Uncertainty and Ambiguity

Amit Varma writes:

...I can embrace ambiguity, and follow threads. More and more, I feel myself drawn towards the latter—it makes me more certain of myself, if that makes sense.

I kinda understand and identify with that feeling. For the most part ambiguity is unsettling and discomforting to most but there is also a certain level of comfort in ambiguity. I myself never voice any strong opinions (just not my temperament) and its not all for the good since I am sure I suffer from it too at times. However, when people make broad conclusions and voice strong opinions, they often comes across as know-it-all's, which is rather off-putting. My aversion to religious wingnuts likely stems from the same discomfort with certainty. By its very nature, the unconditional nature of religious belief demands that certainty...but I would rather see shades of gray than black-and-white absoluteness. I mentioned to someone earlier this week that I am kinda tired of books like Freakanomics too that pose as if they have all the answers to understanding society and human interactions. That aversion is likely another manifestation of the same discomfort with certainty.

P.S. Haha...re-reading the above, I saw the 2nd word "kinda" and took it out. Then thought... no... it should stay. It says I am not 100% sure I understand and identify with Amit's feeling. Let that uncertainty remain. :) Kinda hate books like Freakanomics too. Am not completely shying away from reading such books again but I read them with a pinch of salt; like one should read everything, I suppose. :)

Undeserved blessings and spontaneous remissions

Per old records, I had read 3-4 stories from Runaway by Alice Munro in August 2005 and although I do not remember the stories, I do not think "Silence" was one of them. I just read the story, included in the 2005 Best American Short Stories compilation and was reminded of why readers everywhere (and critics, based on how many times her stories from the New Yorker make it to the Best American Short Stories series) love Munro's short stories. Despite her prolific writing, she manages to deliver a punch every time. Like the author Mona Simpson wrote about her, she..

“understands reality in a complex, capacious way, leaving intact its dimensions of dream and wonder, its shadings of the fantastic.”

Or as another great exponent of the short story genre, Lorrie Moore wrote in her review of Runaway,

There are no happy endings here, but neither are these tales tragedies. They are constructions of calm perplexity, coolly observed human mysteries. One can feel the suspense, poolside, as well as any reader of The Da Vinci Code; one can cast a quick eye toward one's nine-year-old on the high dive and get back to the exact sentence where one left off. The thrilling unexpectedness of real life, which Munro rightly insists on, will in her hands keep a reader glued -- even if that reader is torn by the very conflicts (work to do, kid on the high dive) dramatized therein.

Or in Munro's own words from an earlier story, that Moore quotes from in her review:

Unconnected to the life of love, uncolored by love, the world resumes its own, its natural and callous importance. This is first a blow, then an odd consolation. And already I felt my old self—my old devious, ironic, isolated self—beginning to breathe again and stretch and settle, though all around it my body clung cracked and bewildered, in the stupid pain of loss.

I have long wanted to sit down with a book of Munro's short stories and hope to do just that starting this Friday into the long weekend. Right now, I feel the urge to get Runaway again and read the other two stories "Chance" and "Soon" that narrate earlier stories from the life of the central character of Silence, Juliet but what I will be reading is some of her earlier work, compiled as Selected Stories in 1996. Another compilation of her stories will be published later this year with a foreword by Margaret Atwood - Alice Munro's Best: Selected Stories.

Speaking of her recent work, you can read her most recent story in the New Yorker, Deep-Holes here. (What's with hyphenated story titles. Just heard last month of a good Jhumpa Lahiri story from the New Yorker called Hell-Heaven, which I believe is included in her recently published 2nd collection of short stories, The Unaccustomed Earth.)

P.S. The title of this post comes from the last line of the story:

She hopes, as people who know better hope for undeserved blessings, spontaneous remissions, or things of that sort.

P.S. S. I did not realize that Alice Munro is 77 years old!

