It was very interesting , yesterday at the movies, to see Beyoncé as a normal person in “Dreamgirls”. By a normal person, I mean someone who…just happened to be someone. I tend to think of her, and the other people who haunt the whereabouts of MTV as “possessed” people. I mean, the video clips you see in MTV nowadays are so saturated with sex that I end up seeing the dancers and singers as the distant heirs of the sacred prostitutes of the temples of classical India. People possessed by sex. My readers ( non-existent , but I still feel the need to believe I am writing to someone) will see me as obsessed with sacredness, given that two posts before, I had been writing about the sacredness of money in modern life. Maybe that, sacredness is something separate from God. Even when society does away with God, as it has done in our secular times, sacredness still survives, and grafts itself to our other pursuits – fucking, shopping.

Consider the great commercial centres of our times. When you go in, as you will do on every other Saturday, you will first see great banners whereon are printed the photographs of supermodels. This is the ground floor, on which, more often than not, are found the booths selling perfumes and jewelry. Hommages to the body, and the body’s power is proclaimed in these great photos of beautiful people. Lesser pursuits are attended to in the upper floors – clothes, to be worn when one is not having sex, furniture, stuff for children…but first the perfuming and adorning of the body. Are not our times the Days of the Whore ? Not that I am against Her Power, though I’ve never slept with one, if my readers will pardon me for that ( which I doubt). Those great photos of models, everywhere, are they not sacred objects , Signs of our Times ? Ideals, which few among us can attain ( certainly not me, with my flab and my fondness for beer. I am a low caste of my times ). I tend to lower my head in reverence, when I enter a commercial centre.

Sometimes I have these fantasies of myself as someone who is immensely involved in sex. Like Graham Greene, who at one point in his life had a notebook with the address of around fourty prostitutes. I had a friend who was liked by women – once, I introduced him to a pretty real estate agent, and in my presence, they had the most innocent of conversations. The next day, the woman phoned him and , in passing, he told her he had a cold. She sent him a big bouquet with a “Get well” card. In “White Teeth” Zadie Smith says, about Salim ( I think that’s his name), the handsome teenager: “He was one of those people who radiated sexuality. He would enter a crowded pub, and from the very back, a woman would elbow her way to the bar, to offer him a drink”. My friend was like that. Once, I saw him try his best to seduce a woman – a very easy woman. He failed. She liked him, but for a professional reason, could not go out with him. What I mean, is that he did not have some special technique – I don’t think that exists. He simply was someone women liked to be with. You could not pin it down to any particular reason, I don’t think it was because of his Oxford accent, nor because of his nice clothes, nor because of the fact that he was a womanizer ( a fact which, paradoxically, attracts many women). These were add-ons , bonus points, on a core of sexiness which attracted them. He himself , obviously, would have refuted the idea that he simply happened to be someone whom women liked, and attributed his success to his efforts. At one point, when he was in France, he used to suscribe to three magazines: Men’s Health, which he described as an excellent magazine, Union, a kind of very French porn magazine, in that it had literary and scientific ambitions beyond its fleshpot nature, and Marie Claire, a solid, no –nonsense middle class women’s magazine. “Marie Claire women are my hunting ground” he explained to me. “The Vogue and Cosmo crowd are either too rich, or too wannabe rich for me”. So, he read his Marie Claire every month as an intelligence gathering activity on his prey. It reminded me of Holly Golightly in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” keeping newspaper cutouts of articles on baseball because it was good conversation material with men. Come to think of it, I will allow to him the fact that there were two factors at work: he was a sexy guy, but he also worked on it. He liked women, but then at fifteen, who doesn’t , unless you’re gay ( nothing insulting meant to gay people). Then he realised that he was successful with women, and he started to work on himself, rounding the corners, shaving off the rough edges. And obviously, became marginally more successful at it. Marginally, because in the end, it’s the other side which really decides. I guess we all start like him at fifteen, desperate, but so desperate that it aches, to get laid. He had the right ticket, was on the good wave, and he surfed…. But is that the whole story ? Do guys really like women ? Like most men, he would have been profoundly offended to be called a womanizer. It is a survival of childhood. Boys says: “Girls, buuuuuuuhhhh. Sissies. They cry for nothing”. It’s something more than that. Boys want to be heroes. The fact that women fall on their scarred bloody chests, wipe their sweaty foreheads is a bonus point, to which they are supposed to barely pay attention. A guy shouldn’t suscribe to Marie Claire. He may read Union, or Playboy or whatever in the company of other snickering comrades. He will, in a guilty way, flip the pages of Men’s health at the supermarket, to know stuff about diabetes, cholesterol and how to please a woman. But generally, he believes himself to be invincible. His body can, of course, withstand gigantic amounts of drinking, smoking and bad food. Coz he’s a guy , godammit. He will wear the same clothes for thousands of years, until they fall from his shoulders. It doesn’t matter. A concerned woman WILL come and buy him new ones because she SAW the glint in his eyes which said that he’s a MAN who’s been through STUFF. Women are just supposed to HAPPEN, beautiful walkyries who give you rich pussy after your BATTLE. You’re not supposed to RUN after them. So, all that makes me wonder about my friend. How come he admitted to me that he suscribed to Marie Claire ? He was nearing fifty at the time. Maybe, in some way, he was admitting, to the particularly young and harmless looking guy I maybe have looked at the time ( though I wonder whether I could have looked harmless at any point in my life. I usually look like a bum, walking on the streets, mentally arguing to myself, or else I look like a suicide bomber. I have a very Muslim look, much more Muslim than my Muslim friends) that the great success of his life was that he had been through a lot of pussy. An indirect admission, in old age, of failure – so masculine, in a way, maybe that’s what drew him to it. Look, that’s all I ever been able to do in my life. Accept me for what I am, I did not die in the mud from a gangrene infested wound, like I should have.

Shouldn’t we come back to me ? This is MY blog, goddamit, for my self glorification. It is my tiny slot of intellectual masturbation, granted to me by the American Department of Defence, the Jehovah of the web, which has probably taken note of of my Muslim look ( but I don’t care. I’m a GUY, remember ? Bullets bounce off my chest. My bullets rip through the bodies of six baddies. Their bullets, although they’re twenty around me, all miss me, like Arnie in “Commando”). Well, what about me ? I don’t know. My friend has hogged the whole blog post, warts and all, he was an elder male, a guy who’se been through nearly sixty years of livin’….I can feel around me my women colleagues and friends, asking me his phone number…but anyway, despite everything, let’s return to the topic of myself. I was saying….that I sometimes imagine myself as someone immersed in sex, someone who really loves it, works on it, devotes himself to it, and does it well. Now , sex is something, according to the Sacred Book of Manhood, is not something which a man is supposed to pay attention to. It is ( remember that bit ?) supposed to HAPPEN. And when it does, you do it well, with effortless ease, then lay on your back, light up a fag, and say ( if you speak French): “Alors, heureuse ?” ( untranslatable. Something like: ( said in a detached manner: “So, happy ?”). Gosh, the fucking DEMANDS which are made on you as a man. But at least it’s less ridiculous than being a modern woman. FUCKING SHIT the demands on a modern woman. The perfect body. The smart IQ. Successful at work. Successful lover. Successful housekeeper. Successful mother. Whore, caring mother, perfect host, smart at work. FUCK!!!!!! Thank God I’m a guy, even if bullets are supposed to bounce off my chest. In the end, there’s a charitable humour which is reserved for guys who fail in life, like most do. Men can be laughed at, for the pants which fall off their loins , for anything. For some reason I can’t fathom, at this point in my drunkenness, though it has helped me throughout this post ( praise be to the 200 Aztec gods of drunkenness) you give absurd standards to men, and then give them a laugh and a warm hug when they fail to reach it. You also give absurd standards to women, and give them a dry look when they fail to reach it. Life is an absurdly difficult game, which almost everyone fails, ( and you don’t really want to know about the ones who succeed, they probably shouldn’t wander in a dark alley, there would be a mob waiting for them with bricks and clubs ) but for some reason, men always have the consolation of the pub, this strange world where everyone is forgiven, as long as you can pay your drinks. For women there’s…..I don’t know. Watching all the seasons of “Sex and the City” and “Desperate Housewives” at one go, I guess.

FUCK. This post was supposed to be about me and my FANTASIES, or PHANTASIES, if you’re an old style anglophile, which I wish I had the power and priviledge to be. All right, I wasted it talking of my friend and his Marie Claire readings, which is in a way, a masculine endeavour ( you give your life to your buddy. Without thinking, you sprung out of your hole in the trenches and saved him, who had been hit in the leg by an evil cowardly sniper ( that necessity of DUMB, COWARDLY, SIMPLE EVIL in the masculine mind, women know so much more on that score, understand from early on that your worst enemy doesn't wear a hood, doesn't tie girls to railroad tracks, he is the nice guy at the office who always takes you to lunch). You got hit by three or four bullets, but you dragged him back. THAT NEED, TO HAVE THE HORNPIPE BLOWING AT YOUR FUNERAL AND A WEEPING WIDOW AND LITTLE JOHN JOHN WHO SALUTES YOU AS YOUR COFFIN GOES BY). John John , for my illiterate readers, refers to that photo of Kennedy’s son, John John ( I wonder whether Kennedy was really that smart, if he couldn’t think of a second Christian name for his son) giving the salute to this father’s coffin as it passed by, killed by that monument of American muddleheadedness, that guy, whatever was his name, who could shoot three or four perfect shots within a few seconds – I will not defile my drunkenness by remembering his name.

FUCK NUMBER TWO Can we come back to me ? Of course we can, but is it really worth it , after I have spoiled my carefully cultivated image of myself, first by invoking my friend, the Man who was liked by Women, despite his assiduous reading of Marie Claire ( women too, mind you, don’t like too much the idea of a guy who likes them too much, who reads their stuff, who actually PAYS TOO MUCH ATTENTION to them), second by mentioning Shafty, as his Navy colleagues used to call him, also known as John Fritzgerald Kennedy, who got laid by Holly Golilghtly, also known as Marylin Monroe, among others…after this, can I have some space in My blog for myself, please ?

