Poem a Day 17/09/11

Yesterday's poem from my poem-a-day. For more go to poetryatalexleclez.blogspot.com


Drunk as drunk
Pablo Neruda

Drunk as drunk on turpentine
From your open kisses,
Your wet body wedged
Between my wet body and the strake
Of our boat that is made of flowers,
Feasted, we guide it - our fingers
Like tallows adorned with yellow metal -
Over the sky's hot rim,
The day's last breath in our sails.

Pinned by the sun between solstice
And equinox, drowsy and tangled together
We drifted for months and woke
With the bitter taste of land on our lips,
Eyelids all sticky, and we longed for lime
And the sound of a rope
Lowering a bucket down its well. Then,
We came by night to the Fortunate Isles,
And lay like fish
Under the net of our kisses.

Poem a Day 16/09/11

Here is yesterday's poem for the day. Head on to my poetry site to catch today's.

Since feeling is first
e.e.cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom,

lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

Death of the newspaper? Part Two: Highstreet creation

I'm writing this as a second part to the question: what will happen to the newspaper and codex? It's a second parter because it branches of somewhere else. To read the first part go here.

This is an appeal to all those who enjoy the smell of a freshly printed newspaper. An appeal to those who prefer their bookshelves full rather than a Kindle sitting on their shelf. And more broadly; this is an appeal to those who like having a high street and would potentially like more bookshops on it and fewer Ladbrokes, or even the other way round.
With internet shopping permeating society it is no surprise that our highstreets are emptying. The facility of being able to purchase your groceries, clothing or technology online draws a huge audience. Laziness does too. But i would advocate taking those extra minutes each day to buy what you want from the highstreet.
We've all heard of buying local to support local businesses in their fight against global companies such as Sainsbury's or Tesco. The ethos here is the same. I enjoy the fact that my highstreet, Godalming High Street if anyone was wondering, has a bookshop i can dip into, has a bakery i can dawdle past to catch the smell of freshly baked bread, has an antiques shop that from time to time has interesting things in the window. I buy from these outlets not because they are cheaper (which they aren't - they have to pay rent which is a cost that a website simply does not have) but because i like having them there every time i walk down the street.
My idea is this: Buy from your highstreet so you still have a highstreet but also buy from the shops you like. If you hate seeing gambling shops on the highstreet but do enjoy gambling, do it online. The shop will not be able to continue as demand will be down (obviously as a result of a combination of people doing this, well, that is unless you have a serious gambling addiction) and it may be replaced by another bookshop given the success of Waterstones in the town.
This has obviously always been the way. The consumer votes with their pocket as to which shops survive and which don't but in the digital age i feel we can make more of a difference as some shops may just go online rather than staying on the highstreet. So, to come full circle,I am going to enter into some highstreet creation i will try to buy newspapers from newsstands rather than just reading online and i hope you do too. Well, unless you don't like bookshops or bakeries in which case maybe just go online.

Death of the newspaper? Part One

I would like to know the future of news media. With the crash of News International in Britain following the phone hacking scandal inevitably leading to a loss of faith in journalism and union strikes in France potentially forcing Le Monde online the future of newspapers in print format is surely in doubt.
In fact, in a world where Kindle sales continue to rise and the book shop giant that was Borders is closing down, is there much hope for the printed word at all? It seems evidence from studies suggest that there is a relationship between the reader and the codex form due to the tactile pleasure of holding a book that goes back to primitive tool use. Whilst Kindle sales increase many of us still prefer the old-fashioned book but novels are evolving in a way that newspapers surely cannot. There's a novel that is cut out entirely from another novel leaving spaces so you can glimpse the future plotlines through the spaces between the remaining words and Danielewski's House of Leaves breaks all the rules of page structure set out by early novelists such as Defoe and Dickens. Books like these are re-invigorating the novel making them more akin to works of art than simple stories.
In the current environmental climate it also seems that perhaps it is time to stop inefficiently printing papers and simply release them online. This, of course, is by no means perfect. It still necessitates electricity and there's something of a bygone era that the opening of a freshly printed newspaper evokes. Besides, newspapers are as much a part of our heritage as fish and chips, tea and Shakespeare and for news stands to disappear from our street corners would be a terrible shame.

Poem a Day 15/09/11

Here is yesterday's poem from the poem-a-day i run at poetryatalexleclez.blogspot.com

I know why the caged bird sings
Maya Angelou

The free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wings
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings
with fearful trill
of the things unknown
but longed for still
and is tune is heard
on the distant hill for the caged bird
sings of freedom

The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn
and he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

Pescetarianism?

Hey there. I am considering becoming a pescetarian on ethical grounds and i was just wondering what people thought about it in general but specifically if seafood is sentient as that is important to me. If you comment below that would be great, thank you.

Poem a Day 14/09/11

I'll be posting the day before's poem here. For today's poem head on over to poetryatalexleclez.blogspot.com - yesterday's is a personal favourite so i'll let you have a look.

Bosnia Tune
Joseph Brodsky

As you pour yourself a scotch,
crush a roach, or check your watch,
as your hand adjusts your tie,
people die.

In the towns with funny names,
hit by bullets, caught in flames,
by and large not knowing why,
people die.

In small places you don't know
of, yet big for having no
chance to scream or say good-bye,
people die.

People die as you elect
new apostles of neglect,
self-restraint, etc. - whereby
people die.

Too far off to practice love
for thy neighbor/brother Slav,
where your cherubs dread to fly,
people die.

While the statues disagree,
Cain's version, history
for its fuel tends to buy
those who die.

As you watch the athletes score,
check your latest statement, or
sing your child a lullaby,
people die.

Time, whose sharp blood-thirsty quill
parts the killed from those who kill,
will pronounce the latter tribe
as your tribe.

spirits at work

Continuing on the subject of beliefs from the last post about the longhouse, the orang asli village is about ninety percent Christian - unlike the predominantly Muslim mainland - but this is intermingled with animist beliefs. Not being a religious person myself i am dubious enough about the credibility of major religions let alone belief in spirits but our host told us the story of why he believed in the spirits and although i'm not convinced by it, it is worth recounting.
During the 1990s he had witnessed some of the decapitations that occurred on buses in Bali on his way home. Understandably this lead to acute insomnia that lasted eight months but stopped the night after he visited a place that he was advised the spirits frequented. Once there he underwent tests, so to speak, from the spirits. He claims to have been bitten hundreds of times by mosquitoes and stood still as a python climbed up his body before licking up his throat. Having endured this he followed a small child to a hut where he slept and from that night on he slept in peace.
I understand that this sounds far-fetched. But this man believed every word he said and i believe that he believed that this was what happened and that the forces at work helped him overcome a very difficult period in his life, and that shouldn't be so easily dismissed for it is this sort of experience on which faith is built upon.

If you enjoyed this you might like to head on over to my travel blog at travelatalexleclez.blogspot.com for more.

writing without direction to get back to writing again

I have been doing so much travel writing lately i feel i'm losing any voice i had. Don't get me wrong travel writing is great fun, especially as it means you have to be travelling but i feel i have to keep it all regimented, up to date, in the right orderr etc. It's just not the way i operate. I've been reading lots of people's continuous travel tales and i love it, i really love the idea of just always being moving and doing new things and being in new places and i enjoy writing about it too. This post is more of an intermission so i can feel i can go back to writing travel stuff and be ready for the other things i'm planning on doing here. I've got some fun ideas actually, a couple of projects, a screenplay and a novel all in the pipeline but i tend to work without boundaries or deadlines and so much travel writing is cramping me. It's so therapeutic just to write freely (so if you're not enjoying this have a look down the page, there is targeted and driven stuff down there, this is more for me).

So here, in no order (amazing!) is some stuff i've been up to. I went to New York and discovered an interest in the homeless and how they make money. I have continued to question the existence of everything. I have read some Nabokov, some Cummings and some Le Clezio. I have missed trying new beers whilst in the states. I loved MoMA for hours and got a membership card which i will probably not use again this year. I've played cards and just relaxed with my family. I came back from Malaysia leaving my favourite hostel ever having seen some lovely scenery in the north of the country. I missed seeing a friend in New York. I enjoyed Boston and Harvard but suffered through some terrible puns on a guided stroll through the Yard. I have developed ideas on uni projects and stories. I have, thankfully, used Skype properly for the first time and then onwards. I found a really nice dive in Salem, MA which was enough to make me move to the place. I didn't move to Salem. I considered skiing in Bulgaria and made plans to make plans to suggest the idea to some friends. I have started following Zach Braff and Neal Parick-Harris on Twitter.

