I was quietly sitting and weeping beside the waters of Babylon*, after hanging my lyre on a willow, when a fox sneaked up and pushed me in. Now I am swept along and buffeted by the current, alternately drowning and waving at the weepers on the bank as I pass by.
Listening to the news I am often made jealous by the ease and fluency of English speakers around the world, though I am sure most are carefully chosen to be interviewed by the BBC for just that reason. Neverthless, I feel I would stammer and stutter my way through any interview in my own language and be uninteligible in Indonesian.
On the radio heard someone in Egypt talking about the 'field of politics'. I could not remember the Indonesian for 'field'.
In fact I could, three of them, lapangan, sawah and padi.
But this would come out as, 'In the meadow of politics....' or 'In the wet rice field of politics....'
On further thought that sounded pretty good. The wet, sawah, and dry, padi, fields of politics. Said with confidence it could sound rather profound.
As usual confidence trumps everything, and foxes have it in spades... hearts, diamonds and clubs.
The correct Indonesian word, as I'm sure you all want to know, is... of course, bidang.
This led on to thoughts of memory, and how memory declines with age.
But machine memory seems to decline in a different way. A senile computer just gets slower. Other faults and glitches crop up but I have yet to come across a computer forgetting in the way humans do. Why is that? In many ways memory seems a rather mechanical process of storage and recall.
But recall is a very different kind of memory. Many old people seem lost in memories but are unable to recall them in appropriate situations, or recall the wrong memory, confusing child with husband, or nursing home with a house they once lived in. If we relate memory to consciousness, (Is there anyone who would argue that it is not related?) then some interesting questions arise.
Enough to keep me going for this morning as I float down stream. And you too I should think.
By the way, if you go to Philosophy Bites you can...
Listen to Daniel Dennett on the Chinese Room problem.
* Psalm 137. One of the most beautiful of the Psalms.
And what a great last line!
Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones
and dashes them against the rock!
I don't remember Boney M singing that bit. But you can listen for yourselves below,
Interestingly the word 'waters' seems to be found only in the English Standard version of the Bible. King James and the rest use 'rivers'. I think 'rivers' in the plural actually makes good sense because Babylon lay between Tigris and Euphrates. But I think I prefer 'waters', it sounds more poetic and conjures up more possibilities.
But perhaps one you who knows the Bible better than I do - Jodi -
can put me right.
If you wonder why I refered to Tracy Kidder's book in the title of this piece, well. it seemed somehow appropriate on at least two levels.
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There has been no mention of foxes in this blog for quite some time.
A sure sign that like most immigrants I was becoming absorbed into the culture of my new country. Just as those people who have just moved to the UK fill their blogs with references to the Royal Family, cups of tea, warm beer and Wimbledon, and then gradually these things are replaced by the mundane events of everyday life and personal thoughts and feelings. Until, that is, there is an abdication or the latest Andy Murray makes it to the finals. My job with the WEA has come to a reluctant end and I find myself, at least momentarily relieved of a huge burden. Though I know it is just the relief of putting down a heavy pack just below the brow of the hill. Over the brow lies another slope, another ridge, another slope and many more before the high pass. If any of you have walked in Norway or a similar country sculpted by glaciation will know the feeling of climbing one hanging valley after another and hardly seeming to gain any height. Over the last few months I have had more and more sympathy with my predecessor who finally just walked out of the job leaving no trace behind* and after an initial disapproval I cam to fully understand her frustration. My WEA 'twin', the person who started a parallel job with the Branches at the same time as me quit just over a week ago, I was told yesterday. But, strangely I can only find good things to say about the WEA and the people who run it. What has gone wrong is something out of their control, I think, the organisation has become entangled in a snare of outside funding and contracts that have taken away almost all flexibility and independence. It has fallen into the hands of foxes. I can recognise foxy work when I see it. And I see an entire Parliament of Foxes, where once there was only a scattering, and usually just on one side of the House. On to more interesting things. Is this the worst Lancaster Guardian headline this year? LIDAR data shows mysterious spiral shapes at Angkor. I begin to struggle with my virology lectures. I have got to the RNA replication process within the cell and finding my lack of knowledge about biology is more of a problem. So is trying to remember all the terms and details. I don't want to spend too much time on this, just eavesdrop on the classes and pick up what I can. It's also complicated by the fact that there are far more varieties of virus and replication strategies than I thought. I naively thought one virus would be pretty much like any other. I was wrong. Before I finish, a note on the last entry. My early morning list of good things that everyone should experience was half-dream, and so half-metaphor. But for those of you who have never eaten brains on toast, my Mum used to make the most delicious ones of all time. Though I suspect she may have used some of mine. “But I behold a fearful sign, To which the white men's eyes are blind; Their race may vanish hence, like mine, And leave no trace behind, Save ruins o'er the region spread, And the white stones above the dead.” (For 'white men' one could equally read 'foxes'.) William Cullen Bryant, criminal poet. "The fact is, that he never did anything but steal—as nothing he ever wrote is original." I think that is what is called 'a damnin Oh, and an interesting essay on Afghanistan by William Dalrymple at Brookings. |
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