Love in the Stars

The Chilean desert is one of the best places in the world to view the stars. From there you can see not only the rings of Saturn (using a good telescope), but also Andromeda - the galaxy closest to the Milky Way. This is only possible in the Southern Hemisphere.
    Viewing these spaces, you contemplate the hundreds of billions of stars that make up each galaxy, and our infinitesimal place within the universe. ‘Really, we are nothing’ said my guide to the local landscape the Lunar Valley, ‘Maybe as a whole, as the human race we are something; but as individuals we do not amount to much.’
    His comments related both to the stars and to the hundreds of millions of years it took to forge the grand rock formations that were the subject of his tour. Everything about this region suggests a scale that surpasses human understanding. ‘To the Andean people who lived here before the Spaniards came, this landscape was not very important, it was just where they lived.’ Here too is scale.
    Five centuries have passed and while the unique cunza language of the former locals has gone (all but a few words, and no understanding of the grammar), a few forms of non-spoken language have persisted. The grandparents still perform rituals that have been going on for centuries. At the beginning of spring, at Pachamama festival, they and their children direct their energies to mother earth so that the earth will work with them for a good harvest (yes there are crops in the region). Yes, from a scientific perspective it is pointless, but from a human perspective it is not without worth - it honors a continuity with their ancestors, and it renews the relationship which each of us has with the ground beneath our feet.
    My guide was complaining that the next generation were watching the same cartoons as everyone else in the world (when I visited the supposedly isolated village of Iruya in Northwest Argentina, a cafe was showing the Simpsons). The rituals were appearing in their textbooks and they showed little interest in keeping with them. The past was becoming another story like the one I have been telling you.
    (TV and the internet are far more stimulating. Why are you reading this?)
    Tourists like myself come away with a different story - did you know that southern Bolivia, northwest Argentina, the Atacama desert are rich with a concentrated diversity of fabulous landscapes? Our eyes feast on the light of the sun as it shimmers across the rainbow-colored mountains, salt lakes, subtropical forests, sand dunes, etc, etc. We want to have our cake and eat it - see the place but also hope that the locals retain their traditions. We embody the millennia-old tension between continuity and advancement.
    Is it an advance that so many people appreciate this landscape in a way the locals did not notice? In New Zealand I was told by many - you get used to it and you don’t notice the beauty anymore. New Zealand is working hard to restore the ecology of its fjord lands and its mountain peaks (a sign on Ben Lomond asked visitors to forcibly tear out any wilding trees that they saw shooting up - they’re a European invader) and also selling jet-fuelled adventures up glaciers (‘It’ll be the highlight of your trip.’) Everywhere, everywhere I travelled I saw this contradiction.
    What you really learn from traveling through five continents in five weeks is:
    a) There’s always more to see.
    b) You’re a tiny fleck in the vast sea of humanity.

But a) and b) are hard to reconcile. The children want more Simpsons, more Spongebob, the elders and the nostalgist visitors want to retain the uniqueness of different locales on our planet. ‘They’re destroying what makes people want to come to their region in the first place’ (one fellow traveller told me about south-east Asia). One traveller to another: ’Did you get to Lombok? I didn’t like Bali either - too crowded with tourists - but Lombok was really something.’ Me, overhearing: ‘Isn’t this happening the world over? The place that was good to visit becomes overrun, like gentrification in the cities’ ‘Yes, and trip advisor is making it worse’ ‘It’s accelerating.’
    Unlike the stars which retain their distance, and are governed by unchangeable laws, we are constantly changing our path, following the feedback loop left by guides and other tourists to improve our experience, and rewriting our story to make it better. We tend to think of our selves as the epicenter of our universe with the lives of others appearing as a constellation around our own.
    For many of us, changes to this constellation are an inherent feature of modern life. Long gone are the days when we lived in a persistent community living out the same rituals and habits year after year, under the same stars.  Instead we tend to anchor our lives in love - the aspiration to form a binary star with another person whose mutual orbit with one’s self will become the stable centre of a family. This will in turn become the basis of future generations.    
    Thus, through love, we become a little bit more than nothing; we become a little bit closer to the permanence of the stars.

It’s important that future generations keep an eye on the stars - that the word does not just degenerate to associations with celebrities and ratings. Though we no longer navigate by the stars, they help us gain perspective on our little place in the universe.

Escaping the Cemetery

The grave's a fine and private place

But none I think do there embrace.

                                                    -Marvell

Recoleta cemetery is a captivating yet strange place. This is partly why it's one of Buenos Aires's major sites. As a tour guide said earlier today, the cemetery encapsulates a certain aspect of the city - its mixture of elegance and shabbiness, arrogance and humility; its death-defying extravagence and vulgar populism; at times, its shifty psychology.

