues of the day, which took a detour into the sociology of cults, back into the time of the Second World War and the building and detonation of the A-Bomb (though I should call it H-Bomb since it is made with hydrogen) and back to the current conditions of the day. However, when I asked him why some of the most intelligent and highly educated people would propagate atrocities on behalf of a cult they've joined (and why did they join in the first place), he answered that it has to do with these so called "intellectuals" being merely technicians. Too bad we didn't get to go deeper into the sociology of it. Perhaps another time. Our talk remained pretty light, until Fathi posed to him a question on how he sees Malaysia as having developed, intellectually in the 30 years since the writing of his book "Intellectuals in Developing Societies" and that began the second half of the evening.

SHA lamented the fact that there are no structure or system that nurtures and encourages the growth of intellectual interest in Malaysia. Intellectual leadership from most academics/lecturers to their students are limited to helping them pass exams (in most instances). Many academics are not too concerned with intellectual pursuits, preferring to centre their attention on the technicalities of their specialisation. Bureaucracy is emphasised and flexibility of thought not encouraged. An important fact that he pointed out is that the lack of intellectual integrity and conviction is what led to many academics to being easily cowed through the blatant use of power (read my post about the Atilla)

He did talk quite a bit about his experience as an administrative leader at UM but I will not go into that.Maybe I'll bring it out in another post. However, what he said about the need for academics and scientist to engage with society, and to relate their work to society, is something that is being practised more and more today, though unfortunately in Malaysia, only by social scientists and humanities scholars. What happened to the natural scientists? And what about those in professional fields like business, finance, engineering, medicine, etc? Many of them do not seem to engage with communities beyond that of their own specialisation. The good prof believes that while nature might have a role to play in creating an intellectual, nurture is just as important, and thus the importance of education and the encouragement towards critical inquiry and creative thinking. What do these latter two phrases mean? Well, we might examine them in subsequent book discussions.

As many people had pointed out, and so did the prof now, Indonesia as a much more intellectual discourse. It might have to do with history, has to do with their revolutionary spirit in the fight for independence. The same goes for the Philippines. Perhaps the fact that Malaysia has always get things easy (compared to its neighbours) has made its people more complacent and mentally lazy. Perhaps they think that being in a country that gives them ready access to English books (though in no way am I comparing us to first world English-speaking countries), they are therefore cultured and cultivated, without understanding what these two words mean.
In the third half of the discussion, he was asked about his opinion on what constitutes Islamic Literature (with capital L). The answer was interesting. Most of us (myself included) are often quick to give narrow categorisation on particular types of Literature, and this is no different with Islamic Literature. Many great literatures of the world that talks about the universal values of humanity, of love, kindness, goodness, generosity and all that is considered positive traits of a human being, can be classed as Islamic Literature. Even literature that discusses human depravity and evil can be constitute as such, as long as such literature do not promote these values. If you want to know what values I mean, just go back to the respective religions of the Book. Other religions do not have such wholescale control over the lives of their adherents as do Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Though I stand corrected. (: One person pointed out how the hegemonic imposition of certain formulas into what is Islamic Literature had narrowed down the area of its reach drastically. And this could be true for other religions. Perhaps what can be called Islamic Literature can also be called Christian Literature. Unless one wishes to argue from the point of doctrines.

The good prof did give a number of very old reference to out-of-print magazines which contain some of his locally published writings. I will write more about them later once I have the time to dig them up.

Many are other things were talked about but those are not the main ideas discussed so I will not post them here. What you are getting here is just a summary of what went on last night. (:


P.S. This concludes our discussion of the issues surrounding the book "Intellectuals in Developing Societies" (though some of the ideas might come up again in future discussions of other works). Watch the news and updates blog for announcement on the next book discussion in March. We might and would include some thinkers and authors from our region, though it would be a great challenge to get copies of their books, due to the nature of the publishing industry in this region.

What maketh an intellectual? - according to SHA and the rest of us

My friends and I had an interesting discussion yesterday. Lots of things were said and thrown about. There were talks of lack of intellectual engagement in this country, barring repressive laws. The idea that we are dry of ideas, and intellectual traditions. That our medium of intellectual exchange is non-existent, whether in the mass media or in books. Or even in Malaysian blogs. That most NGOs and political parties work on the dearth of real ideas. And the idea that we are mostly secondhanders, struggling to make sense of of principles that we may never grasp in this lifetime, or which we may grasp and let go many times over. And that S.H. Alatas is a socialist at heart :P

Oh yeah, I brought up the idea of selective intellectualism in some regimes (using the example of the former USSR where materialism is allowed to propagate but opposing forms of philosophy are repressed) and another friend asked "Are intellectuals a chance of nature or a product of nurture"?

