Last night I finally finished the Cambridge History of SEA. (CHSEA)
It has left me with a lot to think about. The last two of the four volumes dealt with just the last two hundred years; it felt rather as if nothing much had gone on since the first hominid ape made its home in some Borneo cave and ate a banana until some western king, or middle eastern sultan, decided to spice up his dinner with a twist of pepper. The whole idea of South East Asia as a region only began in the 1940s with SEAC; the Allies Southeast Asia Command. I can think of no other part of the world that has been so in between. First in between China and India, and then in between Europe/India and China. This is largely down to geography, the trade route between east and west led for most of history along the coast and through the narrow Straights of Malacca. The winds changed direction too, so sailing ships had to wait to carry on to China or India, or make a return journey home. Religion and trade: the CHSEA says next to nothing about artistic culture, science or philosophy. Great empires rose and fell and what was left behind were temples; Angkor Wat, Borobudur, Pagan, Ayutthaya. No great castles, palaces, theatres, roads, canals or aqueducts. - what is that E doing in there? Surely it should be aquAduct? - Like most things on this blog, this may not be entirely true* but that is certainly the impression. I do know from my time at SOAS that Malaya and Indonesia have produced some great works of literature that can match the Chinese and Indian classics and it seems sad that this achievement is omitted from the CHSEA. It's a lot to think about, and far too much to write about. But SEA is a fascinating region to study, and with just seven major countries each with a distinct culture, Burma, Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, The Philippines and Laos, it does not become overly complex. Last night I watched Roman Polanski's The Ghost. Has anyone else seen it? What did you think? I felt afterwards that the plot was rather weak, but I was certainly drawn in by the mystery; no one does Hitchcock like Polanski. Liz has lent me her car and I went up to Liverpool to get it last Sunday, travelling on a train packed tighter than the London tube in the rush hour. Two things remain with me; a middle aged man on Stoke station reading an instruction manual of Pagan Rituals (What goes on behind drawn curtains in Burslem?) and drunken Brazilian football supporters. The Brazilians, faces painted green and yellow, one with a lime green wig, sang loudly: "Wee are a Brazileean! And wee are a prouda off eet! And wee will win de footaballa!" Somehow this seemed rather cute and charming and everyone smiled at them. Was this because they were funny foreigners, and we knew that in a few days time they would be back off to Brazil and we would not have to put up with this again? Or something else? Yes, there is something else: I can't help feeling it would have been a completely different atmosphere if they had been English and singing: We are Ingilish! And effing proud of it! And we are going to win the match! Is this just middle class prejudice? Perhaps, but distance always helps to make a view, or a face, attractive. Broken English helps too. * I never feel obliged to stick to the truth - even if I knew what it was - so please don't believe anything I say here. I just make it all up as I go along. I'm not really going to Cambodia. Well, maybe.
6 Comments
I have made my decision! With luck I'll be off to Cambodia in January as a volunteer teacher to work in the village school you can see above.
The organisation is called Learn4Life and they have two schools; one in Siem Reap with luxurious accommodation for the teachers, and one in a village some 25 kilometres away, with accommodation more suited to the likes of me. I'd hope to stay a year, so may get the chance to do both. You can see some pictures on the website. It has been a difficult few days working up to the decision. There have been health and financial issues to think about, as well as leaving friends and family behind; perhaps forever this time. But in the end I knew my chances of getting enough work without continual stress and worry were next to zero. So why not just take board and lodging and go to do something useful in a beautiful and fascinating country? And I'm sure I will have lots of visitors coming out to see me, and the wonder that is Angkor Wat. Won't I? I may get the change to reach the Plain of Jars and travel up the Mekong by boat. And lots more too. A diffident suggestion.
