Exam week. Getting back final assignments. Revising (or trying to). Taking papers. Applauding Spidey (no I wasn't there. Just got the video off youtube).

Compare

Because I like taking apart movies to the point that you don't enjoy them anymore.



One of my pet peeves: the horrible horrible script in the Star Wars prequels. Here is the scene that takes the cake, where Amidala tries to dissuade Anakin from the Dark Side in too many words, and Obi-Wan and Anakin discuss what we already know in case you were too dense to notice. And in case you happen to fall asleep, their discussion is punctuated with the musical farting of the surrounding lava spouts, guaranteed to wake up any bored moviegoer who's waiting for the sabre duel to start. Notice the red look and the bubbly lava which heightens the already over-the-top emotion. They may as well put on masks and act out Greek tragedy with the overblown melodrama. Or a spoof of a Greek tragedy--the lines are too bad to do the classics justice.

Compare that to the superb scene from The Last of the Mohicans below, which carries the equivalent amount of emotion in just a handful of lines . The mise-en-scene obscures rather than illuminates. Though blue is often used to give a calming effect, the scene here is mainly in blue and black which heightens suspense because of the obscurity. The emotion is intensified because we see so little of their faces that every gesture takes on meaning. Just compare: Amidala's moment is "Anakin, you're breaking my heart!" (I'm not heartless, but I couldn't help laughing); when Cora has her moment she is just a still silhouette gazing in Hawkeye's direction. Hawkeye's glistening hair, Cora's shining eyes...everything serves to intensify the emotion, not meaninglessly amplify it and rob the audience of the chance to use their imagination. Daniel-Day Lewis and Madeleine Stowe could have acted badly and it'd still be a good scene (but good acting has made it one of the greatest romantic scenes I have ever watched--ok, the greatest. I don't watch very many movies).

A Brittle Crazie Glass

As the worst has blown over, we resume our normal transmission. I began this entry the Monday before Easter, and finished it today.

***

THE WINDOWS.

LORD, how can man preach thy eternall word ?
He is a brittle crazie glasse :
Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford
This glorious and transcendent place,
To be a window, through thy grace.

But when thou dost anneal in glasse thy storie,
Making thy life to shine within
The holy Preachers, then the light and glorie
More rev'rend grows, and more doth win ;
Which else shows watrish, bleak, and thin.

Doctrine and life, colours and light, in one
When they combine and mingle, bring
A strong regard and aw : but speech alone
Doth vanish like a flaring thing,
And in the eare, not conscience ring.
~ George Herbert

It is not for us to greet each other or bid farewell we live on archipelagos
and that water these words what can they do what can they do prince
~ Herbert Zbiegniew in "Elegy of Fortinbras"

Man is a brittle crazie glass. We are unsound, liable to fall to pieces at any moment. And is that it then? My life carries no truth of its own unless God's truth is burned into me to bring that testimony into focus. My words mean nothing unless my colours are a witness to Christ's glory--unless I live in a manner that testifies to the reality of the love of an unseen God. An unseen God who allows pain, who allows dreams to fail, who is as full of wrath as he is full of grace. To quote a friend: "the problem of God has yet to be solved." If it had been solved, we would have moved on from God. If the problem of God can be resolved, then he is just an idea and we wouldn't really need him. Then he would just be a convenient scapegoat when life gets too difficult, or a prop, a kind of totem from which one may draw strength. I think after all this time, and all I've learnt, I still believe precisely because the problem of God has yet to be solved.

Speech alone, what can it do? My identity as a speaking being separates me so completely from another--even if speech forms the waterways of meaning. In the elegy, Fortinbras is guilty for speaking and surviving Hamlet, and having nothing to show for it. Every act of speech cannot escape the bubble of our self-interest. These words, what can they do? They cannot reach you as I wish them to reach you, because I speak for my own sake. Are we then born into a state of pathological self-destruction? Unable to love for the sake of another. Dare we believe that we can find a way to see beyond ourselves? If now I see as through a glass, darkly, will there be a time when I can look clearly into eternity and find coherence there?

