Inter Alia

 I remember the oat porridge my mother used to cook. It was not instant oats. She added sugar to the oats and i like how it was lightly charred at the base when cooked, soft and creamy. Then she poured over it hot milk that was made from creamy milk powder in hot water. It was divine. Milk tastes different when it is made with dehydrated whole milk powder. As a child and also in my teens, I had liked putting tiny scoop of milk powder into my mouth. It tasted deliciously sweet.

There are things you recall about your childhood but you cannot truly verify the accuracy of it. To a large extent, we are what we remember about the stuff we have experienced over the years, and every experience we have can only be retold from our memories. There are things we choose to remember and there are others we would rather forget. We tend to romanticize the good memories and try to forget the bad ones in order to move on.

My mother passed away more than thirty-seven years ago.

How often do we tell our own life story?  How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts?  And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life.  Told to others, but – mainly – to ourselves.
- The Sense of Ending, Julian Barnes p.95 (Jonathan Cape Random House, 2011)

Julian Barnes writes about love and memory. After I read the author's The Sense of an Ending, I read several of his other books, both fictions and non-fictions. I recently read his latest novel, DEPARTURE(S) and he tells us this will be his last book. He is certainly a prolific writer and his writings demonstrate a dry sense of humour.

In DEPARTURE(S) Julian Barnes tells the story of how he helped to bring together his two university friends, Stephen and Jean, not once but twice and then their rekindled relationship ended. He was at the City of London from 1957-1964 and then studied at Magdalen, Oxford between 1964 and 1968. Back then at the university, only ' sixteen per cent were women: so, one woman to 6.25 men that was the ratio.' When his friends split the first time after graduating from Oxford , he also loses touch with them. Decades later, Stephen who was now divorced, wrote him a letter and when they met, Stephen asked him to arrange a catch up with Jean because he was still in love with her. He had reached the age 'where most of his friends from a generation, or even half a generation, ahead of him were dying off' so he was happy to have Stephen and Jean back in his life. When they reconnected with one another, they saw 'a fair amount of one another, but somehow without regaining the same intimacy and camaraderie of the earlier years' They visited him separately to tell him things. He made a rule not to pass on what one of them had said to the other. 'Not even a hint, not even if it would have been tactically useful.'

Barnes narrates that 'Stephen was so determined to get it right this time-having spent decades berating himself and lamenting his earlier insistence that they could settle their joint lives forevever at the age of twenty-one- that he got it wrong again, but differently. It was as if he no longer considered, let alone valued, the forty years of life he'd passed between Jean Part One and Jean Part Two;as if nothing of importance had happened in that time. '

Barnes decides to research on the matter and finds that the classic problem in such emotional revisiting is that the parties unconsciously reproduce the same behaviour that had led the initial relationship to founder. The manipulative continued to manipulate, and the over-possessive to over-possess, but without acknowledging it. The intervening years have not brought them greater maturity at all. So here is how he sums up about Jean and Stephen.

' His tragedy is that he can love, but that his love cannot be accepted.'

'Her tragedy is that she cannot love, but that what she does offer is accepted as love.'

'What Stephen viewed as a rounded, dramatic, necessary conclusion to thier two lives Jean saw as - what?-no more than a somewhat intriguing possibility.'

Stephen clearly did not or failed to acknowledge that Jean had remained single all her life until they met again and to Jean, 'non-attachment had seemed like a kind of freedom, not necessarily sought but easily borne; she wasn't sure she needed or wanted anyone seioius in her life at this pre-terminal stage.'

Barnes concludes that what he has written are 'more a novelist's assumptions than an accurate digest 'of all that they told him.; and 'are inevitably coloured' by his' own experiences and preconceptions of life'.

Stephen appears to be still a dreamer in his sixties. It is apparent that he is in love with the concept of romantic love and possibly the idea of Jean as the one that has gotten away. That happens to the best of us if and when we allow ourselves to get carried away.

When Jean died, Barnes now seventy-six, inherited her sixteen year-old dog, a Jack Russell named Jimmy. 'half- deaf and half blind and almost comically toothless.'