These are a few things i have been up to. I hope you haven't been too bored, i just needed to reset my writing, normal service will resume shortly.

on longhouse life

Something i found surprising about the Annah Rais longhouse was the fact that there were even more cats here than Kuching, a place called "Cat" in bhasa Malaysia. Before i go on to tell you about the longhouse's customs i should probably point out that, despite the name, a longhouse is not a single house. In fact it is a series of regular size houses - generally made of bamboo and/or wood - which all sit on top of a raised platform also made of bamboo.
The day traditionally starts by everyone going out onto the pathway outside their house and smoking with what looks a lot like a bong, the smoke is piped through the water before being inhaled. Everyone goes and joins their friends for a smoke and it is a very sociable way to start the day - an alternative to meeting for brunch i suppose. The bamboo floors seem to be not perfectly constructed as there are little gaps between each shoot but this is part of the design so not only do you have somewhere to stick your bong pipe but it keeps the place clean. This works by waiting for any dirt to dry as it will then simply fall through to the forest floor below.
Having walked around the village we were told that it took a week to do a round trip to Kuching a hundred years ago, a trip that took us an hour and a half the day before. Then we were taken to the equivalent of the village hall where they kept the skulls that remained from their head hunting days which were just over a hundred years ago. Oh, sorry. Did i not mention that they used to be head hunters? It must have slipped my mind. Well that's all done now and to prove it they have exchanged peace trees with the neighbouring tribe. It struck me as strange that if a particular insect was heard from the forest - which it was the day before - then it meant that someone in the village would die in the coming days but the fact that their peace tree was clearly dying signified nothing. That would strike me as a bad omen but, you know, each to their own.
The hall itself was simple but it was interesting to hear stories of how young men had to stay in here as part of the passage to manhood and somewhat disturbing to find out that they used to have over a hundred heads here. Firstly disturbing to think of that many decapitated people but it was mainly the reason why there are only about ten left that was strange; they had been broken whilst being played with. Yes that's right played with. And the only reason they said that they couldn't now was because otherwise they would run out of skulls to show visitors. This lack of reverence for the dead seems even stranger in retrospect given something we found out about other orang asli tribe's methods of dealing with the dead, but that is another story, one i will tell another time.

If you enjoyed this you might like to head on over to my travel blog at travelatalexleclez.blogspot.com for more.

four a.m

Your eyes open to darkness.

The fan sounds like sheets of rain crashing down on the streets outside,
the electricity surging is the thunder rumbling
until its zenith
where it claps,
punctuating the rain's whirring.

The heat crouches on you,
dormant,
like your back is to a fire, until the wind whispers past,
stroking you,
fleetingly,
with its fingers,
a tide crashing up the beach of your back only to sweep away again.

The fan halts the bead of sweat that runs down the indentation of your spine, a but-once running river, but only for a second before it may again pick its way down.

on Bornean waterfalls

After a few days of side trips from Kuching we headed deeper into Borneo to stay in a longhouse with the orang asli - the indigenous people here - for a few days. We were greeted with a shot of rice brandy...at nine in the morning. If we were still teetering on the edge of sleep - having woken up early to get there - we weren't anymore.
The plan for the day was for a couple of guides to take us on a walk to a waterfall about an hour away (retrospectively we wondered on what transport). Oh, it's an hour for the guides, maybe it will take you two if you stop a lot to take plenty of pictures. Stop a lot, we did not (no rhyme intended). Take a lot of photos...although it was an amazing walk, better even than Bako, due to the fact that ten inch caterpillars and leeches found us whenever we tried to stop so we did not. Walk at break-neck speed up, and it was always up, for three hours, we did. But wait. That's not a waterfall. That's a road. We could have driven this far!? "Okay, now we're halfway." Halfway!? what on earth happened to an hour if you didn't take pictures!? Sure we stopped for a couple of minutes to take pictures of the insect-eating pitcher plants but that was a couple of minutes no a couple of hours!
Fortunately halfway was a bad estimate. We arrived at the waterfall what seemed like a quarter of an hour later. In reality it took an hour but being able to walk on a flat and dryish path made the time feel negligible compared to our uphill drag across bamboo bridges - one at a time please or we'll roll back to the bottom - slipping back a few inches each time you took a step. But even if we had been walking for ten hours the waterfall would have been worth it. The cool water refreshed our hot sticky skin (my t-shirt as a matter of interest took 48 hours to not quite dry afterwards). The waterfall was layered so it was possible to climb up the rocks to another couple of levels and at the top one, across a pool, the full force of the waterfall could be felt. Finally i understood the herbal essences adverts.
After cooling off and climbing the rocks a bit more we settled down to the bamboo chicken soup that our guides had prepared for us whilst we played in the water and we started contemplating our route home. Down the way we had just come up, back across the bamboo bridges (bridges might be an overstatement, try three shots of bamboo tied together with, sometimes, another as a handrail), back past the leeches, back on the slippery path or on the hilly road which was dry and firm and easy for walking. The shadeless road was unanimously chosen. Shirts were taken off. Shoes were taken off. And we walked up and down the Bornean hills back to the village surrounded by panoramas of the jungle. Lovely.

If you enjoyed this you might like to head on over to my travel blog at travelatalexleclez.blogspot.com for more.

on Bako National Park and proboscis monkeys

The day after Semenggoh and the caves we journeyed to Bako National Park (which, as i'm sure you've noticed, has the unfortunate acronym BNP). Because it is on an island we had to take a boat from mainland Borneo. Although extra travel time may seem like an inconvenience, especially given our hostel's positioning right on the Kuching waterfront with antique shops lining our street, the boat trip was one of the highlights of the day. That is not to say that Bako was not amazing, but there is only so much one can take in trekking through dense rainforest. The boat on the other hand, offered a speed (and a breeze) that was conducive to leisurely appreciating the magnificent scenery that went by. We pulled out of the jetty, passed old fishing boats and house on stilts that lined the mouth of the river and before long we were cutting along the coastline. Most of the land was untamed and as a consequence was densely populated by foliage. We streaked past islands of trees and jutting cliffs, our imaginations allowed to run riot on what fauna might exist there.
We docked at a jetty which was positioned next to a skeletal clump of dead trees, knee deep in water. One of Borneo's most famous - and peculiar looking - animals is the proboscis monkey. If you don't know what one looks like have a quick Google search. Right, see what i mean now? That is one strange nose; in fact it was originally called the Netherlands man monkey after the Dutch settlers. Now i've been to the Netherlands and travelled with a Dutch firl...let's just say Dutch people don't look like that. If you don't believe me it might be time to use that Google search again. Now that that is all cleared up, suffice to say: we saw some, which apparently was rather lucky, so that's nice.
But before we were to see a group of four of these strange monkeys from up close and with a direct line of sight we trekked up through forest along paths that were so inundated with roots they looked as if the roots were trickles of water, separately running down from the top of the island just to get a flash of proboscis through the trees. It was a combination of these roots and something which seemed like moss but, when trod on, compressed about two inches that broke my sandals. Luckily we had already reached the plateau on top of the island and descended past otherworldly purple rocks to a lovely beach where we paddled in water as warm as a bath and started our return to the jetty before it happened so there wasn't too much climbing left to do.
Usually when walking with roots underfoot you need to keep at least one eye on the ground. With your heel sliding every which way at the back of a sandal, then, you would be forgiven for concentrating entirely on your route and it would be very easy to miss the poisonous snakes asleep on branches and a massive spider in its correspondingly massive web overhead but these delights were pointed out to me. Nothing like fear of death to put fear of twisted ankle out of mind. Fortunately neither materialised and all that was left to do was get the boat back past some impressive sea stacks.

If you enjoyed this you might like to head on over to my travel blog at travelatalexleclez.blogspot.com for more.

Bornean Caves

Although the Wind Cave would later buck the trend, the fairy cave continued on from Baku's lead by positioning itself high up and thus many stairs up. Since the years of Chinese gold mining a new staircase has been built but some of the old one remains. This looked slightly magical as it was not connected to the rock-face at any point other than the base and the summit. The stairs were constructed by laying a long piece of wood against the wall and building steps with concrete on that before stripping away the wood once the cement had set. Having no railings - health and safet...what? - and seemingly supported by faith alone the stairs really did have an air of magic about them.
Once in the cave the climbing continued, much to the despair of my sweat-sodden shirt; although in my defense the term 'Borneo's sweaty interior' seems not only to refer to those who travel it but the rainforest itself which seems to perspire the mist that undulatingly rolls through it. Sweating up the elvish tracks which would around boulders and sparse vegetation it felt like you might encounter Tolkien's Moria. It would not shock me to learn that Tolkien journeyed here and drew inspiration from the place.
Only once you had climbed towards the stalactites, picking your way through the stalagmites could you admire the true beauty of the cave chamber. The meandering stairs you had just climbed seemed to disappear into an abyss and there was a huge opening allowing the Bornean sun to stream in, almost blinding you but for the dense greenery that framed the opening.
Lord of the Rings must have been on my mind or maybe the place just provoked thoughts of it but i would have believed that elves had made this place long ago and since abandoned it to nature, leaving only their paths and a few platforms - one of which, in particular, would have made an excellent station for a throne. However, shocked as i'm sure you'll be, it turned out that it was not elves but the Chinese gold miners who had made and abandoned the site in the 1970's though there is also evidence to suggest that a long time ago people did live here too.
A few kilometres further North is the Wind Cave. This offers the tunnel network ying to the Fairy Cave's grand chamber's yang. There was very little natural light so we rented a torch for our boardwalked stroll along the mercifully flat tunnels. The darkness was far more conducive to bats than in the Fairy Cave so we could hear the chitter chatter of these little echolocators but, unfortunately, not the billowing wind that the cave was named after - though a pleasant breeze remains - as changes in pressure levels mean you can no longer hear the formerly deafening wind.