So I'm looking for a word, the Word, that forms the guarantee for the meaning of all other words. So that they're not just empty words that fall to the ground once spoken. Like that guarantee God gives in Isaiah: My word will not return to me empty. Words that are doctrine and life, that batter one's conscience and that demand reaction. Words that speak not belatedly to the dead Hamlet, not useless words, but words that speak life. John Chapter 1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Jesus is known as the Word incarnate. Such a claim to guarantee all surely demands a reaction: you know me, thus you know the Father and thus you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. I'm looking for a guarantee, that at the end of it all, the pain wasn't worth nothing. Pain that makes life so inescapably real, it cannot be an illusion. Pain that demands a meaning. Pain that burns doctrine into life and life into doctrine, annealing it like colour is annealed onto glass to make the stained glass windows that shine gloriously in the light of the rising sun. So I'm looking...

Quotes of the Day

People ask us how we're taking it. With a sense of humour, I guess.


I can't read without my teeth. The words won't go in.
~Dad joking/sulking when we couldn't find his three false teeth.

Lu mau jual darah saya ke?
~Dad to nurse, because they take a blood sample everyday.

Quotes of the Day

11 April
"You're holding it upside down, darling."
~Mum to Dad as he wishes me happy birthday on the phone.

12 April
"They gave me a lumberjack"
~Dad's brain-fevered description of the lumbar puncture procedure he underwent.

"Who is this?"
~Dad not recognizing Mum, asks me.

"Do you see Mummy now?"
"Yes, she's behind me."
~When mum was at his side

13 April
"Peter and Susan visited me at 4.30am."
~on friends visiting in the morning (not so early, of course)

"Who is that?"
~Dad not recognizing me, asks Mum.

"2.30; 6.30; 2.30"
~when we asked Dad to read the clock. It was 1.30pm.

"This place is like a circus."
~on activities in the ward at night (which include noisy old lady who cries out "cuci" randomly and old man on ventilator who pulls off his oxygen mask)

"Tak boleh mati sini. Mau mati pergi tempat lain."
~frustrated nurse to old man attempting to remove oxygen mask.

"Doctors here, they purposely make the time very slow. They move the clock backwards."
~Dad, telling my uncle his suspicions (everytime he sleeps he thinks its a new day).

Quel Malheur...

J'ai lu cette nouvelle hier. Et aujourd'hui mon frère a appelé pour me dire que mes parents sont malade et ont été hospitalisé.

La dengue menace 2.5mds de personnes
AFP
07/04/2009
Deux milliards et demi de personnes, dans une centaine de pays tropicaux, sont exposées au risque d'infection par la dengue, maladie tropicale en pleine expansion qui est la plus répandue après le paludisme, ont indiqué aujourd'hui des spécialistes à Paris.

En cause dans cette "expansion géographique" : transports des populations, urbanisation massive et désordonnée, problème d'évacuation des eaux usées, lutte insuffisante contre les moustiques vecteurs de cette sorte de "grippe tropicale" et les "gîtes" (eaux stagnantes...) qui favorisent leur prolifération, a notamment rappelé le Dr Raman Velayudhan, de l'Organisation mondiale de la santé, lors d'une conférence de presse organisée par la firme Sanofi Pasteur, division vaccins du Groupe Sanofi-Aventis.
Sanofi Pasteur teste en Thaïlande son candidat vaccin contre la dengue destiné aux enfants et dirigé contre les quatre formes du virus. Cette étude d'efficacité, débutée en février, devrait englober 4002 sujets, dont 2/3 recevront le vaccin testé.

Sanofi Pasteur mène aussi des études cliniques (enfants et adultes) au Mexique, au Pérou et aux Philippines.

"On attend les résultats dans deux ans", a indiqué le Dr Jean Lang, de Sanofi Pasteur. Si tout va bien, selon lui, "vers 2015-2016, le vaccin pourrait être disponible et même peut-être un peu plus tôt".

