Insomnia

From The Blue Castle, one of my favorite childhood classics, when Valancy expresses doubt that her husband actually loves her:

"You've been lying awake at three o'clock too long," said Barney, shaking her. "That's all that's the matter with you.

They're definitely words of comfort, whenever I think about all the things that float through my brain during my (often) sleepless nights.

Small World Syndrome

Just to be clear -- I'm not trying to avoid people -- but this passage from Anansi Boys made me think about what a small, strange world it can be sometimes:

"It is a small world. You do not have to live in it particularly long to learn that for yourself. There is a theory that, in the whole world, there are only five hundred real people (the cast, as it were. All the rest of the people in the world, the theory suggests, are extras), and what is more, they all know each other. And it's true, or true as far as it goes. In reality the world is made of thousands upon thousands of groups of about five hundred people, all of whom will spend their lives bumping into each other, trying to avoid each other, and discovering each other in the same unlikely teashop in Vancouver."

On Failure and Happiness

Randomly, I've been re-reading Geography of Bliss this week: a visiting cousin happened to leave his copy behind, which was a stroke of good luck, since my copy is currently 5000 miles away. I flipped the book open and found myself reading about Iceland, and specifically, what makes Icelandic people, on average, amongst the happiest in the world*:

"Having multiple identities (though not multiple personalities) is, [according to one Iceland resident] conducive to happiness. This runs counter to the prevailing belief in the United States and other western nations, where specialization is considered the highest good. Academics, doctors, and other professionals spend lifetimes learning more and more about less and less. In Iceland, people learn more and more about more and more."

And, by way of explaining how multiple identities are able to be cultivated:

"It's because of failure," says Larus, pushing his glasses against the bridge of his nose.
"Failure?"
"Yes, failure doesn't carry a stigma in Iceland. In fact, in a way, we admire failures."

This all intuitively makes sense to me. As an oversimplification:

If you're not worried about failing, you're more likely to try new things, which is likely to cause happiness.

(* Caveat: At least, according to Ruut Veenhoven and Eric Weiner. As pointed out by friends at brunch, there are too many unanswered questions/concerns about the methodology to rely too heavily on its accuracy. And who knows if Icelanders *are* happy? They seem to be having their own share of troubles these days.)

Leaving and Leaving You

And just like that, a year has gone by. It's officially been one year since I've moved to London. A year that's been undoubtedly exciting: exploring a new city, reconnecting with old friends, making new ones. But also a year of longing: missing New York (which feels more like 'home' now that I'm 3000 miles away) and missing loved ones.

I spent part of last weekend at the Southbank Centre, which is hosting the Festival of Britain. As part of the Festival, there are some Scottish poems exhibited, including the following poem by Sophie Hannah. It's perhaps a little maudlin, but it seems especially fitting today.

Leaving and Leaving You

When I leave your postcode and your commuting station,
When I leave undone the things that we planned to do,
You may feel you have been left by association,
But there is leaving and there is leaving you.

When I leave your town and the club that you belong to,
When I leave without much warning or much regret,
Remember, there’s doing wrong and there’s doing wrong to
You, which I’ll never do and I haven’t yet,

And when I have gone, remember that in weighing
Everything up, from love to a cheaper rent,
You were all the reasons I thought of staying
And you were none of the reasons why I went

And although I leave your sight and I leave your setting
And our separation is soon to be a fact,
Though you stand beside what I’m leaving and forgetting,
I’m not leaving you, not if motive makes the act.

46 years later...

After hearing two friends strongly recommend it, I recently picked up The Autobiography of Malcolm X. It was provocative, to say the least. It made me wonder what he would think of our current society. And, despite his reputation for being militant, there were undoubtedly some passages of hope:

"[An American white ambassador in one African country and I] talked for an entire afternoon... We both agreed that American society makes it next to impossible for humans to meet in America and not be conscious of their color differences. And we both agreed that if racism could be removed, America could offer a society where rich and poor could truly live like human beings."

(Unsurprisingly, I found myself drawing parallels to Cloud Atlas.)

A Multitude of Drops

Just finished David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. It's been a while since a book has affected me this deeply: the book is incredible, a tour de force. I know, I know, the phrase is tossed around so casually that it's almost been rendered meaningless, but I can think of no other way to describe the novel. It's like nothing I've read before and written so beautifully that I sunk into it depths, unable to put it down for the past week.

The problem, now, is getting out of it. Passages have wrapped themselves around my brain, permeating my daily thoughts. This wouldn't be a bad thing, per se, except that I found the book to be remarkably depressing. For instance, two separate conversations this weekend - one on Silvio Berlusconi's many scandals and how the Italian media covers them (or, perhaps more accurately, doesn't cover them) and another on whether Osama actually had porn on his computer - had me jumping to this passage:

"The conflict between corporations and activists is that of narcolepsy versus remembrance. The corporations have money, power and influence. Our sole weapon is public outrage... But outrage is unwieldy to manufacture and handle. First, you need scrutiny; second, widespread awareness; only when this reaches a critical mass does public outrage explode into being. Any stage may be sabotaged. The world's [corporate heads] can fight scrutiny by burying truth in committees, dullness and misinformation, or by intimidating the scrutinizers. They can extinguish awareness by blinkering education, owning TV stations, paying "guest fees" to leader writers or just buying the media up. The media - and not just the Washington Post - is where democracies conduct their civil wars."

And how to think about the wars we're embroiled in without thinking of the following passage?

"Another war is always coming, Robert. They are never properly extinguished. What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. The threat of violence, the fear of violence, or actual violence, is the instrument of this dreadful will. You can see the will to power in bedrooms, kitchens, factories, unions, and the borders of states. Listen to this and remember it. The nation state is merely human nature inflated to monstrous proportions. QED, nations are entities whose laws are written by violence. Thus it ever was, so ever shall it be."

I know, though, that not everyone found the book so depressing. J took away the opposite message: one of optimism, citing the final passage. I don't want to spoil it - and I'm not sure if it even makes sense without the context of the story - but the narrator explains how he has made the decision to pledge himself to the Abolitionist cause, though he knows that his father-in-law will call him a fool and jeer that:

"He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay it along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!"

To which the narrator offers the most elegant of replies: "Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?"

What indeed?

Rituals

     ... Angus turned to her suddenly and said, "Domenica, why are we doing this? Why are we having all these people round to dinner?"

      It might have been another occasion on which Mallory's reply would have been called for: because they're there, but she said instead: "Friendship."

      He had not expected that answer. "Just that?"

     "Yes. Because a dinner party provides the ideal opportunity to sit with people. To talk to them."

      "You don't think, then, that it's simply a bourgeois ritual?"

      Domenica smiled. "I might have thought that in the past," she said. "No more, though. I now realise, I think, how important these bourgeois rituals are. Or all rituals, for that matter, bourgeois or not."