Thank Hitchens

If it weren't for Christopher Hitchens I wouldn't be here. I don't mean this in any metaphysical sense, but quite literally: I wouldn't be sitting in this seat, at my folding card-table, with a glass of retsina and a cigar, unable to sleep, in front of a word processor writing. Hitchens deserves almost all of the credit for my own intellectual awakening about ten years ago, and my subsequent decision to be a writer. It's true that I was raised by two brilliant academics, and my parents are certainly the foundation of my love of reading, but by the time I'd graduated from New York University, I'd all but lost interest in the life of the mind. I'd been dipped and coated in various ideas about identity politics, trendy postmodernist theory, some sort of vague Western conspiracy to oppress the rest of the world, and, most perniciously, moral relativism. 

 

Fortunately, thin as it was, the batter didn't stick too well. When my generation was hit with the greatest challenge to its existence in the form of two planes smashing through two skyscrapers and a few thousand immolated corpses, the moral questions raised were more difficult to answer in my state of mind than they should have been, in hindsight. I had been taught that morality was a word about which hung a stale but pungent odor of hypocrisy, hubris, and absolutism. It was a relic from a time when religion ruled the lives of men and no right-thinking liberal person was supposed to believe in anything as old-fashioned and un-ecumenical as right and wrong, much less good and evil. Still ankle-deep in ash, people were already talking about chickens coming home to roost, payback for imperialist crimes, and reaping a harvest of our own sowing. There would later be times when I felt guilty for not joining the armed forces the day after the attacks, but at that time I was still filled with a kind of masochistic guilt – a belief that, having been so lucky in my birth, my environment, my situation, there must naturally be distant victims of my own prosperity, and that they were well within their right to punish me.

One night I happened to switch on to Bill Maher's talk show. One of the guests, a chubby but roguish man with somewhat stringy blond hair, was defending the invasion of Iraq and giving the finger to Maher's audience while mocking them for repeatedly bleating like sheep at the most simple of “stupid Bush” jokes. At first, I thought he was another right-wing pundit, but as I listened to his pleasant English voice, I realized he was arguing for the invasion from a left-wing point of view. I was bowled over. It was my first encounter with a genuine contrarian, someone who could never be pigeonholed or lined-up on a neat spectrum. It was the exact feeling I'd always had but hadn't been smart enough to understand or bold enough to articulate – I was always too afraid that by breaking party lines with those around me, the disapproval of the majority would outweigh the potency of the argument.

In Peter Brook's stage and screen adaptation of the Indian epic The Mahabarata, one character, a young man, is determined to study under the greatest weapon master in the land. He is turned down as a pupil, so he builds a statue of the teacher and practices in front of it every day. In a similar way, I began to write, always with Hitchens' own writing in my mind. I began to read with the same hunger I'd had as a boy, before the things on offer were as dry and insipid as Deleuze and Donna Haraway. I tore through four or five books a week: novels, history, politics, and poetry (for the first time ever.) All because Christopher Hitchens had appeared to me as the embodiment of the man of letters and I wanted to be one tenth as smart and well-read as him. 

 

I read every article he wrote that I could find - essays about Auden, blowjobs, George Orwell, full-body waxing, Thomas Paine, and the King James Bible. I watched countless videos of Hitchens debating on every topic, and went to watch him destroy opponents live with his dazzling rhetoric, wit, and knowledge. I watched as he sat calmly, with a scotch in hand, and jotted something on his notepad while his opponent (in this case Rabbi Shmuley Boteach,) told the audience that Hitch had been lying and that Boteach himself had never read anything anywhere that would prove the points Hitch had been making. When his turn came, Hitch looked once more at the pad, and then gave Boteach the names, authors, and publishers of three books which would support the single point he had been challenged on – from memory.

 

It was Hitchens' erudition, his easy style, his humor, which first led me to try my hand at speaking in public, expressing my opinion, arguing in earnest – that, and the fact that he once said that if you can cut a dashing figure at a podium you'd never have to dine or sleep alone. I began to lead the New York City Atheists monthly meetup group, and I gradually became more comfortable in myself and my thoughts. I stopped being afraid of running up against the chill wall of consensus. When people parroted opinions they'd heard someone else say because they thought that everyone in the immediate area would agree with them, I began to question them and to engage them in discussion. The more I read, the more I spoke, and the more I wrote, the more I came into my own. Through my work in and connections with secularist and atheist causes, I ended up meeting authors, diplomats, UN representatives, and working on political initiatives to keep church and state separate. And it all went right back to Hitch.

But the most important thing that Hitch did for me was to teach me what it meant to be a moral person and a moral writer. It was around the time that I'd first encountered Hitchens that I had independently come to the conclusion that rather than being a product of American imperialism, the attacks of September 11^th were the fruits of a hideous religious ideology, totalitarian in its ambition and tenets. My atheism, always a casual and personal philosophy which I had taken for granted, now evolved into a political belief in secularism. When God is Not Great was published, I realized that the time when religion ruled the lives of men was by no means over, and that it was up to members of my generation to push back against it or risk being destroyed. It was Hitchens' writing that showed me that moral relativism was an easy out – one which absolved the individual from having to make a difficult choice. For the first time in my life, I began to feel emboldened to describe things in terms of right and wrong. And I soon realized that the criteria for knowing who one's enemies are are by no means soft.

Because of Hitchens' literary expertise, I came to understand style, art, beauty, and culture as more than mere window dressing but as the point themselves. I soon realized that my enemies are easy to identify – they are, first and foremost, the people who burn books, who put death sentences on novelists, kill filmmakers, attack cartoonists, burn embassies, kidnap travellers, bomb nightclubs, throw acid in the face of girls who would dare go to school, demolish ancient statues, crush their own daughter's windpipes for speaking to men, have a truly imperialist dream of restoring an ancient and oppressive world order, and only read one old, morally twisted book. I decided I was on the side of libraries filled with many books. And when people criticized US soldiers for not protecting the Baghdad museum as quickly as they could have, I criticized the men who looted it. And Hitch was always ready to point out that these weren't the enemies of “Western” civilization. The word “Western” was completely irrelevant and unnecessary. 

 

And the root of all of this is what is now the most important philosophical tenet in my life thanks to Hitch: a belief in absolute freedom of speech and freedom of conscience without fear, and the corollary belief that if any one principle needs to be defended quite literally to the death, this is it. I looked for a quote to illustrate this point from my favorite book of Hitchens': Letters to a Young Contrarian, but I realized I'd have to quote the entire book. Just go buy it.

I met Hitch briefly a few times at events where he was a speaker. The last time he remembered me. I wrote to him several times, and he always replied promptly, whether it was me asking him for advice on learning about Australia (he recommended Robert Hughe's The Fatal Shore, a well as national poets and writers like Henry Lawson, C.J. Dennis, and Fergus Hume,) discussing what I thought was his Indian flag lapel pin (it turns out that it was the flag of independent Kurdistan – I told him I would give him one of my pins of the flag of secular Kashmir, but I never got the chance,) or, at my last correspondence with him, informing him of the fact that it was the 200^th anniversary of Shelley being sent down from Oxford for writing The Necessity of Atheism. In the response to that last letter, he insisted that the next time I was in Washington DC I call him up and come over for a drink. Unfortunately, the next time I was in his neighborhood he was out of town for the first of his chemotherapy sessions.

I have many things to thank Christopher Hitchens for. Chief among them are my love of: PG Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, Kingsley and Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Iraj Pezeshkzad, Anthony Powell, James Fenton, Philip Larkin, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq, and countless other writers. It was Hitchens who made me decide to go to school to become a journalist, and Hitchens who helped me overcome my natural timidity, not only in social situations, but in the world – I would never have dreamed of going alone to Kashmir or the Congo (I've done the latter but was prevented from the former by worried family after the hotel I was booked into was the site of a grenade attack a few days before my arrival. But I'll get there some day.)

Christopher Hitchens truly made my life what it is today. I'd call him my idol if it wasn't for the fact that, iconoclast that he was, he would hate to be called anything of the sort.

I've posted the following video a million times on Facebook, but it is Hitchens at his best, and probably the 20 minutes most responsible for making me who I am today.

Sluts on Parade: The Importance of Being Dressed

Edit: I'm adding the following link to a good round-up of the feminist arguments against SlutWalk. I agree with a majority of the points, although the authors are undoubtedly on various other points on the political spectrum. Although I'm not particularly convinced that we live in a culture which actually encourages rape. While women are continually objectified in our society, I resent the implication that men can easily be somehow turned into rapists by their environment. It's a very low opinion of men and devalues the importance of their individual characters.
http://www.feministfrequency.com/2011/05/link-round-up-feminist-critiques-of-slutwalk/


When I first learned about the “Slut Walk” protests being held around the world I wasn’t sure what to think. Then when I discovered that they were being held after a police officer in Toronto made a stupid remark insinuating that women should dress more modestly to avoid being sexually assaulted, I thought “this is a cause I can get behind! I’ll march.” Then I started reading more about the protests and a sense of profound disappointment set in.