Not that it's the only cemetary with highly crafted mausoleums, but it seems to represent a particular irony. The irony is the uncanny gap between the grave's intention (to commemorate a person) and its effect. Like most tourists, I forget almost all the names within seconds of having seen each tomb; what lasts is an aesthetic impression that tells little about a person, or suggests a very different impression than was intended. The generals' tombs seemed particularly overblown and suggestive of an overly egotistical character, not of the careful judgement that characterises an effective general.

And these are not the only ghostly figures haunting the city. For example, there are still a number of monuments to Peron and Evita - two theatrical figures who used the political stage to enchant the masses and suppress dissent. To some extent, Evita brought 'social justice' to enhance her own ego - with some very positive effects (women's liberation; nurses; more universal education) and some very negative consequences. Any good student of the twentieth century should understand that the term 'social justice' has often been manipulated to enforce aggressive top-down control over society in the name of the people. The uncritical stance towards Evita suggests something very worrying and oppressive about the way the name of Peron is still used to manipulate and distract voters from deeper problems.

For me, another set of ghosts hover over the city. In 1905/6 my great-grandparents fled the pogroms and SDP movement in Russia and joined the Jewish Colony in Argentina, where my great-grandfather became a law lecturer. My grandfather was born on the road to Buenos Aires (he tells the story of 'how the crocodiles attended his birth' vividly in a book he wrote on his early life). Within a few years, my family would leave for Israel. But I can't help but think it was a propitious time to see Argentina - near the peak of its glory years, when its growth rivalled the US. Over a century later, that dream has faded into the nightmare of prolonged economic instability. My family at that time saw Argentina at close to its greatest success.

Then there is the ghostliness of being a tourist. I've felt this most acutely in the past few days due to having far fewer companions than in Turkey, Japan or New Zealand. While many people have about as much English as I have Spanish (very basic), it's rare to find a fluent speaker or someone more comfortable in English than Spanish. Consequently I´ve felt more lonely in a place which thrives on company (hence the poem quotation above; another profound line that I think of is W.S. Graham: "this is always a record of me in you." 

'Record' suggesting not a direct communication, but a copy of a past inscription by me to you. The line comes from a lonely, remote place.)

After all, border control make it a condition of entering a country that your stay is temporary. Your existence as a tourist is supplementary to the ordinary inhabitants of that place. You are an observer who can take part to a limited extent but no more than is allowed by the length of your visa or your ability to adapt to the native approach to life. There is the pleasure of imagining the possibility of living in that country without the burden of having to adjust to that particular society's demands. It's very fun and I deeply appreciate the privilege of the experience. But in all the pleasure I also confront the fact that most of my activities have been done by thousands of tourists before me. I record in me my own version of other people's experiences. I can then relate that to someone else, such as you the reader. In a very different way to Graham, it is a record of me in you.

Buenos Aires is a strange place. For example, Palermo Viejo is a very funky area full of cafes, restaurants and bars, music and literature, drink and laughter. But in its clean, vibrant fun, it seems somehow hermetically sealed from the more down-at-heel side of Buenos Aires, the city of 13 million where many struggle to make a living. Like most tourists my main concern is profiting from the fun.

I find another line of poetry ringing:

I have learned not to look down

So much upon the damned.

Evita and Peron let in Adolf Eichmann, a man whose role in the intellectual life of the twentieth century encapsulates some of the deep paradoxes at the heart of Argentina. They let us Jews in too. Everybody´s welcome as long as they bring the dollar* and leave when we tell them to. No terrorists please.







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*Dollars are one of the shiftiest aspects of Argentina. The official rate is 9.09 pesos to the dollar; the blue dollar rate is 15 pesos to the dollar. Everyone recognises that the official rate is a convenient fudge that prevents economic chaos but it really makes one think about what money is and what makes it worth x rather than y. Just like many things in Buenos Aires, the value of the peso is not what it seems. Our guide today said: don't trust Argentinians, including me.

Benjamin Bear and Emily Rabbit in Time Travels

An Homage to Philippe Coudray

            Once upon a time there was a bear and a rabbit. They lived in transatlantic Lon Ny land. Bear loved poetry and rabbit loved children’s books.

One day, bear and rabbit visited the Poetry Library in Lon, and rabbit was reading a children’s book journal when she stumbled upon the magical comic-book world of Philippe Coudray. Suddenly she realised that bear was Benjamin Bear of whom Coudray had written so much. Benjamin Bear (BB) is a paradoxical thinker who could find ingenious solutions to fuzzy problems; but sometimes he got a bit confused by reality. Not long after, bear named her Emily Rabbit (ER) after BB’s friend in the books.

