That's how good I am at sticking to new ideas.

Nevertheless, and contrary to vicious elements inevitably briefing against me, I have stuck at my cycling: I've done 300 miles (almost exactly) in the course of these nine weeks, making 33 miles a week (still short of my target, but respectable all the same). If I'd actually stuck to the bicycle diaries thing, it would have been boring, because I've categorically not been anywhere interesting. The only excitement was when I found a path closed and could not work out how to get round it. Real excitement.

It's good to do the cycling consistently, though. I've noticed a real improvement in fitness and stamina: I cycled into Manchester today in about 23 minutes at an average of almost 15mph (bear in mind, cycling nerds, that this is on a heavy, cheap mountain bike) and I was neither out of breath nor otherwise exhausted. General exercise seems to encourage the bulking up of unrelated muscles, and I'm convinced that, in spite of pollution, my asthma has got better: the aerobic exercise probably strengthens my lungs.

So cycle, one and all. Apart from anything else, it's the quickest way to get into town.

A tiring and busy few days! After starting a singing club at our local primary school on Thursday afternoon, I went with my brother to see The History Boys at The Lowry theatre in Salford Quays in the evening. Stephen Moore was excellent as Hector, though, given that I generally don't appreciate theatre, the whole thing was surprisingly good, if a little heavy in Alan Bennett's distinctive brand of sentimentalism. Friday I went to Sankey's for the first time, and found it disappointingly failing to live up to its reputation of good, proper dance music and rampant drug-taking, although it did live up to its reputation of having arsey good-for-nothing bouncers and overpriced entry and drinks. In fact, having been redecorated, it felt more like an upmarket creche, and the clientele did little to confound this impression. Then on Saturday morning I got up at 8am to go to Jackson's Row synagogue, learnt when to say "Shabbat Shalom", met some very nice people, and then cycled out to church for the Christmas fair. Today I've been mainly putting off doing the reading I have to do for tomorrow.

Tagged: jacksonsrow, synagogue, sankeys.

A street in a memory circa 1993,

only no sunshine and no orange coat,

just an emptiness filled with silence,

a gap on the grey brick wall where you sat

for a pause on the walk that you walked with me.

Across those years I still feel

you whiskers pressed against my face;

the well-trodden pile on the carpet

where I collected all your coins one morning;

your sodden hands that washed up after our meal.

But all that detail's as dead as you,

and I cannot recall a single word,

nor even the voice that must have said them,

but which is now, a memory, silenced

like it never spoke, nor was ever spoken to.

Note

(after Windsor Road Chapel)

Tagged: poem, poetry, wilshere.

Labels: poetry

Cold, wet, drizzly autumn is well and truly here and I find it hard to do anything. Today I couldn't bring myself to leave the house to go to university, and so I've just spent six hours loitering around the house, tidying up a bit, doing useless things on the internet, and generally wasting the day. There is someone at the university I know who claims to be unable to work or think while it is raining, and I really feel like that today: physical tiredness, mental immobility, poor eating and drinking. However, he is also an alcoholic, and I fear this may have more to do with low productivity. Nevertheless, I already want autumn and winter to be gone.

On a brighter note, I think I might at last have dreamt up a PhD topic which is both genuinely interesting and can make a claim to be worthwhile in some broader ethico-political way, so hopefully an opportunity to draw together the threads and logics of my studies will help to rehabilitate my views on university after all. It is easier to tolerate the difficulties, contingencies, and annoyances of any situation when you can see a way forward, and a better future at the end of it.

Anyway, I hope the rest of you aren't too darkened by the weather.

Tagged: autumn, winter, weather, university, manchester, britain, phd.

Tagged: manchester, sunset, photo.

Since someone mentioned it the other day, and no-one really knows what follows the first two lines, I thought I'd reproduce W.H. Davies' 'Leisure' here, both to fill that gap and to draw attention to how weak the remaining twelve lines are!