Obviously, the idea that women are at all responsible for being assaulted, harassed, or raped is a sickening one which should be met head on and protested against vigorously. Blaming the victim is never an appropriate response to a crime (one immediately recalls the appalling number of apologists who excused Bill Clinton’s sleazy behavior toward women by suggesting that the victims in question were attracted to his power and charisma, rather than intimidated by the same.) I have many female friends who have been flashed, groped, catcalled, and assaulted. I’d venture to say the majority of them. And even if evidence was produced that women in short skirts get harassed more than the Amish, that would in no way shift the blame from the aggressor to the victim. So I was 100% behind the message of the Slutwalk.

Then I saw some pictures of previous marches. It involves many women dressed as, well, sluts. The idea behind this is that women should be allowed to dress however they want without fear of being harassed. This is true. But just because someone has the right to dress however they want doesn’t mean it’s always a good idea to dress that way. I’d like to make it clear that I’m not saying that women should never dress how they want – I’m saying that for the purpose of a protest against sexual violence, dressing in bras and fishnets is a breathtakingly stupid way to go about things. And this idea of mine isn’t confined to the Slutwalk protests specifically.

The idea that people shouldn’t be judged on how they dress or appear is not only foolish but undesirable. The very same people who affirm the right to dress as they please will often assert that their dress is a form of expression. That concept is, in fact, the very basis of the idea of dressing like a slut as a form of protest. One’s choice of clothing should be, and indeed is, a first amendment right. The people who say they don’t make a big deal about how they dress are often making a big deal about how they don’t make a big deal about how they dress. And I’ll give good odds that many of the hippies who say “don’t judge me for the way I dress” aren’t afraid to be suspicious of a white man in a suit and a tie. So, if dress is a form of expression, the question must be asked: what does your dress express?

I’ve often thought that one of the most self-defeating aspects of modern protest culture is the number of people involved with dreadlocks, ripped clothing, stretched earlobes, and dirty beards. Does anyone think this is a great way to be taken seriously by the people you’re trying to reach (although very often the target audience of protests is markedly vague – are they hoping to change policy? Recruit more true believers in the cause? Change people’s minds? Make themselves feel better because they’re taking some kind of action?) I understand that this particular fashion - and it is a fashion - is mean to be a contrast to the suits and ties of the people in power. The idea that it’s somehow non-conformist is ludicrous when one sees how many people actually dress like that. But the probability that people who look like that will be genuinely listened to and that their opinions will be seriously considered doesn’t seem very high.

Let’s look at a case study: the most stirring, poignant, and important protests in this nation’s history – the marches led by Dr. Martin Luther King and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, starting with the famous 1964 march in Selma Alabama. I invite you to look at photographs from these marches. Everyone is wearing their best clothing. These men and women, black and white, are asserting their dignity, even their humanity, by appearing this way. These are not the naked slaves brought over to be bought and sold like chattel. They are citizens; responsible, serious, and equal citizens. If one looks at a photo of the redneck Sherriff Eugene “Bull” Connor in Birmingham Alabama, his pot belly stretching the front of his disheveled uniform, next to a picture of Dr. King in immaculate suit and tie, this distinction truly has meaning and should not be ignored. It is not a coincidence that just happened to work in King’s favor. A black friend of mine recently told me that growing up he couldn’t afford to look like a slouch. He had to dress more carefully than his white counterparts in order to get any respect. If you want to be taken seriously, dress seriously. And if you want to be really subversive, dress better than the people you’re protesting against. Dressing worse than them is the easy way out and hurts your credibility.

The case might be made that Gandhi wore a loincloth and talked about Indians spinning their own cloth to wear simple clothes. First it should be obvious that Gandhi recognized the importance of appearance – he knew that his campaign of non-violence was, in its most basic sense, a PR campaign. It called into question the moral authority of the British Empire using dramatic means to trigger human emotional responses. The importance of press coverage and, by extension, image, to all of this was something that Gandhi recognized very well. It also seems clear that part of Gandhi’s very deliberate personal image was calculated to play on naïve Western ideas of Indian simplicity and Eastern “spirituality” – a cliché that any self-respecting person should reject. It should also be noted that Gandhi’s followers, while they did significantly wear native clothing, were not dressed in loincloths, and the British authorities were much more comfortable engaging in genuine political negotiations with men like Nehru and Jinnah.

I am 100% in favor of public protest. But I think that the hippie generation in America specifically (the soixante-huitards in Europe are an entirely different matter,) changed the nature of protesting for the worse. Ever since Abbie Hoffman (a SNCC veteran,) and his Yippies tried to levitate the Pentagon assisted by chanting from overrated poet and North American Man-Boy Love Association member Allen Ginsberg, protests in America have become decidedly gimmicky. The new impetus is toward various forms of street theater – people blowing vuvuzelas, wearing jester’s caps, staging passion plays. One can’t help but wonder, once again, who the protesters are trying to reach – I have a suspicion it may be their fellow choir-members. The American hippie generation, which never tires of acting like it profoundly changed the world for the better (how many wars did they actually stop, again?) also left a legacy of turning the act of protest into a rather self-indulgent circus. We have them to thank for the stereotype that everybody who demonstrates in defense of their ideals are probably just pot-smoking hippies. Only some of them are and they’re the ones ruining it for the rest of us.

Groups like code pink yell and disrupt meetings while wearing pink. Brilliant. Someone told me about a “hilarious” shirt during demonstrations for gay marriage which read “I taught your husband how to do that thing you like.” This is undoubtedly a surefire way to bring any fence-sitting conservative opinion around to your side (incidentally, gay marriage is one of those issues on which I find myself at odds with the liberal consensus, with myself taking a much more radical stance: marriage should not be a government-run institution and people should be taxed equally regardless of their romantic relationships or lack thereof.) The amount of undeserved self-congratulatory back-slapping for how clever organizers’ forms of protest are rather than what is achieved is cringe-making. This isn’t me being dour or joyless – I think that if aesthetics are taken into consideration one has to conclude that having beauty on one’s side is far preferable to squalor or tackiness.

So, dressing like “sluts” in order to reclaim the word (the argument has been made on numerous feminist websites that this entirely endorses the patriarchal lexicon rather than heroically co-opting it,) doesn’t seem to me like a good way to get across such a serious point. And if one wants to reclaim “slut,” (which seems incidental and distracting to me when compared to the noble aim of advocating against blaming the victims,) dressing like a misogynist’s fantasy doesn’t make any sense. The first thing the organizers should do is decide who their audience is. It definitely isn’t rapists – savvy cultural argument won’t change their behavior. It probably isn’t the legal system – rape is already illegal and the way the victim was dressed does not affect the sentence. So the audience must be a younger generation of people who need to be taught that holding people at all responsible for the crimes committed against them is a completely indefensible position. And if they see their elders running around in panties and behaving like particularly vulgar men, that message might not come across.

On the topic of intended audience, I’m reminded of a pamphlet I saw at Columbia University. It was called “Consent is Cool.” First of all, “cool,” isn’t the same thing as “mandatory,” but I’ll let that go. It’s always lame (and probably counter-productive,) when public service messages try to speak to kids in the manner in which adults think kids speak. It’s also condescending. Most kids – and especially not Ivy League College students – shouldn’t be talked down to. Now, my question is who the intended audience of this document is. Is it the kind of scumbags who don’t care about consent? The roofie contingent? Because their behavior isn’t going to be changed by a pamphlet. And you know what? They already know they should have consent. They’re just so fucked up they don’t care. As far as I can see, the only people this pamphlet will have any effect on are the already-timid. The document is entirely about spelling out in almost lawyer-like precision exactly what you want from your partner (i.e. “May I touch your breast? Would you be willing to unzip my trousers? How far do you bet I could insert this object into my person?” ) Not only does this completely ruin the romantic nature of a sexual experience as well as rob young people of the important experiences of learning together, overcoming discomfort (or even enjoying it a bit,) surprising one another and oneself, and discovering a few things the hard way, but it also devalues sex emotionally by treating it like a legal transaction. Want to prevent date rape on campuses? Encourage victims to come forward in safety and prosecute the perpetrators seriously and publicly. And don’t imagine it will go away with a fucking pamphlet encouraging kids to be blatant and about their desires. Most boys will learn from experience that a lack of subtlety is usually a bad thing.

I’d like to make it clear that I am, in fact, a great fan of naked women. I’d go so far as to say that I enjoy them significantly more than naked men. In paintings, sculpture, magazines, and my bed, I appreciate them very much. But context is important, and by walking half naked through the streets you’re making bodies far less fascinating, mysterious, and powerful than they are. Both clothes and the lack of clothes are powerful symbols. And people who are themselves uncomfortable with dressing like sluts might feel estranged by these walks. The embracing of a “slutty” look might even imply that people who don’t exercise their right to behave with promiscuity or give a public display of skin are somehow less comfortable with their bodies, their sexuality, or are even against the message. But liberation and freedom are expressed best with nuance, restraint, and careful consideration. This kind of common pageantry can be alienating and can detract from the cause, which is indeed a righteous one. I’d love to participate in an event highlighting the injustice of blaming victims of sexual assault. But I’ll feel embarrassed standing next to a bunch of girls gone wild. And I’m willing to be that many other people who the organizers would like to have on their side will be turned off by their methods as well.