Barnes muses that Jimmy does not rage about much- 'he is a stoic who sleeps a great deal.Though he does resent some things, like not being allowed to stop every fifteen yards on a walk, or being given a constant diet of dog food, much preferring human left overs.' Barnes and his friends Stephen and Jean had a conversation about time, or mortality and how Jimmy does not have any idea about metaphysical questions. So Stephen and Barnes concluded that Jimmy does not even know that he is a dog.

At home we are constantly amused by our Holly, a mongrel that had come to stay since the day she walked into our garden looking famished in February 2016. Living is seemingly very simple to a dog.

In DEPARTURE(S) Julian Barnes also tells his own story about the journey he has taken to come to terms with blood cancer, which walks alongside him, kept in check by chemotherapy and medication. He also talks about his first wife, Pat who was six years his senior and died in 2008. She was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour and died thirty-seven days later.

He writes, "raged against the dying of her light, but I didn't imagine that some cunningly concealed fairness or justice came into the matter. Insofar as I could be calmed by any mere phrase, it was one that suddenly came to me back then, and which I continue to employ: 'It's just the universe doing its stuff.' "

'Departure habitually leads to arrival. Not always, of course as with those poetic French dreamsers who never let port. But at train stations, bus depots and airports we gaze at departure and arrival boards. We go, we arrive, we set off in return, and reach home again: we live with this momentum. But these trajectories lie within a larger and more contrary version. In our lives, arrival comes first, and departure comes atthe end - except a departure without subsequent arrival.'

Barnes writes about aging and how he is aware that after forty-four years of being published, he must be repeating himself with the same old tropes and memes, and even repeating his jokes. He makes reference to Involuntary Autobiographical Memory (IAM) and IAM is a memory that could be triggered by a touch, smell, taste or sight and somehow reveals itself unlike a 'voluntary memory'. Julian Barnes' novels make very pleasurable read and his 

The Splendour of Love

Various contemporary writers shared their views about what literature could tell them about love in the article “ A Sentimental Education” published by New York Times recently.* In the French class last Saturday, we had to give our opinions as to whether we agree or disagree with the statement: L’amitie est preferable a l’amour. This is a difficult choice. Both are essentially about loyalty and acceptance. Friends probably can accept you the way you are if they like you enough but the kind of love we expect from a partner or spouse or lover may change in its character over a period of time as passion or love based on sexual attraction can be delusive. We all know about infatuations, puppy love, crushes and sometimes we may even find ourselves in love with the concept of love when we are young.

I sometimes think about my mother whose life seemed sad to my cousins, children of my mother’s sister  who is suffering from dementia and children of my mother’s brothers and also everyone who had known her for her modesty. She was devastated and became depressed when she had to deal with the reality that my dad had been unfaithful and his mistress had borne him two other children, a son and a daughter. What happened to my parents’ marriage had created an impact on my sister and me, in one way or another.

“ I certainly believe we all suffer damage, one way or another. How could we not, except in a world of perfect parents, siblings, neighbours, companions? And then there is  the question on which so much depends, of how we react to the damage: whether we admit it or repress it, and how this affects our dealings with others. Some admit the damage, and try to mitigate it; some spend their lives trying to help others who are damaged ; and there are those whose main concern is to avoid further damage to themselves, at whatever cost. And those are the ones who are ruthless, and the ones to be careful of.”  - Julian Barnes writes in ‘The Sense of an Ending’.

As children, who are we to judge? I feel sorry for both my parents and  I believe  that both my parents must have suffered greatly for what had happened . Through reading I have become more empathetic about human nature and through reading I understand humanities a little better though I do not need literature to tell me about the impermanence of love. My sister found the journal that belonged to my late dad which is now amongst my possessions. My late dad had written in his journal about how he had been  smitten by my late mother. He kept a journal in the beginning of their courtship and it was incredible that he had kept it for thirty over years . My dad’s journal had somewhat given me a kind of  resolution to my parents’ union.  Even though I had already learnt about how illusive love is since my teenage years and that love can change, I still believe in stories with happy endings. Perhaps I want to believe in whatever that gives mankind inspirations and hope .

I rarely read poetry but I would like to quote a few lines from 'Dover Beach' a poem by Matthew Arnold that was produced at the end of  ‘Saturday’ the novel written by Ian McEwan.

Ah,love , let us be true
To one another! For the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
.....................................                                   

