Outlook: Talking about suicide

By chance after a conversation about the work of Édouard Levé last night at a gathering, the World Service were broadcasting this edition of Outlook, which features Cara Anna (her name reads like the opening of a love letter) bravely describing her own experiences with suicide attempts while working as a reporter in Beijing for the Associated Press. I admire her practical intentions with this blog and her work to reduce the taboo of discussing the subject of suicide attempts. Her blog Talking About Suicide is here 

World Service Outlook programme can be heard here It’s rapidly becoming one of my favourite listens. I seem to chance upon accidentally every Saturday night.

Fog followed rain

I must pause to record the first rainfall warning of the season last week. Perhaps two rainfall warnings or perhaps one that lasted 2 days. It was a relentless rain that fell. Grey on waking, grey on sleeping, lashing in between.

Hark today we are back with megawatty sun bright! But what came in between, what came by chance was eiderdown to the mind. Yesterday driving North in Washington there sat fog. By the side of the road fog. Small bowls of fog. I was tempted to call it rolling fog but it wasn’t rolling. It was sitting in a bowl-shaped-pudding fog.

I was puzzling out whether this was particular only to Washington State, when I found more patches of it sat identically on the side of the road once I crossed the border. Curiously though on the Canadian side it was more square-shaped. Are we therefore square to Washington’s pudding?!

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Teashops they are a changing. Yesterday I met my first ultra slick and swifto tea hustlers. Usually teashops have one man, bedraggled or reading a mystery novel at the back or a hung over student or a woman juggling the dishwasher and the tea selling. Not yesterday’s encounter. It was doubles tennis rebound tea selling. I have never seen so many people selling tea in such a small space. And selling tea swifter than the sample could traverse the tongue. So you’ll be wrapping that tea up and taking that tea home will you? Unfortunately the tea in question was sweetened and decorated beyond recognition — it tasted like tea-ish cool aid.

What can we deduce? The Venture Capitalists have landed on the tea leaf. Still enthusiasm for the leaf is never an entirely unhappy thing, just in this case a tad pressured and go easy on the sweetener.

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I faithfully disagree with Colm Tóibín’s point in his weekend Irish Times interview about tea in the novel. You can never have too much tea in a novel dude. Tea is the word. True progress will announce itself when beds come with built-in kettles. (along with my other unrelated but much belaboured desire for 24 hour swimming pools).

Tractates — the three layers

“[The] conventions of Western discourse — order, logical progression, symmetry –… impose upon the subject an aspect that does not belong to it. Among other ideas, Eastern Aesthetics suggests that ordered structure contrives, that logical exposition falsifies, and that linear, consecutive argument eventually limits… Most likely to succeed in defining Japanese aesthetics is a net of associations composed of listings or jottings, connected intuitively, that fills in a background and renders the subject visible. Hence, the Japanese uses for juxtaposition, for assembling, for bricolage.” Donald Richie A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics

The above quote I read in a book I mentioned yesterday called the BRICOLEUR & his SENTENCES by Stan Dragland (Peddlar Press), but it is quoted from a Michael Ondaatje essay called “Mongrel Writing”, which in turn is quoting the original Donald Richie text which it names as Tractates. (Perhaps the book is out of print, but the only title I could find that’s near it for Richie is the one I’ve attributed it to above.) That’s three layers of quotes to arrive here. It is 7,549 km from Vancouver to Tokyo and unfortunately I am unable to calculate how long it would take you to walk there, but it probably includes the number 3 someplace as well.

If you are wondering what Tractates means (I was) here is a definition:

trac-tate
a treatise

late 15th century: from Latin tractatus, from tractare ‘to handle,’ frequentative of trahere ‘draw.’

This remarking of Richie’s also brings to mind the comments Xiaolu Guo made during this panel at the Jaipur Literary Festival. Xiaolu has a new book out called I AM CHINA. This is very good news. I walked up a mountain in Banff with Xiaolu last year. I should be happy to walk up many mountains talking to her. Indeed we could tractate up and down mountains ensemble.