I sincerely hope that future generations be taught that one can behave like a lady or a gentleman (and I’m not talking about gender roles here, but civility,) and that, if one is genuinely serious about enacting change, dignity is far more important than cuteness, gimmicks, or in-your-face spectacle. I think that the Slutwalks were founded with the best intentions and I fully support their original message. Women should never be held responsible if they’re sexually assaulted or harassed. The only things that will prevent rape is encouraging respect for women (wearing pasties and writing “slut” on your stomach in lipstick seems a misguided way of doing that,) prosecuting offenders, keeping tough but fair laws on the books, creating a safe environment for victims and witnesses to come forward in, teaching both men and women to be vigilant and aware of their surroundings and situations and setting up counseling services for survivors, giving them a chance to speak up, and organizing events (including marches) in order to keep this issue in the public eye.

Reclaiming the word “slut” to assert that women have the right to act just as vulgarly as men sometimes do is at best a distraction, at worst counter-productive.

Death of a Tyrant

Epitaph on a Tyrant

by W. H. Auden

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.


Once again, people who look to poetry for meaning and solace can turn to W.H. Auden, the poet who, during World War II wrote about the greatest moral struggle of his time. In the days following September 11, 2001, his poem September 1, 1939 was republished in many outlets, offering what seemed an eerily prophetic image of our own tragedy.

This Sunday I was at work late at night in 30 Rockefeller Center, one of the most beautiful skyscrapers in New York City, filled with powerful sculptures and reliefs featuring modern and classical scenes (including the famous statues of Prometheus and Atlas,) testifying to human acheivment. The bulding itself was completed six years before Auden wrote the latter poem. At a little after 10 o'clock my boss emerged from her office and told us all that the President was going to make an important statement and that the rumor was that it was related to the death of Osama Bin Laden. We sat waiting for almost an hour for the White House website feed to begin, and when it did we were riveted.

The speech was beautifully written and delivered and I'll admit that my eyes were moist at times and my throat slightly choked with emotion. Here was a promise fulfilled which, for the past ten years, had begun to recede in my mind during the other losses and victories in the war on terror. And suddenly it was a reality. And a welcome one at that. For the first time in my life I was genuinely glad to learn that someone had been killed. And my guilt at feeling this happiness was very brief indeed. I quickly came to the realization that there could be no good reason to lament this death and that elation at the event was not only natural but entirely justified.

My car ride home that night took me through Times Square, where crowds had begun to gather in front of the news screens as images of a grinning madman were displayed several feet high over a digital ticker relaying the good news. Some people wore flags around their shoulders. Others kissed and embraced, reminiding me of the famous photograph of the sailor and his girl on V-Day. Throughout the night television broadcasts showed men and women, mostly members of my own generation, rejoicing at Ground Zero, in front of the White House, and on college campuses across the country.

But it wasn't long before cynicism emerged. There were soon glib comments comparing the celebrations that night to the footage shown of people rejoicing in the Middle East after September 11th. The people who made these comments showed a particularly lazy equivalency; an inability to see the important difference of meaning between waving your own flag and burning another's. And, worst of all, they were in danger of abdicating their own right to make a clear moral distinction between the death of a tyrant at war and the killing of thousands of innocent non-combatants.

This was not a man who deserved sympathy of any kind. When people began to ask "why do they hate us?" after the attacks, they often ignored the important fact that our enemies had given us more than enough reason to hate them. Bin Laden was a mass murderer who masqueraded as a savior, a freedom fighter, and a spiritual leader to Muslims around the world, all the while making the lives of countless of his co-religionists more miserable, backward, and filled with death. In this way he was like Shakespeare's Richard III:

"And thus I clothe my naked villany

With odd old ends stol'n out of holy writ,
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil."

But still people expressed unease at the celebrations, and not without reason. After the horrors caused by the extreme nationalisms of the last century, "Patriotism" has become a dirty word in some circles - associated with xenophobia and imperialism. But this isn't the only face of patriotism. Patriotism isn't, as some like to simplify, an irrational and blind pride brought on only because you happened to be born in a certain place. The many immigrants who are proud of their adopted countries and feel a sense of true belonging and a pride in the ideologies which these nations espouse and the acheivments of their fellow countrymen and women are evidence to the contrary. Especially in a multi-ethnic and pluralistic country like the United States, the notion of patriotism is rarely expressed as any sort of ethnic solidarity. The belief in ideals is important, whether it be a commitment to democracy or a cherishing of the coveted right to express our dissatisfaction with our leaders. And on the defense of those ideals John Stuart Mill spoke with characteristic eloquence:

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

 
On September 11, 2001, I was in the first couple of weeks of my freshman year at NYU. I watched the towers fall from University Place in Greenwich Village with my parents' apartment squarely in the foreground. When the first one collapsed on itself (fortunately not falling over and greatly increasing the bodycount, as the killers had hoped,) a woman next to me grabbed my arm and let out the most horrifying scream I've ever heard before or since. I walked around my downtown neighborhood, running into my friends on stoops with their heads in their hands, seeing stunned businesspeople, ash covered, staggering uptown, and wondering at my own dumb numbness.

I was soon at my parents' apartment, where my father had snapped reflexively into all of the cold war survival training he'd been given as a child in Texas. He stocked up on canned food, filled up the bathtubs, closed all of the windows, and wouldn't let any of us out of the house for the next three days. I was sad that I couldn't go to donate blood, but I was filled with my first feeling of patriotic pride when I learned that the Red Cross had asked people to stop volunteering to donate their plasma because the number of people who were eager to give far outnumbered the number of people who needed blood. And when we learned about the actions of the people who brought down United Flight 93 in Pennsylvania, many people realised that an inspiring standard of bravery had been set by their example.

This was the formative experience of my life and many people of my generation. It is strange for me to come to the realization, as we approach the 10th anniversary, that the toddler who tugged his mother's sleeve and pointed to the plummeting humans and told her that the birds were falling is now a teenager. And the children conceived in those weeks when men and women made love with fear around them, looking for solace in one another's arms and thankful that they hadn't received one of the many last "I love you" phone call from the buildings or the airplanes, are now nine years old.

Several people I know signed up for the armed forces on September 12th. I'm very proud of them. In awe, in fact. Thomas Paine, one of the most inspiring thinkers of the American Revolution expressed it in his own "The Crisis:"

"But when the country, into which I had just set my foot, was set on fire about my ears, it was time to stir. It was time for every man to stir. "

Being raised by ex-hippie baby-boomers, the thought of joining up, somewhat embarrassingly in retrospect, never even crossed my mind. Since then, I've wondered what would possibly tempt me to pick up a gun, useless soldier though I'd likely be. I've begun to think that if a museum or a library were attacked, that would conceivably be outrage enough for me. Because it seems to me that this was a war declared on the idea of Civilization itself. The prefix "Western" is unnecessary - in today's globalized world we all have a right to claim the learning and the history of any tradition as our birthright. And the enemy couldn't be clearer or more repugnant: they are men who believe that half the world's population should remain stupid chattel, they believe that free expression can be punishable by murder - whether English novelists, Dutch Filmmakers, or Danish cartoonists - that the beautiful and ancient art of other civilizations can be destroyed with impunity, that men and women dancing in nightclubs in Bali and London deserve to die. Their laughter comes only from the suffering of others. It is men like Bin Laden who are the most vocal proponents of racism, imperialism, the subjugation of women, the slaughter of homosexuals, censorship, and the destruction of art. Can any fellow-traveling with men of this sort be anything but despicable?

In the past 20 years, there have been both successful and foiled plots by Islamic terrorist groups in
Afghanistan, Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chechnya, Denmark, Egypt, England, Eritrea, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Mauritania, Morocco, Netherlands, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Palestine, Panama, Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, Singapore, Somalia, Spain, Sudan, Sweden, Tunisia, Uganda, The United States and Yemen. If one believes in any kind of cosmopolitanism one should be shocked by the global nature of this fight and furious that there are men who have declared war on everything worth saving, no matter where. Anybody who thinks this isn't the most important and potentially zero-sum (if nuclear weapons fall into the hands of terrorists,) fight today is deluded, and if someone thinks that these people can be reasoned or negotiated with they haven't been listening to what they've been saying. No amount of political concession would stop these attacks. It would, in all likelihood, embolden them. By calling for the conversion or destruction of most of the people on the planet terrorists have said as much. And people who worry about offending the sensibilities of these men should realize that they've already offended the most dearly-held rights and beliefs of civilized men and women in every country. People who think this is a fight that can somehow be avoided are kidding themselves. Staying neutral isn't a possibility - we're all already targets.

Perhaps the most obnoxious complaint to emerge in the past few days is that this will only cause retaliatory strikes. Well, it might. But is killing Bin Laden really going to make them hate us any more than they already do? And the occasionally-heard brainless idea that by killing Bin Laden we're simply perpetuating a cycle of violence seems to imply that the people espousing such rot think the world would be better off if we had let him go and decided not to pursue him at all. Does anyone seriously think that would have been appropriate response to the attacks of September 11th? Does anyone believe that by killing Bin Laden we've made an already dangerous world significantly more dangerous than it already was?