Ok, I have been able to think of myself, again. It all started innocently, with that sentence, saying that I have sometimes have fantasies of myself being someone who is immensely involved in sex. Not, the reader will have understood from the above, in an ABSORBED way. A MAN can, if he wishes to, be intensely involved in sex , but he is supposed to be intellectually and emotionally DETACHED from it. The young ( of course, sexually attractive ) Sociology student asks him : “ What has been the frequency of your sexual activity since your wife went to China ?” He, ( despite his too many beers since his wife went away, he of course still has a flat belly) : “Well sometimes I … go to see … prostitutes” ( the scientific tone disculpates him). She ( wondering, of course, secretly sexually aroused) : “How many prostitutes have you slept with ?” He ( in a scientifically detached manner) : “Around 200. I don’t keep an exact count” “200 ? So many ?” ( That secret male desire : to IMPRESS). He, holding a beer bottle in his hands , detached, almost sad about it : “Yes, I think so” ….etc etc the reader can imagine the rest of the story. Of course she, the sociology student will sleep with him etc ( how could she not ?) . To repeat myself, my fantasy is to be involved in sex, yet to remain clean of the
STUFF that gets involved with it. It would be a sport exploit. Since my wife went to China, I would have slept with hundreds of prostitutes. My dick would be irreproachable, always answering the call of duty. Beyond the demands of these women, I would still have a lively interest in the women in the street, in the world of the web, thus manifesting an irreprochable manliness. Yet my soul would remain pure of the taint of sex. I would indulge in it with delight and perfect sportive performance. Yet I would remain a good boy, interested in higher pursuits. In the end, it is the dream of every man to be a perfect warrior, a perfect fucker, yet also be , beyond all this , a poet and a philosopher. The sensitive boy sissy, whose long hair we tugged at school , is , in some strange way, part of our masculine identity, the top of our edifice, while the bottom remains the rugged motherfucker who can fix the plumbing and give you a dirty joke and a prod in the ribs when you most need it.

Further thoughts ( I like the detached academic tone, which disculpates me from failure, because even if it is failure, it is one at a high –end level. O the masculine need to put one’s defeats at a high level, so that it gives the consolation of heroic death – the walkyries shall YET arrive, their rich moist pussies granting validation of manliness) : Oh gosh, I have forgotten. I have failed my first date, when the car should run smooth, when the restaurant should be perfect. Maculinity is the DEFEAT of the outside world, the saber-toothed tiger, the rundown car, the insolent waiter.Ah’m sorry, ah’ve forgotten what thought it was that I came upon while I went to pee ( peeing is an interesting no man’s land of gender. Some more liberated women friends of mine have no hesitation to say that they are going to pee. On the other hand, the very act of peeing marks a strong gender boundary. A woman has to hide behind a rock. A guy just walks back a few steps and turns his back. There’s a slight tinge of masculine power about the act, because it takes place through the penis, while defecation, an act which belongs to a much lower plane of being, is altogether another matter, wholly removed from sexuality. Peeing is a sort of very vague distant cousin of sex, an ugly mimic of it ). Ah’m sorry- it came to my mind, then it flipped its wings away ( the excuse of poetic language, when one has failed to perform the crude basic act. The flight to reassure the girl/woman that one’s poet ceiling exists, when her feet went through the plumber floor).

Sexuality is so funnily different, according to the sexes, with regard to class. A man feels the need to make a woman feel that he is a plumber who also ( but he’ll reveal that only bit by bit) happens to be a poet. A woman , on the other hand, feels the need to make her man understand that she’s a lady and then, reluctantly, she’ll slowly admit that she also happens to be a whore. Women start from the top , and work their way down. Men start from the bottom, and work their way up. But the bit of revelation is touchingly frightening for both. Men will admit , with some fright, that they are poets. Women will reluctantly admit that they are whores. The advantage belongs , I admit , to men : there is some glory in admitting that behind the plumber was also a poet, if one has been convincing about the plumbing bit. There is some letting down in admitting the whore bit, unless the man has been sufficiently touched by the lady part. Starting from the bottom is easier.

The masculine mistrust of women: the weeping widow afterwards went on to marry a Greek shipping tycoon. Women will not honour the poet in us, will not become sssshhhhhhhhhhhiiiiing librarians of our works .

The feminine mistrust of men…MEN. The resentment, so politically correct, even NECESSARY in our times, of men, in order to be a normal woman. For centuries before, a resentment against women, was politically correct, even NECESSARY, to be a normal man.Thus spins the wheel of fortune. The need to feel resentment against the weaker one: that eternal need of the dominant one. The slave owner NEEDS to resent the slave, for his feebleness, his cunning, his treachery. The master has the stronger vices, those of greater strength, of bullying. The slave has the weaker vices of duplicity.

I’m so sorry that I forgot what it was that I was thinking of while I went to pee. In my mind it has the ripe moist feel of unconquered pussy, of unkissed lips. High school love, who went out with someone else…

The seriousness of money ( glamourised people):

The other day while at a friend’s place I saw bits of a television series which is about a group of highly trained forensic policemen. I think it wasn’t “The Experts” but one of its imitations. The story had that lighting particular to American series and some of their films, a kind of glossiness with a lot of steely blues in the interior scenes. It also had that tensely glamorous atmosphere, with policewomen with something too pert and too smart about them, and the men looking like spinoffs of George Clooney or Brad Pitt. Everyone moves with a sort of crispness , no one ever fumbles, never hesitates. The computer guy sits on the computer and with a few keystrokes , enters into the Pentagon’s secret database or some other inaccessible place. It takes him a few tries to guess the bad guy’s password.

I don’t watch much of that kind of movie, but I am conscious that this taut ubersmart look is very much in fashion nowadays. Two years ago we were served with “Mr and Mrs Smith” which was so drenched in glamour that it wasn’t an action movie anymore as much as a sort of religious work, a Mystery play of style.

A profound gravity characterises people who are soaked in that “glamour liquid”, they are rigid like the faces of old emperors whose corpses have been preserved in lacquer. When I go to parties, I sometimes come across young people working in corporate positions in big companies. They also give off that impression of almost supernatural seriousness about themselves, as if, while tolerating the company of mere mortals around them, their minds were elsewhere, attuned to the higher spheres of creation, in touch with the innermost cycles of money. Their shades are sacramental masks, behind which their eyes, turned inwards, gaze at inner vaults laden with gold and pearls of great price.

In “Voyage au bout de la nuit”, Celine remarked on the sacred character of the banks he saw in New York, cathedral like buildings where business was conducted in reverential silence.

Maybe humanity has never been so serious as it is nowadays. It’s hard to know, for these are things about which we have pretty little information regarding how it was, in the past. The demands we make on today’s children would probably have surprised our ancestors. We certainly ask too much of today’s women – perfect bodies, success at work, perfect housekeeping, perfect mothers. The pressure is getting harder on men, too – perfect husbands, attentive, yet winners at work too.

I love America, but for once I’ll say it: the Americans are the main culprits in this frenzy for overachievement, overglamourisation. In the 19th century, Americans were already considered a deadly serious people. A nation of immigrants, hell bent on self improvement, on making it to the top. Historians are amazed at the thoroughness with which the Civil War was conducted, the Yankee armies methodically laying to waste every Southern city they came upon, the battles fought with extraordinary rates of casualties, for the times.

American humour has a random quality to it, the kind of jokes one expects from people who work too much, and start laughing at anything in an exhausted relaxation of the nerves. Woody Allen’s humour doesn’t count as American, it is quintessencial Jewish humour, of an old, old people, who have been through everything and expect the worst as part of life.

One can only hope that this madness of self-seriousness, self-worship will not take hold in the human brain. Our species has not gone through all that it has gone through, to end up becoming a bunch of hyperneat overachievers, with trembling hands and a jar of sleeping pills on the bedside table.

That would be really sad, especially now that science has given us the means to really enjoy life on this planet. Personnally, I feel that we have enough science as it is, and that it is dangerous, even madness to embark in more research in fields such as genetics. We should rather use the knowledge we have to make the world a garden, a place where people live good, simple lives . It may seem naïve, but the poignant thing is that it is actually possible . A remote possibility, but one which exists, unlike the never-never land of communism. But unfortunately, with this craze for more and more things, all them sleek and glossy, and with people themselves becoming sleeker and glossier, as if they also started to become like the products they own, we are going far from the idea of the world as a garden ( and closer and closer to the world becoming one big airport, with its sanitised atmosphere, its duty free shops, its dull people reading dull magazines, its deadly seriousness).

