Aging its seems
is a slow process of letting go
allowing younger-day dreams to dissipate
grounding oneself in solider pleasures of the day-to-day

Passionate speeches to oneself at night
can be smiled at
must be smiled at
Self must be made to settle
in humbler things
like joy
which is free

 So I haven't really posted much here because I find that increasingly most of what I blog about is either on the markets, or my tentative steps toward God. I've just started a separate blog here: <http://fivesparrowstwofarthings.wordpress.com> in case anyone is interested. I'm not sure what I will post here going forward -- random thoughts on life, I am sure, will occur and appear, but with none too rapid frequency, unfortunately. 

Found in the leaf of a 1948 copy of Birds in Cornwall (original link here):

Low-Tide at Looe

I love the river-bed, when the tide is low
When gulls paddle, but do not ride
The little wobbling waves
And fishermen in long thigh-boots
Casually cross the drying mud
Splashing in the narrowing channel
On the further side
I like to watch the children,
Peering, from the suddenly-heightened
Quay-side at the stranded crabs
Gull hollowed; at the shadows on the mud
Of Gulls, slow wheeling
In the quivering air --
I love the riverbed when the tide is low
For then the busy boats can't come or go
With noisy splash and bustle.
When the tide is out
There is not cry, nor shout
But only, Silence. 

 Ok, maybe it's a cheesy song, but somehow today I keep singing this to myself:

Sting's Fragile --

On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star (x2)
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are (x2)

How fragile we are -- in so many ways... sigh. 

I'm walking again! With a limp, and I can't go down stairs, and I need a crutch for any acceleration. BUT I'm walking again. I also hit the mats yesterday, against the advice of virtually everyone I know (I tried to ask as few people as possible), and I didn't get hurt. Though, I need to strongly remind myself to not do anything that requires weight-bearing, AND anything that involves free rolling, in case someone falls on my ankle the wrong way. And I hope none of the screws in my leg break off at the tip, which the surgeon has indicated would then require drilling to remove the leftover bits. 

Every year end I go looking for words, to put into a next-year's diary for S. I was poking around this slim book of poetry, and found this by the wayside, not relevant for the diary but suddenly moving. Poetry is like that -- it lies in wait for your heart to be in the right place.

*****

The Dance

A middle-aged woman, quite plain, to be polite about it, and somewhat stout, to be more courteous still,
but when when she and the rather good-looking, much younger man she's with get up to dance,
her forearm descends with such delicate lightness, such restrained but confident ardor athwart his shoulder,
drawing him to her with such a firm, compelling warmth, and moving him with effortless grace into the union
she's instantly established with the not at all rhythmically solid music in this second-rate cafe,

that something in the rest of us, some doubt about ourselves, some sad conjecture, seems to be allayed,
nothing that we'd ever thought of as a real lack, nothing not to be admired or be repentant for,
but something to which we've never adequately given credence,
which might have consoling implications about how we misbelieve ourselves, and so the world,
that world beyond us which so often disappoints, but which sometimes shows us, lovely, what we are.

*****

Biopsy

Have I told you, love, about the experience
I used to have before I knew you?
At first it seemed a dream -- I'd be in bed -- 
then I'd realise I was awake, which made it -- 
it was already frightening -- appalling.

A dense, percussive, pulsing hum,
too loud to bear soon as I'd hear it,
it would become a coil of audible matter
tightening over me, so piercing
I was sure I'd tear apart in it.

I'd try to say a word to contradict it,
but its hold on me was absolute,
I was paralyzed; then, my terror
past some limit, I'd try again: this time
I'd cry out aloud, and it would stop.

Trembling, I'd come to myself, as,
the night of your tests, I came shuddering
awake, my fear for you, for both of us,
raging more terribly through me
than that vision of annihilation ever did.

It was like the desolate time before you:
I couldn't turn to you for reassurance
lest I frighten you, couldn't embrace you
for fear I'd wake you to your own anxiety,
so, as I had then, I lay helpless, mute.

The results were "negative"; now
I'll tell you of those hours in which my life,
not touching you but holding you,
not making a sound but crying for you
divided back into the half it is without you. 

