Might Be Mad

"Was she awake behind her pale lids, he wondered, her nakedness a deliberate provocation? He suspected not. There was something too artless about the way her legs were splayed, too childlike about the way her hands were tucked up against her breasts. And the final proof'? She was snoring. If this was indeed a performance, then that was a touch of genius."

It's quite a fortuitous thing, I’d say; a bout of illness has reacquainted me with the joys of a steamboat. Nothing fancy, it’s just a boiling pot of stock, into which you put an assortment of ingredients only limited by the your imagination and the diameter of your steamboat. The Swiss have fondue, we have steamboat. And into the pot, you can have anything from chicken broth (an excellent choice for weak stomachs or when you’re still suffering from stomach flu) to chilli oil Ma La soup, which is numbingly spicy and apt to give you diarrhoea unless you’re made of sterner stuff. But some people swear it’s how southern Chinese women stay svelte and shapely, as opposed the popular conception that it is the rigours of planting rice that explains their enviable BMI. But back on the subject, it sure beats eating porridge. The very idea terrifies me. But steamboat, it seems, never gets tired. I could eat it every day. For a successful steamboat, I have found the following ingredients to b...

As I write this, my faith hangs as claws dug into a chalkboard, slipping and making an obscene racket. Life is hard. I have often even, exclaimed that life sucks. Yet how precious is life! What would we do to extend our own lives, or even that of our loved ones? Anything. But as experience shows, such iron resolve is in vain, and largely irrelevant as events overtake our lives and best laid plans like an incoming tide over a sand castle. As individuals, we can effect woefully little; the Bible tells us, we cannot make ourselves any taller, or our hair, any blacker. Where then the cause for arrogance? It must come from stupidity, or else one is living in denial. As I do. Not intending to be coolly self-deprecating, I count myself most unworthy of a Christian. Bitter, cynical, angry; carnal, worldly, and alienated, I am in speech, and action, near indistinguishable from the heathen. Yet I am a Christian because I believe in the God of the Bible, and have a relationship with Him; a relat...

Of course, Asher had been a spy. And when Jan van der Platz--sixteen and Asher's loyal shadow for weeks--had learned that Asher was not German but English and had confronted him in tears, Asher had shot him to protect his contacts in the town, the Kaffirs who slipped him information and would be horribly killed in retaliation, and the British troops in the field who would have been massacred by the commandos had he been forced to talk.

"She wondered, too, whether she had hampered them by giving him her virginity. She knew that in his mind, she had forced them to start with him taking something from her. She could tell he felt guilty about it. The ribbon of blood on the sheet was a simple statement in cipher: this is serious. Blood , she wrote in her diary, is the colour of love ."

Learned a couple of things over lunch yesterday, and being the generous soul that I am, I thought I would share. Much of this concerns boiling eggs, which to me are one of nature's most sublime gifts (along with clouds and light breezes), full of goodness despite the cholesterol controversy, voluptuously beautiful and pregnant with a wealth of erotic metaphors in their admiration, preparation and general experience. Simply, one could not be near an egg without thinking unclean sorts... in a clean sorta way. I love eggs for the shape of the shell, for which I am at a loss for words to describe, beyond “perfect”, “sublime”, “mmm”; the shocking luminosity of “sunny-side up” which lights up a morning better than a kiss; the fluffiness of the rice wine infused egg white that forms the soft bed of a steamed crab; the rich taste and texture of the yolk, the way this seduces one's sense of taste, touch and smell in the mouth, before doing wonderful things to my head as it is swallowed....

I am sure, on many counts, we do. As do many, many things, in all fairness. For starters, the world, and life, just ain't fair. The good die young and we are left with assholes for company. People who need money, can't ever find enough of it; those with time on their hands have no idea what to do with it. Toast always lands on the side that's buttered, etc. But back to Christians. Irking the world with silly notions and unwanted good intentions; always talking about salvation, thanking an unseen God for everything, always trying to convert people to Christ who is not even older than Buddha, have no respect for tradition (most offensively, at the refusal to partake in traditional funeral rites)... I shall not explain everything at one go; the virtue of brevity is, after all, that it is relatively painless. But primarily, Christians suck because the world would not let us be. Christians (and here, I am generalising -- there are just so many types) have an other-worldly mindse...