****

C'est un peu trop tard. Mes parents sont infectés par le virus Chikunguya. =(

On Donne

A Hymn To God The Father


WILT Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.


Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallowed in a score?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.


I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore ;
But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore ;
And having done that, Thou hast done ;
I fear no more.
~ John Donne

I've found Donne's poetry very useful actually, because it expresses so much struggling and uncertainty. I was thinking about it, and I realise it's a lot like Jacob on the mountain, wrestling with the angel. I think for the longest time he had no idea who he was fighting, until daybreak when he was defeated into submission, his hip wrenched to force him into a position of worship. Only then could he plead for a blessing, and receive it. A recurring line in Donne, especially when he wants assurance from God, is "the Lord throws down, that he may raise up." Most literary critics think Donne struggled with great uncertainty in his faith. But I read the poems and I wonder, if we have failed to identify the real struggle? Maybe he is struggling with God, and for him certainty was in that struggle, and it was not the effort to remove the struggle or defeat the foe that would deliver him from uncertainty. If you're struggling with your doubts, fears, pride or whatever, look again. At break of day, you may just find that all along you were struggling not with yourself or an unknown enemy, but with God. And that's a great relief to me, because I never can face my sins directly. It's kind of a different way of looking at one's salvation, I guess. We Protestants suffer from this "battle your sins" mentality, when we really should be facing the other way. It's submit to God, resist the devil and flee temptation.

Revelations of Nothing

Just visited my old blog. Haven't seen it for years. I'm surprised by the variety of things I thought about in those years, and how boring I found school life sometimes. I thought I enjoyed school a lot, but now I remember I enjoyed the access I had to libraries more than I actually liked classes and the pressure to perform. It's something that hasn't deserted me all these years--I can't shake off the academic perfectionism I have cultivated over the years. Can't even tell when it started--in Malaysia or here. It certainly crystallized under the need to maintain my scholarship. In a sense, in order to keep my beloved libraries, I had to leave off reading random crap and actually study. So the scholarship ensured I had a good balance of state-sponsored syllabi and random reading. If anyone asks me again, why I came to Singapore, I shall say, "For literature and for the libraries."

I also know why I abandoned the old blog. It was too angst-ridden. Looking back at a distance, I grimace at how my thoughts just bleed across the screen in a cool teal that belies the workings of a heat-oppressed brain. I'm much more reticent now. This is probably the first post on this blog which is confessional in nature, without being at all fictionalized or anything. Shall have to give it a new tag. Like: Warning! Read only when you want to be bored out of your wits. Or: Private property. Trespassers will be persecuted by revelations of nothing.

Matters on my mind. Concerning religion.

1. If God is both omniscient and omnipotent, then it's possible for him to see all our future choices and act in a manner which both preserves our free will and fulfils his ultimate will. I.e predestination and free will is a paradox only reconcilable if God has complete knowledge and full sovereignty. Discuss.

2. The ability to discern good and evil is different from the knowledge of good and evil. The knowledge of good and evil is not a precondition for having the ability to discern good and evil. Discuss.

3. What does my existence amount to? If I am only a heap of dust facing the accident of consciousness, then ethics and morality count for nothing but the amelioration of an existence that has no reason for being in the first place. Question I would ask if I didn't believe in God.

4. Why do people--even intellectuals--automatically assume that conservative religious people are either not rational or have never reasoned through their faith? (Probably because it's usually true, haha. And the bad rep of many vocal and unthinking conservatives who go around condemning everyone except themselves).

5. "I find it unfair that God has it all rigged from the start." Comment of friend on book of Romans, which states that God set up the law in order to condemn mankind for our sin, which resulted in death, so that we would realize we needed to be saved through Christ. Theologians usually call this rigging "grace," but plenty of Miltonists would agree with God being very underhand. To the shrewd he shows himself shrewd, I guess.