I’m not sure what to make of that last post of mine: it was terribly self-indulgent I realise, and it’s not one of my prouder efforts. But hell, it was on my mind and I felt like spouting off. I probably need to employ an editor, though I do try and listen to my dear pal Grant’s advice, most of which I seem to ignore. Apologies for this one old boy, but I have to quote you here:
“Reading the latest entry in TLGTIR it's good to see you've taken my advice about brevity, clarity and eschewal of self-indulgence, and completely discarded it.”
Whoops. I’ll try harder the next time.
Though I do want to say this, on the topic of the ‘unexamined life’:
Lately I’ve spent some time in my history classes looking at Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon and Plato and discussing the purpose of history. When you ask students what they consider the purpose of history, you get the same response across the board, something along the lines of ‘to learn from our past mistakes’.
I don’t like this at all as a rationale for studying the past. Mainly because we keep making the same damn mistakes over and over and never seem to learn from them. Isn’t the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results?
I tend to get a bit more philosophical on this one: we study history in order to know what makes us human. To get a sense of where we come from. To get a sense of where national pride came from, and why the citizen of his nation feels his nation to be so superior to all others. This then allows us an idea of how prejudice originate, and why people hold the beliefs they do about other races and ethnicities. Where did all these ideas about who we are and who others are come about?
‘This is the most obvious thing in the world: man is separated from his the past by two forces that go instantly to work and cooperate: the force of forgetting (which erases) and the force of memory (which transforms).
‘It is the most obvious thing, but it is hard to accept, for when one thinks it all the way through, what becomes of all the testimonies that historiography relies on? What becomes of our certainties about the past, and what becomes of History itself, to which we refer every day in good faith, naively, spontaneously? Beyond the slender margin of the incontestable stretches an infinite realm: the realm of the approximate, the invented, the de-formed, the simplistic, the exaggerated, the misconstrued, an infinite realm of nontruths that copulate, multiply like rats, and become immortal.’
Milan Kundera, The Curtain
There are many things that separate humans from animals, some of them debatable. We use tools, we wear jewellery, we keep records of our past, we can reason, we can make and keep promises but perhaps most important, we have a strong sense of self-awareness. We’re aware of the fact that we exist and we consider and ponder the reasons for our existence. This, essentially, is what makes us human. And the more we examine who we are, the more aware we become of what we are.
When it comes to talking about the [unbearable?] lightness of being, no one describes it better than Kundera. I’ve been overly reliant on The Curtain (a series of seven essays on the art of the novel) for inspiration lately, quoting it ad nauseam on these very pages. Though it’s only 168 pages long, I’ve been taking ages to get through it, reading and re-reading and pondering the material. This is very apt:
‘They are just beginning the journey into the unknown; no question, they are drifting, but theirs is a singular sort of drifting: they drift without knowing that’s what they are doing; for they are doubly inexperienced: they do not know the world and they do not know themselves; only when they look back on it from the distance of adulthood will they see their drifting; and besides: only with that distance will they be capable of understanding the very notion of drifting. For the moment, with no understanding of the view the future will one day take of their long-gone youth, they defend their convictions far more aggressively than an adult man would defend his, a man who has had experience with the fragility of human certainties.’
In terms of my own story and existential angst, Jeff came pretty damn close to equally Kundera for his analysis on drifting. Although I can’t articulate it as eloquently as Jeff, what he had to say went something like this: when it comes to travelling there are 3 types of people out there. There’s the light, drifting type – think a feather, or pollen – who floats around from place to place, barely touching down, merely gliding effortlessly through the air. There’s the hard type – a rounded, polished stone – who bounces around from place to place, absorbing nothing and always moving on to something new. And then there’s the 3rd type, the double sticky-sided tape, who picks up little bits and pieces everywhere he goes, adding on and burdening himself with more pressure and experiences, absorbing everything, shedding very little to nothing, all the while risking being torn asunder.
(Something else to consider, which I’ll thankfully refrain from doing here. Why do I feel the need to travel so much? Is it for the sense of adventure? Or for the need to escape? If it is merely escape, and I often fear so, it’s time to re-evaluate matters. I’ll do that on my own and spare my faithful readers any more of my agonising.)