Saturday is a story about Henry Perowne, a neurosurgeon who is a happily married man who wakes up before dawn on February 15 2003 and from his window he witnesses a burning plane as it heads towards Heathrow. That particular Saturday begins with an unease that materialises in the form of events that happen subsequently on that same day. Perowne is a scientific  man and he does not read fictions as he wants the world explained factually and not reinvented as stories. His father in law is a famous poet who has first introduced his daughter into the literary world. For some years  his too literate daughter has been guiding his literary education and he submits to her reading lists  as his means of remaining in touch with her as she grows away from her family even though he thinks he has seen enough death, fear, courage and suffering to supply half a dozen literatures.  A very profound and thought-provoking story indeed.

*http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/books/review/a-sentimental-education.html?emc=edit_tnt_20140206&tntemail0=y&_r=1

Deconstructing Our Mind

Bourgogne 

I wonder if we are obsessed by certain thoughts, will we lose our minds or if we are unhappy, will the brains become more susceptible to attack by some plague that damage our brain cells ? I am told that our brains are like sponges and we are constantly absorbing information; thoughts, good or bad, constantly flow out of our heads whether they make sense or not at all.

Our thoughts can hurt or pick us up. Some people are naturally happy and they are the lucky ones, some will brood over even the slightest thing. We have to be  mindful of our thoughts, things we say and do but we may react or respond badly to people who say things we do not agree with. Often people say things the way they say them because that is the way they are . We have to interact with all kinds of people and very often the phrases and things  that we hear are not what we want to hear. When we are worried, defensive or upset, we  definitely do not listen well and lack clarity of thoughts . Ideally we should empty our minds and think of nothing and just focus on the present, but our minds have a mind of their own. Thoughts are fluid so when we are not careful, we may find ourselves saying things that come out sounding all wrong or getting anxiety attacks.

Burgundy - Seurre

 If we sit back and watch our life like watching a movie, most of us will find that such a movie will definitely not make it beyond the slush pile. We may not be able to replay every scene of our life but there are certain scenes that constantly get rewound  in our head and some scenes linger on longer than others. We can remember some moments from our life well but not the others. Some of these memories may get diluted or diffused over time as we are constantly having new experiences. Sometimes we embellish our memories for self-preservation. How we feel about our new experiences is probably dictated by who we are and what we have learnt from all our previous experiences. Some people have this heightened ability to remember every single detail and even a long memory for slights while most of us can only vividly recall what we have selectively committed to our memory, it is like an outline of what has happened and what we remember is a memory of a memory.

I also think that all of us are damaged at some point of time when we are growing up and even as we grow old. Julian Barnes wrote in his novel “ The Sense of an Ending” :

 ‘I certainly believe that we all suffer damage, one way or another. How could we not, except in a world of perfect parents, siblings, neighbours, companions? And then there is the question, on which so much depends, of how we react to the damage: whether we admit it or repress it, and how this affects our dealings with others. Some admit the damage, and try to mitigate it ; some spend their lives trying to help others who are damaged ; and then there are those whose main concern is to avoid further damage to themselves, at whatever cost. And those are the ones who are ruthless, and the ones to be careful of .”

The story is  about how unreliable our memories are and how we are often stuck with the analysis  that is entirely self-referential when we examine and try to explain the events in our lives because we are incapable of looking outside our own head. The author wrote, “ But time…how time first grounds us and then confounds us. We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly. What we called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them. Time …give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical.”

Perhaps it does not matter what we have encountered before and how past experiences have shaped us, what is important is to be able to embrace each day with an open mind and not to remind ourselves about what had gone wrong or what could have been done. After all,the present will soon become the past.

The protagonist, Tony Webster  in his 60s asked himself :“ Does Character develop over time? In novels, of course it does: otherwise there wouldn’t be much of a story. But in life? I sometimes wonder. Our attitudes and opinions change, we develop new habits and eccentricities ;but that‘s something different, more like decoration. Perhaps character resembles intelligence, except that character peaks a little later; between twenty and thirty, say. And after that, we’re just stuck with what we’ve got. We ‘re on our own. If so, that would explain a lot of lives, wouldn’t it ? And also – if this isn’t too grand a word- our tragedy.”