It seems to me like the world is looking up compared to the way things were several years ago. Dictators are being given the boot and secular-minded democratic young people are making themselves heard and felt around the world. Obviously there will be more terrorists and there will likely be more attacks, but this is an important success in a battle that could in all likelihood continue for the rest of my lifetime. And there will always be brave people to resist this kind of totalitarian enemy. As Christopher Hitchens has said:

"It was obvious from the very start that the United States had no alternative but to do what it has done. It was also obvious that defeat was impossible. The Taliban will soon be history. Al-Qaida will take longer. There will be other mutants to fight. But if, as the peaceniks like to moan, more Bin Ladens will spring up to take his place, I can offer this assurance: should that be the case, there are many many more who will also spring up to kill him all over again. And there are more of us and we are both smarter and nicer, as well as surprisingly insistent that our culture demands respect, too."

I long for a day when people can write, draw, film, sculpt, and say whatever they want without fear of retaliation from religious fanatics. While we continue the possibly unending struggle toward that day we should celebrate the things that make our culture and civilization worth preserving. So wear a flower, grow your hair as long as you want, kiss someone you love in public, dance to music at a nightclub, read a copy of the Satanic Verses, mix yourself an ambitious cocktail, criticize your least favorite politician, vote, and read some poetry aloud. Because it is a time to celebrate - not to celebrate death or violence, but to celebrate a small but significant step toward a more liberal world.

Love you madly,
Natty

"It matters not where you live, or what rank of life you hold, the evil or the blessing will reach you all. The far and the near, the home counties and the back, the rich and the poor, will suffer or rejoice alike. The heart that feels not now is dead; the blood of his children will curse his cowardice, who shrinks back at a time when a little might have saved the whole, and made them happy. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.



My own line of reasoning is to myself as straight and clear as a ray of light. Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to "bind me in all cases whatsoever" to his absolute will, am I to suffer it? What signifies it to me, whether he who does it is a king or a common man; my countryman or not my countryman; whether it be done by an individual villain, or an army of them? If we reason to the root of things we shall find no difference; neither can any just cause be assigned why we should punish in the one case and pardon in the other. Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man."

-Thomas Paine; "The Crisis"

My Valentines Day falling in love at the library's rare book and manuscript room.

I have a not-so-secret fetish: archives. To be sure, libraries in general are intensely erotic places: the quiet, the rows of books on shelves standing silently like accidental arcades, the feeling of being surrounded by thinking people, each entirely alone in her own thoughts. Topped off with the recent addition of timed lights in the stacks, meant to conserve energy but also encouraging a mischeivous darkness, the feeling of concentrated intellect can be arousing.

But right now I'm not in the stacks. I'm in the brightly-lit manuscript and rare book room on the sixth floor of Columbia University's Butler library, sitting at a wooden desk and staring at the back of an asian kid's head. The feeling is certainly not an erotic one, but the contents of the box on my desk have stirred a profound romantic feeling in me.

I came to the manuscript department when I found out that they had four boxes of papers belonging to World War I poet and pacifist Siegfried Sassoon. Sassoon had had a series of homosexual affairs, his most serious being with the beautiful and effeminate Stephen Tennant. It was because Tennant's name was mentioned in the collection's catalog citation that I sought it out.

I had supposed that the letter would be in the fourth and final box of uncataloged correspondence, owing to the fact that Tennant's name hadn't been listed among the letters found in the other boxes. I requested the file and in a few minutes it was brought to my desk. I didn't find anything Tennant related, but I did find plenty of interest and a reminder of why I love archival research.

The box contained several folders, all relating to Sassoon's son George, comprising correspondence from 1938-1955, school essays, school records, miscellanious documents, and photographs. George was born in 1936, so this means that the box contains an intriguing, albeit incomplete, picture of his youngest years, from when he could first hold a pen to after his acceptance to King's College Cambridge. I knew little about George before opening the box, and now I can only claim to have intimate glimpses into the life of a young boy, son of a famous poet and child of his time.

The first document of interest I came across was an undated plain postcard with no address or name of recepient. It is written in the clumsy cursive of a child, but with surprisingly good grammar and no spelling errors (which may suggest it was a collaborative effort. Without context, it is impossible to know if the note is meant as a serious rebuke or something more playful, but the tone is unmistakably that of a wrathful child:

Smelly Creature,

You are ruining my and Daddy's life, by coming over, you nearly killed him with nervous indigestion, and now you expect us to love you. And if you think we do, you are perfectly in the wrong. Today, you have broken the document which you have signed. And in consequence, lost next weekend and 4 weeks of the holidays (you are lucky to get any at all.) Every visit counts as a week, and a very nasty greeting.

Signed,

G.T. Sassoon

(P.S. Show this to Granny.)

Hilarious, no? The next folder is filled with letters to the aforementioned granny (Lady Gatty,) including thank-you notes for presents including "the morse thing" (possibly a telegraph transmitter and receiver?) George writes to her of Scotland, enviously describing how a neighboring boy was given a lamb that is now grown into a sheep and "produced this other lamb the night before last." He is also much impressed by a Mrs. Fryer who has a one-eyed King Charles Spaniel named Crumby. The correspondence continues through George's grammar school years on blue paper with two-and-a-half pence stamps bearing the then-Duke of Windsor in handsome profile.

The next folder offers a charming challenge. George has written to his father and given him a "secret code for our letters." The code consists of letters being assigned a random number and punctuation marks various dots. There follows a letter in the code, which I've attached below, including solution. George's interest in cryptography continues in later letters, including a simple and rather ineffective code by which every 2nd and 3rd word is crossed out and the remainder is the message.
 

George signs his letters "Binks" and has a fondness for X's and 0's. Sometimes a modest number of these marks is insufficient for his tastes so he appends the mathematical formula ([infinity symbol] x XO). In one postcard he asks his dad to bring a spade and saw to school, presumably so he can break out. He tells his father about cricket matches between the "Improbables" and his team the "Impossibles," and laments the fact that when one of their teachers went to serve on a jury he returned with a simple tale of burglary rather than murder.



A folder of undated letters includes one in messy pencil handwriting with little spacing between words:



DEARDADDY
I SUPPOSEYOU HAVE
READIN THENEW
SPAPER THHAT ANEW
AIROPLANE WITCH HAS NO
PROPPELERANDIT
CANGOTOTHEMOON, IF IT
WANTS TO. ANDITCAN
GO VERYFAST IF ITWANTS
TO.AND WHAT ITUSES TOFLY
WITHISAJ JET OF SOME-
THING BU TIDDNT NOWH-
ATTHE SOMETHING IS
WITHLOVE
FROMGEORGE
THORNCROFT
SASSOON

In one typewritten letter, "Binks" goes mental with the hugs and kisses:

In another, he borders the text with them:

One can see the change in George's handwriting over time, and even an assignment from school to write a letter using the old stencil system favored for teaching handwriting and various lettering styles:

As he gets older, his handwriting gets better and his letters lengthier and more complex. His father doted on him and almost every one of George's letters begins with a "thank you" for some gift he'd been sent. In return, he gives detailed accounts of his studies in german, chemistry, engineering complete with pencilled schematics, and all of the boys at school who want to fight him.

In a folder marked "Unidentified," there is the following congratulatory telegram:

In the same folder there is a letter postmarked 1966 on the stationary of the Galway Hotel from one of George's Cambridge friends who is travelling in Ireland:

"...I had a long boozy session with the land lady of a bar who was terribly worried about the extreme moral danger her daughter was exposed to in England. As said daughter is in fact a nurse at [illegible] I shall have to see what sort of contribution in the way of moral danger I can offer when I get back!"

This folder also includes a series of letter's from George's headmaster to Siegfried, beginning with him having "most serious doubts about George's character" and saying that his own life "is not a very pleasant one." In the next letter he says that George is sullen and rude to the Sister in the Sanatorium, but assures the pacifist Siegfried that he "beat him soundly." The letter goes on in an even more dramatic fashion:

"I understand that he is allowed to procure chemicals and carry out experiments both at Heytesbury and at Mull. I further understand that the experiments include explosives (ed: in an earlier letter to his father, George had complained that the school's gunpowder was under lock and key.) Mr. Palmer is seriously alarmed about this, and so am I. Our advice is that you stop all of this, and at once... I know what he means to you, and I do with that there was something agreeable that I could say about him, but there is nothing at all to which I can cling or which gives me any hope at all for this unhappy boy's future.

Yours rather wretchedly,
Arthur [Illegible]"

It turns out the headmaster's fatalism was unwarranted. In the final letter, he says that "George has made an excellent start to the term" and that "His G.C.E. results were splendid and even better than expected." He rather sheepishly concludes with "You must have thought me very disagreeable (indeed, I was) in the past."

Perhaps the most intriguing item in the "unidentified" folder is a plain piece of paper, blank on one side, and bearing the words "With the Compliments of Mrs. T.S. Eliot" printed in elegant black script on the other.