When he was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed him. And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. -- Matthew 8:1-3

For fuck’s sake, there is no such thing. Perhaps I should qualify that as my own personal opinion. Sure, why not. And you’re of course entitled to your own. But that does not mean I can’t be right. I say war is bad… yet all too soon, the macho rhetoric rears its bulbous, balding head (I infer this from observing the majority of its proponents) – surely, there is greater virtue in a courageous death, than living in cowardice. Well. Courage is indeed more admirable than cowardice. But when courage is stirred in the service of dubious schemes cloaked behind big words like “justice”, “destiny”, “freedom”, as has been the case for far too many wasteful wars that men have fought, then this courage is but stupidity. To put it mildly, sentimental bullshit is the magic ingredient most served when men of power seek to stir other men to take the bullet in building the former’s ambitions. No? Is war “just”? Is war “unavoidable”? Why conduct a little experiment: round up the generals, pre...

“Did I not consider myself a scientist? Does a scientist draw conclusions without considering data? Could there be a more important question in all of human existence than 'Is there a God?'”

'With our new luxuries we shall need doctors too, far more than we did before.' 'We certainly shall.' 'And the territory which was formerly enough to support us will now be too small.' 'That is undeniable.' 'If we are to have enough for pasture and plough, we shall have to cut a slice off our neighbours' territory. And if they too are no longer confining themselves to necessities and have embarked on the pursuit of unlimited material possessions, they will want a slice of ours too.' 'The consequence is inevitable.' 'And that will lead to war, Glaucon, will it not?' 'It will.'

Absolute power corrupts absolutely — this is a maxim held with as much faith as “apples fall from trees.” And it’s generally true: as much as any open drain is clogged with discarded trash, history is littered with jerks (to put in mildly) who have perpetrated the worst excesses for no better reason than because they could get away with it. Having power helped. A lot. While people are rightly wary of power in political affairs, I have a feeling they are not wary enough about the flip-side influence of power in social affairs. This was impressed upon me during a recent conversation with workmates over lunch — and what better dessert is there than a bit of idle philosophising? — about the relative merit/justice of alternative power structures in the relations between men and women. Who should be under whose thumb, in other words. Among those present, one of took immense pride in her matriarchal family background — grannies, aunts, mums, etc held fearsome power in the household, while the...

I hate politics. Yet as a citizen of a state, and not by choice a member of the trans-national human race, there is no excuse for not taking an active interest (at the minimum, a raised brow), in public affairs at both the local and global levels. Was it not Pericles who said — I paraphrase, the more industrious among you can look it up in Book Two of Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War and be amply rewarded — that one of the points for which Athens is worthy of admiration, lies in the fact that even ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry (shoemakers, making shoes all day), are fair judges of public matters — informed, sensible, participative. Those who have no interest in public affairs are not called unambitious, but “useless”! I have an interest in politics. I don’t love it. Interest and love are not the same, else “love interest” would make no sense, or no more sense than “banana banana” or “horse horse”. Why am I thinking of bananas? That may ha...

Contrary to popular belief among those who know me (a highly qualified use of “know”, since how well do we even “know” ourselves, much less our peers?), I do know (again, “know”!) a little bit about food. Not so much in its preparation, but surely, in its enjoyment. Would that I didn’t; but as a man of the flesh, possessing a heightened consciousness and sensitivity to the pleasures from the physical senses (are there but five?), I’m ashamed to admit that earthly pleasures hold not a little sway over me — and food is one of these. Food for me is a sentimental thing; a language, a window — touching without touching, talking without words. Beyond technical skill and finesse in its preparation, like music, much of the enjoyment also comes from the care and heart that is put into it, which is communicated to the person doing the eating. As the eyes reveal a person’s soul, food is likewise a portal, a direct window into a mind or a culture. I’m not making this up — you could look past a pai...

Consistent with my general habit of setting modest goals, this blog's opening entry shall be about nothingness – which is not the same as nothing. Nothing is just nothing. Nothingness is about being nothing, which consequently becomes something (being is necessarily about being something or other...) This is not trickery with words. There must be something about nothing; otherwise there would be nothing to say or think about it. The latter would be absurd, since we are always fussing about nothing: doing nothing, getting upset over nothing... even basing religions and belief systems on the pursuit of pure nothingness. Could it be, that on a thought (about nothing), nothing became something? Is that how life and the universe came about? On a thought? Whose? Back on planet earth, I recall, as a first-year philosophy student, that one of my tutors was especially fond of saying, that “there is more that exists than meets the eye.” A rather clumsy way of saying whatever she wanted t...