*****

If I were a poet, I'd want to be C.K. Williams. His voice, across many of his poems, is fascinating -- observant, quiet, intense, cognizant of our mortality, isolate, sensitive. That said, I don't read much poetry, so I have no real basis to judge.

S and I made a first crutchless foray to Parkway Parade last weekend -- it took all of 2.5 hours to get there and back, by bus, and run a couple errands, and by the end I was totally tired and grumpy. Wow, walking is really hard when your foot can't flex. Weird how these little biomechanical things affect life so much.

We went back again the next day -- this time I was allowed to use the crutches, the difference it makes! -- and tried Carl's Junior; somehow something we've both wanted to try (high end fast food). Not bad, not something you'd necessarily go back to.

Anyhow, I'm on leave this week for the last time this year, four days from Tuesday to Friday. I was hoping to be walking by now, and spending the time catching up on training. Not happening. So I've got reading assignments I've set myself -- finishing up Warren Buffet's essays, cracking into this book on the Indian economy, and completing Jiang Rong's Wolf Totem in Mandarin. And investing assignments -- time to catch up with one or two of the companies I've been looking at for PA. Also will be catching up with J, who's back from his Aussie dentistoral degree for Xmas.

And, I expect, there will be the usual room clean-up-and-organise and blog updates that one feels oddly compelled to perform at times like these.

D and his wife C came over for dinner tonight; it's always interesting talking with him, not just because he's intelligent but because he's very good at looking through things and grasping essential points and principles, and simplifying things to concepts. D was finishing up a Ph.D in biology in London, but got disillusioned with the scientific process and got really into church ministry at All Souls. He delved deep into theology -- the program at All Soul, though informal, is incredibly rigorous, as far as I make out from what he tells me -- and is currently serving at my old church in Singapore, taking classes at BGST on the side.

I just wanted to set down a few thoughts from tonights extended conversation:'

First is the difference between Hebrew and Greek. Greek is a more modern and Western language, and words have more singular, specific meanings, while Hebrew is more ancient and Eastern, and words have broader meanings. The Old Testament is written in Hebrew, and many words have different inflections -- this is why Hebrew-Mandarin translations of the Bible are more accurate than Hebrew-English ones, as Mandarin, especially classical Chinese, is more in the philosophical spirit of ancient Hebrew than is English, which is really simplified and bastardised Latin -- and the depth of meaning in many passages is lost in the Greek. He says, interestingly, that when he listens to pastors, the ones who do their personal bible study in Hebrew, tend to have deeper and subtler understanding of passages, than do pastors who study in the Greek.

As an example: if we look at Deuteronomy (which means in Hebrew 'These are the words', apparently; while in Greek it is translated as 'The Second Law'), there is reference to two covenants: the Old, made with Moses, and the New, made with Abraham. However, the New covenant actually predates the Old covenant in terms of temporal chronological order. What gives? It turns out that the words Old and New refer not to temporal chronology, which is a Western/Greek way of interpreting them, but rather Old is 'always old', in effect 'passing away', which New is 'always new', or 'recurring'. It refers to states, rather than time periods. This makes sense in context: because the Old covenant with Moses was the Ten commandments -- the strict Law -- while the New covenant with Abraham was basically God telling him that he would bless Abraham's family and be the God of his descendants forever -- a relational, familial embrace that didn't depend on the law. We'd started talking about this because I pointed out the weird passage in 2 Chronicles, where the Israelites celebrate the passover without having first ceremonially cleansed themselves -- but are not struck down by lightning, because of the spirit of their worship; thus proving that the New Testament God who repudiates legalism is not a new, different God, but the same God in the Old Testament.

D bangs the table very hard on his interpretation of Christianity being relational, which I happen to agree with. He like to say that one should read the Bible as a letter from a lover who is away, not as a textbook. Anyhow, another issue we cleared up is my issue with that Christianity seems very much a religion for grown-ups -- I've felt that it requires a lot of life experience to appreciate what it is saying, that a child couldn't grasp the nuance of.