It's a dog's world - 6

Phew.. what can I say... s*** happens, even in a dog's world! :)

Flying piece of art causes museum chaos in Switzerland

A giant inflatable dog turd by American artist Paul McCarthy blew away from an exhibition in the garden of a Swiss museum, bringing down a power line and breaking a greenhouse window before it landed again, the museum said Monday. The art work, titled “Complex S(expletive..)”, is the size of a house. The wind carried it 200 metres (yards) from the Paul Klee Centre in Berne before it fell back to Earth in the grounds of a children’s home, said museum director Juri Steiner. The inflatable turd broke the window at the children's home when it blew away on the night of July 31, Steiner said. The art work has a safety system which normally makes it deflate when there is a storm, but this did not work when it blew away. Steiner said McCarthy had not yet been contacted and the museum was not sure if the piece would be put back on display.

"Is it plastic? Is it magic?"

I am glad NBC seemed to have toned down the sappy saccharine feel-good background stories of the athletes during the recent Olympics but this one is worth highlighting (not sure NBC covered it - if they did, I missed it.)

I was beginning to wonder who this time's Eric the Eel would be. (See the video of his swim from 2000, with some buffoons commentating! How can one not cheer for the underdog and instead laugh at him, in such a case!)

Somalia's Samia Yusuf Omar probably takes that spot and deserves her few minutes of limelight on the international scene. Quite a different and harsher return to reality for her than for any of the other Olympians, huh!

Samia Yusuf Omar headed back to Somalia Sunday, returning to the small two-room house in Mogadishu shared by seven family members. Her mother lives there, selling fruits and vegetables. Her father is buried there, the victim of a wayward artillery shell that hit their home and also killed Samia’s aunt and uncle.

This is the Olympic story we never heard.

It’s about a girl whose Beijing moment lasted a mere 32 seconds – the slowest 200-meter dash time out of the 46 women who competed in the event. Thirty-two seconds that almost nobody saw but that she carries home with her, swelled with joy and wonderment. Back to a decades-long civil war that has flattened much of her city. Back to an Olympic program with few Olympians and no facilities. Back to meals of flat bread, wheat porridge and tap water.

Read more at the article. Like she says: she does not need our pity. Quite condescending to even highlight her story like this in some ways. But in my mind this is what the Olympics are and should be about - people from all over the world coming together to give their very best and compete hard.

It's a wrap

In a distinct contrast to my reactions after the opening ceremony, which blew me away, I am not raving in awe after the closing ceremony. It was a let down of sorts -- maybe because I expected too much, or maybe I tired of all the traditions (raise this flag, raise that flag, shut the flame, pass this on, pass that on, give some Brit musicians some TV time, etc.), or maybe because of too many ad interruptions (more frequent than any other Olympic coverage or at least felt like it) . Overall, there were some great moments but it just didn't capture my attention and was disappointing in many ways.

However, I'd still like to take this occasion to link to Boston.com's amazing pictures from the two week extravaganza. London's definitely has a tough act to follow:

We now know what can be accomplished by a nation of 1.3 billion people imbued with nationalistic pride and governed by a no-nonsense leadership.

Such a nation can run the most efficient, if not necessarily the most joyful and spontaneous Olympics yet known. Such a nation can trot out an endless stream of blue-shirted volunteers (at least three people for every one that was needed and three more behind them, just in case). Such a nation can send out battalions of skilled and dedicated athletes in more disciplines than any previous country ever had mastered. Such a nation can justify its presence on this earth to itself, while announcing to everyone else, without specifically saying so, that it is the future and the 21st century will inevitably be theirs.

Presenting itself to the world with a stupendous opening ceremonies that told the story of its honorable and ancient civilization in the most modern of technological ways, China put on an Olympics that will not soon be surpassed. Who else will commit $43 billion to the cause?

And yet, there was something lacking and something lost in all the clockwork efficiency and rigor - more in terms of the performances by the Chinese athletes, which I followed closely on TV across various sports than in the organization of the Olympics, which I have read was exceptional. Until the closing ceremony, I do not think I saw Chinese athletes celebrating and smiling, with not more than a cursory smile or a brief exultation by the Chinese gymnasts after a great routine. The Chinese divers were supreme and so much better than the rest of the competition but perhaps under the pressure and expectation set to win all 8 diving golds (they won 7; with an Australian upsetting them in the last event - the men's 10m platform), they never broke into even the cursory smile we saw in the case of the gymnasts and other athletes after winning medals! I'd take the joie-de-vivre of participating and not winning over the pressures of winning that seemed to bog down many Chinese athletes any day!