Now for a bit of jumping around
Back to that topic of reading from two posts ago. A few more quotations to share:
‘How well he is read/To reason against reading.’
Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost
(again, thanks to Grant for this one; by now I ought to fess up and put him down as a co-writer on this thing)
‘When a man writes from his own mind, he writes very rapidly. The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.’
Boswell’s Life of Johnson
Revisiting why I bother reading, when I can’t seem to keep much of it in:
‘The novel is a very poorly fortified castle. If I take an hour to read twenty pages, a novel of four hundred pages will take me twenty hours, thus about a week. Rarely do we have a whole week free. It is more likely that, between sessions of reading, intervals of several days will occur, during which forgetting will immediately set up its worksite. But it is not only in the intervals that forgetting does its work; it participates in the reading continuously, with never a moment’s lapse; turning the page, I already forget what I just (sic) read; I retain only a kind summary indispensable for understanding what is to follow, but all the details, the small observations, the admirable phrasings are already gone. Erased. Someday, years later, I will start to talk about this novel to a friend, and we will find that our memories have retained only a few shreds of the text and have reconstructed very different books for each of us.'
The Curtain
Onto more anecdotal matters
I’m about to break one of my promises by sharing a schmaltzy teaching tale. In all honesty, there have been a couple I’ve been tempted to share lately, including one featuring some potentially scandalous comments from one of my female teenage students. For legal reasons, I’ll refrain from discussing that further; email me if you really want to hear further details and I’ll consider sharing.
At the conclusion of my civics class, I often ask the students to write a reflection on the day’s lesson. It’s meant to be on the content of what I’ve attempted to teach them. Sometimes I ask them to write down three things: 1 thing they’ve learnt, 1 thing they’ve found interesting and 1 thing they don’t understand or have a question about.
Now, I’m awfully open with my students, telling them various stories of my shenanigans and tomfoolery – trying to leave out the bits that include alcohol – with the aim of somehow tying it into the theme of the point of the lesson. This isn’t always successful. I’ve already divulged some of my more shameful episodes, including tales from various public baths, my rib-cracking experience in Riga and getting kidnapped by rebels in the Nigerian Delta. They at least laugh at me.
For whatever reason – probably because I just love incriminating my friends – I recently shared with the class a few probably inappropriate anecdotes. One involved me and Jeff’s excursion in Petra – discussed in more detail in a previous post – which keep in mind occurred during our accidental celebration of Ramadan. Because we’d failed to adequately prepare for a day of gamboling amongst the rocks, we had no food, little water, and resorted to Coke and Fanta to keep us afloat. By mid-afternoon we were delirious and making no sense to each other.
Upon scaling the heights and reaching the top of one precarious path, Jeff had the bright idea of pulling his trousers down (but thankfully keeping his boxers on) to let the breeze course through his…whatever. I duly did the same, and man did it feel great. We stood up there feeling like real men, free as can be in the blowing wind.
I shared that tale. What relevance did it have to the topic? I’ve got no idea.
Another one I shared involved my dear friend ‘Dr Wasabi Islam’, who thinks there are fewer things more refreshing in life than removing all of your clothes before taking a dump. Trust me on this one: he’s right. Especially on a sticky, hot summer’s day, it takes a real load off.
I shared that tale. What relevance did it have to the topic? I’ve got no idea.
So at the end of class, I asked the class to reflect on the lesson, using that three things format. Roughly a 1/3 of the class took it seriously and commented on the actual ‘content’ of the lesson. Some of the remaining samples were as follows:
What they learnt/found interesting:
1. Mr Pedzo and his friend took off their pants and let the wind blow on their balls.
2. Mr Pedzo’s friend decided to take off his pants and then so did he and it felt really good.
3. It feels really good to take off your pants at the top of mountains and feel the wind.
4. Mr Pedzo’s friend Dr Wasabi Islam likes to take off his clothes before he takes a dump and this feels really refreshing.
5. Dr Wasabi Islam likes to relax before taking a dump by taking off all his clothes.
6. Mr Pedzo has some weird friends.
What they didn’t understand/had questions about:
1. How it can feel good to have the wind blowing on you on a mountain after taking off your pants because I’m a girl, I don’t think it would be the same.