I could go on about George Sassoon's archive for ages, but I'll spare you and conclude with the final folder: photographs. In these photos we see young Binks with a full grin and his father's rather goofy ears. In one photo he sits on a rock next to his father in corduroy shorts and sandals.

In another he reclines on the lawn of a manor house, squinting in the sun with his hat off, surrounded by speckles of little flowers on the recently-cut lawn.

He walks down the street with an old lady in a fur coat and head kercheif. He is wearing a rather grown-up double breasted wool coat with peaked lapels, a flat cap, and he's gazing distractedly into the distance, perhaps dreaming of blowing things up.

Inside a blank card there is a photo of him in a woolen sack coat, shorts, and wellingtons. He's holding an air rifle almost as tall as him and making the face that comes naturally to any boy feeling the thrill of holding a weapon.

And in a tiny square of faded black and white, he is a baby, lying on a carpet, his mother onher knees bending over him. You can barely see her mouth, but her cheeks can be seen pushing outward in a beaming smile. He is smiling too, looking off into the distance, possibly dreaming of explosions even then. Lady Gatty sits in a chair behind them, an inscrutable expression on her tough-grooved face falling somewhere between nostalgia and not giving a damn.

If a person's life can be read in the documents she leaves behind, a wonder how I would be remembered if I were ever important enough to be archived. Is google filing away all of my emails? Will Verizon produce the ill-advised text-messages to women which my own boozy sessions have resulted in? Will the letters, diaries, and postcards I've sent embarrass whatever legacy I may have? What private and intimate words do you leave behind? And when you write them, can you picture a man in a library reading them after you're dead?

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO,

Natty

A Defense of the Amazon Kindle

I'm often asked about my Amazon Kindle. When my friends ask me it's because they know I'm a compulsive reader (I try to swallow down at least 4 books a week.) If strangers on the subway ask me it's because they don't care about interrupting me while I read to satisfy their curiosity. Still, I don't really mind. But so many people ask me about it that I thought I'd go ahead and give it a review here.

My responses to their questions are probably not the standard pitch for the Kindle. I don't subscribe to magazines on it, I don't often buy books from Amazon on it, and I listen to audio books on it. But what I do use it for is invaluable to me.

The chief complaint I hear from people who have never used the Kindle is that they prefer the feel of real books: the porous pages, the thick bindings, the overall tactile experience of them. Well, I prefer the feel of a real woman, but I can't always afford to buy one a drink. Which brings me to what I chiefly use my Kindle for; not pornography, but public domain works - mostly what are referred to as "the classics."

I have four shelves of "real" books, many of which I have yet to read. I still buy books; especially new ones because I like supporting the authors. But websites like Project Gutenberg and Google Books mean that I can download a huge library for free. That means I've paid $200 or so dollars for a device that is now a massive library of over a thousand works. Most importantly, they're all searchable. That Byron poem I love that begins "So we'll go no more a-roving?" Why can't I find it in his complete works on my Kindle? Oh, because it's in the complete letters and diaries of Byron, as a quick search of my items has shown me.

Fortunately, owing to the nature of my current project, much of the literary and biographical research material I need from before the last century is available in the public domain: novels, poems, diaries, correspondence, memoirs. It's very handy to have these thing be searchable. More importantly, there is one of the best features of the Kindle: the ability to highlight and add notes. This is far more useful than the usual marginalia one might pencil into a book. In fact, it's closer to what used to be called a "commonplace book." The Kindle takes all of your notes and bookmarks and saves them into two files: a hypertext file viewable on the kindle which lets you instantly go to these passages on your device and a plain text file which you can open on your computer and copy and paste directly from. You can imagine how convenient this is for the purpose of quotes. In addition to this, the latest version of the Kindle software lets you Tweet or post to Facebook your favorite passages from books. For someone as addicted to social media and information-sharing as I am, this is a distinct pleasure. I've attached some of my quotes and notes at the bottom of this post.

Most people I speak to aren't aware of the amount of free content available online. If you love reading the classics as much as I do, this is a godsend. I can instantly pull up anything from Cicero's political speeches to any work by Goethe to a passage from Khayyam to a favorite scene of mine from Huckleberry Finn. However, I would imagine that for someone more interested in reading the latest novel or work of nonfiction or having a magazine subscription that's largely pointless.

For some reason, reading magazines on the Kindle doesn't appeal to me, but I think that's because of formatting, page size, and color. The Kindle really does look like a book page. In fact, that's usually the first thing people remark on with surprise when they pick up the device. The magnetic ink really looks like print and the non-backlit screen means that one can read it in direct light and see it perfectly. However, this means that one cannot read it in darkness without a reading light. Once again, this is another way in which the Kindle is exactly like a book.

But people who do want the latest books are in luck as well: many of them are available on Kindle for a fraction of the price and, as Amazon likes to boast, they can be delivered instantly to the device over a 3G network. I understand that Amazon now offers two versions: one equipped with 3G and one less expensive version equipped with Wi-Fi. I have a 3G version and I have to admit that it's been very useful. While I was traveling through Europe there were few opportunities to purchase English-language books, but my Kindle made it easy and instant. However, the 3G Amazon network does not work in all countries (for me it worked throughout Europe, America, and in the United Arab Emirates but not in Africa.) If you live in a country in which it does not work, the Wi-Fi may be a better choice. Before going to Uganda I was able to instantly download a book about the history of child soldiers in that country. Neat, huh?

Books with footnotes often have hyperlinked notes so you can move quickly between the main text and the notes. One of the new features that can be toggled on and off is a popular highlight, which shows you which passages lots of other people have been underlining in the newest books. I'm sure it can be interesting, but only if you care about other people.

The 3G also helped me stay connected to Email and Facebook while I was traveling without any other devices. The internet browser is very basic, but it works fine for simple things. It even helped me out of a tough scrape. When I got lost in the suburbs of Florence, I was able to use Google maps in a fairly rudimentary fashion until I found my way back to where I needed to be. So...the Kindle kind of saved my ass.

Another advantage is the battery life, which seems to last for weeks. The only exception to this is if you use the web browser often, which drains the batteries quite quickly.

The Kindle does have plenty of disadvantages. For one, I feel odd about reading very long books on the Kindle. I'm not sure why that is, but the prospect can be daunting. In addition, books purchased from the Amazon store have a limit of the amount of text one can highlight, and in some books this can be quite a small amount. But perhaps the biggest disadvantage for me has been screen problems, although I've been told that this pretty much has to be my own fault for treating the Kindle roughly because nobody else has gone through four devices. Fortunately, my warranty has continually replaced mine, but it is frustrating. I don't think I abuse my device. I have a nice cover for it, and I've never dropped it. But it is often in my bag with other items and I've been told that if pressure is accidentally applied to the screen the magnetic ink will get completely screwed up and the lines I've seen so often will appear. Unfortunately, nobody seems to have made a hard metal case for the Kindle yet, so I'll have to be even more careful.

I haven't used other devices and I've heard good things about the Barnes and Noble Nook. They have a new color model, which I imagine is better for magazines, and they have the fantastic ability to share books with friends for something like two weeks. Obviously, your friend has to have the Nook too, so this is largely useless until lots of people have one.

De Profundis (Oscar Wilde)
- Highlight Loc. 73-75 | Added on Sunday, March 07, 2010, 01:37 AM

Now I find hidden somewhere away in my nature something that tells me that nothing in the whole world is meaningless, and suffering least of all.  That something hidden away in my nature, like a treasure in a field, is Humility.

De Profundis (Oscar Wilde)
- Highlight Loc. 214-15 | Added on Sunday, March 07, 2010, 05:30 PM

Behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous.  But behind sorrow there is always sorrow.  Pain, unlike pleasure, wears no mask. 

ol. 6 (Lord George Gordon Byron)
- Highlight Loc. 3812-16 | Added on Wednesday, March 10, 2010, 11:10 AM

'T is melancholy, and a fearful sign Of human frailty, folly, also crime, That Love and Marriage rarely can combine, Although they both are born in the same clime; Marriage from Love, like vinegar from wine— A sad, sour, sober beverage—by Time Is sharpened from its high celestial flavour Down to a very homely household savour.

Vol. 6 (Lord George Gordon Byron)
- Highlight Loc. 4910-14 | Added on Friday, March 12, 2010, 07:37 PM

The Heart—which may be broken: happy they! Thrice fortunate! who of that fragile mould, The precious porcelain of human clay, Break with the first fall: they can ne'er behold The long year linked with heavy day on day, And all which must be borne, and never told; While Life's strange principle will often lie Deepest in those who long the most to die.

Vol. 6 (Lord George Gordon Byron)
- Highlight Loc. 4928-33 | Added on Friday, March 12, 2010, 07:39 PM

The gentle pressure, and the thrilling touch, The least glance better understood than words, Which still said all, and ne'er could say too much; A language,[237] too, but like to that of birds, Known but to them, at least appearing such As but to lovers a true sense affords; Sweet playful phrases, which would seem absurd To those who have ceased to hear such, or ne'er heard—

Pelham — Complete (Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton)
- Highlight Loc. 283-84 | Added on Tuesday, March 16, 2010, 08:39 AM

In marriage a man lowers a woman to his own rank; in an affaire du coeur he raises himself to her's.

