Tolkien: A Celebration

What a gem of a collection! The collection starts and ends with essays by people who knew JRR Tolkien personally, giving this collection the perfect start and finish. Tolkien's literary legacy, as expounded on in these essays, is bursting with layers and wonders of meaning.

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

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

Or Lambas as the eucharist.

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

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

Or the prevailing sense of hope even in utter despair.

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

list of essays in the book

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The World and Other Places

I read Jeanette Winterson's The World and Other Places before the busy week at work. The World and Other Places is a collection of short stories, including Psalms, Orion, The World and Other Places, and The Poetics of Sex. I read her first novel a while back, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, which was a riveting read that got somewhat rambly at the end.

Winterson's work is full of sentences that take you by surprise at the precision of truth in them. Her images are often biblical, requiring a profound sense of the metaphors in the Bible to understand. For example this, when she describes calling a puppy by its name: "The moment between chaos and shape and I say his name and he hears me."(4) This of course reminds me of the moment of creation, where God brings order out of chaos with a spoken word. Other sentences also captivate me, such as this: "She is painting today. The room is orange with effort. She is painting today and I have written this."(45)

I enjoyed the story of Orion and Psalms. Orion is a myth explaining why the Orion constellation cannot be seen in November, the month of Scorpio. In Psalms, the conflict between obedience and rebellion is played out in the conflict between Psalms the turtle and Ezra the imaginary rabbit. Psalms the turtle is eventually drowned, leading to a stream of other biblical pets: "the Proverbial fish, Ecclesiastes the hen, who never laid an egg where [they] could find it, Solomon the Scotch terrier, and finally Isaiah and Jeremiah, a pair of goats who lived to a great age and died peacefully in their pen." Ha ha! Actually I find the story sad, but still, it is very funny.

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Returning to the topic of snakes and their hemipenes

I have time to blog again, can you tell? :)

Since my last post about male snake anatomy (see here), I've come across another article from Michigan Daily innocously titled "Study asserts snakes have body side preferences".

Although snakes have no hands, they have hemipenes that can function as limbs.

Robert Mason and Mike LeMaster of OSU studied more than 400 garter snakes that they found dead from suffocation in Manitoba, Canada.

The scientists weighed the snakes and measured their internal and external organs. They found that garter snakes tended to have larger hemipenes, kidneys and testes on the right side.

OSU researchers used the unexpected size differences in the data they found to form the hypothesis that garter snakes use the right hemipenes more than the left, and that the male is more likely to use his right-side than his left in certain circumstances.

The scientists are yet to find any practical applications for their research but think that it might help in future research of human hand-preferences.
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All things bright and beautiful

For the longest time I didn't understand how people could love a beautiful sunset without being awestruck by the goodness and beauty of God. To me, an awesome sunset is a testament to God's faithfulness, his creative whim at making things simply for the sake of them (why make a sunset? the sun can set just as well without the fanfare of colour), and just a indescribable sense of the goodness and beauty of all creation.

And then I realised that I only think this way because I interprete the world through a biblical worldview, Bible spectatcles, so to speak, and that it is because of the constant reading and re-reading of Psalms, where the "heavens declare the glory of God" and "day after day" pour forth speech; of Isaiah where the mountains and hills burst forth in to song, and the trees will clap their hands; of the Gospels where Jesus said that the rocks would cry out in praise if we were to keep silent; that subconsciously a worldview is formed about nature.

It is interesting that for others things, for example the sinfulness of mankind, the redemption by Christ, etc., I can take off these glasses and see as a non-deist does. I intrinsically understand what it is like to have a headonist worldview -- it makes sense to me. But I cannot take off these Bible spectacles concerning nature, and try as I might, I cannot understand nature apart from God. It is an interesting phenomenom...

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Busy

Very. Busy. Week. I have no life apart from work this week -- no dinner dates, no jogs, nothing. It is a shame that I am absolutely unable to squeeze in a jog this week. It'll be harder to start again next week, especially with the post-busyness depression. Not looking forward to it. Sigh. Anyway, going to get back to work now.

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When you are old

Today's a poem kinda day, so I'm posting one of my favourites here by William Butler Yeats:

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

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Back home late

Tonight I feel like the only one alive. The night air is still and cool; all my friends are asleep, dreaming of their own quests and escapades.

I have my own escapade too, but mine is with two eyes open, fingers poised, words flowing. In my escapade, I'm a heroine, victorious from battle, wreathed with garlands on my head. In my escapade, I return home to a house noisy with laughter, full of food and music.

What is yours?