Fung-Wong storm: 200,000 displaced in Philippines

No sooner have you cancelled rain when a story flashes up of a dreadful storm situation, this time the Philippines where 5 people have died and over 200,000 displaced. Fung-Wong is now head to Taiwan according to this BBC report. This is the second storm in two weeks to hit that area.

Weather cancellation

I was just about to welcome back my old friend the rain and announce it was time to start discussing the weather again … when he was given a battering today by 79 degrees worth of Fahrenheit sunlight. Prior to today’s intervention, we had two remarkable grizzly overcast days and I was ready to hat and scarf my way to this weather watching station and declare the season commenced. In any case CANCELLED. Cancelled. There’s nothing to be said about the sunshine that Beckett hasn’t already covered. One never sees any true variety in sunshine, it’s just up there, bright, blue and beautiful. Thus nothing to be said.

The rain however I’ve managed to fill hundreds of posts on since approx 2005 or whatever ancient date this blog hails back to.

Anyway chief weather watcher going back into her box under the table until something to actually report shows up.

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Under the table winter reading has begun. I am continuing to read this Alice James biography by Jean Strouse (NYRB Classics) but there’s an awful lot of Henry Sr, (one legged boozer) who I mistook to be Henry Jr (two legged) and had to give Henry James Jr a leg back on twitter. But really why so much Henry, why so many Henrys’? Why didn’t the dad go for Harry or Hamid as a name for Henry James (the scribbler)? If he’d known how melted my head is shifting between him and H jr while all the while ONLY wanting to read about Alice for whom I purchased this biography.

All other actual Jamesians would be yay delighted to find the entire diaspora included but I want to know about Alice and since this book is supposed to be about Alice, hurry up Alice. Climb out of the pond weed and duck tails of these Henrys. It must be said though I very much appreciated the description of Henry Sr’s “vastation”. Have you ever had a vastation? I want to survey random folks at bus stops. The very next time I meet a religiously inclined street preacher or bell ringer I shall ask this question promptly.

Also being read is a book about a Bricoleur, with Bricoleur in the title, which I hope to review if as usual I can persuade “the newspapers” that a book that dissects reading is a valuable one to contemplate critically. The newspapers do not seem to concur with the titles I think could use vital contemplation partly because my appetite for the obscure is, um, long confirmed.

A roasting hot read staring at me here that I’ve been saving for the reading equivalent of a Harvest supper: a book called Postal Culture by Gabriella Romani subtitled “Writing and Reading Letters in Post-Unification Italy” published by the University of Toronto Press. The newspapers already told me negative Nelly on this one. How and ever I feel a postal essay brewing that will hopefully include this book and another from the NYRB Classics.

Here also is one of the most riveting things I read last week.  You may not find this riveting so do not be alarmed if it fails to rivet. In fact it’s so riveting I cannot locate it. It was about Viral Hemorrhagic Fever and the timeline of how it strikes. I will find it and hang it here forthwith. (Postscript: Here it is. It’s a chapter from a textbook with latest info on Ebola provided by The Wellcome Trust). Note the quote below in the key points and how the symptoms are so non-specific they could present as any virus. The chapter goes onto explain the history of Viral Hemorrhagic Fever as a term first coined by Russian physicians in the 1940’s and that it may be caused by 30 different viruses from four taxonomic families. (I have no clue what taxonomic means).

“Viral HF is characterized by a short incubation period (usually 1-2) weeks followed by a rapidly progressive illness usually lasting no longer than 2 weeks. Initial signs and symptoms are usually very nonspecific and include fever, headache and myalgia, followed rapidly by gastrointestinal symptoms and, in some cases, rash and neurologic involvement. ”

http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/stellent/groups/corporatesite/@policy_communications/documents/web_document/wtp057281.pdf

Malarky shelfie in Paris

Malarky has different shelf mates this week at Shakespeare & Company bookshop in Paris (merci mille fois mes amis) from last month. Someone who stood in the bookshop on Monday sent me this picture.  How cheering to see the fine company she keeps in this feisty shop that engages so robustly with challenging literature and always has done. May it ever be so.