2. Mr Pedzo’s friend takes off his clothes before taking a dump, but he didn’t say if he did, I wonder if he does.
3. Why Mr Pedzo and his friend just didn’t wear shorts when they were hiking on top of the mountain.
4. What if I really have to go and I don’t have time to take my clothes off and make a mess on accident.
5. Does Dr Wasabi Islam take off all his clothes every time he takes a dump? What if he’s in public?
6. Why does Mr Pedzo have such weird friends?
I have to wonder just how effective a teacher I really am.
Various snippets of various things
Elizabeth so kindly/cruelly pointed out this article in the comments section of my last post:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/02/ryszard-kapuscinski-accused-fiction-biography
“Reading the latest entry in TLGTIR it's good to see you've taken my advice about brevity, clarity and eschewal of self-indulgence, and completely discarded it.”
Whoops. I’ll try harder the next time.
Though I do want to say this, on the topic of the ‘unexamined life’:
Lately I’ve spent some time in my history classes looking at Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon and Plato and discussing the purpose of history. When you ask students what they consider the purpose of history, you get the same response across the board, something along the lines of ‘to learn from our past mistakes’.
I don’t like this at all as a rationale for studying the past. Mainly because we keep making the same damn mistakes over and over and never seem to learn from them. Isn’t the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results?
I tend to get a bit more philosophical on this one: we study history in order to know what makes us human. To get a sense of where we come from. To get a sense of where national pride came from, and why the citizen of his nation feels his nation to be so superior to all others. This then allows us an idea of how prejudice originate, and why people hold the beliefs they do about other races and ethnicities. Where did all these ideas about who we are and who others are come about?
‘This is the most obvious thing in the world: man is separated from his the past by two forces that go instantly to work and cooperate: the force of forgetting (which erases) and the force of memory (which transforms).
‘It is the most obvious thing, but it is hard to accept, for when one thinks it all the way through, what becomes of all the testimonies that historiography relies on? What becomes of our certainties about the past, and what becomes of History itself, to which we refer every day in good faith, naively, spontaneously? Beyond the slender margin of the incontestable stretches an infinite realm: the realm of the approximate, the invented, the de-formed, the simplistic, the exaggerated, the misconstrued, an infinite realm of nontruths that copulate, multiply like rats, and become immortal.’
Milan Kundera, The Curtain
There are many things that separate humans from animals, some of them debatable. We use tools, we wear jewellery, we keep records of our past, we can reason, we can make and keep promises but perhaps most important, we have a strong sense of self-awareness. We’re aware of the fact that we exist and we consider and ponder the reasons for our existence. This, essentially, is what makes us human. And the more we examine who we are, the more aware we become of what we are.
When it comes to talking about the [unbearable?] lightness of being, no one describes it better than Kundera. I’ve been overly reliant on The Curtain (a series of seven essays on the art of the novel) for inspiration lately, quoting it ad nauseam on these very pages. Though it’s only 168 pages long, I’ve been taking ages to get through it, reading and re-reading and pondering the material. This is very apt:
‘They are just beginning the journey into the unknown; no question, they are drifting, but theirs is a singular sort of drifting: they drift without knowing that’s what they are doing; for they are doubly inexperienced: they do not know the world and they do not know themselves; only when they look back on it from the distance of adulthood will they see their drifting; and besides: only with that distance will they be capable of understanding the very notion of drifting. For the moment, with no understanding of the view the future will one day take of their long-gone youth, they defend their convictions far more aggressively than an adult man would defend his, a man who has had experience with the fragility of human certainties.’
In terms of my own story and existential angst, Jeff came pretty damn close to equally Kundera for his analysis on drifting. Although I can’t articulate it as eloquently as Jeff, what he had to say went something like this: when it comes to travelling there are 3 types of people out there. There’s the light, drifting type – think a feather, or pollen – who floats around from place to place, barely touching down, merely gliding effortlessly through the air. There’s the hard type – a rounded, polished stone – who bounces around from place to place, absorbing nothing and always moving on to something new. And then there’s the 3rd type, the double sticky-sided tape, who picks up little bits and pieces everywhere he goes, adding on and burdening himself with more pressure and experiences, absorbing everything, shedding very little to nothing, all the while risking being torn asunder.