Now at an age when I have become, fat, old and useless I look around and see a world fast filling with other FOUs. It gives me little comfort to know that I am not alone. In fact, you might say that it is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors, crowded with FOUs. As was once said... it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of FOUs of both the genders, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom a very great additional grievance; and, therefore, whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of solving the problem would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation. Who could not agree? FOUs are the biggest drain of all upon state benefits and the health service, taking money so badly needed by all the bright young things who have now fallen on such hard times. People now live much longer. It is not unusual to reach your eighties, or even nineties, or beyond, thus living out one quarter of your life in protracted, useless and very expensive misery. But what if you could sell those twenty years from sixty to eighty? Perhaps with a few extra thrown in. What if the state was to offer, in cash, just a quarter of the cost of keeping you in housing, drugs, teeth, glasses and all the rest. Wouldn't you leap at the chance? it would be a tidy sum after all. The draw back is that you would have to die. But when you are over sixty what do you care about that? Though, of course, nobody wants to die horribly in some awful state euthanasia clinic listening to the theme from Chariots of Fire and watching a big screen video of sheep in green pastures. No not that! So, I suggest one should be given a cash refund and that the patronising bus pass is replaced with a Danger Pass. This would give all people over sixty free access to any activity where there is a good chance they will be killed. Free travel on budget Indonesian airlines and ferries, free hang-gliding and parachuting, free narcotics, and best of all free cakes, cigarettes and whisky! What if you are only injured? Why, then you are given a small, but clean and comfortable room, and as much morphine as you like until you drift away from this world in blissful sleep, or recover. As long as it takes no more than a week. Imagine what joy my 'cash 'n card' scheme would bring to otherwise empty lives. What huge amounts of money it would free up to spend on the misguided young, and at the same time reduce taxes. A statue would be nice, but I will settle for a large cheque. Oh, if only I lived in such a society now! But we can change things with the power of public opinion and the internet. I urge you all to sign the Avaaz petition I will be sending you very soon. I was woken the other day by someone whispering these words in my ear. It's lucky I live on my own and know the way of foxes or my life could have become unbearable. Imagine, you could never be absolutely sure it had been a dream, and you would start to say things like, 'I'll make the tea and coffee, and do all the cooking! It's such fun.' and 'The track that runs beside the main road looks so much nicer than the cliff top path.' Forever glancing over your shoulder and fearful of falling asleep.
The space where dream slides into reality is usually a safe and reassuring place, but not always. But the rewards outweigh the drawbacks. There are those times when you can read scores like those in the video clip a few entries back and be swept away by the music, or walk in fields and deserts where the colours and textures are more intense and real than here in the natural world. But then we have to wake up. I remember telling Kit stories when he was little: never ending stories that just went on and on, the way never ending stories do, and eventually I'd fall asleep and continue telling the tale in nonsensical dream language. The same thing is happening now as I read The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia - I'm up to vol. 4, the 20th Cent. and the last book. - only it is the text that becomes nonsensical dream text and I carry on reading until I suddenly realise and snap awake, or drift into real sleep and the book falls from my hands. I am finally emerging from a two day drug and alcohol stupor after the bad news about the job. News that hit the ego like the sharp rap of a teaspoon that fractures the top of the breakfast eggo, spilling yolk down the shell. Sorry, there are obviously still odd molecules drifting through the bloodstream like so many Nano-Kon-Tikis. Sorry again. Reading the history of times you have lived through is fascinating and often surprising as more previously secret documents get released. The strange thing about SEA seems to the odd mixture of capitalism, socialism, traditionalism and pragmatism. Perhaps the histories were shaped as much by globalisation and the end of the Cold War as they were by their own rulers. Even isolationist Burma changed direction from time to time. Some common factors are the retention of wealth and power by elite groups, the growth of a middle class and the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. Despite all the terrible wars, famines and revolutions they have all slowly moved in roughly the same direction. In other words they have become more like us. The End of History perhaps? A new religion in Singapore? A brand new monotheism? It has worshippers island-wide, Its name is moneytheism. I went in early to Jobcentre + for a 'review' conducted by segadis cantik dengan rambut panjang dan pirang: she had a spider tattoo on her shoulder, so my first question was, 'Why have you got a spider tattoo on your shoulder?'
It was a long, but not unexpected, story of a foolish and misspent youth combined with an interest in spiders. I told her about the wonderful spider that lived in my garden at Gang Rengali. I also mentioned Cambodia and she thought the chance to go and live there was better than any boring job in the UK and I should grab it. Sometimes going to the Jobcentre + is not the tedious and depressing experience you might expect. While at J+ I also mentioned the fact that I was waiting for the result of my interview in Hereford. I will know the result today but with every minute that passes my hope decreases. The interview had taken up most of my time for the last week. I was asked to come up a presentation for three different arts projects aimed at differing groups of older people across rural Herefordshire. The presentation was only to last 15 minutes. It is almost impossible to present one project in fifteen minutes, let alone three. So I did a lot of research and build up a good bibliography concerning the current state of therapy, the arts involved and funding. Just to prove that as I raced through the fifteen minutes all I said was based on solid ground and not just gabble. The interview began on Tuesday, at nine thirty and finished shortly before six that evening. It was a very long, exhausting and hot day. The hottest day of the year so far, I think. We began with a trip around the the theatre and arts centre. A beautiful steel and glass structure containing two boxes that housed the theatre, the studio theatre and workshop and gallery spaces. Being separate spaces meant that there was no problem of background noise, and the natural light was strong enough inside to illuminate the galleries. It would have been a very nice place to be based. After our tour of the theatre we, there were three other candidates, gave our presentations. Mine seemed to go well, except for the inevitable Norman Wisdom moment when the door handle came off in my hand as I left the room. I am trying to erase that from my memory. There were two young women and one man in his mid thirties also applying for the job. I was by far the oldest but also the most experienced, and I felt that, unless the others were exceptionally good in the interviews, that I was in with a very good chance. After presentations came a written test: draw up a funding bid for a project in one hour. Another completely artificial task, especially as drawing up such bids is not part of the job specifications. But perhaps the test was more about using a computer and presenting work. I had to use an unfamiliar version of Word and that slowed things down a bit, but I can't imagine any of the other candidates coming up with anything vastly superior to my attempt, given the circumstances. Finally, after lunch, came the interviews themselves. The order of interview was decided by the distance traveled to get to Hereford, and as I had stayed at my brother's house in Orleton the night before I was nearest, and therefore last to be interviewed. After the interview came the physical, to go with the spirit of the Olympics we all had to run a hundred meter race, with backpacks full of bricks. I came in last. That when combined with the door handle incident, and perhaps the trivial fact that over coffee I admitted that I didn't like the smell of old people (But who does? Surely they wouldn't hold that against me?) may have lost me the job. But... C'est la vie or itulah hidup, as they say. I'm not sure how the redoubtable Hildebrand Staggers got on with the 5th Liverpool Tweed Run yesterday, but I offer this short movie to say thanks for the invitation to join in.