Woolfe- Brummell
- Highlight Loc. 31-33 | Added on Monday, March 22, 2010, 12:17 AM

His clothes seemed to melt into each other with the perfection of their cut and the quiet harmony of their colour. Without a single point of emphasis everything was distinguished- from his bow to the way he opened his snuff-box, with his left hand invariably. He was the personification of freshness and cleanliness and order.

The Sorrows of Young Werther (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
- Highlight Loc. 67-70 | Added on Saturday, May 08, 2010, 11:28 AM

Often do I strive to allay the burning fever of my blood; and you have never witnessed anything so unsteady, so uncertain, as my heart. But need I confess this to you, my dear friend, who have so often endured the anguish of witnessing my sudden transitions from sorrow to immoderate joy, and from sweet melancholy to violent passions? I treat my poor heart like a sick child, and gratify its every fancy. Do not mention this again: there are people who would censure me for it.

Marriage and Love (Emma Goldman)
- Highlight Loc. 83-85 | Added on Tuesday, May 25, 2010, 04:41 PM

Ours is a practical age. The time when Romeo and Juliet risked the wrath of their fathers for love, when Gretchen exposed herself to the gossip of her neighbors for love, is no more. If, on rare occasions, young people allow themselves the luxury of romance, they are taken in care by the elders, drilled and pounded until they become "sensible."

Marriage and Love (Emma Goldman)
- Highlight Loc. 169 | Added on Tuesday, May 25, 2010, 04:54 PM

If the world is ever to give birth to true companionship and oneness, not marriage, but love will be the parent.

Dante - The New Life (Dante)
- Highlight Loc. 501-3 | Added on Tuesday, June 22, 2010, 01:49 PM

‘Since you acquire this shameful aspect when you are near this lady, why do you try to catch sight of her? Suppose you were asked that by her: what answer could you give in reply, taking it that all your wits were free when you replied to her?’

Vol. 1 (Lord George Gordon Byron)
- Highlight Loc. 2746-52 | Added on Saturday, July 10, 2010, 09:42 AM

TO A LADY, [1] ON BEING ASKED MY REASON FOR QUITTING ENGLAND IN THE SPRING. [i] 1.   When Man, expell'd from Eden's bowers,     
A moment linger'd near the gate,   
Each scene recall'd the vanish'd hours,     
And bade him curse his future fate. 2.   
But, wandering on through distant climes,     
He learnt to bear his load of grief;   
Just gave a sigh to other times,    
 And found in busier scenes relief. 3.
  Thus, Lady! will it be with me, [ii]  
   And I must view thy charms no more;  
 For, while I linger near to thee,   
  I sigh for all I knew before. 4.  
 In flight I shall be surely wise,   
  Escaping from temptation's snare:  
 I cannot view my Paradise    
 Without the wish of dwelling there. [iii] [2]

Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound and the Seven Against Thebes (Aeschylus)
- Highlight Loc. 275-76 | Added on Sunday, July 18, 2010, 11:52 AM

Oc. Knowest thou not this then, Prometheus, that words are the physicians of a distempered feeling?26
==========
Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound and the Seven Against Thebes (Aeschylus)
- Highlight Loc. 567-68 | Added on Sunday, July 18, 2010, 02:12 PM

Pr. Disordered I would be, if disorder it be to loathe one's foes.

The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Complete (Percy Bysshe Shelley)
- Highlight Loc. 4108-11 | Added on Friday, July 23, 2010, 09:23 PM

ASIA: Thy words are sweeter than aught else but his Whose echoes they are; yet all love is sweet, Given or returned. Common as light is love, _40 And its familiar voice wearies not ever. Like the wide heaven, the all-sustaining air, It makes the reptile equal to the God: They who inspire it most are fortunate, As I am now; but those who feel it most _45 Are happier still, after long sufferings, As I shall soon become.
==========
The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Complete (Percy Bysshe Shelley)
- Highlight Loc. 4156-60 | Added on Friday, July 23, 2010, 09:29 PM

Sink with me then, _70 We two will sink on the wide waves of ruin, Even as a vulture and a snake outspent Drop, twisted in inextricable fight, Into a shoreless sea. Let hell unlock Its mounded oceans of tempestuous fire, _75 And whelm on them into the bottomless void This desolated world, and thee, and me, The conqueror and the conquered, and the wreck Of that for which they combated. Ai, Ai! The elements obey me not. I sink _80 Dizzily down, ever, for ever, down. And, like a cloud, mine enemy above Darkens my fall with victory! Ai,

Pushkin: Eugene Onegin (Pushkin)
- Highlight Loc. 131-43 | Added on Tuesday, October 12, 2010, 03:43 PM

Now, when Eugene reached the age Of restless youth’s tumultuous passion, Those years of hope and tender rage, Monsieur was packed off in brisk fashion, And my Eugene was free at last, A London dandy safely classed His hair cut neatly a la mode, Into society he rode. French he spoke and wrote with ease, Danced the mazurka deftly too, Bowed to each acquaintance new, Did all that was required to please. What more is needed? All agreed That here was wit and charm indeed.

Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah — Volume 1 (Sir Richard Francis Burton)
- Highlight Loc. 258-61 | Added on Wednesday, November 10, 2010, 08:17 AM

Let others describe the once famous Capital of [p.10]Egypt, this City of Misnomers, whose dry docks are ever wet, and whose marble fountain is eternally dry, whose "Cleopatra's Needle"[FN13] is neither a needle nor Cleopatra's; whose "Pompey's Pillar" never had any earthly connection with Pompey; and whose Cleopatra's Baths are, according to veracious travellers, no baths at all.

Three Men on the Bummel (Jerome K. Jerome)
- Highlight Loc. 2792-95 | Added on Sunday, November 28, 2010, 03:49 AM

I do not know if it be so, but from what I have observed of the German character I should not be surprised to hear that when a man in Germany is condemned to death he is given a piece of rope, and told to go and hang himself.  It would save the State much trouble and expense, and I can see that German criminal taking that piece of rope home with him, reading up carefully the police instructions, and proceeding to carry them out in his own back kitchen.

A Question of Upbringing: Book One of A Dance to the Music of Time (Anthony Powell)
- Highlight Loc. 123-26 | Added on Wednesday, December 08, 2010, 10:51 AM

When I came in, Stringham was kneeling in front of the fire, employing a paper-knife shaped like a scimitar as a toasting-fork. Without looking up, he said: ‘There is a jam crisis.’ He was tall and dark, and looked a little like one of those stiff, sad young men in ruffs, whose long legs take up so much room in sixteenth-century portraits:

The Complete Bachelor / Manners for Men (Walter Germain)
- Highlight Loc. 85-87 | Added on Tuesday, December 28, 2010, 05:50 PM

A gentleman will never be seen in public with characters whom he could not introduce to his mother or his sister. A man when he is with a lady should be very careful, especially at roof gardens and such places in midsummer, about recognizing male acquaintances who seem to be in rather doubtful company.

The Complete Bachelor / Manners for Men (Walter Germain)
- Highlight Loc. 572-74 | Added on Tuesday, December 28, 2010, 07:09 PM

I pass over the man who leaves traces of each meal on his shirt or his clothes. Such a being, I have no doubt, would convey food to his mouth with his knife, would blow on his soup, tea, or coffee with the idea of cooling it, or would pour the two latter cheering fluids into a saucer and drink them therefrom.

A Buyer's Market: Book Two of A Dance to the Music of Time (Anthony Powell)
- Highlight Loc. 2435-41 | Added on Wednesday, January 19, 2011, 05:28 PM

Although the theory that, in love, human beings like to choose an ‘opposite’ may be genetically unsound, there is also, so it seems, a basic validity in such typically prescriptive emotional situations as Montague and Capulet, Cavalier and Roundhead. If certain individuals fall in love from motives of convenience, they can be contrasted with plenty of others in whom passion seems principally aroused by the intensity of administrative difficulties in procuring its satisfaction. In fact, history is full of examples of hard-headed personages—to be expected to choose partners in love for reasons helpful to their own career—who were, as often as not, the very people most to embarrass themselves, even to the extent of marriage, with unions that proved subsequently formidable obstacles to advancement.

A Buyer's Market: Book Two of A Dance to the Music of Time (Anthony Powell)
- Highlight Loc. 3079-82 | Added on Tuesday, January 25, 2011, 09:53 PM

I can now, looking back, only suppose that a consciousness of future connexion was thrown forward like a deep shadow in the manner in which such perceptions are sometimes projected out of Time: a process that may well be the explanation, for which no other seems adequate, of what is called ‘love at first sight’: that knowledge that someone who has just entered the room is going to play a part in our life. A curious, almost apprehensive feeling had certainly come over me, though it could hardly be described as ‘love’.