If you enjoyed this you might like to head on over to my travel blog at travelatalexleclez.blogspot.com for more.

hello there Mr Orangutan

On our first day in Kuching (which is bhasa malaysia for cat - yes i was excited too) we started with a trip to Semenggoh. Semenggoh is an orangutan sanctuary so all of the orangutans are wild and don't interact with the humans running it; they are just kept an eye on and provided with fruit handouts at feeding platforms - though they rarely go to these during fruit seasons due to their own ability to find their own. As it is only a protected area sightings are not guaranteed so we felt very lucky to see a mother and child pair just before the entrance gate, well. we saw them from there, they spend most of their time in the trees. Given the ease and grace with which they move this isn't hard to believe. At one point the child orangutan was moving along a horizontal vine with just its right foot and right hand in contact whilst it hang down; it was hardly surprising to find out they are seven times stronger than humans of equal weight. The baby slid its foot towards its hand until they touched then let go with its hand and grabbed further along, repeating the action until it caught up with its mother who carried him on her tummy as she climbed somewhat more sensibly. This was the first indicator of the interchangeability of feet and hands. The second was when the same monkey held a bamboo shoot on with side of it with its hands - at a casual twenty five feet above the ground - whilst feeding itself with its feet.
Given the fact that they were wild, the only place you could reliably see these people of the forest was the feeding platforms. After a short walk through the dense rainforest we came to another clearing from where you could see another feeding area, but this time it was occupied by a male. Now the males weight twice as much as the females and this fella was big. With his enormous pile of fruit though, i couldn't help but think of King Louis from the Jungle Book. and with a Disney-esque sense of humour and timing another child orangutan snuck down a bamboo shoot and took some bananas which it ran off with in its foot fingers. Our attention was immediately recalled to the male as we heard a loud bang. A war cry? A threat to this tiny primate? No. Coconut opening time! The large male stripped the outsides with his teeth before thwacking the coconut against the platforms and opening it in just two blows. Now anyone who has ever won a coconut at a coconut shy - or had a dad help at one and get some of the un-won ones afterwards (guilty as charged) - will know how hard coconut shells are. Just another exhibition of the apes' immense strength, just a teensy bit less playfully demonstrated than the child monkey's philosophy on gravity: "Upside down? No Problem. Gravity only chooses which way I fall (if that ever happened) not the direction or the angle that I climb."

If you enjoyed this you might like to head on over to my travel blog at travelatalexleclez.blogspot.com for more.

Long time no see

Wow what a long gap. No internet in the Bornean interior or in our hostel in Penang combined with laziness in Kuching equals no new posts. But now i must try to remember and ah yes i do have some notes written in the back of my diary, phew! New posts coming up soon, hope you enjoy them.

on Singapore

After the cultural shift that was Malaysia Singapore feels strange. It is odd to be in such a Westernised place and although it's impressive that such as young country is so developed (Singapore celebrates its 46th birthday soon) it doesn't really appeal after Malaysia. Things i might enjoy at home seem superficial and frivolous expenditure here, especially given the Western prices. Sure it was nice to have soft pillows, fancy showers with showerheads like suns, air con that actually works and coffee you can drink but Singapore is more of a palate-cleanse than a taste to savour. It is firmly back in the comfort zone with easy meals at Subway and a wooden toast shop (which i must admit was rather exciting and did do good toast). Breathing is markedly easier given lower pollution levels and humidity levels the right side of seventy percent again. I think my preconceptions  of a country famous for its ex-pat community and astronomical fines for the possession of chewing gum set me against it from the start. This was not helped by the list of fines outside the underground station: $1000 for smoking; $500 for eating or drinking; a more understandable $5000 for flammable goods; and an understandable, if rather comical, ban of the durian fruit.
Odd bans and high fines aside i'm sure it would be a nice place to live it's just hard for a backpacker to particularly identify with or connect with. I was ready to bemoan the materialistic culture of shopping centres you need a Masters degree to navigate and flower beds that pump music at you as you walk past before i fell prey to it myself in a National Geographic shop though in my defence i spent under $18and bought biodegradable shoes which i plan to use as in Borneo as they will be more leech-proof than my sandals. I will admit it: the shopping is very good, that just isn't what i travel; the variety of cuisine is gargantuan and to a high quality but again it is difficult to accommodate it in a shoestring budget. However, it definitely will serve as a reset button for my travels and was some welcome respite and for that i am grateful.

If you enjoyed this you might like to head on over to my travel blog at travelatalexleclez.blogspot.com for more.

Tea time in Malacca

In Malacca the restaurants generally shut at four or five in the afternoon, a little inconvenient for dinner. A Malay-European fusion restaurant still open was out as they had the sheer audacity to charge seven pounds for a main course. The Korean place we had planned on eating at (where you could sit at tables over a pond where fish would come and nibble the dead skin off of your feet) had closed and turned into a shop selling Angry Birds merchandise, an Angry Birds merch church in Malaysia, who would have thought it? We were facing a trek across the river to the other side of the other half of town for an Indonesian eatery when we were approached by an old Indian woman offering us a leaflet.
Asia is no different to London, or the Occidental world in general, if you're offered a leaflet (unless you are on a Danny Wallace-esque quest) you have three options. Option the First, the rude option: completely ignore the leafleter and continue walking whilst pretending that you are far too busy to indulge in such frivolities; Option the Second, the polite Percival/Penelope: politely decline the offer with a smile before wishing them a good day (if you do this and it isn't sunny and/or you're not having a particularly good day i commend you) and; Option the Third, standard Brit: take the leaflet to avoid awkwardness or perceived rudeness, glance at it and either put it in the bin around the corner or take it home to recycle. We did none of these. We broke the rules. We did what surely no two people have ever done. We took the leaflet. We looked at the leaflet. Enquired further. And. And followed the small Indian woman down a street to a tea house where we were assured there was food. Followed even after we were told about the "short cut".
But a short cut it was. And dinner available there was. And the "option" of a tea ceremony afterwards...there wasn't. No option that is. Plenty of tea ceremony. Three hours of tea ceremony. And i don't even like tea. And it was great! We learnt all about different types of Chinese teas and how best to prepare and brew them right down to how the value of a clay teapot increases with each use (you pour the first brewing over it) as it gets stained by the tea. I asked whether people didn't just cheat by leaving it to soak in strong tea. I was not expecting her answer to be as touching as it was. She said that you could but no-one would because you watch the teapot growing up and maturing just as you would with your child. Aside from this sweet explanation we also grew to appreciate how hot water could taste sweet after the bitterness of tea and how durian fruit altered the taste too. Even for a non-drinker of tea it was a very enjoyable way to spend a few hours in Malacca and our host knew plenty and was keen to impart her knowledge, expertise and passion for an art that extends a long way back into Chinese history. I would strongly urge anyone in Malacca to find the Zheng He Tea House for a few hours of soothing diversion and an overwhelmingly relaxing time; despite our aircon being broken that evening i slept the best i have all trip.

If you enjoyed this you might like to head on over to my travel blog at travelatalexleclez.blogspot.com for more.

on the Batu Caves

On our last day of our first stay in KL we ventured out to the Batu Caves. They are caves (how did you guess?) which, when discovered, were turned into a Hindu temple. Oh so many stairs! Batu is a popular pilgrimage site around the Thaipusam festival but what a slap in the face it must be, having walked for miles, to be faced by the two hundred and seventy two steps to the top. And once you've finally scaled them, sweat dripping out of every pore as the sun shines in your face as you ascend you go down some steps, seemingly, just so that they can take you up some more without having to go higher up.
Before you get to the top there is the option to go into the so called Dark Cave. It worked on us, yeah sure we'll pay that to walk through a cave which is dark in order to just stop climbing these damned stairs, maybe it'll even be cool in there. Cool it was, dark it was, stepless...it was not. Fortunately we didn't step in too much guano (bat droppings) as we were provided with torches and a very bouncy, energetic guide (who refered to me as Scott having got confused by Kat's surname. I have now tried being called Scott for nearly an hour, i would not recommend it.) who told us a bit about different cave formations (one of which looked uncannily like the waves painted by Hokusai right down to the spray) and the animals, aside from bats, that could be found there. One of these was the long-legged millipede. Aptly, if not inventively, named it turned out; it was five inches long and three inches wide! We were also told about the spiney millipede which she showed us a photo of. We were then asked to guess how long it was, most people guessed about an inch or three, all except one Finnish guy who reckoned on it being around two foot long. Amazingly it turned out that he was right, it was a metre to a metre and a half long! Skepticism started. Our guide said that if it was called it would also come to the path for feeding and started making a clicking noise to call it. Skepticism remained. We were then asked to help calling it. Some people did. Skepticism persisted. We were told it was in fact only two inches long. Skepticism was validated. Overall the Dark Cave was enjoyable and when we turned off our torches it really was impossible to see your hand in front of your face. This made it all the more beautifully eery when there was a hole through which light could pierce the cave walls and suddenly it made sense why the caves were turned into a temple.
The temple itself was quite nice but slightly overrun with monkeys, one of whom followed me down the steps trying to take my plastic bag of food. He literally ran rings around me but i had the last laugh emerging with the bag intact and so ended our trip to Batu. Next stop Melaka.