And, to create an inquiring society, what call for action fo we need?
1. Space?
2. Conflict?
3. Engagement with conflict?
4. Critical mind?

And how does one define all those four without going into the chicken and egg conundrum?


I think another vital aspect that one has forgotten to include is that different peoples have different ways of working within groups/structures even when it comes to intellectual work, and what works for one group may not work for the other. And the most vital part, that maybe only came in fleetingly in the end, is how class wars now begin to come into play in this struggle for different opinions.

All this in the name of "Intellectuals in Developing Societies" .

And, should an intellectual be a person who has higher moral standards/ higher level of morality than the rest of us? And whose and what morality (this is subjective to whether you believe in God and absolute morality or not) :D


A bientot

P.S. Comments welcomed.

Should it be this? Why not that?

Here is what I feel is a well-written, balanced report on the cartoons and the furore it sparked.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/02/10/news/cartoons.php

Here is from today
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/02/15/news/union.php

I suppose when one talks about emotional issues, it is hard to maintain a clear mind.
How far can satire go, and should there be an arbitrary decision on what is sacred and profane?

I don't think this question will ever be answered. But many recent riots, sparked off unfortunately in the densely populated immigrant section of Western Europe, have made current administrations pay attention to the conditions of today's polity. And recent events have made me requestion the concept of religion, and why this religion and not the other. I see a new crisis coming up :D

On a lighter note, it is so 'on' to be an applied scientist today :D
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1709337,00.html

Damn, why did I switch to the fickle world of advertising and branding, where qualifications and formal education are less important (though knowledge IS a big asset, acquired which way) than your ability to maneuvre the world of hard-knocks, put up with corporate jinks (fickle-minded and dense authorities) and to negotiate deals. Even a PhD without the necessary survival skills and EQ (+ creative talent) will drown in this vast ocean.


Academia seems so much more of an ideal in comparison (barring the campus political back-biting and power-play), but should I ever enter it, I hope that I can also share "real-life" with them, from the horse's mouth.

Both words require smarts, and in today's highly commertical world, I doubt that a lack of industrial experience will do a book-centred academic much good, even if you majored in Egyptology or Celtic Studies, or the linguistic cognition of Trobiander Indians. (:


Time to rethink my "higher-education".

Valentine's Day 2006: Some Vignettes

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.
~ James A. Baldwin

1.
It has gone past midnight, the curfew relegated to the unconscious area of our minds. We sat shoulder-to-shoulder on the yet to be-opened-flyover, the car behind us. For the first time, I was acquainted with the inner-life of this boy, this teenager on the verge of adulthood. He spoke more than I did. He told me his dreams, his ideals, what he had done in the past. I asked if he had ever confided in his best pals the way he had to me. He said he never did. We boys do not engage in such conversations, said he. I looked at him, this young man considered to be the ideal of manhood. Smart and brawny. Popular. We were both staring down at the motorway, at the zooming cars below us. He brought food and drinks, which he shared with me. We, two, small-town teenagers, exchanging intimacies in the darkness of a yet-to-be-opened public area. Daring of us, and illegal in the eyes of the law. There were more things I wished he had told me that night, but it did not happen, as the spell was broken by the police. I shuddered at the thought, as mother would not be too pleased to be woken, after I had deliberately broken the curfew. However, the magic of that night was gone. A year later, we were almost strangers.

2.
We stood under the dusky sky, looking at the breaking waves, barely perceptible in the dimly lit area. We set up the camera and tripod to catch the full moon, and maybe a few constellations. We had to leave the camera for maximum exposure, and while waiting, we surveyed the darkness around us. We spoke, I do not remember of what. Did we touch? It escaped me. The next morning, we were up early to see the orange globe as it rose from the horizon. We took pictures once again, and the pictures came out beautifully. We also took pictures of the junks and fishing boats that were coming in with the catch of the day. We stood under the wooden pavilion, waiting for breakfast to come in. This time I remembered that we could had held on to each other, and to the camera. And the others arrived to join us for breakfast. The magic was soon lost. Few months after, we were almost strangers, a broken version of the pictures we took together.