I am reading Philippe Djian’s “Criminels” and I can feel an ugliness of being emanating from the pages of the book. There is no physical description of the main characters, as far as I can remember, but I can almost smell their fetid breath, feel their flabby bellies, see their empty eyes. Not that they are peculiar people. The main character, Francis is a laid off harbour worker, there is also a sort of male –hysterical character called Victor, a policeman called Ralph, his nymphomaniac wife Nicole and a woman called Sonia who all the time talks in terms of aura and vibrations, but, oddly enough, seems to be sanest, healthiest person in the story. I say “seem” because it is rather difficult to make up what exactly is happening as the story unfolds, because it is a blur of vapid conversations between the characters, which comes to the reader as through a haze, as if he is sitting dead drunk in their midst. It feels as if you had gone on a month-long group tour of some incredibly boring country – the Kerguelen islands, maybe ? I am maybe insulting the place out of ignorance - and the people you are with are an incredibly bland, boring, suspicious lot, and on the evening of the last day of that trip, the whole group sits together by a camp fire on a bleak shore, under a grey sky, and for some reason, maybe because you want to remember the vacuous horror of this moment, or because you are so drunk that you decide you’d better do this or else you’ll be doing something sillier such as picking up a fight, you have decided to film the whole scene with your camcorder. So there you go, doing close ups of all those faces you want so much to forget, tomorrow morning, picking up snatches of conversations, having long takes of someone’s feet, patiently recording how, as the evening progresses, your “friends” – who, during that one month, have been cheating on each other like it was getting out of fashio – fall, one after the other, flat forward in a puddle of mumbled accusations, laments, wisecracks and flashes of anger. From time to time, the camera shifts to filming the steely, implacable sea and the cruel looking clouds, to allow the viewer some relief. But the analogy is misplaced – because, someone who takes the camera and films these people is , in a way, proclaiming his distance from them. But the reader is emotionally plunged in the story – it is well written enough for this to happen – so there is no escape : one feels at one with the characters, and the terrible thing is that they are not even wholly evil : Francis tries to take care of his insane father, Elizabeth tries to bring together Francis and his son, Francis really cares for Elizabeth. But for some reason , love is not enough, things go awry. The Police (the rock group) said, in one of their songs: “There’s got to be an Invisible Sun, that gives it heat when the whole day’s gone”. It is as if this invisible sun had died out, and nothing good can ever come out of people, however hard they try.
Why is that so ? In the case of Francis, I have the impression that there is a hardened shell of cynicism about him, which makes him say unpleasant things one time too many. He is a Bogart too far gone into being Bogart, and who can only play the tough gangsters , the Lefties and Tigers of his earlier career, and will never graduate to being a Rick or even a Marlowe of his later years. One can only admire the courage of existentialist writers like Philippe Djian, to create such sordid, yet believable worlds as they do. It takes a lot of moral strength to do this without collapsing into madness.

I have been reading “The Inheritance of Loss” by Kiran Desai, which won the Booker Prize last year. It is rather interesting, a good book, but the characters are not terribly appealing. A misanthropic retired judge rotting in a villa amidst the mountains, his orphan grand daughter, the son of their cook who scrapes a living as an illegal immigrant in New York – I am listing them in order of attractiveness: the judge is a dead bore, the girl is so-so, the cook’s son enlisted most of my interest, probably because of his underdog appeal. Anyway, I didn’t finish the novel. By the time I had reached about two thirds of it, I had the growing impression that the whole story didn’t have enough momentum for it to reach a convincing end.

I didn’t quite understand how this book got the Booker, and I went googling to see what other people felt about it. Thus did I stumble on an awful article entitled “Wounded by the West” written by Pankaj Mishra, in February 2006 in the New York Times. The link is as follows:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/books/review/12mishra.html?ex=1297400400&en=a3d469a1782b2d59&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt

Truly shocking, that article. The self rightedness of it. The just guy just lifts up everything which is wrong with the characters’ lives and personalities – the judge’s misanthropy, the servile anglophilia of the old crones whom the girl is friend to, the miseries of the illegal immigrant – and drops it all at the doorstep of the West. Just like that.

I don’t know if I’ve received a bad upbringing, but I tend to believe that people do share a bit of responsibility for who they’ve become, by the time they’re fifty. I didn’t know that a guy can spend his whole life as a bizzare, self-hating character, despising his fellow Indians, (badly) aping the British, but that it’s not his fault at all, no way, it’s because of colonialism. Oh really. Same goes for the old crones with their imported Marks and Spencer’s underwear or whatever.

You gather, reading Mr Mishra’s article, the idea that India was some sort of Utopia that was once invaded by some evil aliens coming from a mothership called the West, and they’ve laid the whole garden of Eden to waste.

But a few months before, I do remember having read part of an article from the same Mr Mishra, where he was telling how, after graduating from a provincial university in North India, he had spent one winter in the library at Benares University, reading all the novels that came by his hand, trying to pick up the latest names and trends in contemporary English literature. And after some research on him, I came to understand that it is when he himself made his way to England, that he became a successful author.

And that evil West that he is talking of, is it not also part of Kiran Desai’s inheritance ? She does have a German grandmother, doesn’t she ?

My point is, that Western culture which Mr Mishra is talking of like a clean sprightly elf talking of Sauron in his impregnable fortress, isn’t it part of Indian civilisation, in the same way as the Persian/Arabic heritage in Northern India, even stronger, actually ? When the top brass wakes up in India, they do read the Times of India and The Hindu at breakfast, don’t they, I mean, they read English language newspapers. And they do like to send their kids to Catholic schools, and later to English-speaking universities and IIM’s… Mr Mishra is part of that set up, the West has made him well-known and prosperous, and so is Ms Desai. I’m not blaming them for that, it’s just that one has to face the fact of life, which is that India’s elite does have a love affair with the West.

That does not mean the West is beyond reproach, far from that. But that Mr Mishra should come in on his high horses, like that, talking about the West as if he was some tiger-skin clad sadhu in the Himalayas, it’s pretty rich.

I suspect it’s a habit of the Indian top brass, of suddenly lecturing others as if they themselves were beings of light. The way they can just , at the drop of a hat, start talking of the “spiritual decadence of the West” always leaves me breathless. What on earth gives them the entitlement to talk of spirituality and morality, they who live in a society which is greedy and corrupt to the core ? I like the way they explain away the poverty and backwardness of their country by blaming it on the poor. Yessir, they do, I have heard Indians explain to me, without blinking an eye, that India is held up in its progress by its rampant population growth, and that’s because they’re a democratic country, so they just can’t enforce a one child policy like the eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeviiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiil Chinese do. So, they just have to let the poor keep breeding, nothing doing , yaar, hopeless bunch, those poor. Pretty clever explanation, eh ?

I must have been reading the wrong articles on sustainable report, but it just happens that whatever I read on the matter, I always come across the notion that one of the key elements for sustainable development is mass literacy, especially the education of the girl child. A literate girl child will, once married, have a greater tendency to be interested in learning about contraception, and to use it. She will also tend to see to it that her children get some education, as she herself can read and write. An illiterate woman, on the other hand, is ignorant and superstitious, and will feel afraid to go enquire about contraception methods or anything regarding her well-being, for that matter. She will feel ashamed that she won’t understand what is explained to her.

So, you’d expect that Indian society would care to give some education and basic health care to its poor. No go, man. Indian society is profoundly elitist, and Nehruvian “socialism” hasn’t changed that. On the contrary, Nehru, with his obsession with heavy industry and electric dams, saw to it that the country was well provided in universities and technical institutes. He didn’t care much about mass education and health care. India’s fabulous economic growth is happening in the cities. Its countryside is like the African bush – no roads lead to there, and there’s just nothing out there but mud huts strewn amidst the fields. One can read the World Bank reports about rural education and health services in India. It’s shocking.

And it’s even more shocking to hear well-off Indians talk about their poor. A friend of mine just came back from Delhi and the Indian official who was guiding him through town said, acknowledging my friend’s shock at seeing the people living on shacks on the roadside: “Don’t bother yourself with these people. They live, breed and die on the streets. It’s always been like that”. Nobody sees the poor in India, not in reality, and even less on television, which is filled with fair-skinned, prosperous actors and actresses in the soap operas. Let’s not even talk of Bollywood. And they say that the West is racist….

It’s a pretty nice life, actually, being one of India’s elite. The state scoops up its meager resources to build you gleaming, state-of –the-art universities and IIT’s and IIM’s, while the rural poor squat under the trees around a piece of rotten chalkboard. Once you’ve squeezed the country’s educational resources to the limit, you get yourself a green card and fly to the States. But not only that, man, you also have a CLEAN CONSCIENCE. Ah mean, whatever’s going bad in poor ole India, it’s the fault of the White Man, and of the niggers in the countryside…

While I was doing some research on China National Highway 219 ( Xinjiang to Tibet) for my second novel, I came across this website whose candid style I like a lot:

http://www.tibettravel.info/get-to-tibet/xinjiang-tibet-highway.html

It's a Tibet travel info guide and it does not pull any punches:

The Xinjiang-Tibet Highway will be blocked by snow in winter and spring and it’s impossible to travel. The best time to drive is from May to the middle of October. The climate in the trip is terrible and food and accommodation condition is not good, either. Clothes to guard against the coldness should be prepared. Medicines against ailments and illness (medicine to stop diarrhea, diminish inflammation, and to treat the cold) according to the physical conditions of the tourists themselves should also be prepared. All people will have altitude reaction on Jieshandaban Mountain, so tourists are advised to take some medicines and oxygen.

Room and board conditions are not good along the highway. So it’s advisable to take some solid food and sleeping bag. Vegetables are short along the road, so some vitamin pills should be taken.

I like the slightly puzzled tone taken by the writer regarding the holiness given to Mount Kailash and lake Manosarovar. Here's an excerpt regarding the latter:

In Burang County, the Holy Lake, Manasarova (Mapam Tso), enjoys equal popularity as the Holy Mountain. The lake covers 412square kilometers (159 square miles) and its altitude is 4,587 meters (15049 feet) and is 77 meters deep at the deepest point. Judging by the area, altitude and depth of the lake, Lake Manasarova doesn’t stand out. But because it is called the “Jasper Lake” on earth [Jasper Lake is a place mentioned in clinical Chinese mythologies as a lake in the Kunlun Mountains where a Goddess lives], it is considered the most venerated queen of the plateau lakes. Many Buddhists deem that as long as they can gaze upon the lake, they are sainted. If they circumambulate the lake, it was just like the circumambulation around the Holy Mountain, which can accumulate benevolence and at least excuse the pain of being sent to the hell after their death.

Most mainland Chinese don't quite get the point about sacredness, in general. Of course, there have been a great many religious movements in Chinese history, sometimes taking on millenarian tones ( the White Lotus, the Heavenly Kingdom), but I get the impression that the main thrust of Chinese culture is literary, not religious. The mandarin, well versed in poetry and history , is the central character of Chinese culture.