If you enjoyed this you might like to head on over to my travel blog at travelatalexleclez.blogspot.com for more.

Cosmopolitan people and their religions

Having stayed in Chinatowns wherever we have been so far we are perhaps more conscious of how cosmopolitan a country Malaysia is. There is a Malay majority but they tend to live in more rural areas and the population is made up by thirty percent Chinese and ten percent Indian, a fact i relish when meandering through the hawker stalls we tend to eat from. This also lends the religious scene even more flavour. Whereas in Europe you can get a little swamped by churches (i love this because they are regularly the most beautiful buildings in a town but Kat isn't so keen after the first thirty or so) and the cultural palate slowly stales at the homogeneity of church after church, here there is a patchwork of Hindu and Buddhist temples as well as mosques for the Islamic majority.
Every morning in KL we walk past a Buddhist temple. I love the smell of the incense sticks that are being burnt en masse. If you can't smell durian fruit or incense you aren't in Malaysia. As you enter the temple you see the spiraling incense sticks that are a couple of feet long and a foot wide at their widest point hanging above your head, you just have to watch out that the soot doesn't land on you - so far, so clean. It overwhelms not only the nose but the eyes with vibrant colours at every turn, such a vibrantly place to worship but so calm and quiet. Quietness, though, can sometimes be oppressive in a place of worship. Not here, it lends a peacefulness to the temple that draws me back again and again - not a bad quality for a religious building.

If you enjoyed this you might like to head on over to my travel blog at travelatalexleclez.blogspot.com for more.

KL as a tourist city plonked on top of a jungle

It is becoming increasingly apparent that KL is a city plonked on top of a jungle. That revelation continued today at the Lake Gardens (i'll let your imagination run wild - there's not much i can say that explains it any further) but it was prompted by the park in the centre that i've already talked about and Lake Titiwangsa to the North of the city where you have a clear sight over the jagged skyline above the lake. There's a strange photo where,because of the fog, you cannot see the Petronas Towers except for their reflection in the water. It's strange to think about cities like that, like they haven't always really existed. Obviously it's true and if you stopped and thought about it you would know but i feel we take urbanity for granted a little (rather than human impositions on nature), especially in countries we are new to.
Staying so close to Chinatown it can be a little hard to not feel like a tourist. Every time you walk down the street you hear: "Yes, Sir, nice watch for you!" - No, thanks i can't read the time - "Yes, Sir, cool sunglasses for you" - I'm wearing my own! - "Yes, Sir, DVDs for you" - I...only own a VCR player sorry - and the less imaginative "Eat here, Sir" - I've already eaten (then sitting down at the table next door because the menu was better). Having said that, you can get off the tourist crawl just by getting off the main thoroughfares and turning into the places the locals are selling ingredients in a market rather than meals. It's here that you really get a glimpse at the city's soul. People are no longer trying to sell to you (how likely is it that a white man in KL is going to cook their own food when the choice between Chinese, Nonya and Indian food can satiate any cravings not already put to bed by the exotic fruits or chestnuts roasted in an oil barrel full of hot gravel?) nor are they putting on a front for the tourists. You get to see life as it is for the majority of Malaysians, i like that.

If you enjoyed this you might like to head on over to my travel blog at travelatalexleclez.blogspot.com for more.

thoughts on arrival

On the first evening i really had no idea of the size of Kuala Lumpur; it seemed to be a gigantic metropolis when flying in. The density of lights staring out into the darkness of the night's sky gave this opening impression. An impression that was swiftly seconded by the taxi driver's inability to find our hostel despite us giving him an address, it makes sense that we took so long to find it walking having never visited the city but surely a taxi driver should be able to find it, no? We scurried past lizards, rats and a prostitute (who, to her credit was playing with a cat - amazing the effect that can have on my opinion of someone) and our despair was finally lifted when someone from another hostel agreed to walk us there - oh how travel relies on the kindness of strangers. This did nothing to dispel the impression of an unknowable metropolis, unnavigatable to tourists.
After the first breakfast for days (eaten only out of duty to routine - i still had no idea if i was hungry or not), in the light of day the city did not seem so large and now on returning seems only to be a small city easily navigated via the punctual and efficient underground and overground train services (outside of one there is a No Motorbikes sign which has been ignored by at least fifty bikers who seem to have made a point of parking solely around it). We have now returned to KL from Melaka in order to get a bus to Singapore and know the streets like those of our home town, well, in Chinatown where we are staying at least. Although now it is second nature taking the trains, on the first day, having asked for a train to the city centre, we were asked where in the centre. Umm, well...what do you say to that when you have no idea where you're going? I went for, "where do you think we should go?" - The lady was rather bemused - and only a little amused - at this and didn't suggest anything.
Having successfully negotiated that dilemma with the aid of a train map (when someone asks you for the city centre and there is a stop called Kuala Lumpur City Centre, how hard can it really be to send them there?!)  and bypassed the shopping centre we had an enjoyable stroll about the park in the centre. It is an inextinguishable joy i feel each time i look through the rainforest-like trees to see a thirty storey building scraping the overcast sky, if only they could tear some holes in the canvas of clouds to permit us a little sunshine. Thirty storeys, however, is nothing compared to the famous Petronas Towers. Vast pillars of engineering stretching eighty-three storeys high, how long does that add to the commute to work on the top floor? And what happens if the lift is broken, who needs a cardio programme when you can work there.
Continuing around this jungle in the middle of the corporate canopy we happened on a mosque. The architecture was simple but attractive adding to the stillness (interrupted only by children playing downstairs) of the place. This was certainly a place of beauty and stillness away from the interminable buzz of the city.
Leaving the mosque that feeling quickly subsided when we encountered the 'Bosch Power Drill powered races'. Go karts powered by power tools. You could almost smell the testosterone. Sadly we decided against waiting an hour and a half for the race to begin but who knows, maybe we'll catch the World Finals in China (yes that's right, this was only the qualifying round to represent Malaysia). Or maybe not.

If you enjoyed this you might like to head on over to my travel blog at travelatalexleclez.blogspot.com for more.

on flying and Dubai

Hello there, it's been a long time without me being able to update this but i have some time and some internet so let's see what happens. The whole trip started really impressively with both Kat and i losing our wallets. Fortunately i only left mine on the bus to the airport and ran back to get it and Kat only thought she had lost it; nothing like a bit of anxiety to start a trip.
Maybe it's just me but i always find Dubai quite magical to fly into. Last time, in transit to Cape Town, the sun was just rising over the desert dunes as we landed but i wasn't near enough to a window to see this time until we were leaving again. It wasn't sunrise but ten in the morning but the roads and mountains had a beautiful stillness. There are so few landmarks or perceptible objects in the desert that the two roads running parallel  looked like tentacles reaching endlessly or ink spills traipsing down a pine desk. The small patches of grass as green as green can be are always fun too just for their sheer unnaturalness. I cannot have idea of Man conquering Nature and the elements to make the grass grow without thinking of Burkean theories on the sublime and the beautiful as that which inspires the belief in God being swept away by the denial of the natural order (maybe that's why Dubai is secular in comparison to Abu Dhabi, the capital). It is so strange to have so many thoughts about a place i have only ever transited through! The flights were fine but the fact that the plane went West-East and the sun East-West not only confused my sleep patterns but my eating ones, i missed two breakfasts as it was never the right time for where i was flying to. I no longer knew whether i should be hungry or should be tired, it's strange how quickly you can lose control of the most normal things.

If you enjoyed this you might like to head on over to my travel blog at travelatalexleclez.blogspot.com for more.

a poem a day

Poem a day is on a break as i am travelling in Malaysia for a month but check back for travel updates if you like.

So the idea here was that i love poetry and wanted even more of an excuse to read some. I will hopefully cover some classics but also unearth some lesser-known poets and their poems for you. There should be a real range of nationalities, eras and subject matter the only unifying element will be their quality. Only one poem will be shown at a time but previous days's poems will be listed at the bottom. I hope you enjoy them.