 “The Sense of an Ending” is indeed a brilliant piece of writing.

The World is Our Playground

It is uncanny when I  turned to a page randomly, the words which happened to cross my mind somehow sprang from an article or a fiction I happened to be reading . They are sheer coincidences but  they  reinforce the fact that what is on my mind is shared by many other individuals. There were times when I was internalizing a thought, I came across books which were about the very same theme I happened to be reflecting on . Perhaps it is law of attraction, you get what you are looking for. Perhaps we read what we think.

La Saone- Gray

I have been thinking quite a bit about how we can choose to be elusive and deluded about our situations and what we remember about the past might have been inaccurate. We have a tendency to reconstruct our memory and amend what we remember about the past. Here is a prime example: I had never thought of myself as a strict mother but apparently there was this incident my twenty year old remembered.  She was not allowed to go on a school trip during primary school because she did not do well in some school test. I subsequently jogged my memory and vaguely recalled that there was one school trip  where we had paid up and subsequently she had to tell the teacher that she would not be going for some reasons or other. I think it was probably one of the joint decisions I had to make with my significant other. On my part, I was relieved that she was not going as I had a tendency to become worrisome about my  daughters’ travelling on those buses which the school usually chartered for such trips. I worry about errant and reckless drivers and unhygienic food.

In one Proust questionnaire published in Vanity Fair September 2006 issue, Howard Schultz was asked this :  “What is your most treasured possession?”  Mr Schultz’s  answer was : “ My memories.”  Brilliant answer and how true. But what if our memories are faulty? I believe we all have selective memory, some more selective than others.

Two weekends ago, I was  in the company of  some of the friends’ from the past. We gathered at a post wedding reception held by one of our school friends whose son recently got married. The wedding took place in San Francisco in May and the post wedding party was held a few months later in the groom’s hometown in Malaysia. It was an interesting full weekend catching up with a few school friends. I am not one who becomes nostalgic and carry the notion that school days were wonderful. I think that was such an awkward age. Nonetheless we behaved as if time had not passed despite whatever  we had gone through and  experienced during all those years as  grown ups.

When I returned to my present life, I read "The Sense of an Ending" by Julian Barnes, winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize. At the beginning of the story, the protagonist Tony Websters narrates, “……but what you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed.”  I can relate to the sentiment after a weekend away with some nostalgic moments spent with some school friends. It is definitely a novel for grown-ups, superb prose, full of wit and complex undertones.

 

"The Sense of an Ending" explores memory and the story was told through the apparently insignificant life of a sixty year old man, Tony Webster whose life was basically average by his own terms. The calm of his life became unsettled when he received a letter from a solicitor who informed him that he had been left a small legacy by a woman he barely knew and the legacy included a diary kept by his good friend from school, Adrian Finn some four decades ago. Once in history class, the school master asked the students for a definition of history.  Adrian Finn’s answer was “ History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation." Apparently the  quote was from a fictitious French author whom Finn had made up. Tony Webster’s answer then was “ History is the lies of the victors”. Later on in life, he realized that history is the memories of the survivors , most of whom are neither victorious nor defeated.

Tony Webster  narrates “ But time….how time first grounds us and then confounds us. We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly”.  How true. So often we go through life playing safe by avoiding hurt,  loss and the unbeaten path  in the name of survival and self preservation. Webster had to confront the core of his character when he examined some letters he had written in his fits of spite. The book is exquisitely written and makes an insightful read. 

  

Another  insightful and brilliant novel I had recently read was  “ A visit from the Goon Squad” by Jennifer Egan. It is about passing of our youth, very cleverly written. The writer has employed a satirical approach to lives of the characters in the fiction. 

Not that I lament about the passing of youth and fragilities of life, I particularly enjoy reading novels which have been written on that premise. I am addicted to buying books as every book is a hopeful purchase. These days I find myself devouring the pages too quickly to accord the author justice. While I anticipate the joy and look forward to the day when I can take my time  to savour each and every phrase and passage lucidly put together by these writers, I suspect I may still not have enough time in the world to catch up with all the books I want to read. Meanwhile  juggling time between my work, chores, tennis , yoga,  social outings, chats, movies, books  and blogging keep my adrenalin pumping.

Paris