Conversely, the central character of Indian culture is the brahmin, versed in sacred texts and in philosophical speculation. Indians are fond of philosophy, and the Chinese of literature and history.

In the opening paragraph of that website, the writer talks of the "overwhelming charm of lake Manosarovar" . The use of the word "charm" is interesting, I have the impression that, out of habit, he is using it when speaking of a lake, having read so much Chinese poetry about the Western Lake ( near Suzhou), and about the beauty of nature, in general. An Indian writer would have quoted text after text from the holy scriptures, about the sanctity of the lake.

When my son started talking, it was interesting to see that my mother's first concern was to make him learn prathna ( making Hindu prayers) while my wife was teaching him Tang Dynasty poetry -

Chuang qian ming yue guang

Yi Shi di shang shuang

Ju tou wang ming yue

Di tou si gu xiang

This is a website which gives three translations of this poem:

http://www.chinapage.org/libai014.html

It is probably the most beloved of Chinese poems.

Overheard the other day on Radio France Internationale, a kind of literary commentator of daily life, telling the following anecdote: He found, in a newspaper, a classified advert which said ( I am telling from memory): “Dear unknown Miss, I am the young man who was sitting next to you in Restaurant… last Saturday. On that day, like every Saturday, I took my grandmother out for lunch. While she was talking to me, my attention wandered to you, you were the tall brunette dressed in (…) who was sitting at the next table, and were reading a novel. and while you were on your way out, you had the waiter pass to me a note which I found very touching. I would very much like to meet you again. Signed (…)” Isn’t the whole story touching, said our commentator. One imagines the young man, neatly dressed for the occasion, coming to pick up his grandmother, as on every Saturday. She herself is her best clothes, with a drop of cologne behind her ears, and started eagerly waiting for him a quarter of an hour before the time he usually comes. They go out, she probably chooses the same restaurant half of the time. She has ordered a lamb chop maybe and a Tarte Tatin, and is telling him for the umpteenth time how she met his grandfather on the eve of the feast of St Jean, in a provincial town. He, grown a little absent minded from the retelling, lets his eyes wander to the tall brunette, absorbed in a novel in the table next to them. He believes that she has not noticed him, but later on a note comes to his table, while she is on her way out. One would like the handwriting to be a beautiful cursive, so film-like , or novel-like it all sounds.

Touching indeed, and so classy. It must have happened in one of the provincial towns. Paris struck me as being such a mess, its people rude and tense.

As long as there are young men who take their grandmothers out for lunch every Saturday, said our commentator as a conclusion, and who afterwards pine for brunettes who left them some mysterious note, there is reason to hope about life.

It is the kind of story which made me long so much, in my youth, to go to France. Whatever disappointments I’ve had later on, I guess I’ll always love France for some things. The other day, I happened on the website of a not –too-well known, I guess, French publishing house, called l’Asiathèque, devoted to things Asian. Just on their literature section, these guys had published such books, all in French, as a collection of poems by two 18th century Korean poets, an epic poem by an early 20th century Turkmen, or what is Uzbek poet, another one by a modernist Bengal poet of the 1930’s, a collection of folk tales from an ancient Chinese writer who was interested in the subject, a sort of Andersen of his times.

And it just went on and on like this. Then there was the philosophy section, and still others.

That reminded me of walking near the rue des Ecoles, in the Quartier Latin, and coming on an old Armenian bookstore, like in a film, with a bearded old man wearing wire rimmed round glasses, and shelves crammed full of old Armenian books, but also travel books in different languages, and old bilingual dictionaries. Later on, another library I came upon was doing a special event on Octavio Paz and there were first editions of his works lying open on the front window. In the background, a big ornate hotel particulier was holding an exhibition on “Birds in sacred Western African Art”.

It’s all so densely packed. Everything in Paris is crammed, the culture, the business, the politics. It’s fascinating but impossible to live in, in the long term, unless one was born a Parisian. There is too much of everything, and it’s mostly ridiculously expensive. But thank God, it’s there. The world would be an awful place were it not for the French, you have to allow that to them. But if only they could spread out a bit out of Paris…

Yesterday I heard on the BBC that the Indian government conducted some ceremonies to mark the 150 th anniversary of the 1857 mutiny. By coincidence, the other day I was reading a book called “A Sahib remembers” which is a collection of interesting anecdotes and commentaries about the days of the British Raj. One of them was about the blowing up of the Delhi Magazine during the Mutiny. The Indian Mutineers had surrounded the Magazine, which contained a vast amount of weaponry and gunpowder, and was guarded by some British soldiers. The latter decided to blow the place rather than surrender, given the vital importance of that arsenal . Of course, that meant they would be killed on the spot.

Amazingly though, it seems that some of the British soldiers did survive the explosion. If I do remember well, one of them was picked up by a friendly Sikh soldier who hid him in his village for the rest of the Mutiny.

This morning, thinking back of the news about this ceremony in India , I was led to thoughts quite far removed from the politics and warfare of that period- I was thinking of that British soldier who survived what must have been a huge explosion. I was fascinated by the image of that man, probably in the redcoat uniform of the British Army of those days, flying up against the blue sky, his legs spinning as if he was pushing the pedals of an invisible flying bicycle. The cartoonish humour of it – the comical movement of his legs, looking for ground to tread on, he looking punily human against the vastness of the sky, that impression emphasised by his old fashioned uniform, all brass buttons and regimental insignias, a mere mortal visiting for a moment the domain of the gods, only to be punished the moment after by the fall back to the ground.

The image is funny yet one also feels some envy for him, as for all those who take to the skies, even for a brief moment. Of course we do fly nowadays, but in different manners, about which I guess there is a scale of disappointment corresponding to the degree of distance from what would be ideal flying. Lowest on that scale would be commercial flying, which is basically sitting in a narrow seat, flipping through magazines in a sort of train which happens to glide up high in the air rather than go on a railtrack. Much better is what one sees audacious people doing with delta planes, these big flying sail contraptions which take off from mountain slopes. They maneuver them with some levers by which they guide the sail up and down prevailing winds, and from what I have seen them do on television, it seems the more adept ones practice what is the nearest humanly possible form of ideal flying.

The latter being flying such as we do in dreams : soaring up from the ground simply because you feel like it. In my case, I will occasionally , in the middle of a dream, realise that I am not subject to gravity and I will then slowly rise. I am aware, during the dream, that this is due to some special “technique” which I must master. There is some “lifting power” which enables me to go up, and it usually emanates from the palms of my hands. I must let go of the fear of falling, and then I go up, avoiding the tree branches and electric cables. At some point, usually a bit over the rooftops, I feel vertigo, and am afraid to rise further. I then try to move forward, but for some reason, it is pretty laborious. People are watching me, with amusement or annoyance rather than amazement. Sometimes they point at me and it seems they want to tell me to get down now.

Their annoyance I guess would come from the fact that they feel I am doing something reserved to a special few, normally saints and prophets: The Virgin Mary carried by angels , Prophet Muhammad on the Borak Mare, Elijah on his ladder, Saint Anthony on his pig. Or superheroes, our modern gods: Superman, Flame On, Iron Man (1).

Flying in a machine, on the other hand, does not bring about that idea of sacrilege. It is understood that flying this way is more like driving, and is usually even more cautious and rule based than driving a car. It is acknowledged to be the very serious business of steering an intensely serious looking piece of machinery.

In his anime works, Miyazaki constantly invents flying machines which correspond more to what, in our subconscious, flying machines ought to have been.

To begin with, they often have flapping or vibrating wings, like those of birds or insects. Airplanes strike us as being boringly machine-like because they have those static wings, jet engines being the worse, because at least turbo propeller airplanes have those fast moving propellers which make them look a bit insect like. His machines seem to be consciously doing the effort of swimming through the air. Even the huge evil looking bombers in “Howl's Moving Castle” have a row of slowly flapping winglets on either side. Real airplanes look like huge pieces of metal which hang in the air as if they negated it. One almost feels annoyed with scientists for inventing a piece of machinery which so completely defies common sense. ( In a post in December, I think, or maybe November , I have written about the discomfort we feel about scientific revolutions , because they tell us things which simply do not make sense- that the earth is round, that it is not the centre of the world, that we descend from apes, that a particle can be in two points in space at the same time, that the act of observing a phenomenon affects its behaviour)

Also, Miyazaki’s flying machines are often insanely maneuvrable , such as the dragonfly –like small airplanes of “Howl”, which even zip through the air with a buzzing insect sound. This is what flying a small airplane should have been like, an intensely fun roller coaster experience, instead of being so much about watching dials and checking coordinates.

Finally, they are not deadly. In the few Miyazaki anime I have seen, nobody ever gets killed from an airplane crash. If damaged, his airplanes simply zig zag down to the ground with a hurt sound. A real-world airplane, if damaged, plummets to the ground with merciless force, the speed with which it crashes down being revelatory of how profoundly alien to its aerial element it actually was. It is basically a sort of car engine which has been made to fly by some trick of playing with air lift.

Such is our destiny. Unfortunately, we are not a flying species, except maybe for some of our saints and prophets. Or maybe some of our deltaplane flyers. But I don’t know if even they can experience the lightness of being which ideal flying would be about.

Not even that British soldier was able to experience this blissful feeling: I have just checked about him in “A Sahib Remembers” ( by P.J.O. Taylor, by the way). His name was Raynor and he and his wife were standing under the one of the rare arches which did not fall down under the huge explosion, which was heard thirty kilometres away in Meerut. Both were uninjured and were helped through the rest of the Mutiny by friendly Indians.

Well, at least miracles do happen.