I have never felt completely at home on a bike, and after experiences in the traffic of Jogjakarta. and going around Trafalgar Square on a Boris Bike, bike riding has become the transport of last resort. So good luck, and I hope the ride went well. I would far rather cyclist be covered in swathes of tweed (or any other material) than the current fad for mass nude cycling. Don't look it just encourages them. I accidentally published some links I had been saving and the entry looked a mess. I'll let it stay since it's here and just tidy things up.
The video is about different styles of musical scores and it interested me because some are so close to my idea of poetry. I have in the past toyed with similar ideas. Words somehow no longer seem adequate to express some thoughts and almost all conventional poetic forms now feel overused and banal. Culture has steadily moved towards the visual, the novel largely eclipsed by film, and I don't see that poetry should be the exception. I did find the narration of the movie a little irritating, but that aside, I found some of the scores themselves fascinating and sometimes beautiful. The clip was from the Brain Pickings newsletter and many of you may also subscribe to it - it's well worth it - and so not much here will be news to you. One other Brain Pickings link, while we are on the topic of poetry. Poetry in scientific papers. Finally a quick apology to Jill. The connection between tarantism and monosandalism is not as clear as I thought it was. - Can't trace my original sources - and many illustrations do show tarantists with two shoes. Later the tarantella became a folk dance and lost the cult associations; so one has to look only at very early prints. The picture below known as Epileptic Women by Peter Bruegel the Elder is an interesting example and shows the women wearing shoes. But though Bruegel spent time in Italy he was Flemish, and what he drew may be from memory and so not entirely accurate and a true picture of the tarantella. The link with Mithras* seems stronger and the monosandalism link probably comes that way That's done, now I can finish my coffee. "Mystic Cults in Magna Graecia By Giovanni Casadio, Patricia A. Johnston Looks good but limited access online Should I say 'yes' to Cambodia, and go and seek infamy and misfortune in a strange and distant land?
Of course I should! But something is holding me back and what it is I'm not sure. Leaving the Wretched Boy behind and all my friends my friends in the UK? Partly, but WB would come out and see me and we could go off and see the fabled Plain of Jars, before all the jars have been stolen, now more people are visiting the plain. Or we could go North to the Lao Cambodian border to that strange, beautiful and still not fully explored area where the Montagnards live. And WB always becomes Number One Son when we are having an adventure. Would friends come out and see me? I have had three refusals so far that seem to be largely based on either being too old and feeble, or too cowardly. Oh, fair-weather friends, who would watch me drown and only cry, 'I want to help, but I'd get wet and might catch a cold!' I'm sure Viv would visit. Has anyone checked the *@$!-headed fish for adenovirus? Who else? Tell me. You don't have give your real names, if you are too shy to comment, and you could email. Brooke and Madison would come and we would raise hell in Siem Reap. I would be able to enter the sleaziest of sleazy bars with a beautiful girl on my arm and everyone would think I was a gangster, or corrupt arms dealer, and buy me drinks. Respect! As the kids say. Besides all that, I would be teaching Cambodians who desperately need to learn English. Not just to talk to tourists, though tourism is the biggest industry in Siem Reap, by a long way, because it is the entrance to the Angkor Wat complex. English has become the common language across SE Asia, so is used in all the neighbouring countries too. I feel that my work would be of some use there, while here in the UK I have come to believe that no government really wants to help the poorest people in society. They are needed to provide work for the lower middle-classes, whose votes both major parties rely on. My current teaching certainly seems to benefit a huge pyramid of teachers and administrators far more than the actual learners. Reasons to stay here? I will be able to go and see my friends every few weeks and... do what? Enjoy their company and watch them grow old. Nobody is asking for my help in building some huge folly, starting a new political movement, religion, hunting the mysterious Burmese Guinea Pig, some dodgy criminal enterprise, or anything else. All I get is the offer of a short walk around the Wrek (RecreationField) with a dog. If I go what happens when I return... Poverty and a slow decline into older age and Death... The modern Death on the Instalment Plan.. gargoyles and bottle-imps... Business has realised that there is money to be made from a long protracted