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Pining for broadband

Everytime a long weekend comes along, I pine for broadband. The newspapers today featured a survey -- more than half would rather give up their daily shot of caffeine than internet access. Considering my dependence on the effects of coffee, it is a hard decision to make, but I would have given up the java too.

Today's papers also had a special on the growing popularity of new age practices here in Singapore. It noted that as Singaporean laboured under increasing urban fatigue, more sought alternate practices that focused on holistic living. I am not surprised. How long can a person live in pursuit of money, career, or even simpler, in pursuit of a way of living? As Jeanette Winterson wrote in her short story "The World and Other Places", "The curious thing is that no matter how different they are, the people are all preoccupied with the same things, that is, the same thing; how to live. We have to eat, we want to make money, but in every pause the question returns: How shall I live?" (95)

(There is a popular book in the Christian evangelical circles titled "How now shall we live?" The title always makes me think of the phrase, "How now brown cow?" but that is another matter altogether.)

What I am trying to say is this, my pining and need for broadband is part of my colossal attempt to lose myself in the architecture of urban living, and in so doing, hiding from myself, myself.

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This is the way I work

If you use Microsoft Outlook to send and receive emails, you may be aware of the little red follow up flag. I've only recently begun to use this feature and I can only say that the little red follow up flag is driving me nuts. It keeps my to-do list in my frontal lobe and all I want to do every minute of my 8-hour day is to right-click the email and hit "Flag complete". I suspect that the little red flag may be making me drive my colleagues mercilessly to get things done. Must. Control. Urge. To. Over. Achieve.

Post complete.

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A Short History of Nearly Everything

Flipped through this tome of a book that tells the stories surrounding the emergence of all the main sciences -- astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, geology, etc. Bryson's style is easy to read and generous with anecdotes.

Like the anecdote of the French man Le Gentil who waited an extra 8 years to observe the transit of Venus as he could not take accurate readings the first time, being held up in his schedule and caught on a rocky boat. 8 years later, his patient attempt was foiled by cloud cover for the exact duration of the transit. And so he packed up his things and returned to France, only to find that he had been declared dead in his absence, his wife having re-married and his possessions re-distributed. Poor guy!

Or the story of the Swedish guy who believed that gold could be distilled from urine and kept bats and bats of urine in his basement. He discovered phosphorus instead when the urine would spontaneously combust in contact with air. Due to the attention Sweden gave to this new element, they are still one of the largest match making centres in the world today.

Or the story of the bed-ridden inventor who invented a system of pulleys to help him manoeuvre in his bed, but ended up strangling in the ropes; or the story of the two men who accidentally and ignorantly discovered the static the universe was emitting since the beginning of time and so won nobel prizes; or the story of the discovery and subsequent loss of the first dinosaur bone in Iowa, USA.

If I learnt anything at all, it is that our quest for knowledge has been riddled by many lucky breaks.
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Against the death penalty

Read this post by Alfian -- it is nothing short of perfect. Shit, I'll never write as well as him.

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Ode to Coffee

Black liquid exotic,
Your sweet aroma entices
and awakens dreams
of wild Africa, Papua New Guinea,
of puppets dancing in the shadows
of Java
Throbbing
the senses, aroused
Pulsing, dark rivers
of Indochine

Awake!

Awake!

The lover calls
I am yours; you are mine

Alive.

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sleek swimmers & crazy runners

Date	Place	Time (mins)	Distance (km)	Pace (km/h)
Monday, May 16, 2005	Barker	45.6	7.2	9.5

By the end of the run, I look like a xiao zha boh (mad woman). Half of my hair is already out of the red rubber band, flapping against my face as I run. I absent-mindedly hook the hair back behind my ear, only to have it fall over my face 30 seconds later. In fact, I don't notice it when it flaps against my face -- I am in that much pain -- it is only later in the lift, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the reflective doors that I realise what I must have been doing -- hooking and rehooking my crazy flapping hair.

Of course when I finish my run I feel so victorious I think I am the sleekest and best body around. I go and do my push-ups and what-nots by the benches overlooking the pool. It is only when the young men and woman emerge from their effortless butterfly strokes, reflecting the evening sun on their tanned and toned bodies, that I realise my victory is purely internal. Too bad I don't like swimming, otherwise I can emerge with a wet and powerful body like them, and not like the dripping smelly xiao zha boh that I look.

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The Hotel New Hampshire

This is the seventh John Irving novel I've read since November 2004. That would be an average of 1 Irving novel a month, not counting the other books I've read in that period.