(1) Batman does not fly, but then he is a pretty special kind of superhero. He represents our wish to swallow a pill of evil, so that we could take revenge on those who oppress us – the child’s fantasy of becoming a big, fearsome man who will terrify the schoolyard bully. He is Night, but a Night in which we have become the bogeyman, that most earthlike of our frights, with his heavy steps, his rough, hairy hands and dark, unknowable face. The immense arsenal of weapons he hides under his mansion, those massively built, overweaponised cars and airplanes he rides in represent a wish to subdue Matter, so that we may fight back at Its grotesque, hostile manifestations ( the Joker, with his stiffened face and poisons, is a Troll of Matter). But, by virtue of his intimate contact with Matter, Batman cannot fly, for this is the attribute of the Spirit. He can only briefly hover and swing by the means of strong, steely wires ended with fierce looking hooks which grasp at Matter like sharp, precise claws.

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Of usefulness

At school, I used to be worried by the opinion, unstated but hanging in the air, that a developing country should give priority in its education budget to useful subjects such as engineering and informatics over literature.

Then in my twenties, I was given the doubtful priviledge of conversation with some persons, active at the head of what we politely call "socio cultural organisations". One of them, an engineer, struck me by his passionate advocacy of the most tenebrously conservative opinions on culture. Conservative in the Mauritian sense often means the preservation ,at great expense, of forms of peasant culture which had come with us in the times of Indian immigration, but which are out of time and place, for we are no longer in rural India – old folk songs, certain rituals, meant to die on the vine , to give place to a new culture.

I owe to these persons the debt of realising that one rarely has a passion for useful science. There do exist some people who will gladly spend a whole week end redoing the plumbery. But generally, accountants and informaticians are, like everyone else, enthralled by useless pursuits. A car is useful only because it helps people to go to the races , to football matches, to the sea side, to the temple, to visit their parents. Of course, a car also brings us to the office, but most of us derive little joy from this. We get our paycheck because it enables us to live, which means, beyond the basic needs of food , shelter and clothing, the pursuit of irrational pleasures.

Even an Edison or a Da Vinci were driven by passions – to explore mathematics, and science , by which, inadvertently, they would stumble on useful discoveries, and the later being useful only because they helped others in the pursuit of other useless pleasures.

Man by nature is addicted to some pleasure, whether it be alcohol, or religion, or women, or invention. Communism was, among other reasons, unpleasant because of its glorification of engineers and heavy industry. If most people were passionate about electrical dams, maybe it would have been a more popular form of social organisation. But people generally like glamour and/ or, religion, and communism was low on both.

So, now, I no longer feel ashamed about loving books and art films. My friends at the local bar – lawyers, accountants and policemen – are devoted to football, engine tuning, whisky and horseracing. The difference between me and them is one of degree of cultural sophistication, not of nature.

Of Morality in art

I sometimes wonder whether the devil can be beautiful. Can art prevail if it is immoral ? I think my doubts come from my family background. I was raised in a standard Hindu middle class family, which means a bit of pietism did get in my bones. Like many others before me, I have flipped the pages of the encyclopedia at thirteen, looking at those naked women of Western art, and I have wondered, deep inside, whether all that art was not an excuse to look at naked people.

There has always remained, in me, the question of whether the aim of life should not be religion, and if all that secular art and literature was not a dangerous diversion. From that doubt, there came the need to justify art in moral terms. That art is good because it does this or does that. But it could not quench the suspicion that art can exist, beyond morality.

I only made headway on that question when I realised the obvious, that art is related to sensual enjoyment. The latter is predicated by moral guidelines. We say that such a piece of art is "high" because it elevates our spiritual or intellectual awareness, the other is "low" or "crass" because it only thrills low instincts.

Can high art exist, which does away with moral guidelines ? Quentin Tarantino's films are an interesting case. We do enjoy violence on the screen, let's face it. It is one of the baser instincts which we should get rid of, but as long as we don't, we have action movies to serve our needs. "Pulp Fiction" elevates the violence level, and wraps it up with derision and virtuoso narrative skills. It is outrageous and beautifully told. But after watching "Kill Bill" one and two, I personnally feel a bit sick of it. I would not like to watch "Kill Bill" again. There is no longer that coating of derision we had in "Pulp Fiction", which gave me licence to enjoy the violence.

Moral guidelines vary from person to person. Not at the core ( at least, we hope not), but at the edge. How much can we suspend our moral judgement, because we find something beautiful ? Actually, we are, most of the time, most willing to leave moral judgement hanging on a hook. There is a great deal of dubious dealing which goes on in our mind when we appreciate art. We may look at a Renaissance picture of the Virgin and Child, and convince ourselves that we are looking at a fine piece of painting, but we are mostly enjoying the sight of a beautiful woman ( nobody, I guess, pays much attention to the Child). At least for the likes of me, a great deal of my aesthetic enjoyment is a cheating on the Trappist monk who lives in a cell, somewhere in my brain.

We cheat, or we may be seduced. Some beauty is tame ( gazing at a landscape), most of the rest involves some sex or violence. Beauty can be pretty treacherous. Of all forms of art, the sentimental, or mawkish, is one of the most dangerous, because it pretends to be related to morality, when it is in fact a celebration of self rightedness. The popularity of sentimental films and novels in a society is a sure sign of general hypocrisy.

The beauty of collective violence is also seductive. Nazi paraphernalia are a case in point. The deathly allure of their processions by torchlight, which history documentaries cannot help but show, when they could have avoided them, and the stylish German army: the Messerschmidts and panzers were splendid machines, and the army officers had a beastly beauty ,with their smart uniforms, and monocles, and duelling scars, and riding crops.

A tricky form of beauty is that of "libertinage". It is a French exercise, starting from the 18th century, which stems from a virulent strain, in French culture, of anticlericalism. It deliberately provokes Catholic morality by describing amoral sensual enjoyment in all its refinements. We owe "Manon Lescaut" and "Les liaisons dangereuses" to it, but it has trickled down the centuries into a peculiar, flippant French outlook at human relationships, which has given us the tongue in cheek love scene between Jean Seberg and Belmondo in "A bout de souffle" , and a great too many more bitter than sweet love comedies in later French cinema. There is something dark and tired about the French view of love, with their créatures ( Brigitte Bardot, Sophie Marceau in a sillier vein, Isabelle Adjani in a smarter vein) flitting around cynical, badly shaved men ( the
French worship Humphrey Bogart, and despise Maurice Chevalier).

Fortunately, or unfortunately, I am divided about how to qualify it, it is a form of beauty on the decline, because it hinges on the idea of woman as a temptress, and it necessary involves the man ( heavily built, deep set eyes, Lino Ventura type, obviously a moine défroqué, a man who would, in earlier times, have been a monk, the kind that takes care of the forge, but in modern times, has to be content with being a police inspector) slapping at one point the foxy lady, or at least shaking her by the shoulders ( see The Maltese Falcon for details) . You can't have that on the screen in our politically correct times, all actresses are goooooood, and the men are baaaaaaaaaad, or well meaning jerks.

The beauty of temptation has lost all its refinement nowadays. In the 40's we could still have Rita Hayworth's dance of the seven veils. Now it comes to that sorry excuse for a film noir, more of a bad fantasy about rich women, Basic Instinct. The way these two policemen go on and on about the 110 million dollars Sharon Stone has inherited as if that was the point of the story. Actually, I'm sure at one point the film director contemplated scrapping the sex scenes altogether and going on a tour of her villa instead, with the interior decorator's phone number on the left of the screen. The heavily emphasised contrast with Michael Douglas' commonplace lifestyle. His big clumsy American car and her sleek smart European convertible, in that car chase. That interrogation scene, where she, wrapped in cashmere, shows her cunt to a room of men in bad suits – marvelously subtle assertion of class superiority, isn't it. Other, more primitive people, use wit to the same effect, I am told. Poor Sharon Stone, she could have weighed 300 pounds and have hairs sprouting from her ears, Michael Douglas would still have slept with her. A movie that uses sex as a pretext to wallow in social envy, how pitiful.

Come to think of it, how fast we are losing the art of seduction - which lies at the heart of the idea of sinful beauty - who are the women artists, nowadays, who could play the role of sultry seductress? Meg Ryan (????), Julia Roberts ( can't do much apart from her goofy smile), Gwyneth Paltrow ( vague). Uma Thurman could, a long time ago. Maybe Angelina Jolie, though there is something a bit irritating about her. There is hope with Scarlett Johanson. And then you have these "singers" on MTV who look more and more like pornographic actresses, in these "clips" which themselves look more and more like porn films. Not too brillant on the men's side either. Brad Pitt, a bit. George Clooney and Pierce Brosnan, whom everyone is a bit tired of, by now. Why do I have this feeling that in the future all actors will look like Tom Hanks and all actresses like Meg Ryan ?

What boring times we live in, everyone so nice, neat and hardworking, and with all those beautiful actresses who keep preaching in their interviews in the glossies about how they eat only salad, have a great mom and pop and care deeply for the poor, when they are not playing in a movie in which the main part is held by a giant monkey or iguana or whatever. In the 50's, you had a journalist asking Ava Gardner: "How come you married that 120 pound midget ?" ( meaning Frank Sinatra) and she replied : " Honey, coz 20 pounds of it is cock", and no doubt she blew her cigarette smoke in his face after that.

Which brings me to guess that sin is embedded in art. It becomes clearer in times like ours, when everyone tries to sanitise sex, when art tries to become politically correct. Apart from landscape paintings and the like, all secular art is inherently sinful to a degree. All art is not sinful, but if one tries to remove the sin from art, a great deal of art goes with it. How obvious it sounds, suddenly. I hope the reader does not feel I wasted his time, when the conclusion seems to have been so foregone.

I’m wondering about programmes like “The weakest link” or these talkshows where people talk in a loose manner and the host is paid to throw in nasty putdowns. Some people defend these shows, by saying something like: “They’re showing something which is also true about human nature”. So, these shows would work like astringents. Those who enjoy them, are suffering from sacharrine overdose, from watching neat Hollywood movies and detective television series. Mainstream Hollywood only deals with mainstream reality. It leaves great wildernesses unexplored – pure greed and nastiness ( “The Weakest Link”), the joy of seeing a starlet being put down in a talk show are just some nearer approaches of these vast prairies.