Previous poems:
26th July: To a Friend Concerning Several Ladies by William Carlos Williams
25th July: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
24th July: Literal by Ani DiFranco
23rd July: Bosnia Tune by Joseph Brodsky

On travel as a way of life

Reading Alain De Botton's Art of Travel unearthed many treasures, among them an account of Xavier de Maistre's journey around his bedroom. Xavier's idea was that travel was an attitude to life that comes with being in a different place and he decided to apply this in the comfort of his bedroom. The idea is a good one; pragmatic in terms of time and money (although unlikely to catch on as a summer holiday option even in a recession) but i think it only applies to some people.
The idea is unlikely to catch on with those who wish to sunbathe by day and party by night, but then they aren't "travellers" per se, not to my mind anyway. The target demographic must be people who wish to travel but can't afford either the time or the money. De Maistre identifies bedroom travel as an alternative and De Botton goes on to have a very enjoyable walk around Hammersmith but I think travel is more of a way of life than that.
Travel is an intrigue, an interest and a capacity to walk through life noticing the little things wherever you are whether that's South Luangwa National Park in Zambia or a car park in Slough; the Cathedral of Sveti Sava in Belgrade or your parish church. Travel is, as the spoken word poet Sarah Kay beautifully puts it, walking through life with your arms out ready to catch whatever falls out of the sky. Sure, you go to different places for specific things and often we want a cultural shift; we want to try different philosophies, lives, foods, buildings and people but you do so to incorporate the parts that you like into the life you have at home.
The real souvenirs of travel are less the objects we bought in markets and more the memory of things we liked, attitudes or recipes; the stories we tell are just the feelings we had when we were there.
Of course travelling is easier when in new places, more things capture our imagination but for me the true traveller travels their home town or wherever they are just as they would travel Borneo - with their eyes open. I think we retain our child-like naivety, a perspective that tells us that we are so small and that there is so much to know and see.
People say that life is a journey - only some of us travel it.

If you enjoyed this you might like to head on over to my travel blog at travelatalexleclez.blogspot.com for more.

on eco-graffiti ii

I have already written here about eco-graffiti but so many interesting things have been found since then it merits a second post. It seems that etching into plants is not the only avenue open to those who wish to indulge in some public displays of artfection. I have found images in moss, printed into snow and, perhaps most cunningly, selective cleaning. It really is amazing what you can find when you know that there is something to look for.
The artist Hanksy's technique of printing into snow is innovative ( and can be found here: http://hanksy.co.uk/page4.html ) but is surely not practical in the UK. Maybe it is intended to signify fleeting moments of art but i personally feel that crude puns are not the best example of art. Edina Tokadi, on the other hand, offers a more sustainable and lasting image in Williamsburg, Brooklyn with images of animals presented in moss. Although it relies on good behaviour from the locals i feel the moss adds a tactile element to the art which, combined with the playful animal shapes, will surely appeal to children and adults alike. Graffiti, for me, is about reclaiming land, transgressing notions of property and ultimately creating more liveable areas for everybody and if you look here i think you will agree Tokadi achieves this: http://tinyurl.com/3cq5psm . On the same webpage the artist herself is quoted as saying that she likes to let her plants "live by themselves" stating that, "from the moment I put them on the street they start to have their own life". Roland Barthes would love this because as soon as the artist is finished with their work it becomes a part of society and open to what other people will do with it; i feel art that is interactive and collaborative is the finest type and sincerely hope the people of Williamsburg have not only maintained the pieces but changed and enhanced their beauty and identity.
Another interesting find on the inhabitat website was this article on reverse graffiti: http://tinyurl.com/29lwg6d . The movement seems to have been started by "Moose" and Alexandre Orion and they selectively clean dirty walls in public leaving an image. The interest from brands such as Smirnoff suggests that this is a phenomena that may continue into the future (after all the worst that could happen is that walls were properly cleaned afterwards as was the case in the Sao Paulo tunnels) and although technically it is illegal advertising when done for branding it is surely a fantastic eco-solution for artists who live in unclean cities. 
If you have seen any interesting eco-graffiti i would love to see it and if you have been inspired to create your own masterpieces i have found a recipe for the moss mixture here: http://tinyurl.com/3q2q6tt . I am so glad that, as Kate Muir put it, the days of "preserving sharks in formaldehyde is over [and] the days of preserving sharks in the ocean are here."

on eco-graffiti

Reflections on French nudity and dressing aside Nice showed me something i can't believe that i've never seen before: graffiti on plants. No spray paint here, it looked like the graffiti had simply been etched into the cacti. Is this a new eco-friendly form of graffiti? No wasted spray, no spray-can necessary, no cleaning possible; it might be the future of graffiti: artists are a very conscious group.
Now i have no idea how expensive being a graffiti artist is, in fact, all of my graffiti knowledge comes from a book i browsed whilst waiting for my hair to be cut and the odd amusing print of Banksy pictures. Some quick research revealed that a spray-paint can costs between £3 and £15, overalls cost £5 a time and a paint mask sets you back about £20. This struck me as relatively cheap for art but, and you'll be shocked at this, during my research for a sharp implement with which to etch, i came across five sticks outside my house and several stones all of which were free! This means that not only is plant-etching eco-friendly but it's cheaper too. (More sensible readers might note that you could easily come by a sharp object for a very small sum and it would likely be a one-time purchase unlike spray-cans.)
I know that in the UK we are relatively relaxed when it comes to graffiti (well at least when it is done by Banksy) and this seems true of many of the countries that embrace it as an art form. Eco-graffiti (as i shall from now be calling it) deals with what i imagine can be a big problem: over-congestion. It must be (i say with no real knowledge) a problem. There is only so much wall space. Plants, however, will repair these parts of themselves renewing the canvas for someone else. They might even give an interesting effect where old scar tissue gives a background to new pictures without confusing the image. Even if you aren't too bothered about the environment cacti offer a good canvas for you because the local authorities are not able to clean off your art but are also unlikely  to actually remove the plants.
It seems that everyone is a winner with eco-graffiti and even though i have only seen it in Nice i think it just might take off.

on french beaches

If you are one of those special people who frequently read this blog you will have noticed that i've not been leaving many digital footprints for you to follow. For this i must apologise but i have been away, in Nice, and have brought back some reflections. With no blog to write on they were written in a vague diary format and i want to experiment with this form and its effect so this post might look a little strange.

Some Early Thoughts from Nice
French people dress more bravely.
The French are more liberal (this translates to better in my mind) when it comes to nudity and, sadly i feel they come hand in hand, sex. People are happy to sunbathe sans vêtements and just change on the beach. Why did i feel i needed to retreat to the toilets?! (Note to self: Maybe spend time in a nudist colony to overcome this ridiculous British embarrassment over something completely natural. Aim for the week: Feel comfortable enough to be nude in public for a few seconds, changing into swimming trunks might present the perfect opportunity. Let's take this with little steps.) Why shouldn't i be confident enough? Why should i care anyway? 

French people through all ages are braver with what they will wear. As a result they are more stylish, have more flair and are more individual, they embrace their individuality. What a fantastically confident nation! Their confidence is inspiring.


After the beach on the second day
The French's bravery and the fact that they don't care about other people's attitudes towards them translates to nudity on the beach. But only for females. Why? I felt that i should start the male revolution at least when changing. I didn't. (Update on Operation Nudity: i think it would be easier when not with people i knew. I like to think that with just strangers here i could. Why is it that we are most shy in front of people we know? Maybe we care more. Maybe we don't want to change their perceptions of us.)
Is it only for practical reasons that women are in a state of undress on the beach that men fail to reach (relative to swimsuit "normalities")? Clothes are a human construction after all. No other animals wear them. (When did not being nude go beyond mere practicality, who said: "you know these things that we use to keep warm and use for comfort for certain parts of our bodies? Let's wear them all the time and in the future the idea of being naked in public will seem crazy, will become a crime!" Clothes are nice and all but i'm not sure that they are always necessary or should be the only option.)


Afternoon of the third day
The revolution has started. On my third swim of the day i decided to paddle out into the sea where nobody else was swimming and indulged in some skinny-dipping. It might take a while to catch on if i continue to do it where nobody can see me but i still feel that this can count as a success.
I continue to like how nobody cares that people are naked on the beach. It is a very refreshing maturity especially coming from a country where the most read newspaper prints a naked lady on the third page every day. Nudity here is treated as normal, people don't stare, it isn't seedy, people aren't perverted. I think the problem in the UK stems from the fact that we are so Victorian about sex and nudity. It then becomes taboo and taboo becomes fetish. There are certain parts of the body that we can usually see: the face; the arms; the legs etc (well, if it is sunny anyway - maybe our average temperature contributes in part to these views) and a general appreciation is built up, especially for faces, they are accepted parts of people's bodies. When something usually covered becomes uncovered people act like children, act as if this weren't part of the body but instead some exotic fruit that must be gaped at, in France they just accept that it is all a part of the body and act like adults.
It continues to be disappointing that men have not undressed in the same fashion that women do, why are they shy? I hope to convince myself that is the sheer impracticality of sandy bums that causes this, after all women are not bearing that area either. I do also like to think that if someone started the male revolution on the land (oh yes, i consider myself as the revolutionary of the sea) that i would follow at some point, it's like a standing ovation really: you wouldn't start one even if you thought it was right but you will happily join in later.