death... you need money to pay for your care... just sign your home over to us... then come to live in our care home... look at the brochure... fantastic setting... all run with the minimum of staff... on the minimum of pay... please stay alive as long as you can... we need your £500 a week*... and it can only go up as you get more feeble... we need you money ...we have our second home in Tuscany to pay for... the kid's school fees... the boat... and our own expensive pension fund...where are the Euthanasia Centres? ...Not profitable... Kurt Vonnegut said: the government will help you die in peace and dignity, but only because doing so benefits them, too... and so far it does not... That's enough Celine ...s I can't think of any good reasons not to go. Except money. Anyone who reads this please tell me some. The Tarantism Competition. Won by Jill for a wrong but spirited answer. I like the shot gun method of firing as many answers as possible in the hope one might hit the target. Much better than never taking the challenge, and not even picking up the gun. The correct answer was, of course, the dancer should have been wearing only one shoe. There is a mysterious and ancient connection between the cult of Tarantism and monosandalism. I'm sure I have mentioned the fact before on this blog, and anyone carefully reading the Christmas Ghost story would have picked up on the fact. If you want to know more you have to dig yourselves, so here is a useful bibliography from Stanford University. Jill has also suggested the fascinating possibility of hat cults. The Chinese secret societies of the Red and Yellow Turbans spring to mind. When it comes to secret societies no one can beat the Chinese, but there salways seem to be some Chinese who just don't grasp the basic principle, that wearing something like a coloured hat is a bit of a give away, if you want your society to be a secret. Red Eyebrows was an even worse idea. You may get away with wearing a coloured turban but surely your Mother or your friends would nag you to death until you told them why you had suddenly dyed your eyebrows red? ... On second thoughts... green hair?.... perhaps Kit?.... he did come out East with me... and Liverpool has a large Chinatown... but I have never seen any Chinese with green hair... yet. Jill, congratulations, you win the much sought after privilege of a blog entry. Just email it, with any pictures and links. Or if you would prefer I can send you the log in and password and you can do it directly online. Everyone. Should I go to Cambodia and work for just food and my room? Both look very good. * Price based on BUPA rates. The rent for a two bedroom house in NuL is about £350 per month. I am cheered up by an email from Madison urging me change foxes for coyotes and go and sleep on her floor, while I search for work in the USA. Just like so many before me who have left Europe and gone in search of the American Dream, in The Land of Opportunity: so well described in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.
Two other pieces of good news are the fact I may be able to volunteer for a year in Cambodia (more of that another time) and I am still in the running for the one job I really want, running arts for older people in Herefordshire. I shall no more on Monday. Meanwhile, I came across this website about cell biology I really liked: http://www.johnkyrk.com/index.html The red snails have not yet returned. I will give them a few more days before concluding that I took them beyond their homing capabilities. It is a long journey across the car park, for a snail. Foxes sabotaged my link to the article I mentioned and tried to sent people off to see Wendy Holden. Sorry about that, but it should work now
Taking time off from the continual and ever depressing search for work, - It is reaching the stage where I am beginning to be pleased if I even get a rejection! - I read the following article by Stephen Metcalf, on The Slate. Disillusion with contemporary politics has led to a rise in those claiming to be libertarians, first in the USA and increasingly here and in Europe, so I think it is useful to go back examine the origins of modern libertarianism, and the Rawls vs Nozick debate of the 1980s. So here you are and I hope you enjoy the article as much as I did. The Liberty Scam Now back to filling in another form, signing on and reading The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia Vol. 3, or Wendy Holden - in Indonesian. |
Archives
January 2014
Categories |
- Egypt
- Mexico City
- Back in the Land of Dreams
- From the Dinosaur Hotel to the Temple of Literature
- Flying West to Mimpi
- Lost in the Sea of Sand
- Sri Lanka
- Back to Beirut and the old Bay Route
- Into the Basin
- Tbilisi and Yeravan
- In the Republic of Mimpi
- Bangkok, Burma and Beyond
- Tom on Elephant Island
- Java Blog
- Cokaygne.
- In the Kingdom of Foxes
- Photos
- Contact Me
- Why Java?
- London Blog
- The Bay Route to Beirut
- Return to KK
- Hot Milk in Prague