Uganda 3

I've written before about how superstitious India is (...a thousand gods look on and do nothing) but Africa is serious (and probably more dangerous) competition. Witchcraft is widely believed in, with women and children often taking the brunt of the reprisals. The punishments can be almost unbelievably inhumane. For example, one popular method of exorcism (execution, rather,) involves injecting the accused witch with battery acid and watching them die in poisonous agony, which is taken as proof positive that the demon is being purged from their body along with whatever life they had.

For the second day of our safari we were heading to another section of the park in order to look for the famous tree-climbing lions which are indigenous only to that area. Our route to the necessary entrance took us near the town of Kanungu. This town was the site of a true horror several years ago. In the 1990s a local prostitute had visions, which seems a very quick way to get popular in rural Africa. This woman, Cledonia Mwerinde, claimed that the Virgin Mary had instructed her to begin a church which she called the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God. She quickly gained the support of several defrocked Catholic priests who eagerly joined forces with her and began claiming followers throughout the area. The cult demanded the property of all its members, and they eagerly gave them. Mwerinde, in a very unoriginal choice of date, declared that December 31, 1999 would mark the end of the world. So her followers prepared with all the necessary devotion. Obviously, the world didn't end, just like it hasn't after the countless other messianic predictions criminals have made and sad suckers have believed. The followers were angry with her for being wrong. So she took matters in her own hands, announced that the new date would be on March 17, 2000. When that day arrived, about 500 of her followers came to the church. She shut the doors from the outside, boarded them shut, and set off several canisters of petroleum and acid, incinerating everyone within, the majority of whom were children.

But this wasn't all. Mass graves were found around the cult's compound, including a pit with the remains of 150 people underneath the home of one of the priests. According to townspeople, any cult members who complained were taken to a room in the main building, given a can of poison soda, and then their bodies were thrown into a pit and sprayed with acid to make them decompose faster. Nobody from the outside was prepared for this. The local government had taken bribes to stay away, and while children continued to die from the prohibition of modern medicine, the outside world was largely ignorant because no word came out of the compound. It is not known where Mwerinde or her priests are now, but some believe they took the possessions and money they'd stolen from their followers and run across the border to the DRC through the nearby Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, a popular tourist destination for people who want to go gorilla tracking.

We bumbled along the roads in this new section of Queen Elizabeth park, this time accompanied by an armed guard. This was due to the particular elephants in this area of the park. Because the DRC segment of the park is far less well-policed (the DRC is a bit of a shambles, to say the least, and its capital, Kinshasa, is at the other end of the vast country from the park) there is considerably more poaching of elephants there. As a result, herds of elephants from that area cross the border into the Uganda side of the park (similarly, the Rwandan refugees who had sought safety in the DRC were forced to cross over into Uganda because the violence had followed them there.) According to our guide these elephants were noticeably different in temperament to the herds native to the Ugandan side. After having been ruthlessly hunted with no conscience regarding their extermination, the elephants had become more aggressive themselves, more quick to rampage, more hostile to humans. Evidence of their more rough lifestyle could be seen in the scores of uprooted and trampled trees which were all over this part of the park but not the other. Unfortunately, some of the local elephants have been learning poor behavior from their Congolese cousins. Not only fighters, elephants are drunks, too. They can smell Marula fruit fermenting in the hot sun from several miles away, and they'll travel until they reach it and then they'll eat it and get staggeringly drunk. Africa's main exported liqueur is called Amarula Cream and is made from this fruit. It has a creamy texture and a unique tart fruit flavor. I recommend using it in a White Russian. Perhaps call it a White African, or an Albino Ugandan, or an Afrikaner, if those aren't too racist.

2 oz vodka
2 oz milk
1 oz Kahlua
1 oz Amarula

Serve over ice and get drunk as an elephant in the megaton sun of Africa.

We finally saw the tree-climbing lions. After spending a whole day driving all over the park and ready to give up, we came upon four in a tree with a cub. They were adorable, asleep, and couldn't care less that we were sticking our heads out of the sun roof of an SUV and taking photographs of them. They looked just as lazy and uninterested in humans as any other cat I've met. They were draped over the limbs of the tree like melted butterscotch and if it weren't for the fact that I'm allergic to cats I wouldn't have minded joining them in the shade of the giant tree they were in. At one point a hornet flew into the car and I was seized by an overwhelming fear which the sight of those peacefully dozing lions could never inspire. Although I'll bet if I'd thrown a rock at them they could have made themselves scary enough.

We were back at Mwenge tea estate the next day and there was something wrong with my eye. In fact, there still is. My right eye is perpetually weeping and it feels a bit like both my pupils have gone numb. However, when I poke them roughly they can most certainly feel it. On this day they were particularly bad. I couldn't look into the light without wincing and crying copiously and unevenly. So we headed to the tea estate's local clinic where I was prescribed, guess what? Antibiotics. The third world is obsessed with antibiotics. It makes sense – antibiotics have been something of a miracle to cure deadly diseases around the world and nobody knows disease like the third world. As a result, they have a definite tendency to over-prescribe them. For everything. My doctor at home is always very reluctant to give me antibiotics. They are, after all, only good for bacterial infections. And not all run of the mill diseases are caused by bacteria. A large proportion are viral, so antibiotics would have no effect. But hey, a doctor has to prescribe something more than bed rest, right? The most ridiculous example of this was when a pharmacist gave me antibiotics for my allergies in India and all of my well-meaning relatives insisted I follow the orders of the pharmacist who, after all, wouldn't have prescribed such expensive medicine if it wasn't effective. I stuck with Claritin in the end and it worked just fine, thank you very much. Things could have been worse. Just before leaving for Uganda I'd read about a flesh-eating parasitic disease sweeping rural areas and carried by microscopic bugs called jiggers. The jiggers burrow under your skin and soon afterward your hands and feet begin to literally rot off in a perfect display of necrotic grossness. In some cases your buttocks rots off as well. So it's a good thing I didn't catch this disease because I have a nice ass.

We went to the local golf club so my uncle could play a round with some friends. I've never played golf but it looks like a real action-packed scream. I stayed in the clubhouse with the ladies and had a Coke. The caddies were great. They were little kids who practiced swinging clubs themselves, which they were apparently very good at because of their proficiency with those self-same machetes or “choppers” which they swing about at the ground to hack at the grass and the weeds. Seeing them pretend to drive a golf ball miles into space I wouldn't doubt it.

After the club we went to a local pizza place owned by an Italian named P--- who had come to Uganda along with his priest several years before and never left. Instead, he opened up a pizza joint in Fort Portal which made pretty damn good pizza considering the difficulty I imagine acquiring fresh mozzarella would involve. We drank beers in the upstairs bar and looked out the window as the night rose and the streets went grey.

We started the long drive back to Mwenge in the dark. Well, almost the dark. People in Uganda apparently don't know that you're supposed to turn off your brights when a car is approaching so you don't blind the oncoming driver. The cardboard pizza boxes sitting on the back seat between me and K--- were creaking with each pothole and filling the cabin with hunger-making aromas.

As we approached the place where we would turn off the main road onto the long dirt road leading to the tea estate, we saw that the usual crowds at the side of the road were thickening. Hundreds of people, mostly women were flooding the streets and fields around us. This was particularly unusual as it was already after dark. It seemed to be some kind of social function, and in a sense it was. R---, being the only native in the vehicle, explained it to us: it was grasshopper season.

Once a year the grasshoppers swarm. Coincidentally, it is always somewhat near to Christmastime. The women of the villages gather in the fields and await the biblical horizontal deluge of bugs. They hold up large iron sheets with plastic buckets underneath them. The grasshoppers fly with such speed and force that when they collide with the sheets they're instantly killed or at the very least stunned. They fall into the buckets and the women collect thousands of them in large plastic bags and bring them home to their husbands as a Christmas treat. The insects are prepared by plucking off their wings and legs and being fried in water then salted. Then they're eaten like they were Cheetos. Like seemingly everything in Uganda, there is a dangerous side to the harvest of the hoppers. The swarms are incredibly thick and fast. Their wings are sharp and they can hit you with the force of a tidal wave of razorblades: thousands of winged needles ready to shred. In the village there is a boy outside the supermarket who sells fruit to my aunt. Half his face has been chopped up and scarred by the swarms, presumably because he turned one way and the devastating hord hit him full-on in profile.

The following day K--- and I were sent up to Ndali Lodge for lunch and drinks. Ndali is a beautiful resort situated on a ridge between two broad crater lakes. One has to drive upward along a crest a few meters wide with a steep slope on either side plunging down into the craters. The Lodge is a popular tourist spot, and rooms cost around 300 USD a night. So this was a little dip into Ugandan luxury for us, although we were only staying for lunch. We sat with some local NGO workers on holiday, an American lawyer in country working with the owners of Ndali on new projects, and A--- and C--- the gracious hosts themselves. The lodge is beautiful: laid out on the thin strip of land in a chained railroad-style with a patio overlooking a lake on one side and a lawn with swimming pool jutting over the other crater on the other side. The cozy colonial feel is completed by the wicker and wood furniture, old prints framed on the wall, and complete works of P.G. Wodehouse and Graham Greene on the bookshelf. Unfortunately, we didn't stay after dark when the lodge is lit almost entirely by candle.