I know a friend who thinks I'm reading way too many of his novels, but when you've come so far, it is almost a matter obsession to finish all of them. I am a little tired of the depressing plot -- when in the middle of his long novels I think to myself that this will definitely be the last one I read -- but the stories end with such an oomph and a strong sense of hope that I think another one by Irving won't hurt. I now know the essential ingredients of a best-selling novel -- they are faith, hope and love, and that's all there is to it.

The Hotel New Hampshire is about a family who moves from hotel to hotel because of the father's big dreams for the future. There are four hotels altogether -- the Arbuthnot-by-the-sea where the parents fall in love, the Hotel New Hampshire they run in Dairy, the Hotel New Hampshire in Vienna where they spend seven years, and the fourth and last hotel, the hotel truly built on dreams, back at Arbuthnot-by-the-sea.

By the end of the novel, the family is ravaged by the father's need to dream. When Lily died, and Frank was blaming himself for her death, Win Berry said, "But who is the dreamer of the family? She just wasn't big enough to meet her own expectations, and she inherited that from me." Sorrow the dog was put to sleep for the plans of the very first hotel, and he returns to haunt the deaths of Iowa, Mother, and Egg -- all sacrifices on the altar of the father's dreams.

Despite the tragic effects of Win Berry's illusion, Irving in no way condemns this dreaming, but in fact endorses it with a kind of power to redeem. At the end of the novel, Win Berry becomes the best rape therapist on site, despite the fact that he is completely in his own world, blind to reality, subsisting on illusion. Irving seems to say that there is a power in dreaming, a power in stories from the past, and a power in fiction.

As Frank would say to John, "Keep passing the open windows." And somehow, things will work out.

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Bulging like a pregnant snake

I had a conversation with my friend yesterday evening while walking along the street. She was describing to me the cooking show she had just watched. The cook (a handsome Englishman, in her words) stuffed small aubergines with a scumptious mix of ricotta cheese and pieces of dark chocolate. The end result is wonderous bulging brinjal, "as fat as a pregnant snake". Of course I had to ask, "Hmm.. How do snakes do it anyway?" And she said, "On top of each other?" We both had to laugh. "Or beside each other? Or coiled?"

"But where are their genitals?" I asked.

Well, I looked it up, and apparently male snakes have two hemipenes (See male snake hemipenis here.) These are inserted one at a time into the females cloaca to fertilize the eggs internally. Okay, I feel a little sick now.

Anyway, after our short foray into the largely unknown (to us anyway) topic of snakes and sex, she jumped right back to how yummy the eggplant looked.

Update: Told my friend about male snakes having two hemipenes and she said, "Wah lau, snakes got all their priorities wrong! No arms, no legs, but two penes???"

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I will resist

In spite of my secret ambition to be a published and popular writer, in spite of the fact that there are less than 10 regular readers and less than 90 hits a day, in spite of the feeling that my words change nothing, in spite of the seductive hike in anonymous traffic that sites like blog soldiers promise, because of my principle of not letting people who know me read this blog, I will perservere with my piddling attempts at building up a base of readers.

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The ultimate tool for precise back scratching!

Haha! This came from the International Chindogu Society's website. The tenets of Chindogu are:

1. A Chindogu cannot be for real use
2. A Chindogu must exist
3. Inherent in every Chindogu is the spirit of anarchy
4. Chindogu are tools for everyday life
5. Chindogu are not for sale
6. Humour must not be the sole reason for creating a Chindogu
7. Chindogu is not propaganda
8. Chindogu are never taboo
9. Chindogu cannot be patented
10. Chindogu are without prejudice

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8 May 2005

My heart is beating 80 times a minute. That is the rate it used to beat before I started running. It may be the coke; it may be the adrenaline left over from the 8km+ run; it may be because my mind is exploding with thoughts and I cannot sleep.

---

Her fingers found the grooves in the pew again.

---

It was a wet day. She had two pairs of clean socks in her backpack, but she was too civilised to change into a dry pair in the restaurant, and too lazy to make a trip to the loo. When she took the umbrella out of the plastic bag back home, it left a puddle on the parquet floor.

---

They pretended to read the newspapers together, somehow drawing strength from the empty space between them.

---

8km+. Cool night air. Steps in beat to the music. Running is a great way of emptying out unwanted thoughts and emotions. But what do you do when the road comes to an end?

Her heart beats 80 times a minute.

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young and powerful

It is a powerful feeling to be young. It is Saturday afternoon. I am sitting in front of the computer, my hair wet from a shower. I am wearing faded cargo pants and a white V-neck top. The computer’s 6-speaker system is blasting DC Talk; my feet are propped on top of the booming base speaker. There are running clothes and a water bottle in my backpack.

This day wants to be conquered.

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COLOURFUL links

I mean it literally.