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

— W.H. Davies

Tagged: whdavies, davies, poem, leisure, whatisthislife, standandstare.

Labels: poetry

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.

—André Gide

Those (few/one) of you with anything like a regular affection for this blog will not have let pass you by the fact that I have not updated you on my Proust reading since June. For this I apologise; I am still reading it, and indeed have made it substantially further since my last report, but progress is slow since I have so much reading to do for university again. I'm nearing the end of the third volume now, and I hope to write about it soon.

Although the way Proust writes about life enriches the experience of living it, and empowers us to notice and value so much that we would normally dismiss or take for granted, it is also a profoundly cynical work which is soaked in resentment of the inhumanity of (particularly high) society and of social behaviour. The brief biography at the start of each volume of In Search of Lost Time states that "his growing disillusionment with humanity caused him to lead an increasingly retired life" after 1899. The antipathy between Proust and society is perhaps best illustrated by the famous encounter between him and James Joyce in 1922, here recounted by the latter (quoted in Alain de Botton's book on Proust):

Our talk consisted solely of the word 'non.' Proust asked me if I knew the work of so-and-so. I said 'non.' Our hostess asked Proust if he had read such and such a piece of Ulysses. Proust said 'non.' And so on.

On the one hand, I am increasingly sympathetic to Proust's cynicism. I'm back in Leicester and have met up with two old friends in the last twenty-four hours, each of whom takes extremely little interest in anyone apart from himself; last night, as a little game with myself, I resolved not to proffer anything about my own life's events, thoughts, or disasters, until I was actually asked. It was forty-five minutes before it was necessary for me to speak in any meaningful way, and even then the questions that came were stock ones about church, unimaginative, disengaged questions read out from a mental script of what he thinks it means to be sociable. I know he plans conversations because I've compared notes with others. Similarly, today over lunch with my other friend, I was aware of my 'presence' there (although it was nothing of the sort) was little more than as facilitator of the charade he likes to put on for the bar staff. Perhaps you should just get better friends, I'm sure you're thinking, and you'd be right.

But that's not all. Every encounter, or at least with very few exceptions, is full of cross-purposes, self-interest, duplicity, lies, jealousy, exploitation, insincerity, dishonesty, disloyalty and betrayal. (Can you tell I've been spending more time in university corridors?) University is just one backstabbing after another, an assault so routine that nobody thinks anything of it. The atmosphere is one of complete suspicion in which there is unrelenting undermining and attempted assassination of each other's character as well as just their work. Substantive assassination of the latter would be acceptable, but the inability to separate the personal from the professional, on top of being highly unsavoury, also betrays a major weakness in the critical and intelligent faculties of all implicated.

On the other hand, I am aware that this account of mine, and surely that of Proust too, is hyperbolic, and involves wanton negativity. The problem with cynicism is that you come to see only the bad side of things to the exclusion of what is good in relationships and what is good in the university corridor. Even worse, cynicism sometimes means seeing the bad that it creates ex voto. And in any event, is difficulty, betrayal, or disloyalty a justification in itself for a withdrawal from encounter? Surely not, but I think it means we have to find a new way of encountering. My cynicism is currently running at Proustian levels of saturation. But I am seeking a new way to relate. Your suggestions are welcomed.

Tagged: proust, marcelproust, insearchoflosttime, alarecherchedutempsperdu, cynicism, friendship, betrayal.

Labels: metathought, readingproust

Rowan Williams' lecture last night was excellent — he was a lot more fluent, and clearly a lot more comfortable, in the academic environment than he is on television or radio. I suppose that he, as an academic, relishes being able to give an academic paper too — the demands being so different, and the possibilities so much broader, than the political sensitivities, political correctness, and factional balancing acts, which inevitably come with anything issuing from his ecclesiastical role.