The mainstream audience is aware something is missing from the stuff it is rationed, which is supposed to represent its tastes. Chips and hamburgers are nice, but it also wants pickles, thousand year eggs, Sichuan pepper. I used to think, with dread, that after decades of being fed the standard stuff, the audience would have been conditioned to like only that ( we are talking about the mainstream audience, the neat big block of the population). Mass production culture was to engender Mass production man. What went wrong with the corporate politburo’s indoctrination programme?

Maybe the fault lies with television itself. It is like a salesman endlessly, 24 hour, 7 day a week wedging its foot in your door. Its grab for people’s attention, which started 60 years ago , has become more and more desperate, with standards reaching new abysses every year. While sinking in the mud, the beast has thrown up to the surface some things which the audience should not have gained access to – odd sensations.

It could also have to do with internet. Through email many people have actually started enjoying expressing themselves in a written form. I remember when I was small, if someone would go to live abroad, his friends would tell him “Well , take care. You know I’m not very good at writing…”. Writing letters was considered bothersome. After two or three awkward attempts, people would fall on to the yearly christmas card. But with email, people do write, and many even enjoy it. Of course, they send each other endless jokes and photos but still, a lot of writing does go on. And that opens new rooms in the brain, it starts enjoying odd turns of the phrase, puns, allusions, bold assertions, what if’s.

Another extraordinary phenomenon: blogs. Who would have thought people , yes, standard issue people, , would regularly put their ruminations and doggerel on the web for the whole world to see ? Instead of just watching Dallas, they would write what they thought of the last episode, and disagree with someone else about it, and discuss the thing over ?

Maybe programmes like Skipe are not so good in this respect. Email is getting out of fashion, blogs could also be in danger. You can just talk yourself silly now. You can even have these making- up conversations with your lover where at first everything one says is followed by a long silences to think and digest and prepare a reply, and after three hours, when everything’s repaired, both are mumbling fervent promises and kissing the phone receiver– and one is in Cleveland and the other in Nauru. It is great for lovers, but it does cut in the woods of written language. SMS also doesn’t work good in this respect because it represents a sort of fast food version of written language, very compact and emphasizing short punchy lines over deeper expressions.

Unless an equilibrium is reached, just like the normal mail has survived the arrival of internet. Except that the mail has become a strictly utilitarian medium, there are not so many love letters anymore. Maybe email will also become increasingly associated with communicating on serious matters, or with people you are not so close to. That will be a loss because people will de-learn all the skills they had acquired in the 1990’s in expressing intimate thoughts in writing.

What about blogs ? Telephone is great for reaching to the people you know, but blogs and discussion forums enable one to meet new people – and the beauty of it is that, unlike cocktails, where you first see a pretty head, and say “hi” and then don’t know what to say next, here you know right away that the other person in the forum is into thai food, which is wonderful if you like this too. The only problem is that you don’t know whether you are talking to a pretty head or to a convict in Sing Sing.

The great battle of our times is about meaning. The more the web is like a school playground at noon, with children playing everywhere, the more hope there is. But if the schoolmaster succeeds in having drill maneuvers at noon, so that children can get physical exercise in the correct manner, instead of wasteful and dangerous playing activities, then we are truly lost. Or if the children themselves, instead of playing around, just sit there fiddling at GameBoys, then we are also lost.

I can’t resist the pleasure of adorning my blog with this gem of French poetry, the last part of Booz Endormi , in La Légende des Siècles by Victor Hugo. The first part is already glorious, there is the description of Booz’s uprightedness ( "il était vêtu de probité et de lin propre", which has entered the language), and his amazement at his dream, of a great tree sprouting up from his tired body ( "Un roi chantait en bas, en haut mourait un Dieu") : "Une race naitrait de moi !" "Quand on est jeune, on a des matins glorieux" " Je suis vieux, Seigneur, et mon âme penche vers le tombeau/ comme un boeuf vers le ruisseau). Dazed by his dream, he does not notice Ruth, his kinswoman, who has come to lie down at his feet, in the hope of being taken as his wife. Then Hugo wraps up of one his greatest poems by an entrancingly beautiful evocation of a nocturnal atmosphere:

"L’ombre était nuptiale, auguste et solenelle
Les anges y volaient sans doute obscurément
Car on voyait passer dans la nuit, par moment,
Quelque chose de bleu qui paraissait une aile

La respiration de Booz qui dormait
Se mêlait au bruit sourd des ruisseaux dans la mousse.
On était dans le mois où la nature est douce
Les collines ayant des lys sur leur sommet

Ruth songeait et Booz dormait; l’herbe était noire;
Les grelots des troupeaux palpitaient vaguement;
Une immense bonté tombait du firmament;
C’était l’heure tranquille où les lions vont boire.

Tout reposait dans Ur et dans Jérimadeth
Les astres émallaient le ciel profond et sombre;
Le croissant fin et clair parmi ces fleurs de l’ombre
Brillait à l’occident, et Ruth se demandait,

Immobile, ouvrant l’oeil à moitié sous les voiles,
Quel dieu, quel moissoneur de l’éternel été
Avait, en s’en allant, négligemment jeté
Cette faucille d’or dans le champ des étoiles"

( from a letter, written in Summer 1999, in Beijing)