The third evening
It seems that the French maturity about the body does not translate into their children following suit. I find this very odd given their parents' views. Our parents don't undress on beaches. Our papers fetishise the female body. Theirs do and don't, respectively, so why did the two girls at the Matisse gallery almost collapse with waves of laughter at the sculpture of a naked man? This strikes me as very strange and i can only put it down to the fact that it was a man, or perhaps the fact that it was a man and they were female. It seems France still has progress to make (though that's good really isn't it? If they had finished there is always the danger of a revisionist school of thought).




Now i was definitely away for longer than three days but i don't want to be throwing too many topics out in one post so that is all for now on Nice. I am very aware, tremendously aware even, that this post has been very gendered, especially given some of my previous posts, but i'm sure you will understand that the distinction was there only due to its importance in the issues discussed.

If you enjoyed this you might like to head on over to my travel blog at travelatalexleclez.blogspot.com for more.

on being "yourself"

Yesterday i was talking about which team people choose to support and i am aware that that might have been limiting to people's pleasure as it is a specific interest. I guess it all comes down to how we want to define ourselves, as part of our community and country or as adhering to a particular ethos or philosophy. When you think about it, people don't choose authors, poets, musicians, artists and philosophers on where they come from, why would you do that with a sports team?
Everyone, at one time or another, has heard the phrase, "just be yourself", whether it be parental advice on your first day at school or friends trying to help calm your nerves for a date or a job interview. The thing i struggle with is that, yes, people can be themselves in general but i don't see it embraced quite as fully as i think it should be, people do it in mind perhaps but not so much in body.
In Arundhati Roy's 'The God of Small Things' there is a sentence which says that Velutha (a character) 's body was shaped by his carpentry. This, in itself, is not that interesting a sentence, however what the phrasing of it made me think of was the fact that he had been shaped by his hobby, physically. What struck me at that moment was that no-one should make a particular effort to appear a certain way. This would lead to us being able to judge books by their covers (when books are a metaphor or analogous for people, when it comes to books it's far more problematic - they don't get to chose their covers in the way that we do). Now i like to think of my body as a tool for doing things that i want to do, it enables me to move, sense things etc but it is mainly a carrier for my brain. This might be what leads me to this point of view but i don't think that people should do things specifically to attain a certain aesthetic quality; people who enjoy spending time outside would then be the only tanned people and that would be right because it was part of who they were. The body could become a descriptor for a person's personality. People who enjoyed exercise would be slimmer and/or more muscular but people shouldn't just go to the gym in order to manufacture that (unless of course they enjoy the actual going to the gym rather than the results) because that is untrue of who they really are.
I think this all comes from our flawed notion of "beauty". We should recognise traits that we share with people in their very appearance and that should be attractive rather that what society conceives and deigns we should all find attractive. I just find it strange that we try to be something we aren't, something apart from our essence, away from our true beauty as an individual.
This theory would also cover food and drink. People should eat what they want and whatever shape they come out, when combined with everything else they enjoy doing, would be their "truest" shape, their "truest" self. I put truest in quotation marks because i felt it was a little strong otherwise but i do really believe that we have an ultimate, absolute essence and every time we do something that we don't enjoy or choose something that wouldn't be our first choice we distance ourselves from that and I think that if we just followed what we wanted we would all be a lot happier as every action would have meaning and passion and desire behind it.
I am, of course, aware that this isn't always possible, that it would be an idealist world for it to be possible to only do what you want but i also know that we aren't true to ourselves as often as we might be, as often as we should be.
The difficulty with this is knowing where to draw the line. There is making an effort, simple hygiene and there is going to the gym. Just because you don't enjoy the gym - and so don't fit the credo of only doing things that you do enjoy which would lead to forming a body most like your personality - does that mean you shouldn't go? By extension i don't enjoy the act of putting on sun cream or find brushing my teeth particularly riveting so should i not do that? Clearly these are issues of hygiene and protecting yourself against dangers and people will argue that going to the gym could be conditioning against an attacker or giving you the option of getting places quicker and thus a protection as well. Drawing the line between being untrue to yourself and endangering yourself is problematic but i think in general gym-goers tend to push the vanity borders and so don't fall in line with this theory - unless of course they really do go for the above reasons. In any case, vanity would become redundant as people would be beautiful in their own way rather than trying to attain certain characteristics.
When it comes to exercise and food if we all remained true to what we wanted to do, what we enjoyed then it would be easier to identify people with similar interests and versions of beauty would change, we would come to recognise personality traits and find them attractive in others. Objectors might say that the problem with this might be that it lead to a very homogenised social group but i feel when you factor in how long people spend outside (leading to tanning) and other variables you would find certain things in other people attractive but not others, just like in relationships now.
This clearly does not factor in many activities that leave no noticeable mark on the body such as reading, going to galleries and museums, listening to music (or the active rather than passive versions of these activities - i feel it is slightly sad that my first three activities were all passive) etc. But they would still be marked by their food choices and the general guide of just following what you enjoy and want to do still holds as a good rule for life. I feel if you keep selecting options that you enjoy or find interesting then they will continue to lead to other things you will enjoy, we should be fully ourselves and not try to manufacture something else. Sure, this will screw over modelling and the clothing industry but we all need a challenge and as long as they have followed things they enjoy and been true to themselves i'm sure they will enjoy this too.

I feel this might need some serious revisiting so watch this space.

how are the leaves up there?

Today was the men's final at Wimbledon. Andy Murray was not playing. The papers, my friends, my family and the nation as a whole seemed to think that this was sad. Well, it is sad because it was something important to him but it is no more sad than if he had knocked out Rafael Nadal, his semi-final opponent.

Supporting the sports team near you or your own country has always been a bit of an odd idea to me. I know these people no better than i know the people playing in Wolverhampton or Ipswich or those lovely looking gentlemen from Uruguay. When people are younger, excluding those who follow their parents' choice, they are generally attracted to teams who do well or teams who play in shirts that are their favourite colour (no wonder red and blue teams abound in the Premiership - they even reap the rewards of table-football, the cheek!). This seems like a far more reasonable decision than choosing your local club. That is unless you plan on going to see them play, but even then i think i would find it difficult to feel passionately about anything just because it was convenient. That sort of attitude would lead to lots of tree-climbing for me, "Fancy going to the pub tonight?" "Why would we do that when we have all these trees to climb just outside?" the conversation would go, and if we follow this ad absurdium, and why wouldn't we, to eating the leaves as it was just impractical to climb all the way down the tree, traipse across the road, open the front door and make a sandwich. Returning to the real world, why wouldn't you choose a team who's style of play you particularly enjoyed or who played in that certain shade of turquoise that you treasure above all other colours? When you see fans at matches one of the words that springs to mind to describe them - along with heavily inebriated and raucously loud - is passionate, and if i'm going to get passionate about something it's going to be something i enjoy not something that the only thing i have in common with it is where i happen to have been born and reside.

A film i would strongly recommend is a German film called, Die Welle. There is a scene in the film where they are discussing nationalism and a girl says, "all those people waving flags, it's disgusting" which is instantly countered by a boy claiming, "if we don't, who will?" Now i am very much of the opinion posited by graffiti artist Banksy that, "people who enjoy waving flags don't deserve to have one". The same jokes come out year on year that there is a new system designed by the NHS for gauging how crazy people are: people with no flags on their car are sane; people with one are a little odd; people with two are just about approachable; three flags means handle with care; and four flags suggests you should keep your distance if you can. This anti-flag position does not seem to go hand-in-hand with anti-nationalism though. People who wield flags in favour of their team just baffle me, patriotism i can sort of understand but flags are only really at home on ships or castles.

But the boy has a point, doesn't he? These lovely (questionable adjective but let's be friendly) people have dedicated their lives to sport and if that is something we enjoy watching then they should surely receive our support. Well, yes, someone should but i still have no greater link with these people than that we come from the same country, not something which i had a large choice about in the first place. 