Dr Williams was opening the Manchester Research Institute for Religion and Civil Society (MRIRCS — catchy), which neatly ties in with the University's recent symbolic appointment of Robert Putnam to a showcase position. (Putnam, for those who don't know, is an eminent popular academic figure in the United States, a professor at Harvard University, and has had a fairly substantial impact on American social thought about civil society. He popularised the idea of 'social capital' and has made some of the most concrete, empirical, criticisms of the decline in civic involvement in the U.S.)

Williams' lecture was essentially a critique of a strong, interventionist state which (like France) often intercedes to prevent communitarian/communal political expression in favour of promoting a positivist set of 'liberal' values which hold the logic of individualism to be sacrosanct. He argued that the state should rather be a facilitator and guarantor of good relationships between a number of different communities and communal identities (which can and must coexist under the same political state), and see itself as a "community of communities" rather than seeing some radical dichotomy between individual and community. Accordingly, he also argued for a more moderated view of what are genuine doctrinal and philosophical differences between communities and traditions, and made specific criticism of responses to some recent events (for example, the niqab controversy), pointing out that it is only "cynicism" and an oppositional mindset which sees such difficulties as occasions for one set of values to 'win'. He encouraged instead a healthy "scepticism" which seeks greater understanding, toleration, and co-operation and a rejection of such oppositionalism.

Williams was incredibly at ease, and hardly used his notes; while I have always had a high regard for him as an academic, last night he proved (to me) his absolutely groundedness in the real problems of religion and politics at both the governmental and community level. There are some criticisms to be made, but I will come back to these when I write in a more considered way about these related issues. (This day will come, soon, I promise!)

Tagged: rowanwilliams, archbishop, canterbury, manchester, mrircs, civilsociety, putnam, archbishopofcanterbury.

Labels: politics

(Photo by viacreativa)

As my alarm snoozed I dreamt of a girl I've been trying to forget. She made the choice she never had to; and the Big Other was stood there the whole time, he was in the room, and I could see him. Now all day, as I've been walking around town, I've seen in several girls in the street the contours of her mould; contours which can only be detected by our peripheral vision and which disintegrate when focused on; lights which, like distant stars, disappear when you look at them. Driving past a group of coquettes clad in fluffy boots last night on Moston Lane evoked a quickening of the heart that is entirely involuntary, a rise in body temperature caused more by the impossibility of the ideal than by a desire to be part of another real fleshy being; our dreams are not without causation. We never bridge the gap, in truth: and for our lives to remain liveable we need never to draw too close to the details of the people we know, but rather leave them in the half-light which provides just enough shade for our dreams to draw breath in that lie of reality.

Tagged: dreams, girls, reality.

Labels: metathought

Just a quick reminder that Rowan Williams will be speaking in the Whitworth Hall at Manchester University at 6.00pm today. All are welcome.

Tagged: archbishop, canterbury, rowan, williams, rowanwilliams, manchester, mcircs, civilsociety, speech.

Labels: politics

Yuk. Cycled into uni in mud and rain, resulting in various bodily and vestmental stains, rushed through some poorly-shelved reading in the library, only for the session to be cancelled. *Sigh*

I've just been reading Talal Asad's 1997 article 'Europe against Islam: Islam in Europe' (The Muslim World LXXXVII, No. 2 (March 1997)) and, in spite of (or perhaps because of) being almost ten years old, it seems to have a lot more insight on our currently schizophrenic attitude towards faith, politics, and democracy than most contemporary arguments I hear. It must be said that there has been considerable recourse to clash of civilisations orthodoxy in the media and mainstream politics, (although it never really went away).