Here,life goes on its own sleepy space. Beijing also has been under a heat wave, and looking at old chinese people sitting under the shade fanning themselves made me feel very like I was back in Port Louis. But here it is different, in the sense that I feel a liking for the people, whereas back in Port Louis, I would walk in Chinatown, see the sights, smell its strange smells, a mixture of dust and eucalyptus oil, and taste the food, but it remained a bit alien. Diaspora Chinese are rather distant people. In Mauritius, I’ve had long, close friendships with Creoles and Muslims, I’ve been to their places, gone to church and mosque with them, and generally spent so much time in their company that I can safely say that a little bit of me is Creole and Muslim. But the Chinese kept to themselves. The other day, I was speaking to a sino-mauritian, like we call them, who lives here. I said: "So, you’re from Port Louis. Maybe you know my father’s family, they were from Madame Street, near the pagoda.." She said: "We were very Chinese, in my family…", meaning by that, that they knew only Chinese people.
But here, like I was saying before, it is impossible not to like them after some time. They are a warm, welcoming people, although it takes some time to get used to their crude manners. Most of them look like they are fresh from the villages. Also, the Red Guards crushed the old middle class during the Cultural Revolution, and condemned all forms of bourgeois behaviour. So, the working class lost that elite whose manners they could have taken on. And as for the nouveaux riches who have appeared since the early 80’s, they imitate American manners, which only makes things worse.
Despite the Chinese in mauritius generally being an aloof bunch, still, China was part of that kaleidoscope of cultures I grew in, but as a distant star. My neighbourhood friend was a Muslim, and I remember eating beef once at his place when I was small, which is forbidden for us. The house behind mine was that of a mulatto, who spoke english to her dogs for one week everytime she came back from visiting her son in Australia. China only came to the fore whenever we went to visit my mother’s family in Port Louis.
Port Louis, boiling in its hyper humid bay surrounded by hills was a rather strange, fascinating place for me. I have ever since been using images from my childhood visits there in my writing. But if I could paint, I would have liked to paint a huge, crowded, picture in the naïve style, like the folk painters in Haiti, showing the people of Port Louis, in the 70’s.
In that picture, somwhere near the centre you would have the pot holed streets in the northern part of Port Louis, with afro-hair style creoles hanging around near little tin-and-wood shops. In the 70’s when I was a kid, afro hairdos were in fashion. I was frightened of ,yet fascinated by the creoles in Port Louis loitering near my grandmother’s place, with their huge James Brown heads, open shirts, big gold-plated chains, platform shoes. They radiated sexuality and danger. Their women had short skirts and a defiant come-get-me-if-you-can look. The men flicked a knife at you, gangster-style, if you looked for trouble with them. Then somewhere a bit to the south of the creoles, in the picture, you would see a hindu temple, with a pink dome half hidden by trees. The street where my grandmother lived was almost an indian village, and the temple near her house was a quiet place with a big banyan tree whose trunk was surrounded by the threads tied by people who had made vows ("promesses"), and the priest was an old brahmin who could interprete dreams and cast horoscopes.
My grand mother’s place was also a quiet little house made of iron leaves and wood. Near one of the doorstep, one could see a bit of a old newspaper which had been pasted on a wooden rafter to protect it from rotting. It started with: "The Allied met yesterday in Tehran…" but I don’t remember the rest. My grand parents were pious people, and you could see old hindi books on the shelves and a painting of Krishna bought from the bazaar on the walls, but one room had a different atmosphere. That was S..’s room. He was my mother’s little brother, a bachelor, with bad habits.
That room had pin ups on its walls, beer bottles, an ashtray, and there were always some comic books on the bed, some for children, some for adults. Looking out by the window, I would see my uncle S... squatting by the roadside with the creoles, drinking beer with them. Many of the comic books were westerns. Westerns were in their last days of fashion – Clint Eastwood, especially. The young crowded in the hot moist cinemas in Port Louis to see them. Looking beyond my uncle having his beer, I would see a dry yellow hill – Port Louis is surrounded by a U-shaped chain of hills. That hill was always dry and dusty, and it looked like the canyons in the Westerns. Even now, when I see that hill, I think of cowboys and apaches. So, in my imaginary picture, I would have , to the left of the creoles near their shop, a yellow hill
with Geronimo at its top.
There was another hill, touching the dry one. That one was always very green. It was covered with a thick forest - it received the rains coming from the central plateau of the island. It was rather high, and the clouds often gathered around its summit, which was like a thumb – it is called Montagne Le Pouce. That one, I associated with the war in Vietnam, because in another of the comic books in S...’s room, I once saw american planes flying around jungle covered hills which looked strikingly like Le Pouce.
So, in my picture, you’d have, a bit above my grandmother’s house, a green thumb-like hill with jet planes flying around it, throwing bombs. And, running out of the house by one of its doors, there would be a naked girl hiding her limbs with a bedsheet.
That would be not an allusion to the famous war photo of the little vietnamese girl running naked from the american bombs, but to one visit my mother made to the house, after her parents’ death, where she fell upon a girl whom her brother had brought to his room. She chased her out of the place.
This is a long digression, but I am presenting first the other elements of the picture then I will last talk of China, which comes at the South East of the house.
Further South of the house, coming out of the Hindu temple, you would see a cavadee procession. The cavadee is a feast of penance and vow-taking made in honour of Muruga, the son of Shiva. On that day, the penitent, after having maintained abstinence and vegetarianism for eight days, pierce their chest and arms with little needles to form the pattern of a peacock fanning his tail, the peacock being dear to Muruga, and carry on their back a miniature Muruga temple with a wooden frame covered with flowers on a long procession. My uncle S..., for all his bad boy habits, often carried the cavadee. Let’s follow the penitents.
Coming out of the temple, they lounge the border of the muslim quarter of Port Louis. That is to the left of my grandmother’s house in the picture, and I paint it as a casbah of white little cubes crowding each other, a bit like the old towns in Algeria. Do you remember the story of Naushad and Ayesha I gave you? Ayesha was a surtee, one of the rich trading families from Surat, near Pakistan The surtees are a beautiful people, a handsome mixture of persian, indian and arabic, and if you are walking in the surtee section of the muslim quarter, through which the cavadee procession is presently passing, sometimes a breath-taking beauty from the Arabian nights may pass by you on the street. So, let’s have a languid eyed shaheen (queen) peeking at the procession from the balcony of her opulent house. And notice the little wizened figure with a skullcap observing the procession from the door of the mosque. That’s the mullah, who is carefully looking at the faces of the penitent, to check whether none of the Faithful is indulging in these abominable bhut-parast (idolaters) practices.
And now the procession enters Sun Yat Sen Street. The children of the Middle Kingdom are, appropriately enough, right in the middle of Port Louis, and they look with amusement at the strange procession. The Mauritian chinese are only faintly interested in the other cultures on the island, and that kind of flamboyant penitence – at that stage many in the procession have fallen into a trance and are dancing ecstatically – is not to their taste anyway.
The Chinese. Like I’ve been saying before, they have meant little to me. I have been madly in love with a muslim girl, whose father, incidentally, finances a good part of the running costs of the mosque in front of which the procession passed earlier on, and even if I was jilted, she unintentionally set into motion a chain of events in my life which is still unfolding. It was following the advice of another girl that I once became a journalist. But when it comes to the Chinese, I have only a few stray images.
I remember my mother telling me, one rainy day, in the streets of Port Louis: "Guette enn bonnefemme in mette kabai" ("Look at that old woman. She is wearing the kabai") –effectively, among the passer-bys, I saw a bent old little chinese woman wearing the kabai, the traditional blue shirt-and-trousers worn by chinese peasants. I don’t know if she was carrying the bamboo pole with two baskets hanging at each end, or if my imagination is adding things to my memory.
I also remember, in a very old Chinese shop, a dusty red framed picture of Sun Yat Sen. He was sitting with his back very straight, in an austere setting. It looked very ancient. It reminded of the pictures of Nehru and Gandhi, which you could still see in the waiting room of any old Indian lawyer or doctor in the 70’s in Mauritius.
The idea of dust often came to my mind when I thought of China. Chinese historical films were often filmed in the arid provinces of Shanxi and Kansu, near the desert, since the stories of "old" China often occured in these places. Looking at those places, one had the feeling that China was a drab, dusty land, a bit sad. I haven’t yet been far outside Beijing, so I can’t say if it’s true. The rare old buildings one may see in Beijing, apart from those in the Forbidden City are big grey stoned houses, with the typical horned roofs, military looking in aspect, which goes in well with the rather sad "siberian" looking vegetation in the region – there are lots of pines here, and other severe-looking trees whose name I don’t know , but which all make me think of Russia.
The problem is that, already, I am starting to pick up the regional stereotypes, and stereotypes are hard to get rid of. In this case, l’idée reçue is that North China, where I am, is the "old" China, especially Shanxi province, a bit to the east of Beijing. The North is where the imperial capitals have traditionally being located. It is said to be more intellectual and conservative. These grey buildings do have an austere aspect, with their crenellated walls. It seems like a land of soldiers. Northern India also has that imperial character: a vast plain dotted with forts, castles and ancient battlefields. The North is said to be a bit narcissic: the emblematic image here is that of a chinese soldier in armour standing sentry over the Great Wall.
South China, on the other hand, is a gay tropical country, of great natural beauty. Here in the market we get mangoes and litchis from the South, and they evoke images of sandy beaches, cyclones, tropical jungles, all of which ye may find downe there. The South, with its long tradition of commerce with the rest of the world, is said to be more open to change from outside. The fact that it is where the boom started in the 80’s reinforces the stereotype.

A lazy winding conversation in the beginning of the afternoon

The other day, on a hot sleepy beginning of the afternoon, I was talking with Miss G., our young, and quite pretty, typist cum translator. Beijing was nodding, reminding itself with difficulty that Deng Xiaoping had abolished the old chinese custom of the one o’clock siesta ( but when I phoned Wuhan University, in Hubei Province, to talk to a friend, the girl at the other end of the line said– "Everyone’s sleeping here! We open again at three!", a reminder that Beijing’s imperial edicts are often disregarded by the rest of the country. Just like in India, where a provincial administrator will often quip: "Dilli door hein"- Delhi is far away )
I am reproducing bits of our conversation.
She:- "So did you go to the Fragrant Hills in the weekend?"
Me: -Yes! It was nice!" (actually it was raining. But still it was good to be a little bit out of beijing).
-You took the cable car to the top?"
-No, I walked up. I met a French family on the way. They are in Beijing for a few days, then they are going to Mongolia to do horseriding" Those crazy french.
-Oh! Really!"
-Is it safe there in Mongolia?"
-Of course it is. They are very warm people. But very rough" (coming from a chinese, means they are really very warm and rough)
-Oh. I know little about Mongolia. Do they look like the chinese?"
-Yes, they do (after a bit of reflection) Their skin is less smooth"
-How so?
-It’s a very windy country.."
-When I think of the mongolians, I think of very strong warriors, on horseback.. with moustaches"
-But that was in ancient times. I had mongolian friends at the university. They were good people..and Mongolia was part of China before, during the Yuan and Qin dynasties" now the Yuan were a mongolian dynasty, so it was rather China which was part of Mongolia, but I did not want to offend her by making that correction. Chinese people are terribly sensitive about their country. Which is one more reason why it is extremely difficult to discuss politics with them. Not only would it be dangerous for them, but also they are often too proud to admit to a foreigner that they are unsatisfied with the state of things.
She continued: "So that before, with Mongolia, China was shaped like a cow" I tried to imagine an old Qin dinasty map of China but could only conjure up images of Tintin, of japanese soldiers and of the streets of Shanghai and Kunming as described in an old english travel book I had read in a house boat on the Dal lake in Kashmir, last year, none of which images correspond to the times of the Qin dinasty.
She added: "Now, China is shaped like a rooster" ( the head being Manchuria and the tail being Xinjiang province) and continued "So, people say, the cow is a peaceful animal, which is why China was…" she hesitated.
-Dominated by foreigners?"
-Yes. But the rooster is very.." she looked for the word
-Proud? Likes to fight?"
-Mmmm , yes"
The Chinese have that thing about the "power" of animals, and plants. It is not a coincidence that the chinese horoscope is made up of animals. What she said reminded me of two things. The first one was an article I had read about the golden dragon fish. The dragon fish ( I think that is its name) is a very old species of fish, with no dorsal fin. It has a smooth gliding way of moving in the water, which can be quite hypnotic. The chinese have great respect for it, and can pay millions to get the red or golden variety, which are very rare. The article was about a young man in Hong Kong who had spent a huge fortune to buy a golden dragon fish. It was not for speculation. He said: "I love it. To have it for me is a blessing. I can watch it for hours. I have no doubt that it is a very old and wise fish, and I can feel it giving me protection" The man was not a soulful old chinese, on the contrary he was one of those bland utterly hollow looking young executives .
And the second thing was a little bit of a book I had been leafing through some time last year in a bookshop. It told how one day a great chinese wushu fighting nun ( wushu being what is known in the west, mistakenly, as kung fu) in shaolin, saw a great white heron near her window. She teased it by touching it with the end of her fighting stick. The heron smoothly pushed away the stick with the tip of its wing. Puzzled, she touched it again. The heron broke the stick with its beak. Whereupon, said the book, the Wushu master immediately understood that this was the spirit of a great animal who had come to visit her. She fell down on her knees, and the spirit of the heron entered her body, whereupon she was infused with its power, and became the first master of the Fighting Heron wushu style.
There is a streak of animism, I think, which runs in the Chinese soul. Strange, for such an old civilisation. And yet one more common point they have with the Indians.
-But I thought China looks like a dragon" I said. We looked at a map of China. "Look" I said, pointing to Manchuria – that looks like its mouth, its crest.."
-Yes, a bit"
-You have dragons for the rivers, the mountains, the air ?
-According to legends, dragons are in the water, and in the air. They are especially in the rivers, and in the sea"
-Like in the Chanjiang river ( the YangTseKiang)? So, when there are floods, it would mean the dragon is angry?"
-Especially when there are droughts. People then say, the dragon is burning the earth"
-And Sun Wu Kong ( the Dear Monkey King, much beloved of the Chinese– you remember the story I told you in my previous letter, about Sukumong’s fight against Heaven ) stole the magic stick from the dragon, right?
-Yes ! And he hid it behind his ear"
-Then he and Xuan Zang went to the West (India)…"
-Yes, he and Xuan Zang they went to find books. And they became…Fu " she looked for the word in the dictionary "Buddhas" she finally said. Having acquired merit by finding the books, the Monkey King and Xuan Zang became buddhas.
-But they went through a lot of adventures.."
-Eighty one"
-Oh? Exactly?
-Yes. Because the Chinese say that nine is the greatest number. So when we say 81, that is 9 by 9, that means the maximum. Xuan Zang and Sun Wu Kong were already buddhas when they were coming back from India. They were flying through the clouds. But Xuan Zang said: We have undergone 80 adventures. We have to go through one more, then our merit is complete. So they fell down on the earth, and had one last adventure"
-Oh. Very resolute’
-And in the Forbidden City, there are 999 and a half rooms" meaning, I guess, absolute perfection.
Then the phone rang and it was time to work again.

