Eretz Israel
This hilarious news story seems to say a lot for the Israeli government's blindness.
Tags: israel, government, lebanon.
Labels: politics
Sleepless
Five cups of too-strong coffee are keeping me awake, lying in bed thinking about all kinds of things. There's just a few days to go now until I move out of this lovely house; I'm packing my stuff into foldable plastic crates, which now half-fill the study. I've learnt by now that it's silly to invest too much emotionally in a new place, in a new flat, in a new routine; but emotions are incorrigible, and it is only human to dream about new experiences, new ideas, and new ways of living. My first project — if I survive the move both physically and financially — is to take my car off the road. This is both an environmental and an economic gesture, and my move has been chosen partly to facilitate day-to-day life in Manchester by bike. Chorlton is only seven miles from church, and a negligible three miles from university, so there will genuinely by no need for me to drive. Therefore, if there's anyone reading looking for a T reg 1999 black Fiat Punto with a completely new set of tyres, new timing belt kit, new part exhaust, six months' tax and MOT, and a snazzy Kenwood radio, I'm your man...
Tags: chorlton, manchester, car, fiat, punto, forsale, moving, coffee, environmentalism
Labels: chorlton, manchester, stockport
Room
This is a photo of an assiette of delicious desserts Mark and I shared last weekend when he came up to do a recital here. The food at Room was great, and cheap to boot. Only if you go before 7pm, mind, so get along there at 5.30pm Monday to Saturday for early bird main courses. The style of food was quite haute-cuisine I guess, so don't expect massive portions, but do expect a good range of imaginative dishes served quickly and stylishly.
Tags: room, manchester, restaurant
Labels: eating, manchester
W.H. Auden at 100
Happy birthday Mr Auden. Today you turn 100, and every word you wrote is truer now than then.
There will be no peace (1956)
- Though mild clear weather
- Smile again on the shore of your esteem
- And its colours come back, the storm has changed you:
- You will not forget, ever,
- The darkness blotting out hope, the gale
- Prophesying your downfall.
- You must live with your knowledge.
- Way back, beyond, outside of you are others,
- In moonless absences you never heard of,
- Who have certainly heard of you,
- Beings of unknown number and gender:
- And they do not like you.
- What have you done to them?
- Nothing? Nothing is not an answer:
- You will come to believe — how can you help it? —
- That you did, you did do something;
- You will find yourself wishing you could make them laugh,
- You will long for their friendship.
- There will be no peace.
- Fight back, then, with such courage as you have
- And every unchivalrous dodge you know of,
- Clear in your conscience on this:
- Their cause, if they had one, is no thing to them now;
- They hate for hate's sake.
Economics (1964)
- In the Hungry Thirties
- boys used to sell their bodies
- for a square meal.
- In the Affluent Sixties
- they still did:
- to meet Hire-Purchase Payments.
Tags: auden, whauden, therewillbenopeace, centenary, birthday, poetry, poet
On the idiocy of Panorama
Or, as it is otherwise known, the BBC's answer to Brass Eye. I caught this week's episode on News 24 just now. It basically spent its (now reduced to 30-minute) slot saying: some family's Jonny in the army went and got killed in Iraq, isn't it terribly sad, shouldn't someone be apologising for it, etc. etc., all accompanied by slow-motion videos of the soldiers in question and some eery haunting music. Or how about, no, Panorama, sod off, and soldiers' families, stop milking your pathetic brand of sympathy-seeking. How can anyone be stupid enough to join the army, and then complain when they have to go to war and get blown up? Get over it. Most of the people living in Iraq don't have the time or resources to behave so self-indulgently.
Panda No. 15
Must. Stop. Eating. So. Late.
I have a bad habit, due to being busy most evenings, of eating far too late at night and then feeling terrible the next morning. On top of this factor this morning, I think I am ill too; damn those choral germs. I'm going to cycle a good 25 miles today nevertheless. It might blow those nasty bugs away.
Labels: illness
Panda No. 14
Appropriate, given an earlier conversation today about Newsnight.
Tags: panda, mouse, newsnight, cartoon
Labels: cartoons
Housemoving
Hurrah! Today I have effectively finalised my move to Chorlton, which is both scary and exciting. Scary because it's going to increase my rent by £125 a month, exciting because it is an opportunity to waste even more money than that with trips round Manchester's new Ikea and Ilva stores. Scary because it means living alone for the first time, exciting because I will be able to frequent such bars as the Marble beerhouse and indulge my primitive bohemian streak. What's more, a friend told me the other day that Quentin Crisp died in Chorlton not far from where I live. So I might even meet his ghost.
Tags: chorlton, marble, quentincrisp.
Labels: chorlton, manchester
Panda No. 13, again
On leaving a happy life
To have found God is not an end but in itself a beginning.