(Something else to consider, which I’ll thankfully refrain from doing here. Why do I feel the need to travel so much? Is it for the sense of adventure? Or for the need to escape? If it is merely escape, and I often fear so, it’s time to re-evaluate matters. I’ll do that on my own and spare my faithful readers any more of my agonising.)
Now for a bit of jumping around
Back to that topic of reading from two posts ago. A few more quotations to share:
‘How well he is read/To reason against reading.’
Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost
(again, thanks to Grant for this one; by now I ought to fess up and put him down as a co-writer on this thing)
‘When a man writes from his own mind, he writes very rapidly. The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.’
Boswell’s Life of Johnson
Revisiting why I bother reading, when I can’t seem to keep much of it in:
‘The novel is a very poorly fortified castle. If I take an hour to read twenty pages, a novel of four hundred pages will take me twenty hours, thus about a week. Rarely do we have a whole week free. It is more likely that, between sessions of reading, intervals of several days will occur, during which forgetting will immediately set up its worksite. But it is not only in the intervals that forgetting does its work; it participates in the reading continuously, with never a moment’s lapse; turning the page, I already forget what I just (sic) read; I retain only a kind summary indispensable for understanding what is to follow, but all the details, the small observations, the admirable phrasings are already gone. Erased. Someday, years later, I will start to talk about this novel to a friend, and we will find that our memories have retained only a few shreds of the text and have reconstructed very different books for each of us.'
The Curtain
Onto more anecdotal matters
I’m about to break one of my promises by sharing a schmaltzy teaching tale. In all honesty, there have been a couple I’ve been tempted to share lately, including one featuring some potentially scandalous comments from one of my female teenage students. For legal reasons, I’ll refrain from discussing that further; email me if you really want to hear further details and I’ll consider sharing.
At the conclusion of my civics class, I often ask the students to write a reflection on the day’s lesson. It’s meant to be on the content of what I’ve attempted to teach them. Sometimes I ask them to write down three things: 1 thing they’ve learnt, 1 thing they’ve found interesting and 1 thing they don’t understand or have a question about.
Now, I’m awfully open with my students, telling them various stories of my shenanigans and tomfoolery – trying to leave out the bits that include alcohol – with the aim of somehow tying it into the theme of the point of the lesson. This isn’t always successful. I’ve already divulged some of my more shameful episodes, including tales from various public baths, my rib-cracking experience in Riga and getting kidnapped by rebels in the Nigerian Delta. They at least laugh at me.
For whatever reason – probably because I just love incriminating my friends – I recently shared with the class a few probably inappropriate anecdotes. One involved me and Jeff’s excursion in Petra – discussed in more detail in a previous post – which keep in mind occurred during our accidental celebration of Ramadan. Because we’d failed to adequately prepare for a day of gamboling amongst the rocks, we had no food, little water, and resorted to Coke and Fanta to keep us afloat. By mid-afternoon we were delirious and making no sense to each other.
Upon scaling the heights and reaching the top of one precarious path, Jeff had the bright idea of pulling his trousers down (but thankfully keeping his boxers on) to let the breeze course through his…whatever. I duly did the same, and man did it feel great. We stood up there feeling like real men, free as can be in the blowing wind.
I shared that tale. What relevance did it have to the topic? I’ve got no idea.
Another one I shared involved my dear friend ‘Dr Wasabi Islam’, who thinks there are fewer things more refreshing in life than removing all of your clothes before taking a dump. Trust me on this one: he’s right. Especially on a sticky, hot summer’s day, it takes a real load off.
I shared that tale. What relevance did it have to the topic? I’ve got no idea.
So at the end of class, I asked the class to reflect on the lesson, using that three things format. Roughly a 1/3 of the class took it seriously and commented on the actual ‘content’ of the lesson. Some of the remaining samples were as follows:
What they learnt/found interesting:
1. Mr Pedzo and his friend took off their pants and let the wind blow on their balls.
2. Mr Pedzo’s friend decided to take off his pants and then so did he and it felt really good.
3. It feels really good to take off your pants at the top of mountains and feel the wind.
4. Mr Pedzo’s friend Dr Wasabi Islam likes to take off his clothes before he takes a dump and this feels really refreshing.