Les Chinois sont des Français qui ne le savent pas, ou est-ce l’inverse?

As you must have noticed, I have a habit of comparing the Chinese and the Indians. It’s automatic for me, because I’ve always thought of the Chinese as "our neighbours". Despite my mixed feelings about the sino-mauritians, I’ve always had great admiration for the mainland Chinese. I consider them as a brave people, who have always kept their head high through innumerable tragedies. A good many of the things I read about them came to me through the French.
I suspect French intellectuals, especially the right-wing variety, of having a deep fascination for China. De Gaulle certainly had. Both countries have a lot in common. They have a history of high centralisation, heavy bureaucracy and both are now nominally republics, but headed by Presidents who enjoy near monarchical power and prestige. They have a ritual attitude of reverence towards their literature ( the French, when speaking of Chateaubriand or Voltaire, will sometimes make a little bow and say : "comme disent les classiques". Like old chinese quoting Li Bao or Du Fu) and a deep inner conviction in the age-worn superiority of their civilisations. Was it a coincidence that the French sometimes talk of their writers as "les mandarins de la littérature"? And of course, both are stiffly proud of their cuisine.
The other day I was talking to a young Chinese from the bureaucracy who had just returned from a course at the Ecole Nationale d’Administration.
-Et avez vous été en stage en préfecture à la fin de votre cours, Mr H?
-Bien sur, bien sur, cher ami. J’ai travaillé durant deux mois comme adjoint au préfet du Pas de Calais. J’étais là-bas lorsqu’il y eut un accident dans l’euro- tunnel. Comme vous le savez sans doute, le service des pompes à incendie relève, en France, de la Préfecture. Je suis resté dans le tunnel, en compagnie de Monsieur le Préfet, pendant 36 heures, à diriger les opérations de secours. Ce fut fort intéressant".
Fort intéressant, indeed. Who else but the Chinese can instinctively grasp the complexities of French administration…
Both countries were the main land powers in their respective continents, and both are being outshone by countries over which they exercised cultural dominance in the past: Germany and Japan. And better have a good life insurance if you bluntly point that out to a Frenchman or a Chinese.
In this case, are the Japanese the Germans of Asia ? I rather tend to think of them as Asia’s british: stiff, formal, monarchical, looking down their nose at the yahoos on the Continent. But the Japanese have, like the Germans, a classless set of mind, a great tradition of consensus-seeking between syndicates, employers and government. I’m in two minds about their "European nationality" then.
India is the Asian Italy, I’m a bit more sure about that. Both are hot, corrupt, colourful and chaotic peninsulas. Theatrical, overemotional people. From India, buddhist monks spread the faith all over Asia, and from Rome , Christianity reached the farthest reaches of Europe.
About Spain, I would think of Indonesia, although Philippines has obvious credentials for that sobriquet. The Indonesians are a macho people, a bit death-seeking. The Koreans are the Dutch, a medium-sized, sea-faring nation. They have a family air with the Japanese, (like the Dutch with the Germans) but they don’t like to be told that, because they have suffered a lot from the Nippons.
Hong Kong is Monaco, a prosperous southern beauty spot living in symbiosis with a hulking China/France. Taiwan is Corsica, but a Corsica where the independentists have won. Rich, bland, boring Singapore is Luxembourg. Nepal is of course Switzerland.
But of course these comparisons have only limited value. The Chinese may have common points with the French, but there is one big difference between the two: the French, for all their hauteur, and streaks of xenophobia, are "condemned" to be a crossroads of cultures and of people, by reason of their prestige and location. In the last two centuries, they have received many migrants from Poland, Russia, Spain, Italy, North and West Africa. In the 30’s France was the second biggest immigrants destination in the world, after the United States. Culturally, Paris has always been a magnet for writers and artists. In the 30’s it was the American writers – Hemingway, Mc Fitzgerald. In the 50’s, the Africans – Césaire, Senghor. And, less well known, Paris has constantly been the home of many american jazzmen who later became famous in the States.
China, on the other hand, has not been blessed with that influx of foreign talent since many centuries, not since Chang’An ( now known as Xian) was the great metropolis of the Tang Dinasty, during China’s Golden Age.
Anyway, I’ve got to end the letter now. Cher ami, the letter you posted me this week should be at my doorstep some time next week, I guess. That will be a nice moment.

( Another letter from Beijing, also in 1999)

I'm listening again to a cd i had bought a few months ago. it's nice how when you listen to a tune you know, it brings back memories of the days when you had heard it for the first time. in the present case, the cd, despite its ghastly title of (i'm respecting the ortograph): "the moon reflected on the 2nd spring. it is the best of music television karaoke collections coppact disc" is actually a cd of classical tunes on the pipa ( a sort of luth). my favourite is "the autumn moon on the han palace", a lovely old melody full of nostalgia, which judging from its title, should be 'bout 1500 years old. it is a very popular tune, but it's not easy to play because, like debussy's "clair de lune", it requires heavy soaking by the performer in the highly romantic, very tender and delicate mood of the piece.another popular tune on that cd is "surrounded in ten directions", one of those melodies you'll hear everywhere in china if you spend a few days here, it's one of the staples of chinese classical music, like beethoven's 9th symphony in the West. It's about the death of a famous warrior at the end of the civil war period which preceded the founding of the han dynasty in the 3rd century bc. It's a tragic and powerful tune, a bit like the death of karna in the mahabharata would have sounded like if it had been put to music. interestingly, in that piece the pipa often sounds like the guitar background in sergio leone's westerns ( by the way, i loved that comment i read the other day about a japanese film where all the actors are intense, introverted types: "the dialogues are sparse words falling like rare dewdrops into a pool of silence, making slow and lengthy rings in it. it is like a Western where all the parts are played by clint eastwood").forget about the syrupy classical tunes they put as background music in chinese restaurants ( at least in mauritius): if that leads you to think that chinese classical music is the docile sort, you're dead wrong. the other day at the san wei bookstore ( a very studentish - chinese translations of derrida, sartre, joyce, proust and the rest on the ground floor - place, the first floor is a bit gauche with its puzzling sculptural hymns to maternity or whatever, but still a very nice hiding place on grey sunday afternoons) i too was tempted, after the first half of a cozy late night concert to conclude that the classical chinese musical heritage was a castrated repertoire of soporific tunes meant as background for the breast fondling afterdinner conversations of emperors with their concubines when suddenly, that evening's performer, a twenty year old guqin player, seemed to have an intuition of my thoughts and she suddenly embarked on the most amazingly brillant, tormented interpretation of a very strange piece, she tore at the strings, a lock of hair escaped from her hairpin and waved across her sweating brow, her eyes flashed wildly and the rather dumbfounded audience, to whom she had seemed up to then to be a slightly plump, not very bright looking, peach perfect product of some starchy conservatory, suddenly found themselves listening to what sounded like the musical rendition of a hurricane in the south china seas being played by a overpowering passionate woman of stunning beauty. i was chastened, even frightened.

--II--

( Part of an email sent to me by my friend Leonhard, during that same period – I’m sure he won’t mind):

Well then, let me give you Benjamin's code to begin with once I have the
book with me. It is really a beautiful insight into someone else's mind
to have their motives listed up so conveniently - inconveniently only for
Fouche's police, whom Constant in true French romantic cloak-and-dagger
style seems to have feared rather more dramatically than was perhaps necessary.
Nor was he in fact particularly good at tricking them, for while it may be a
clever idea to write your journal in cyphers, there is not much of a point
in doing so if then, for fear of forgetting the - fairly elaborate - code
yourself, you actually note it down on a page of the very diary. After
using this system for 3 years, in 1808 he must have got tired of it and
instead began to write the French text in greek characters, before finally
under the restauration he got so worried that he packed off the whole set
of diaries, gave them to a reliable swiss banker, immediately afterwards
forgot that man's name and never saw them again. Only when after his death
his heirs announced publication of his Oeuvres did the forgotten banker's
family remember the little treasure they held and sent it back to Paris -
to the benefit of, entr'autres, J. Christopher Herold from whose classic
life of Mme de Stael the following is taken. "The Code tells more of
Benjamin than anything else could in so little space:
1 Physical [i.e., sexual] pleasure.
2 Desire to break my eternal chain [with Mme de Stael].
3 Reconciliation with this bond, because of memories or a momentary charm.
4 Work.
5 Disputes with my father.
6 Tenderness for my father.
7 Travel projects.
8 Mariage projects.
9 Tired of Mrs Lindsay.
10 Sweet memories and revival of love for Mme Lindsay.
11 Irresolution in my projects with regard to Mme du Tertre.
12 Love for Mme du Tertre.
13 Indecision about everything.
14 Plan to settle at Dole [with his father] to break with Biondetta.
15 Plan to settle in Lausanne for the same purpose.
16 Projects for a voyage overseas [i.e., America] (1)
17 Desire to make up with certain enemies [i.e., Napoleon].
Numbers 9 and 10 gave Benjamin some slight trouble during his remaining
weeks in Paris. On July 3, after receiving a letter from Germaine which
prompted him to write fourteen 2's in a row, he left for Coppet."