By all means feel free to support your local club and cheer for your country; i think i'll stick to supporting those who i feel a link with, wherever they are from. I guess i just prefer to like types of people who embody amiable characteristics than blindly following whoever it is that turns out under a certain flag.

hello readers from all round the world (except Australia but in particular Ukraine)

So i have noticed that, UK aside, the countries that view my blog the most are Ukraine and then, with half as many views, Russia. Hello there, cheers for reading. At first i thought maybe a few people had stumbled on it by chance and enjoyed it and kept reading new posts, then i considered that maybe i just strike a chord with Eastern Europe, after all, i loved it when i was there, maybe rakija and bureks indelibly marked me for Eastern European entertainment.
What was especially strange was that no Australians - an anglophonic people - had viewed the blog (if you are Australian and are retrospectively reading this blog: hello, i'm Alex, i hope you find something here that you can enjoy. Don't believe me that there are enjoyable things? Just ask Ukraine!). Maybe the weather in Oz is just too nice to waste scouring the internet. Maybe that wizard fella won't let you use the internet and forces you into barbecues, surfing, beach-parties and drinking tinnies around a campfire at sunset. Maybe in one sentence i managed to offend most Australians with my own national stereotype and, possibly worse, have you confused with a fictional alternative to Kansas.
But maybe it is down to timing. Maybe i just post at a certain time of day that means people in Eastern Europe are the ones idly (or not idly - other levels of the passivity/activity spectrum are available) trawling the internet for odd thoughts on baths and grass or some confused poetry, rather than anglophone America or Australia who are busy working or sleeping respectively.
Well whoever is reading this, wherever you're from, i just hope you enjoy it. Maybe you could even let me know if you are Ukrainian and feel i have unwittingly tapped into your national psyche or Australian and just don't have time to read anything further than this post because there is a crazed, but slightly magical, despot inside your emerald city pursuing you and your dangerous blog-reading ways.

In a bath, darkly

when submerged you hear only your heart in your ears as if it has moved there, you don't feel any point of contact, the beauty of disconnected floating, an achievable flight, the nose poised above the water, your chest can't swell as the pressure of the water constricts like a belt, you must breathe in shallowly to avoid floating up too far. Then carefully, turning the plug's valve with your foot the water drains away slowly. You feel like a skin of water is pulling you down like clingfilm, your face breaks the surface as if it were your original crowning moment seeing the world for the very first time and a wave of pleasure of tenderness of sensitivity crashes through your body like waking at once from a dream you try not to laugh out in joy in ecstasy, you are so delicate at this moment in this moment, a single exhalation will ruin the feeling of asphyxiation, the sweet asphyxiation, your eyes which had only been able to sense the candle-light when submerged are now given the opportunity to open but you concentrate all your sensory action on touch on feel on pleasure through this masochism. Shallow breaths are necessary to prolong your drowning as you are weighed down paradoxically by the lack of water that seems to go on forever, you are pinned to the bottom of the bath, you cannot move, do not want to for the weight of the universe is not only pressing down on your chest but pulling you as well, as satan fell to pandemonium you are being pulled by some insatiable force and again you are floating, in stasis, but not drifting this time you are stuck, lost in transit. The water below you leaves and your breath cannot keep you off the surface of the bath now and you thud back into the world, your eyes can again open  to these familiar surroundings and you are free to breathe again, the water around your shoulders slowly trickles past you until you undam it and let it flow freely to the plug.

Untitled poem ii

I promised myself that i wouldn't post this until i understood it all but it was pointed out to me that some of the beauty was in the fact that not even the author understood it all. It seems i wrote it in an existential crisis. As always i would love to hear comments on how you might change it so i can improve my writing.

What if this all is a cover-up, what if none of this is real?

There are rules and regulations

Unnecessary to feel

The body doesn’t exist all people are actors, no-one dies or is hurt.

The laws are to limit our thinking

Words have been banned

How difficult would it be to lie about history

If it had been planned

Any sense of truth is easily obliterated

Everything is mitigated by the inexplicity, my nonexperience

Cogito ergo I know nothing except that sum

People could lie, all too easily

Real pleasure is out there

Untapped to my brain unfeasibly

But I’ve never heard of it

I have no grasp of its nectar

Of the things outside this bubble in which my life is cast

Some things get through

Smuggled in from the real world

They have to let it be

Or the mystery is unfurled.

The rules can be broken, without punishment

Those who you hear about are just tempting you

They are corporation sent.

Is life an audition for some greater purpose

If I succumb to their ways do I win or I lose

If I think for myself do I shine or do I bruise.

The things that I know are things that I’ve learnt

But who chose those things,

We learn of non-democracies

Are told how we have it good

Is that just their way of decreasing our livinghood?

Grass

Well there's been quite an absence of writing of late and for that i must apologise. My excuse: Wimbledon. It's amazing what you can do with some well manicured grass. People will come from all over the world not only to play but to watch. Until today this was the only reason i could think for keeping your garden in a nice condition: you planned on painting some lines on it, putting up a net and maybe even some fences and ultimately playing tennis. This all changed today when i discovered the joys of gardening. It wasn't like this was my first time gardening, but it now feels like all the other times i thought i was "gardening" i have only been working in the garden to make money. I wouldn't say that i felt "at one with nature" in a way i do at other times but even though i was killing and maiming plants (weeds and grass respectively, don't worry i'll still get paid) it didn't feel like a domination of nature or even destructive. Maybe i was taming it. A strange concept but it felt more like guiding a child to stop being rude or endangering itself through it's actions than constricting or limiting. Maybe moulding is the verb i'm looking for. I could smell the garden, feel it, see it. For a long time now i have been considering spending a day, as an experiment, trying to make every sense operate at all times and be conscious of each sense individually. Today suggested that a garden would be a nice place to do this and this, i think, is why so many people are attracted to gardening. It's not about dominion over nature it's about working with nature and very much a journey rather than a destination, a journey in which you are always accompanied by your senses.
     Now before today i've always thought that when i had my own garden i would buy gargantuan packets of mixed seeds, throw them around the garden and just let them grow. Even if all my seeds were promptly eaten by birds i would still be pleased with just having long, overgrown grass. This is because i like long grass. It is soft underfoot and cool even on hot days, also i prefer it aesthetically to shorter grass. The other advantage is that animals, and when i say animals i particularly mean cats, will be able to play in it. The amount of times i have seen a hint of sadness in the eyes of my cats when they see the lawnmower - to accompany the fear of the terrifyingly noisy beast that it is - is...well, admittedly...none but i like to think they enjoy stalking pretend prey in the grass (or prey that is an ant and thus does not constitute prey), i mean their stalking looks so much less enjoyable in short grass. Now, many lines down a paragraph that started "before today..." you may enjoy my but, oh that sounds terrible, you may enjoy my use of but, still a bit weird...you may...well...but today i started to understand why people would go to all the trouble of mowing the lawn (except where it is a duty of yours by law - apparently my readers state-side have lawn-mowing quotas, this is incredible, i mean literally unbelievable, can anyone deny or confirm this?). By juxtaposing the tidy lawn with the flowers or the patio or the (if you're really into your garden) water feature, the latter looks even more beautiful. Don't get me wrong, a lawn can be nice to look at but only in the way that you look nice in that photo taken in front of the Ngorongoro Crater (fell free to fill in anywhere truly magnificent that you have been) or the cloth in Cezanne's 'Still Life with Apples' can be when compared to the jug or the eponymous apples. The spectacular looks even more so because of the banal.
     Earlier i said that gardening was a journey. I am all for journeys; i love the journey but what puts me off actually gardening is that it's a project you never finish. You have to maintain it year round, year on year. This, however, is also the beauty of gardening. It is a relationship like any other (well my friends don't die when i'm on holiday because i didn't give them water or suddenly get eaten by slugs overnight, and i hope yours don't either, but you see what i mean), you have to nourish it day on day and keep up your side in order for it to blossom. These gardening terms doing anything for you? I'll just go then.

untitled poem

I feel it might be a little Kubla Kahn to write up a dream but i feel it's strangely haunting like the opening passages of Notes from the Underground (and yes, i flatter myself by that comparison with Dostoevsky) and it expresses a feeling i am attached to quite well. Of course i would love to hear some comments on how people would alter it.

He traipses along the platform,

the day receives the sun,

with a briefcase in his hand

he trudges on.

Few notice that the case is cuffed to his left wrist,

fewer that it carries only water.

The water changes state

depending where he is.

Sometimes it's steam and barely hinders

but as ice it's cold and heavy

and it encumbers every moment.

But this case, it has a faulty clasp

so people can sometimes open it,

sometimes it just knocks something he walks by

then everything

                          pours

                                  out.

In the shallows of the day

and the shadows of a train

he does not want people to see the contents of his case

so he scrambles picking up shards of ice that have shattered in this place.

But his left hand is hindered by the empty box

so he scrambles and he dwindles with his right.

It is his burden to bear

but even if he were unshackled

he would again bind himself.

Although he hates the contents

he knows his die is cast

so he picks it up again as the controller ambles past.

Though it is hard and hinders him

as he must take it everywhere,

the alternative is living without it

and that he could not bear.

For the guilt would eat him just as surely as Lady Macbeth saw a spot,

and the pain itself is comfort that he can pay his lot.