5. Dr Wasabi Islam likes to relax before taking a dump by taking off all his clothes.
6. Mr Pedzo has some weird friends.
What they didn’t understand/had questions about:
1. How it can feel good to have the wind blowing on you on a mountain after taking off your pants because I’m a girl, I don’t think it would be the same.
2. Mr Pedzo’s friend takes off his clothes before taking a dump, but he didn’t say if he did, I wonder if he does.
3. Why Mr Pedzo and his friend just didn’t wear shorts when they were hiking on top of the mountain.
4. What if I really have to go and I don’t have time to take my clothes off and make a mess on accident.
5. Does Dr Wasabi Islam take off all his clothes every time he takes a dump? What if he’s in public?
6. Why does Mr Pedzo have such weird friends?
I have to wonder just how effective a teacher I really am.
Various snippets of various things
Elizabeth so kindly/cruelly pointed out this article in the comments section of my last post:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/02/ryszard-kapuscinski-accused-fiction-biography
I’m glad she did, though it pains me to learn that my literary hero is a potential fraud. Still, it does nothing to detract from his magnificent oeuvre, and I consistently recommend his works to everyone I come into contact with. My favourites vary, but The Shadow of the Sun has to come top of the list. The Soccer War and Imperium are also classics, but you can’t really go wrong with any of his material.
In the interests of transparency, I also recommend this one:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/mar/06/ian-jack-ryszard-kapuscinski
While I’m a roll with the links, here’s an amusing little ditty about those wacky Central and Eastern Europeans and their petty feuds over names and nationalities:
‘You say Lwów, I say Lviv: a guide to Eastern Europe’s most tedious arguments’
‘Ukraine/Poland: Anyone who spells the capital of Galicia as Lwów is a Polish nationalist who bayonets Ukrainian babies for fun. Anyone who says it is spelled Lviv is a Ukrainian fascist who bayonets Polish babies for fun. Anyone who spells it Lvov is a Soviet mass murderer. And anyone who calls it Lemberg is a Nazi. See you in Leopolis for further discussion.’
The rest of it can be found here:
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15810902
‘Ukraine/Poland: Anyone who spells the capital of Galicia as Lwów is a Polish nationalist who bayonets Ukrainian babies for fun. Anyone who says it is spelled Lviv is a Ukrainian fascist who bayonets Polish babies for fun. Anyone who spells it Lvov is a Soviet mass murderer. And anyone who calls it Lemberg is a Nazi. See you in Leopolis for further discussion.’
The rest of it can be found here:
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15810902
In honour of Easter, a brief anecdote from my high school days. This might be the farthest I’ve delved into the past on these pages.
Charlie Buchanan – some fellow readers may remember him – was quite a religious young man, who was persistent in his attempts to get me to attend church. I never gave in, but the kid was relentless in his crusade. This was one particularly memorable exchange:
CB: So, what about coming to church this Sunday?
DP: Sorry, I can’t, I have a baseball game (our league in England played on Sundays)
CB: You know, Jesus died for you.
DP: Yes, he died on a Friday and then rose on a Sunday to watch me play baseball.
I was never invited to church again.
I end with a trivia question I posed two posts ago:
According to Uefa, in which city can be found the only stadium in Europe that ‘conforms to every single safety and security measure that [Uefa] stipulates’? The complex comes replete with two full-size stadia, an arena licensed for international meetings of any indoor sport, a five-pitch training ground, a sports academy, a hotel, bar and restaurant.
I wish I could say I was deluged by answers, but got only 1 response. Mike’s guess was Ibrox, which is incorrect.
The answer? Tiraspol, capital of Transnistria (a part of Moldova, depending on your politics), and home of FC Sheriff Tiraspol. Surely they deserve to be awarded a Champions League final, with such splendid facilities.
For football geeks like myself, this is absolutely fascinating.
I probably ought to get out more.
There are few better feelings in the world
Wow, we were way off! That should be listed on all the"Top 20 Europe Football Stadiums" websites I checked out trying to cheat at finding the answer to your question (though Mike's guess wasn't based on my googling). Interesting!
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