Back in 1997, with the Salman Rushdie death threats fresh in the cultural memory, Talal Asad questions the priorities which can stir up such a fuss about threats made against a literary figure, asking:

Why [is] far less interest [...] taken by the Western media in the torture and killing of non-literary individuals by governments (for example, political prisoners in Egypt, Palestinians in Israel, Kashmiris in India)[?] Is it because the Western liberal middle classes regard the lives of literary figures to be more valuable than those of other mere mortals? Or is it, as some claim, because in threatening them principles are involved that affect the fundamental constitution of modern liberal society? When, over the last four years, I have pointed out this unevenness of moral concern to my liberal friends, they have often responded by claiming that in attacking authors the zealots of Islam are attacking Freedom of Speech, and in seeking to murder critics of religion they are trying to kill the liberties on which Modern Society itself is built. But if that is thought to be an adequate explanation of their unequal emotional responsess to human outrage, one may be led to the following disquieting thought: some of our secular liberals are more easily moved by what they see as an affront to transcendent sacred principles (like other religious zealots) than by actual instances of gross cruelty to particular human beings. The "principles" are, so it appears, highly emotive symbols of the personal identity of liberals. (186-187)

Asad is clearly critical of the straw man set up by the antagonism between 'modernity' and 'religion', arguing for a much more differentiated view which can allow some measure of humanity back into the debate by rejecting an identification of extreme religious responses with the 'essence' of Islam:

Too often in post-Enlightenment society "to tolerate" differences simply implies not taking them seriously. This has certainly been the attitude behind religion toleration bequeathed to the modern secular state by the European Enlightenment. But it is no longer adequate to regard "religion" simply as a type of private belief. In a political world where everyone is said to have the right to construct himself or herself, "religion" is now also a base for publicly contested identities. As such it is at the very centre of democratic politics, from which only the most determined anti-democratic power can keep it out.

Can we not break away from the fundamentalist vision of a single authentic (i.e., European) modernity, and help to construct multiple modernities? It remains to be seen how many Europeans will actually be drawn to this option despite the strong sense that most of them still have of their cultural triumph in the world at large. (195)

Certainly much to think about — and I will return to the article when I get around to writing about Richard Dawkins.

Tagged: talalasad, talal, asad, islam, muslims, europe, religion, richarddawkins, richard, dawkins.

Labels: metathought, politics

Saturday is, for me, the event in life most full of idealistic promise. Years ago Saturday was the day when the individual particular escaped from the general mass of uniformed school drones: the time in which you could affirm yourself by doing something you willed freely, something you set your heart on, and something which seemed to hold the keys to a different future. That individualism gradually seeped out into the rest of life, thankfully, but not without attendant problems, and thus Saturday lost its identity. But, walking to the supermarket of a Saturday morning, I am still tempted to buy a copy of The Guardian, not because I would read it (after all, it's available on the net for free), nor because I particularly want it, but because it reminds me of waking up in my friend's house at the start of a weekend, being up hours before him, lying on the sofa downstairs and reading (then) amusing columns by Guy Browning. Through the newspaper's very presence in all of those most contented moments, the Saturday Guardian, along with BBC Two's Saturday Kitchen, toast made on an aga, and cat food, Saturday retains an aura otherwise lost in the soup of post-adolescent ambivalence.

Tagged: guardian, saturday, newspaper.

Labels: metathought

Having ignorantly thought that the council had abandoned its rampant commercialisation of the public space of Exchange Square, it transpires that the Wheel was wheely just taking a holiday:

Tagged: manchester, wheel, exchangesquare.

What should I blog about next? Give me some ideas.

Contentment is no place (utopia) to think from. Contentment is passivity, depoliticisation, and apathy: and none of these things are permissible while we live in the world. We seek flight from conflict, but conflict is the first principle of our life in the first place. We chase after an ephemeral notion of 'happiness' invented for post-industrial man. But despair, anger, worry, love, fear, confusion, offer space for creativity and invention. Happiness is death: it is non-being: no place.

Tagged: utopia, noplace, contentment, conflict, happiness.

Labels: metathought, politics

Reading some Hegel just now, he managed to remind me (through a sentence on time) that I had a quiche in the oven which was about to burn.

Tagged: hegel, gwfhegel, time.