For forgetting is worse than hindrance;

freedom worse than pain,

for if you forget

or lay the memory down

the moment that it comes back

is worse than the combined hell of the perpetual case sodden by the rain.

on reading the dictionary

Sometimes i have good ideas at night. It's logical right? I spend roughly a third of my life in bed so it's only natural. I definitely once heard that a composer kept a pen and paper on their bedside table for just this reason. What with the arrival of technology i just leave my phone / alarm clock / notepad on the fridge next to my bed. The slight disadvantage of this is the fact that whereas i would see a notepad with my inspired fourth symphony on my bedside table in the morning the phone is always there and is always singing at me to wake me up so my stock reaction is not to check my Drafts. So it is now that i find that, a while back now, in a period when i apparently wasn't feeling too positive, i thought it would be a good idea to read the dictionary in order to have different reasons and ways of disliking things; the more words you have the more things there are to dislike and the better you can complain. Also if you are looking for a silver lining for this thought how about the ability to locate exactly what it was that you didn't like, making it easier to alleviate any unpleasantness.
Now you can have your real silver lining in the present day: we had just come back from town, the sun was warm on our backs and sweat embalmed our foreheads so we went to sit in the park. Two of the boys were discussing the unnecessarily overly-engineered swing and, what with my limited knowledge in this area, and with my perpetual need to provoke debate between arts and sciences students, i remarked that it was nice that engineers had done something useful in my life because it was pleasing to look at. They, of course, pointed out all the things in the park that engineers had done which i had probably enjoyed and retorted that literature had done nothing for them here. Now, i would usually quote Bennett's Hector and say that:
"The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours." 
then couple that with the fact that apart from seeing the way the children played on the swings and the ways the houses framed the soft lush grass through my own eyes and feeling a bond with "a person [i] have never met" and the ensuing beauty of the human mind and the beauty of their words, apart from all of that i could also have my thought framed by their words so i would see Wordsworth's grass next to Eliot's buildings and thus see the world completely differently as each image transports me back to original moment of beauty of those poems. Aside from all that, for the first time, i realised that verbosity lent itself to appreciating the beauty of the world all the more.
These thoughts suggest that reading the dictionary might not be such a strange idea as thought is shaped through language and language is as close to articulating feeling as i will ever get. Van Gogh's Starry Night may move me to rapture, but i cannot paint; music may inspire a catharsis that makes me understand how skin can crawl, but i cannot play; stories in film or novel form may inspire me to reach further and for things i did not know existed, but my own will never do so; but being able to appreciate a moment's beauty all the more for having the words to articulate it and the words to feel things i did not know existed, that, well that is something we can all aspire to and is within easy reach in any dictionary.

i want to start every sentence with i feel because of the beautiful Jonathan Harris

So i said that i watched something that made me think about The Night Listener again and that thing was a lecture by Jonathan Harris which was about connecting people and their stories, i'll put the link at the bottom if you're interested.
The first thing he talked about has been around since about 2007 though i've never heard of it but it was all amazing. Possibly a bit too anglophonic but such a lovely idea. It is a program called We Feel Fine and it searches the world's blogs for the phrase "i feel..." and it stores all the data of what people are feeling and what they are blogging about (apparently it logs about 20,000 people a day) then it can find where you are through your IP address and can tell you what the weather is like there. You can then go and search for certain characteristics like women in their thirties who feel melancholy whilst it is sunny in Kosovo, if that's what you would like. The way i'm expressing it seems to make it sound much more like a device that stalks you and helps you stalk people than when Jonathan described it but really i think it is beautiful. Maybe i should let Jonathan know, i'm sure he checks the data sometimes as he seemed really interested in people's stories so here goes; Jonathan i feel like your We Feel Fine program is absolutely lovely, it makes me feel that i am on the road meeting new people each with a story to tell, jumping in and out of their lives like Jack Kerouac.
People ask me why i blog rather write a diary if i don't tell people the url and this is my new fantastic reason. You can even click on each quote and it will take you to that person's blog - he talked about clicking on the blog if you felt empathy for the person which just makes him an even more beautiful human - and i like that people who feel the same or feel they can help can get in contact. Some people seem to think that the internet is massive and frightening but to me it is a warm cuddle of compassion.
On to the actual link with the last post then. What is so lovely about all of this is that it is passive. It has been around since 2007 and i have not heard of it, which means every time i have blogged "i feel..." i have not known that there was an audience and this must be true for the vast majority of bloggers. It shows people as they are being honest and candid and so gives true feelings and true stories, especially if, like me, people are writing without an audience or rather without catering for an audience. This got me thinking that this was a better thing to engage with than a soap. If people like real life stories ( i am still not sure why this is but i know that On The Road would not be so sublime if i thought it was made up (if it is please don't tell me i just refuse to research it in case my heart is broken)), as i was saying, if people like real stories then they should follow We Feel Fine because there is no end to what you can find out, you can just keep reading, television, films and novels are finite in a way this isn't and this is all true (which is apparently what we want). However exciting metafiction can be - like the release of a real Nikki Heat book from the fictional television show Castle - it can never trump real life with all its intricacies and magnificence.
Jonathan then talked about how the night sky is filled with constellations that are named after Greek myths and  what stories we would have in the sky if we named the constellations. i had never really thought of the stars like that, as stories playing out across the sky. i don't know the constellations but i now feel driven to know them and go back to Zambia where the sky was darkest and the stars were brightest and just gaze up and watch myths all night long...i wish i was there right now in the silence of the Zambian night. He then talked about a program that tracked the world's media and the internet and made constellations through the stories and the words that were being used, i can't explain it like he did, if you like the ideas maybe have a look at the link at the bottom, but what i liked most about that was the fact you could put anything at the centre of the universe. and all the words, all the news stories, all the photos that were related to that swirled around it like cinnamon into coffee and you could get an absolute picture of anything you wanted. This made me happy. i want you to look at it and start lots of blog sentences with i feel, so we can all feel together.



Here is the treasured link, if you forward anything today forward this link: http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_harris_tells_the_web_s_secret_stories.html .

on authoriality

Wrote this a couple of days back but forgot to post it and then watched something else which reminded me of it. You didn't need to know that but i needed you to know that.

i just watched The Night Listener, if you haven't seen it it's about an author who gets a call from a 14 year old boy whose existence is never proved. The boy has allegedly used writing therapy to overcome the trauma of having been subject to paedophilic pornography films and being violated in them. He writes about this in the book. In the film Robin Williams says if it's a lie that it is a sick way of promoting a book. But really, aside from the possible terror of the reality, what is the importance of it being a real story? i always like to think it would be fun to pretend to be someone else when on a plane or when you meet people travelling but would i be upset or disappointed if i found that stories that i had been told were lies aside from the fact itself that i had been lied to? Is it plausibility which is important? Is it to do with how emotionally invested we get with the story? When you study history, or rather when i did i never got emotionally involved because i know that that is how it turned out and that has, in part, created the world we live in, and to an extent a true story does the same. A fictional story could have ended differently, we wonder perhaps why the author chose for it to end in the way it did. Hollywood obviously thinks that it is important because they always say when a story is based on real events. Is it maybe part of modern fiction that it has to be plausible and if we know that it happened then we can trust it and we feel more tied to it emotionally because it is real people? In the case of the film though it wasn't important if the back-story was real was it, it was just the fact that the author lied.

Authoriality confuses me.

"awesome like ten million hotdogs, Sir"

So i haven't written any poetry properly for a long time. i would say i was rusty so i had an excuse but i don't want one. Art should be collaborative i think. Art is collaborative even if only one person writes it. i fear and relish your comments but i like the immediacy of this form and the pressure it puts on the poem - if i can call it that, it's more of an imagination dump.

Carriages lined with people

With stories of their own.

The world expands in my head

As they make their way home, to work, to family, to friends

To the ends of the line

And time passes time

In this underground line

Where my eyes open to the awesome size of the world,

"Awesome like ten million hotdogs, Sir."

My score of years

Is nothing here

My own insignificance pales against theirs

Their love affairs, their joking dares, their unawares.

We are follicles of hairs on the head of the city

Alone nothing but together pretty.

Or ugly. Or something

Less much less than i could fathom.

I am insignificant at best.

Chess

A strange thing to talk about i suppose but i do find it interesting. A very old game where the only female gendered piece is the strongest. The king might be the one you have to take to win but the queen is the most versatile and the most dangerous whilst the king is the most fragile; the female:male dynamic i suppose is a bit like in Macbeth, action vs inaction, potency vs stasis. On a side note i suppose i also like the imagery of bishops only being able to move diagonally, unable to defend itself from attacks right next to it and criss-crossing across the board sticking to one colour of square like it doesn't accept the philosophy of the other and thus refuses to go there (also they are more fun simply because James Joyce makes the bishop in Ulysses criss-cross around Dublin - simple things...). i like the social mobility the pawn is afforded, an american dream of a piece before America was even populated by what we would now call americans.

I but you?

It probably hasn't escaped your attention that i write "I" i. Why am i capitalised but not you or him or her or it; not even we gets that lovely capitalising treatment (isn't it a little egocentric, at least be consistent). But names do, sure. Strange aggrandisement rules. i'm happy to capitalise people i like or rather people i think deserve it the same goes for cities. But some names just look better lower case, the example that comes to mind is bogota, don't know why, it's just aesthetics. Capitals were previously used when people didn't put spaces between words but i think we can probably say it's safe to say i is fine and personally i like the little dot hovering above my personal pronoun and i'm not sure i deserve capitalisation yet, something to aim for maybe.