Staring Up At the Blue Whale

Philip Roth passed.  What do I feel about this?  He passed a few days ago.  First there were just reports.  Then there was salutatory commentary.  Then there was disparaging commentary.  Then there was commentary trying to reconcile the two. 

There are plenty of twentieth century author’s whose depictions of women seem hollow.  I didn’t feel that way about the daughter in “American Pastoral”, who oddly becomes a Jain, and lives as a homeless vagabond.  I didn’t feel this way about the mother in “The Plot Against America” as she frets about whether or not they should flee America for Canada.  And I certainly didn’t feel that way reading his book “Shop Talk” where he, at least to my eyes very thoughtfully interviews Mary McCarthy and Edna O’Brien. 

Perhaps I need to read further.  The women in “Everyman” were certainly stock characters.  But sometimes you need stock characters.  Perhaps I need to read more critically.  Perhaps I’m just a male reader at the end of the day.  And it is rather straightforward to identify with male's author's male characters. 

Regular readers know I have been reading War and Peace aloud to my daughter, for nearly two years now.  Surely, Tolstoy has an uncanny ability to render humans of both gender.  This, at least to my decidedly male assessment, reading another man write about women, he seems unnervingly accurate, as if it were obscene to be so intimately involved in another person’s thoughts. 

Roth was Roth.  He wasn’t trying to be Tolstoy.  "Indignation" was short but when I read it from start to finish in one pass a few years back it struck me as a perfect novel.  I was able to completely suspend disbelief and savour this particularly unfair dynamic that he’d drawn together where a young man’s life is sacrificed by ignorant, callous people. 

I liked the story about him visiting the Museum of Natural History after finishing one, later novel.  This man who suggested that old age wasn’t a battle but a massacre.  He stood staring up at the blue whale, suspended there in the museum and thought to himself, ‘What?  Am I just gonna stare at whales now?  Get back to work.”  Keep fighting one’s way through the massacre until the end.  The fast bullets haven’t yet started to fly.   

Sunday 5/27/18

On Them As Individuals

My kitchen.  It happens every year.  First there are a few scouts.  Then a line is established.  One scout has found something worth sacking and bringing back to the nest.  Communication lines have been established.  Orders have been given.  The pace has been established.  There is a basket with bread goods in it.  Go!

So, I kill them.  I look for something to spray.  I look for something to wipe them away with.  Wherever I find them I kill them.  I utter things about how this is “my space.”  I warn them to “tell command control to find another house.”  I take the basket full of dry goods and put it out on the porch.  I slam it down and ants scurry.  I stomp a few for good measure on the way back in. 

Later I’m over at the school gymnasium.  I’m on the stair master and, this being Saturday, rather than my normal weekday routine, there are children everywhere.   Some of them are playing badminton.  On the other side kids are running sprints after completing their batting practice.  I’m perhaps thirty feet away from them and I am not focusing on them as individuals, rather they are a mass of activity that swarms beneath me. 

Suddenly, someone calls and all the children stop what they are doing.  Some quickly and some slowly they all fall into line and begin to make their way to the exit below me.  And in a manner most ghoulish, they all suddenly seem to look like so many ants.  The residue of the morning’s murder is still unresolved in my near-term memory store.  I consider how easy it is to kill things from afar, when you can’t see any of them, when they all seem to be operating by a logic you can’t understand. 

Saturday 5/26/18

Domestic, In the Main

I had confirmed a date to teach a Chinese corporate client back in March.  They cancelled at the last moment.  I’d nagged at my contact there for weeks.  And then they rescheduled and I confirmed.  But I shouldn’t have.  The date was it turns out, the same day I was supposed to be teaching in Shanghai.  They’d changed my schedule.  I’d confirmed too soon.  So I asked if another day might work.  The contact was aghast and implored me to find a way.  So I called the school, did a bit of horse trading and I found a way.

The company, is one of China’s largest.  Their mission is domestic, in the main.  But this group concerns itself with things international. I was tasked to speak with them about cultural acuity.  I asked them and they had colleagues from many different countries, there on the campus.  “Where?” I asked.  “Cameroon.”  “The Ukraine.” “Egypt.”  “OK, then.  Those are the countries we will use, for part of this exercise.” 

They also had projects underway and projects under consideration for abroad.  Again, “Where?”  “We do work in the Philippines.”  “Well, then, we’ll need to learn about the place, quickly.  “We do work in Australia.”  Perfect.  Let’s see what we can assemble about there, and about the Sudan, and about Myanmar as well. 

Everyone broke out and assembled info quickly using one or another method about the country I assigned.  And soon they were all reporting in credibly about what their company could do there, what they might say to colleagues in the elevator from that other land.   

Sometimes you have a room and sometimes you don't.  Today went well.  I don't want to sound hoary but whenever I work with young Chinese professionals like these it seems imperative to remind them of how fortunate they all are to lead international lives denied their parent's generation.  I know they've heard it before.  And still . . . 

Friday 5/25/18

Go And Find Examples

I planned a syllabus for Chinese history out of thin air.  There was a requirement when I did so to take two field trips.  I didn’t think two long before I settled on one as being the Shanghai Museum.  The school I teach at is quite close the People’s Park.  It will be quick walk up the road and over to the facility. 

I bothered to check and: yes, it’s open, gee, it’s free, and right, as suspected every major period of Chinese history is accounted for.  In my mind when I drew up my plans I’d budgeted hours to go and explore the facility.   It’s the morning before we’re supposed to go and I still need to decide what we’ll actually do there.

In the distant past when I taught high school, we went to museums.  I took middle school kids there as well.  And I don’t know that the assignment will be radically different taking undergrads over to the facility either.  We’ve been covering these things.  Go and find examples of such things from this or that period and come back prepared to speak intelligently about them.   At least with twenty-somethings I don’t need to worry about anyone vandalizing the artefacts. 

And you take for granted that it will be interesting.  But I was surprised how stirring some of the syncretic Buddhist Art was.  How magnificent it was to see an enormous jade axe from the earliest Shang.  And how topical it was to think about Tang representations and how different they were from Song depictions of people.  Here is calligraphy from Huizong himself.  Magnificent. 

I bump into a few of the groups and they seem energized.  We’ll have something to talk about at the beginning of tomorrow’s class, for sure.  I’ve wanted to take my daughters here for the longest time now.  I’m newly resolved to make this happen. 

Thursday 5/24/18