monoceros blogsThe New York Times Book Review has released its 100 Notable Books of the Year list, which I've printed out and stuck to my noticeboard. I'm not sure how many I'll be able to cross off, but it's nice to know several books I picked out are on my have-already-read or will-read shelf.
A new title that got my attention was Elizabeth D. Samet's Soldier’s Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point. More to the point, I'm surprised to learn that first-year students at West Point study literature. I thought on it a little more and realized that it made sense - some of the finest literature deal with great themes and dramas found only in wars and among soldiers. Almost every college or short story anthology features Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried." If civilian freshmen are reading it, young soldiers who can more readily identify with the characters should be too.
This also reminds me of how all first-year medical students in the US are given a copy of On Doctoring, which is a practice I couldn't agree with more. Doctoring, soldiering: these are professions that save, defend, protect, or fail to protect or take lives away intentionally or unintentionally. If stories are built on conflict, these are two vocations made for story-telling. It works both ways - people who have to deal with human conflict on a daily basis can find much to learn in literature.
I wonder if NS men, or at least the officers in OCS, and doctors in Singapore would be any different or better if literature were part of their syllabus. No matter what skeptics - or principals in secondary schools who've dropped literature because it doesn't pull in as many A's as the other subjects - no matter what anyone says, literature has its place in any curriculum. Not all of classroom lessons have to be geared towards examinations. Education should encompass as much as possible and open up a pupil's world, pushing him beyond what's expected of him. Hector, the English teacher from Alan Bennett's "The History Boys," got it right when he filled his lessons with poetry and cultural knowledge. These weren't for the exams but for life - "Learn it now, know it now and you'll understand it whenever."
It's Thanksgiving today, and also my last day at the university this year. I was all set to describe the origins and joys of Thanksgiving to my Chinese students but they beat me to it, wishing me a happy Thanksgiving (not that any of us is going to be wolfing down turkey and cranberries). We did have some sharing though - I baked brownies for them (a last-class tradition that I observe) and they presented me with a journal in which each of them had written a note for me. Although they were thrilled with the brownies, I think it's safe to say that I was the more surprised one. Their notes were incredibly moving and made all my slogging and grading over the past months suddenly seem like the best thing I did all year.
I haven't been this touched since my first class of students at Changkat Changi - secondary 4 normal-technical students - presented me with a huge brown bear on my last day. I knew that money didn't come easy for many (if any) of them, so even though the cynic in me was (and still is) averse to beribboned over-sized bears, I thought it was one of the finest bears I'd ever seen. It's been over ten years and I've lost touch with all of them. However, the day after my wedding four years ago, when LK and I were banking in our gift money, I recognized the bank teller as Sarina, a girl from that Changkat Changi class, the prettiest one of the lot who often wore gray contact lenses to school. She once threatened to press charges against a classmate - statutory rape - and I imagined she would be a tough student to handle. But we got past her reputation and I admired her for her fierce intelligence, passion, and resilience. She seemed happy working at the bank, and I was proud of her. She had lost some of her youthful beauty though; she was now a little heavier and wearier, but still, I didn't miss the old spark in her when we started conversing after she recognized and asked me if I was who I was. I hope she's still happy, wherever she is now.
My Chinese students, I imagine, come from more comfortable backgrounds, though by no means are they terribly well-off either. They were cheering the tray of brownies before I had even uncovered it and shown them what food they were getting. It's been a long time since I've met students or young people so easy to please. They're a quieter group, compared to my previous one this year, but they sure know how to make an impression. I can't put the journal down. I think it's something I'll be reading whenever I feel like grading is a level of hell the scribes had forgotten to include in their accounts.
Happy Thanksgiving to whoever is celebrating it.
I'm thankful for many things this year.
What's not to love? The movie has big band music, transporting scenes of London, an excellent cast: the brilliant Frances McDormand, effervescent and talented Amy Adams (fresh off "Enchanted"), the sweet-faced Julliard boy Lee Pace (from "Pushing Daisies"), and dashing and debonair Ciaran Hinds (if you didn't see him in "Persuasion," you should).
(Look out for the blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance of Shirley Henderson, who plays Moaning Myrtle in the Harry Potter movies; she's the one who makes over Miss Pettigrew, giving her "a little powder." I recognized her voice before her face; no one can forget Moaning Myrtle's voice!)
I've been deciding what my first post in a long while should be - a rant about work, or rather people I've come across in my line of work; the writers' strike in Hollywood, which reminded me of the first strike I participated in three years ago - complete with wooden sign and chanting - and which also unearthed a story about one of my parents who didn't just participate in one but actually organized it (I've never felt prouder of that parent than when I listened to that story); the celebration of babies in August (Mandy's Megan) and October (Peiming's Paige); two poems I recently read and came to love; or two books I'm reading and loving but have had to put aside because the work is piling up but I can't seem to bring myself to read another essay with missing articles and non-idiomatic sentences.
Perhaps I'll keep it short with the two poems and save the other stories for another week (drafts are in the works).
Lisel Mueller is a favorite poet, and what she does with words moves me in so many ways that I can't quite begin to name the first. I'll give it a shot anyway - every word is a simple one, but perfect in creating a scene that is at once everyday, ordinary, knowable but also surreal, rich with possibility, and edged with the lozenge of darkness that makes a picture worth looking at more than once.
"In November" by Lisel Mueller
Outside the house the wind is howling
and the trees are creaking horribly.
This is an old story
with its old beginning,
as I lay me down to sleep.
But when I wake up, sunlight
has taken over the room.
You have already made the coffee
and the radio brings us music
from a confident age. In the paper
bad news is set in distant places.
Whatever was bound to happen
in my story did not happen.
But I know there are rules that cannot be broken.
Perhaps a name was changed.
A small mistake. Perhaps
a woman I do not know
is facing the day with the heavy heart
that, by all rights, should have been mine.
Most people love poems for their truth, for how perfectly they reflect our sad and sometimes happy lives.
"Loss and Gain" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
When I compare
What I have lost with what I have gained,
What I have missed with what attained,
Little room do I find for pride.
I am aware
How many days have been idly spent;
How like an arrow the good intent
Has fallen short or been turned aside.
But who shall dare
To measure loss and gain in this wise?
Defeat may be victory in disguise;
The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.