It was drizzling outside so we stayed in and had drinks, fish and chips, and a game of Scrabble. As usual, I came up with uncommon words which didn't add up to many points: things like “boor” and “despotic.” The bar against one wall was by far the best-stocked one I'd seen in Uganda, and I was generously given access to it and carte blanche to start mixing on the condition that every drink I composed be taught to their man and noted in his cocktail book. So I rapidly whipped up Manhattans, Dirty Martinis, and whatever else I invented after drinking several Manhattans and Dirty Martinis. There are three things I really missed while I was away from home: my friends, my wardrobe, and my bar. Not necessarily in that order.

At the end of the bar I noticed a bottle without a label. In it was a slightly less-than-clear liquid. My liquor sense started tingling.
I approached A--- and asked
“Is that what I think it is?”
“It sure is.”

Pretty much every country on the planet has its own home-made liquor. Since man first walked upright he has been looking for ways to fall over. These traditions continue and, despite the best attempts of legitimate brewers and distillers, the culture of DIY hooch is worldwide, fascinating, and responsible for countless pregnancies and fistfights.

The Ugandan moonshine is called “waragi,” which A--- told us was a corruption of the English “War Gin.” This is apparently because the natives would drink it before battle. I'm hard pressed to imagine the advantage of doing so, unless it were the general sense of invincibility it imparts. I certainly don't think it would do much to improve the accuracy of a thrown spear.

The waragi at Ndali Lodge was made by a group of local farmers just down the hill. It is authentic waragi, made from matoke – the local green bananas which are one of Uganda's staple crops. It has a very high alcohol content and tastes delicious – somewhere between a banana Eau de Vie and gin. As with any unregulated liquor, however, there are problems. Last year several scores of people in and around Kampala died or went blind after drinking a batch of waragi to which had been added battery acid to give it an extra kick. One begins to wonder where this apparent African obsession with battery acid comes from. Because of incidents of poisonings such as that one, the government has begun producing its own waragi. Unfortunately, as is often the case when a government decides its going to do something its citizens have been doing on their own for centuries, it isn't nearly as good. It's either made from potatoes or sugarcane (nobody was sure which) and it lacks the unique flavor the matoke provides. Still, one can often see the Boda Boda (motorcycle taxi) drivers biting the corner off a plastic baggie of government waragi and pouring it into their mouth like a Capri Sun as a passenger sits on the pillion and clutches the driver's waist as they speed through Kampala.

K--- and I left Ndali in high spirits and high on spirits, having purchased a liter bottle of the good stuff.

The next morning we did what any sensible person with a hangover does: we went for tea. We drove off to the factory at Mwenge with my uncle B---. He dropped us off at the door with the floor manager and while he attended to business she showed us around. We put on our white coats and started in a room where the leaves were dried on large beds and sifted to remove twigs and stems and bits of grit. Then we saw the machines which curl the tea into smaller and smaller balls. The factory only makes CTC tea (cut, tear, curl) rather than whole-leaf tea. CTC is not as high-quality, but it is the type most commonly used in tea bags, which is obviously the way most people take their tea (fools.) We saw the long conveyor belts which pull the tea pellets all around the factory while they ferment, getting progressively more brown. This is the part of the process when the whole factory room begins to smell of tea and machines. It's not such a bad combination. We saw the giant furnace which is run on wood chopped down from the Eucalyptus trees the company continually plants around the tea fields to use as fuel. We were taken to the packing room and saw stacks of sacks of tea labeled products of Uganda in proud stencils. Finally, we went into the tea tasting room where tea from the freshest batches had been brewed – each cup from a different area of the plantation. My uncle rejoined us and showed us how to taste each tea like a wine and spit it as gracefully as one can into a big plastic trashbin. Needless to say, my palate was useless in differentiating each blend, but each pristine bone-white bowl looked as beautiful as a crater lake with a shallow pool of deepest brown sitting at the bottom.

From the factory we headed to the tiny airstrip which the company's Cessna takes off from, sending my uncle and his colleagues to the various other plantations in the area. The runway leads right to the edge of a cliff and my uncle explained that the Cessna doesn't actually lift off, but rather the ground runs out, the plane takes a terrifying dip over the edge, and then begins to ascend.

We then visited the plantation's machine shop, run by a Frenchman named P--- who had been in Uganda for many years, first coming to Africa as part of the French Navy, jumping ship, and working as a machinist during the reign of Idi Amin, who he was forced to occasionally do repairs for. P--- is old now. He works in an almost empty hangar where there are pits over which cars drive so he can work on their undersides – a holdover from the days before lifts. He fixes the occasional tea plucking machine. And he adds to a collection of hundreds of moths and butterflies pinned onto a cork board and left uncovered and unprotected from the other moths which come and chew their cousins' wings off.

On the way back to my aunt and uncle's house we drove past a few dozen young men sitting along the sides of the road eating their lunch. They were field hands, and the sight of K--- was clearly a treat for them. We didn't understand what they were saying to her, but we had some idea of the gist. The reason we couldn't understand the men is because they spoke neither English nor the local Ugandan languages – they were all Rwandan refugees who had found work as field hands on the plantation. In some cases you could literally see the scars of their past on their faces. But when they saw K--- you mostly noticed the smiles.

Our final stop in Uganda was a campsite inexplicably called “Hairy Lemon.” My aunt and uncle wanted to try the fishing, which was supposed to be great on account of the camp being located on an island in the middle of the White Nile, whose source is found a short way down near the town of Jinja. We arrived at the shore of what was apparently the Nile but seemed like a rather small and quaint little stream. I suppose we weren't viewing it from the right angle. On the near shore we met a group of that odd breed of American jock that wears hemp jewelry and tattoos obnoxious things like yin-and-yang symbols onto their lacrosse muscles. One of them was very friendly and recommended the camp and the kayaking. I wasn't paying any attention, though, because he had the smallest eyes which were bunched so far down his flat forehead and so close to his beaky nose that they looked like two grapes about to roll down a ski slope. This, combined with Easter Island Moai-like chin, his stuck-out ears like two clam shells, and his minnow-like mouth gave him the aspect of an oblong plate of antipasto arranged by someone with a particular crude sense of humor and a poor sense of spatial reasoning.

We hopped into a canoe and set out for the camp. The water was exceptionally clear, and I could see shoals of sleek and pretty little fish scattering with each dip of the paddle as our oarsman pushed our canoe across to the camp.

Upon arrival I immediately recognized and was recognized by a group of young Russians seated around one of the tables in the mess. We exchanged exceptionally dirty looks, a pastime which I feel they have an advantage in owing to the general misshapen scowls I'd seen on their faces every time I looked over. This isn't to say that they were incapable of smiling – just that their twisted smiles could have arisen from watching the Eurovision song contest or, alternatively, people having their knuckles broken. I'd first encountered these ten or so Russian youths on my flight into Uganda two weeks earlier. One of them had taken a young woman's seat so they could all sit together and the innocent young woman had taken my seat instead. This led to a mass negotiation of seat changes that ended with everyone on the plane sitting somewhere new and someone else eating my vegetarian meal. On the plane they were consummate jackasses. They refused to sit down, lounging across the seats and leaning over the seat backs in order to practice spider-man kisses that couldn't have looked more like arachnids clashing mandibles gracelessly. Also, they were hideously ugly and covered from eye to ankle with logos, presumably to flash their capitalist credentials.

In any case, they were here at the Hairy Lemon and on our first night there, after my aunt and uncle had gone to their cabin to sleep, they challenged a group of Americans first to a drinking contest and then to a wrestling match. Needless to say, nobody was a winner in this situation. K--- and I sat with R---, giving him shots of tequila for the first time and hearing stories about his beautiful wife J--- and his two little boys who he had raised as proud Manchester United fans (somehow a forgivable offense in a sweet Ugandan like R---.)

The aforementioned group of Americans were allegedly members of a “school” that travels the world kayaking every day and taking “classes” whenever they're not sitting in little boats wearing spandex with attached half-skirts that zip into the canoe so they don't get water in the boat when they inevitably spin around in the water. It is clear that don't understand some people and the things they do.

I took the opportunity to listen in to a little bit of one of their classes as I passed by them one day. As I suspected, their reading group was reading one of those hippie classics I'm wholly ignorant of but is probably supposed to expand your mind, which is clearly why I'm so closed-minded. The Russians spent most of their time in bathing suits, the men looking like spuds with muscles and the women showing off spindly frames that may as well have been built out of toothpicks held together with chewing gum. One of the ladies also looked like her face had been drawn by R. Crumb and her hair had been styled by a Slap Chop.

We left the hairy lemon and parted ways with my aunt and uncle. Then K--- and I spent our day and evening in Kampala before heading to the airport early in the morning. We stocked up on government-sanctioned waragi at the Entebbe airport and had a quick flight to Nairobi. There we said goodbye and got on separate flights – hers to Toronto via Amsterdam and mine to Brazzaville via Kinshasa.