Anyways, to wrap it up, here's a list of 36 facts about the Olympic medal count (scrambled out of order by me)

12) India has 17% of the world's population. They won 0.31% of Olympic medals. (ouch! don't rub it in, dude! - sanjeev)

13) China: 19.8% of population, 10.4% of medals.

14) United States: 4.6% of population, 11.5% medals.

15) Jamaica: 0.041% of population, 1.15% medals.

7) Per capita, China won one gold medal for every 25 million people in the country. The United States' per capita rate was one gold for every 8.5 million. The tiny island nation of Jamaica, which won a staggering six golds in Beijing, had a per capita rate of one gold for every 450,000 residents. Had China won at that rate, the country would have earned 2,889 golds.

29) From 1980 to 2008, Jamaica won three Olympic golds. In a span of six days in Beijing, Usain Bolt won three.

16) Iceland was the least populous country to win an Olympic medal.

17) Pakistan was the most populous country not to win an Olympic medal (164 million residents, sixth-largest nation in the world).

18) Michael Phelps would have finished tied for 9th in the gold medal count, ahead of countries including France, Netherlands, Spain, Canada, Argentina, Switzerland, Brazil and Mexico.

19) The rest of the world won seven golds in men's swimming events. Phelps, of course, won eight.

20) The United States won the most golds (7) and most total medals in the track competition (23), despite having what was widely considered a disappointing meet

Later in the list is another PATHETIC attempt to trivialize the Chinese medal wins by discounting and separating out golds at 'judged' events as not being 'real' golds... but let me not get started on that kind of nonsense in the US media. Lets celebrate the winners - from all countries - instead of whining about other people's wins for once! Despite a sub-par track and field performance, the US did very well, I think and ended up with almost a record tally of total US medals. In addition to all the much celebrated swimming and gymnastic wins, there were some great team performances in basketball, volleyball, beach volleyball, softball, and even water polo and women's soccer.

A museum of mediocrity and foolish aspirations

Hmm.. sounds like me and my writing*! (emphasis mine)

"Alas, Fausta had told the truth: everything was left exactly as it had been on the day I went away. One seemed to be poking one's nose into the study of one of those long-dead writers whose rooms have been transformed into museums, which are visited by people reverently and hat in hand. Except that there was a difference: those writers whose rooms have been transformed into museums were for the most part real, genuine writers; or were, in their lifetime, sublimated artists of the first water, and their studies are faithful mirrors of their sublimation. I, on the contrary, am desublimated, and my study was clearly a museum of mediocrity, of approximation, of self-didactism, of foolish aspirations, of the near miss, of amateurishness." - from The Two of Us, by Albert Moravia

* Actually, the tragedy is that I have not even taken the time to write much and so do not even know if it is mediocre and desublimated or something worth reading! Foolish aspirations or "Khayali pulao", as a friend would call it!

And so it goes...

Of emphatic locutions, platitudes, and cliches.

Just finished Albert Moravia's well-written novel Conjugal Love, a short and delectable 142 pages, though I ruined some of the fun by reading it in many sittings over a month!

Here's an excerpt from the novel, gleaned from a review by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.

"A malignant force was driving me to accumulate repetitions, solecisms, unclear limping formulations, uncertain descriptions, emphatic locutions, platitudes, and cliches. But above all I felt that my prose lacked rhythm, that regular, harmonious breathing that sustains flow, just as meter sustains and regulates the motion of poetry. . . . I stumbled, stuttered, lost myself in a tumult of discordances and stridencies."

I won't be writing a review but all I can say is that the novel suffers from none of the above ills and was very enjoyable, even in translation. The much-acclaimed novel, Contempt (made into a movie by the French new wave director, Jean Luc Godard) is probably the next Moravia novel to read. Or maybe Moravia's other acclaimed novel Conformist, which was made into a movie by Bernardo Bertolucci.