But thinking about God as focused on relationships, and building a family -- a catholic family in the original sense of the word, meaning all-inclusive, accepting of people from different backgrounds -- helps me to accept that children can and do understand God in a way that is different, perhaps simpler, than that of adults, but no less profound. It is that all of us appreciate and come to God from a different point of view: I as a historian, he as a scientist, she as a doctor -- I, being a historian, could not appreciate God in the way a scientist could, not on my own; but here is the value of fellowship, that because a friend is a scientist, by watching and listening to him, I can begin to appreciate how a scientist might approach God, might enjoy different aspects of his creation, though not a scientist myself. So likewise, I can believe that a child might enjoy certain aspects of God that I as an adult have forgotten, or perhaps having had a different kind of childhood, didn't myself experience. But I can learn from the child in terms of seeing how God could be looked at from that point of view. Its a bit like being back in freshman year and making students of different stripes read the same classical texts, hoping that we feed on each others' insights. I know the profs certainly thought those intro-type courses by far the hardest to teach.

Another interesting -- less theological and more sociological -- topic, was how the church is really experiencing a generation gap. The older generation in English speaking churches is used to a more dictatorial, pedantic sermon style, and cannot appreciate sermons where one is asked to think through the arguments -- they want practical, tell me what to do, type sermons. The younger generation can't abide that, and prefer thoughtful, nuanced sermons that critically argue through principles. Unfortunately, because the two groups attend the same sermons, the pastors have a hard time. D sees that as a looming problem -- along with that the Chinese-speaking congregations are seeing big inflows of PRC attendees, and they will again change the needs of the church (this is where we started talking about pastors who preach in Chinese; apparently there are a few BGST students from China with a good grasp of both Mandarin and Hebrew, and their sermons are supposed to really blow you away, if you can understand and appreciate it, I guess). One generation from now, the congregation will go the way of European churches -- where the main constituents are not first-generation Christians with all the fire of having been brought up Buddhist and discovered Christ, but that of second/third generation Christians, jaded, bored with Sunday School, needing a preacher that knows how to make the words relevant and fresh again. Along the same lines, reportedly a study of Singapore's population 10 years ago found that 50% of the population was Buddhist, a more recent study found that 40% of respondents claimed to be atheist. So the gospel will need to be contextualized and delivered in a way that the audience can appreciate. This will be a challenge.

Anyhow, all very up-there stuff. One practical thing I got out of it was a method of Bible study I think I will try -- when reading a book, say in the NT, refer to the part of the OT where the NT writer quotes, and write out my own interpretation of the OT book, then refer back to the NT book and see whether the writer's interpretation matches mine. Assume the writer's interpretation is right, and try to understand why he uses the quotes in this or that particular way -- apparently one can be very surprised here. Persevere with this, and this will deepen one's understanding of both OT and NT. Heheh, that makes it easy, no need to buy third party commentary...

Oh, and for the record, I reprised an experimental recipe of brown rice cooked with dried shrimp and olives -- a bit too salty cos I put too much of the olive-water in the rice compared to the first time, but otherwise still very tasty. Good, it will go onto my permanent menu.

We saw Casablanca on okTV (ex-Channel 12) last night -- awesome! Crisp, trenchant, good old-fashioned acting, nothing like the whiny trash that is Hollywood these days. Movies seemed to have more purpose back then. Next Sunday at 10pm is the original Ocean's Eleven -- given that I did actually even like the remake, I expect the original to be even more fabulous. Something to look forward to, certainly. 

 Bleah, feeling fat and gross from a couple nights of interrupted sleep to attend US-hosted webinars on how to use trading software. Not that these appears to give significant information beyond what one could probably work out from playing with the interface. Nonetheless I guess it is an interesting cultural experience. Went swimming yesterday, on physio's advice, did some water running and then some laps; felt absolutely bloated after swimming and resolved to hate swimming forever. Along comes an email about the 2009 BJJ World Championships vids being available online, which depresses me even more for some reason. Deleted the email. Will I ever train again? That side of me seems to be slip, slip, slip-sliding away... That was a nice song.