3.
Our acquaintance was hardly usual, and under the usual circumstances, might had never arisen. We had many-shared loves, and shared-disgusts. We were alike yet so different from the other. We seldom met, yet our hearts were knitted together, sometimes sundered by unknown forces. We shared many a lonely time apart, and spent some of the most mundane hours together. Our passions were strong yet unnoticeable by others, our love mostly unspoken, then, now and thereafter, even as we engaged in long conversations. In my most conventional moments, I've dreamt of a a life together with love, a beautiful wedding to enshrine it all. Perhaps it might never come, not ever in this lifetime. The magic had begun early, and had had many fleeting moments. The first touch, the first kiss, the first of it all. Maybe the first instance wasn't all that important. The memories were what made it as it was.

Epilogue
Perhaps, the essence that defines love is made all the stronger by the lost of possibilities, of former hopes and the realisation of irrational passions.

Dans nom â l'amour, mon ami
Happy Valentine's to each and every one of my readers.

Note from a postcard 2 (first published in June 2005, two days after the first postcard)

Maria sat behind, oblivious to the battling couple trying to navigate the traffic. A cherubic child sat next to her, intermittently looking out of the window, and at her. Maria caught her glance when looking up from her mobile. Maria smiled back at her.

The four of them got to the cafe safely, after tension, as the driver had difficulties in finding his bearings, whilst his partner tried to impart his wisdom on the city's maze.

The waiter took their order. The atmosphere had relaxed. They were now all chatting amiably. Maria exchanged banter with the couple, and the child. She tried to be bright and witty, but her mind is floating elsewhere. Why did he refuse to come?

They discussed their plans, their lives and their ideals. One of the couple worked for an NGO, the other was in publishing. Maria asked one of the couple, the one who was driving. How was he? He looked at her evenly. The same.

Did he ever mention me?
Maria sat behind, oblivious to the arguing couple in front trying to navigate the traffic. A cherubic child sat next to her, intermittently looking out of the window, and at her. Maria caught her glance when looking up from her mobile. They smiled at each other.

The four of them got to the cafe safely, after much tension, as the driver had difficulties with his bearings whilst his partner tried to impart his wisdom on the city's maze.

The waiter took their order. The atmosphere had relaxed. They were now all chatting amiably. Maria exchanged banter with the couple, and the child. She tried to be bright and witty, but her mind is floating elsewhere. Why did he refuse to come?

They discussed their plans, their lives and their ideals. One of the couple worked for an NGO, the other was in publishing. Maria asked one of the couple, the one who was driving. How was he? He looked at her evenly. The same.

Did he ever mention me?

No.

Dinner came to an end after an hour. Maria went with the couple and child back into the car. She looked again at her mobile. The call never came. She sat back as they drove to their next destination.

From the corner of her eye, Maria noticed that the child was eyeing her, with a look that she imagined must meant empathy.

Note from a postcard 1 (first published in June 2005)

He sat next to me, holding my hand and bag. I looked at his face. It held an imperceptible pensiveness. He looked at me and smiled in a way that only those who understood would see it as a smile. He held his lips closed to my temple as he pulled me towards him.

I looked out of the dew covered pane as we whizzed past flat landscapes, highways and scatterings of narrow houses. I touched the cold glass, feeling the frosty tingle through my fingers. The world looked sober. I felt the warmness of his palm as he squeezes my hand nearest to him. I savoured an amniotic coziness that must soon be abruptly ended.

In the swirl of diembodied voices, omniscient clocks, people and bags, we came to a halt at our destination. We took a trolley and started looking for the counter. I noticed a dog in a leash trotting obediently behind a lady in a coat, perhaps on their way to greet someone who had just arrived. Everything was a whirl but festivity was in the air. Bags were taken away. In return, I held a pass.

We went for breakfast, our last meal together, knowing that oceans will soon separate us. I took in his liquid eyes, long lashes and gorgeous lips. We chatted amiably, wanting in vain to ignore that which was then impatient in the performance of its duty.

A long queue met us at the entrance that stood as a hatchet between loved ones, those who were leaving and those who were staying back. Some for a few days, some for a few weeks, some indefinitely.

He bade me adieu, not wanting to linger longer, having an appointment to keep, and wanting to be spared the painful parting. Before leaving, he whispered, "I love you" and kissed me on the lips, the first for that day. I looked at his back as he hurried away.