—Franz Rosenzweig, Judah ha-Levi
What can we do but embrace time and the changes that time brings? Grace seems often nothing more than time itself, the unfolding of desseins éternels in cause and effect, whose romantic and teleological dimensions have been left curiously untouched by the absolute logic of the physical: the logic of determination, fate, and plasticity. Staring down the microscope and into the depths of an atom, physicist becomes mystic, interminable energy is opened up by that particular some-thing, and he can meet the theologian and stand side-by-side in a universe of everything-and-more. But we would do without time, without change, without age, without material, if it would take away our fear and leave us stationary in some transcendent moment — but that is not of this world. Time, change, and mortality are the very possibility of life, and when we resent change, reject change, despise change, wish for immortality, chase eternity on our own terms, we do not have life.
So it goes on: by a lake, with an ice cream, in the folds of old bedclothes; you will never know. Speaking forbids understanding at the last, and separation is the only possible conclusion to a conversation. Thus is death a start, a new life; just as silence is a new speech, and tears a new joy. In the end, we pull ourselves together, remain, and change the sheets.
Panda No. 12
Panda No. 13
Panda No. 9
Hidden dip
Today I went over to see how my friend from church is getting on. There is always an interim. We don't see people as often as we should. We make promises to ourselves and to others of which only the superhuman could fulfill all. In even the closest of our friendships, perhaps especially the closest, we are like adjacent beermats, and those damp stains at our edges exude an aroma of unmet expectation. For that reason we remain apart, individual, and we speak to bridge the gap. Were there no dip to hide, no ebb and flow in relationships, no humanity in our exchanges, silence would be sufficient.
Things must be looking up: the house is tidier, there was vegetable stew on the stove, and there was more than just the cheapest sausages now. The Radio Times sat next to me on the sofa, the gas fire was on, and there was a new digital radio playing in the corner. For the first time, I saw the TV switched off. Perhaps the hidden dip of grief is disappearing over the horizon of sheer time; cruise control feeding day and night in their serial inevitability through the paper shredder of reality's rear view mirror; the crash, the blood, and the real pain receding behind a lifetime of happy memories which are, alas, only ever memories. Mixed metaphors aside, the true grief is always for memory, not for the person-as-such.
Encounters, conversations, coffee; they plug a gap of originary misunderstanding, and as soon as we leave each other's presence, we close our eyes and ears to one another, and the unavoidable work of resurfacing must begin, rebegin; it never stops.
Poetry XLIII: Short
- Imagination is the key:
- I'll be you, if you'll be me.
Labels: poetry
Panda No. 8
This is one of my favourites. Panda meets Jesus in an absinth-induced hallucination.
Labels: cartoons
Unfortunate Donald No. 3
Panda No. 7
Asthmatic Elphant: The gosh darned only one
Back to life, back to Rosenzweig
I just had my first meaningful MA dissertation meeting; meaningful in that I had done some preparation, although even that was relatively cursory. I'm back to reading Rosenzweig, of whom I have written before. Perhaps at this late stage I should give an explanation of who this Franz Rosenzweig is.
Rosenzweig (1886-1929) was born in Kassel, Germany, (home of Bärenreiter music publishers and this fascinating tiramisu) to a Jewish family. To cut a long story short, he embarked on an academic career, but in 1913 suffered what he describes as a "mental collapse" whereupon he lost faith in academic work, and via Christianity, came to accept religious faith as a "valid response" (Nahum Glatzer) to life. His major work, The Star of Redemption (Der Stern der Erlösung), was written mainly on army postcards during WW1. It is a remarkable book, remarkable mainly for its complete unconventionality. Its density and deliberate convolution of expression demands a slow reading, and through this task Rosenzweig means to challenge our understandings of conventional categories of thought. While difficult and often impenetrable, it is a rewarding book to read not least as a way into understanding the threads and priorities of twentieth century Jewish thought. His book has done much to reconcile Jewish and Christian thought and to analyse each as a valuable tradition. By the same token, Rosenzweig takes swipes at Islam, and at Buddhism and "pagan" religion, so it is not without its problems.
When I'm back at home I'll post about Rosenzweig's outlooks on time, music, and redemption.
Tags: rosenzweig, franz, franzrosenzweig, philosophy, music, theology, judaism, jew, religion, christianity, redemption, christian, time, glatzer, nahumglatzer, islam
Labels: philosophy, rosenzweig, university
Unfortunate Donald No. 2
Panda No. 6
Unfortunate Donald No. 1
Panda No. 5
Panda No. 4
What the hey, here's another. I do have cause to be cheery however: my car is fixed at long last. In an amazing stroke of good fortune, my timing belt failed without damaging any engine parts. What's more, I found out I don't have to go into the office today either. Time for a drink.
Labels: cartoons
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