Labels: metathought

It seems to be taking me at least two hours between getting out of bed and actually leaving the house. I tried to be conscious of what I actually spent that time doing this morning. This list is chronological:

• Get out of bed
• Go to bathroom
• Go back to bed
• Get out of bed
• Go on computer
• Check emails
• Check emails
• Check emails
• Check ebay
• Read some blogs
• Contemplate looking at porn, but too tired
• Go back to bedroom
• Look at self in mirror
• Contemplate weight
• Turn on shower
• Think of going downstairs for glass of water, but reappraise in light of wearing no clothes, large windows, and proximitous neighbours
• Go back to bedroom and put on boxer shorts
• Go downstairs for water
• Go back upstairs
• Have shower
• Go back to bedroom
• Put on t-shirt
• Contemplate weight
• Put on jeans
• Contemplate waist size
• Take off jeans
• Put on a smaller pair of jeans to see if they fit
• Take off smaller jeans, they didn't fit
• Put on third pair of jeans, which do fit
• Take off jeans
• Put on first pair again
• Put mobile phone(s) and inhalers in pockets
• Go to study to get socks off of radiator
• Sit down in front of computer to put socks on
• Check emails
• Go downstairs
• Put kettle on
• Open fridge
• Get sandwich materials and milk out
• Put milk and instant coffee in cup
• Pour out Weetabix, milk, and sugar
• Make coffee
• Sit down
• Eat Weetabix, coffee too hot, so leave it a while
• Make sandwich
• Put sandwich materials back in fridge
• Put sandwich in food bag
• Drink some more coffee
• Get confused and wonder what else I need to do
• Drink rest of coffee
• Assemble books, notes, wallet, keys etc
• Put on jumper
• Put on coat
• Put on fluorescent stripe, armband
• Take lights off bike, transfer them to bag
• Put speedometer on bike
• Adjust brakes on bike
• Reset speedometer
• Put everything in bag
• Put bag on
• Turn kitchen lights off
• Take bike out the front door
• Double lock front door
• Check brakes
• Start to ride off, forgot helmet
• Turn back
• Unlock double locked door
• Get helmet
• Double lock front door
• Realise not put trouser clips on, get them out of bag
• Put on trouser clips
• Leave for work.

No wonder old people get up early. I remember the days when I was 7 and you just get straight out of bed, threw on some clothes, and ran straight into the garden to kick a football around. Not so simple now. Still, as my friend said to me today, at least I've not reached the stage of having to wait in for two hours in the morning to let my waterworks settle.

For the Manchester contingent: Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams is visiting Manchester University on November 15th to give a speech opening the new Manchester Research Institute for Religion and Civil Society. The event is free, and open to the public. It takes place at 6.00pm in the Whitworth Hall. Hope to see some of you there!

Tagged: manchester, archbishopofcanterbury, archbishop, canterbury, rowan, williams, rowanwilliams, university, universityofmanchester, civil, society, social, capital, socialcapital, putnam, bourdieu, speech, research, institute, civilsociety.

Labels: politics

Gyrgh. I've spent over and hour on the phone this morning trying to sort out the farce that is always the experience of trying to change your phone contract. I received my new handset, sim card, and FREE photo printer this morning (all of which are very nice), but I was then unable to transfer my old number over (in spite of having the PAC number to hand) without Vodafone disconnecting me, cancelling my order, me returning all the equipment, only to have exactly the same stuff sent out again (minus, possibly, the free printer) on a new record, which would allow the transfer of my old number. I'd had it by then, and just decided to stick with the new number they gave me. In my experience, returning stuff to big companies results in complete confusion which taken several hundred years to sort out. So instead, and wanting to get off my old contract ASAP, I transferred my old number onto a free Orange sim card, which I should be able to retain for 12 months with the odd phone call and top up. Not ideal, but probably less injurious than sacrificing peace of mind and a lovely free printer.

If there's anyone out there that I omit to send my new number to, please email me or text my old number and I will make sure to get it to you.