If you make maps and get tired of deciding what colour to use with what, try the ColorBrewer. I've used it to create a few demographic maps of the country.

Or, if you do powerpoints and for some reason cannot use a powerpoint template colour scheme, try the Colour Scheme Generator. You can choose whether you want a mono scheme or a contrast scheme, etc. It churns out the RGB numbers too, for easy reproduction.

That's my contribution to the blogosphere today. Next week -- where to get the entire text of Christian classics, for free.

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Mouth Wide Open

The school boy turned around and saw me, standing with a dollar coin in my hand, waiting to buy breakfast. He was so shocked that he stared at me for a long time, his mouth open and poised to bite into his bun. Then just as suddenly, he grinned and said to his friends, "Phew, Gave me a shock. I thought she was a teacher." Haha!

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$1.21 saved (which is more than the refund)

Cycled to work today in just under 26 minutes which is less than the time it usually takes by public transport. Whoo hoo!

I only decided to cycle this morning. Perhaps the article I read yesterday in Runner's World about the benefits of exercising at "Lactate Threshold" played a part. I rarely run fast or far enough to feel the lactic acid buildup in my legs. Cycling, on the other hand, builds up lactic acid fast.

Last weekend, I went cycling on the road that parallels the Changi Airport runway. Now, that is a long, unending road. When you're on the plane it takes like no time at all. But when you are pumping away from lamp post to lamp post, feeling your thighs slowly turn to concerete, that's a different matter altogether. I could barely walk the next two days, my calves were aching that bad.

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confused ponderings after may day

It feels like it ought to be Monday, since yesterday was a public holiday.

Yesterday was the day after May Day. Yesterday was also the day the former President of Singapore died. I only found out this morning in the staff pantry though. Colleague said that I was behind in my news. That’s a weird thought considering I read the newspapers from cover to cover yesterday. But it wasn’t in the papers – the headlines only lauded Singapore for having a protest-less May Day, and PM Lee’s maiden May Day speech on “strong tripartite ties” between the government, the unions, and the workers. Is that what May Day is about? Protest marches? Why didn’t they tell us this in school? If I were to have a picket fence rally, I’ll protest the rising bus and train fares especially since my salary is as stagnant as a mosquitoes’ breeding ground.

Anyway, back to Mr Wee Kim Wee. mrbrown remembers him as a gentleman. Sad to say, I have no personal memories of him apart from seeing him on TV during the National Day Parade and thinking about how pleasant he looks. I also used to wonder about the extent of his legislative powers and the specific burdens he has to carry in his position. I know that the President is given the power to give clemency to those on the death row. But he can’t give everyone clemency can he? Doesn’t that undermine the entire justice system?

In any case, I think I’ll go turn on the TV at 9pm to “catch up” with the news today. Somehow I don’t think I’ll ever catch up.

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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Loved the book. Hope the movie is just as good. Read about it here.

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What would make your life fabulous right now?

Just curious... You may post anonymously if you like.

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Ravelstein

Ravelstein was written by Saul Bellow in 2000. It was his last novel. He died in early April this year.

Ravelstein is dense, powerful, and seamless. I’ve never read a novel like it. The sinewy connections this novel has with real life are intriguing – in the novel, Chick is a old man writing a memoir as a promise to his friend Ravelstein; in real life, Bellow is writing his last novel in honour of the political philosopher Allan Bloom.

Like Ravelstein, Bloom wrote a best-selling book on Bellow’s recommendations titled The Closing of the America Mind. He too was a lecturer, a man of vast intellect and strong opinions; a man with awkward stutters and trembling hands; a man who loved his Cuban cigars, Armani suits and Mont Blanc pens.

Because of these tenuous links with reality, I cannot help but consider the morbid – How did Bellow die? Did the “pictures stop”, as aptly described by the Bellow-character Chick? Did he become more and more preoccupied with Jerusalem rather than Athens in his last days, squaring off with the cruelty of mankind, the “meat hooks”, and the essence of being fully man? Bellow was 89, married for the fifth time.

Even if there were no Allan Bloom, merely the descriptions of Ravelstein would be enough. I can see him – bald, melon-headed, pointing his students with sharp irreverent intellect towards the light in Plato’s cave, smoking Marlboro after Marlboro, himself a hodgepodge of oddities and contradiction. Merely the description of his rich textiles, the expensive bedding, the coffee stain on the $4,500 Lanvin jackets, together with his overarching historical ideas and frankness are enough to propel me into his world.

I was initially afraid that I would mix up the main character in Henderson the Rain King and in Ravelstein. Boy was I wrong.
more on Ravelstein

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