Farsighted Catherine Barber James, Granny of Henry.

“Henry James the novelist added in his autobiography of the day to the portrait of Catherine Barber James (his granny) — She had a passion for the “fiction of the day” — novels by Mrs Trollope, Mrs Gore, Mrs Marsh, Mrs Hubback, Miss Kavanagh, Miss Aguilar. And she had a habit of disappearing from a room full of grandchildren into a corner with her novel to sit, bent forward at her table, with the book held out at a distance and a candle placed directly between it and her farsighted eyes. ”

Alice James, A Biography by Jean Strouse (NYRB Classics)

From the NYRB Classics website:

“Alice James was a fascinating and exceptional figure in her own right. Tormented throughout her short life by an array of nervous disorders, constrained by social convention and internal conflict from achieving the worldly success she desired, Alice was nonetheless a vivid, witty writer, an acute social observer, and as alert, inquiring, and engaging a person as her two famous brothers.”

More about this book here

Cooking calamity #754(a)

He said he was Indian. It said it was his mother’s recipe. It said it would take 15 mins. It involved 2 cans of chick peas and some other goodies and this famously disastrous cook writing to you.

All I can say is you want to place your left hand on your heart right now and ask all the forces of God and nature to ensure I never open an Indian takeaway in this lifetime nor invite you over to my table to sample my Indian cookery.

I am sure it is an excellent recipe and he is an excellent cook and his mother even better.  I think maybe the ginger blew it. I got my numbers confused and perhaps added a few too many tablespoons of ginger spice.. Then to temper the ginger that turned my mouth to major discomfort above the neckline I added sugar, more sugar, ketchup and finally I saluted the recipe with milk. He, the anon, cookery recipe provider online did not suggest those last four steps. I’d like to apologize to his mother for destroying her recipe with such fervor.

#tummyache.

#othertalents.

#we hope.

Post script Sept 9, 2014. I think he meant teaspoons rather than tablespoons of garam masala. Nothing improved about that mound in the pan overnight which suggests the word leftovers can provoke varied emotions other than relief. 

754(b) was the chia pudding that was not disgusting but certainly dusty and a tad meh meh meh. (think lamb noises)

Postscript. Chia pudding was vastly improved by dumping half a bottle of shop bought chocolate syrup sauce into it, which defeats the purpose of eating chia pudding, but your taste buds do not lie is the savage truth of the matter. Taste buds are not polite alas. 

#38, nearly John Lennon’s #39

#38. The best number in any airport bookshop for a challenging literary work. WH Smith in England. Thank you kind readers for engaging with my work so heartily.

Malarky in Paris at Shakespeare & Company. Our Woman on the shelf between the lads.

In Baile Atha Cliath/ Dublin at Dubray Books Grafton Street at beside Mr Eggers. I love Dubray Books it’s a great shop.

Concertina’d

I have been learning the concertina. I have been practising the concertina. Excessively. I now have a terrific pain in my left shoulder from playing my concertina which is like trying to play a steam engine. I need a much better concertina than this one. In the meantime I am available for weddings and funerals if you wish to be married or die to the strains of the same 8 notes being played again and again and again.

Currently the biggest employment for the concertina is rousing my inert teenager out of bed each morning. (eg middle of the afternoon as it’s summer and he keeps nightclub bouncer hours). There is nothing like the face on him when the concertina starts bellowing at the foot of his bed. It would take a giraffe video to match it.

The other role of my concertina is to create employment for physiotherapists who will have to repair the damage from my eight note interludes so I can continue to earn an actual living doing what I do. The act of typing endless for which somewhere, some excitable researcher is working with a 3D printer to create new shoulders for underpaid freelancers and overwhelmed rugby players.