Not long ago, Benjamin Bear and Emily Rabbit went to the Antiquarian Book Fair in the ny part of lon ny. There they feasted their eyes on fabulous books from the distant past.

The Botanica stall showed beautiful pictures of Californian nature from the 20s and 30s, reminding Emily Rabbit of mum and home. A map stall displayed a colorful 1650s pic of the Americas (wow – all the major American cities like Cartagena and Cuzco), the first geological map ever (of Southern England) and a unique metal pocket globe. Bear and rabbit adored the Dickens-enalia. Bear got interested in a first edition of Finnegans Wake, and the recovery of Greek texts after the fall of Byzantium by Venetian Italians. And Emily Rabbit found a few children’s book stores, even discovering Alison Uttley’s The Adventure of Hare.

When the fair was over, Benjamin Bear and Emily Rabbit got on the down-world train so they could escape intensity city (once known as mannahatta, its verticality and fast pace is anathema to rabbit) and find some of Benjamin Bear’s goodies in alternative city (once known as breukelen after the dutch).

Emily Rabbit said:

-Bear, I’m tired.

To which Benjamin Bear responded:

-I know, Rabbit. I wish we had Brigitte here so she could put us in a comic book called Benjamin Bear and Emily Rabbit in Time Travels. Then you’d take me to the Victorian period and we’d meet Dickens, and I’d show you their Gothic interests, and use that as a portal to take you to the Medieval period.

-Oh bear, that would be so good; but the weekend just isn’t long enough to go on such adventures. I wish there were just more time…’

-Rabbit, that’s it! You’re brilliant.

Bear reached into his pocket for the Infinity Device (Infinity! after the infinity of the internet, phone calling, etc) and began plugging away. After some time, Bear showed Emily his idea.

Emily Rabbit was amused. Bear had opened a calendar, but unlike any calendar you ever saw. Every week had eight days. Yes, eight days. That’s forty-five and a half weeks in a year. And three days of weekend.

-See Rabbit! Even though we’re Jewish, we don’t have to follow the abrahamic calendar. Was it the Incans who developed that amazing calendar based on the sun AND the moon?

-No Bear, it was the Maya.

-Oh right – a great Mexican invention! Delicious food too. The Milpa field and all that. Anyway they showed us the way. Since when do we have to adopt the seven-day calendar?

-Oh bear, if only. I think there should be one day for resting, one day for errands and one day for adventuring. But why do you want to change the week? I think it’s a myth that the five-day working week is good. I would do it so much better if I only had a four-day week.

-Emily Rabbit, that would make it hard for me when I become a lawyer. How am I meant to fit a 55 hour week into just 4 days? That’s too hard.

-Bear, I wish there were more hours in the day. You yourself said that the studies have shown we are built for 25 hour days. You can’t argue with that.

-Yes, rabbit. But then I wouldn’t just have to change the laws of this country, but the laws of this solar system!

-OK.

Bear, take me away to the land of the Working Time Directive…

Yes, Rabbit – that’s the only way our time will travel together.

Rivers

Living near a river is a source of great renewing pleasure. Letting your eyes run along the lapping waves, water threading in and out, in and out, is to move your mind from the flux of its own consciousness to the flux of more eternal matters.

(To any of my tutees reading this, I recommend wandering down to the Thames every so often to calm the mind between revision sessions.)

Rivers have inspired innumerable passages of fine writing and even fine cinema. I could probably write a small book on rivers; but don’t worry I won’t bore you with my essay on how Renaissance river poetry documents the gradual transfer of power from court to the country’s active citizens. Instead I’ll concentrate on just two small works by my favourite living English poet Alice Oswald.

Dart (2004) is one of the most democratic English poems to have appeared in recent years. Oswald recorded conversations with people all along the river Dart. She then crafted a voice for the river which interacts with and channels phrases and statements from the recordings.

The book is a delight of mobile form and living scene. Rather than adopting a repeat form, she makes each segment’s form responsive to its content – quatrain; short-line; prose-poem; etcetera. The scenes dart from near its source – meet mythic boogeyman Jan Coo! – to bathers diving on their Sunday off – to the sewage-men and hardened crabbers at the estuary.

Her other book on a river is A Sleepwalk on the Severn. Whereas Dart is about the river in daytime, A Sleepwalk is subject to the moon. It’s a short work but captures an ethereal perspective on English life – starting with a dispute between an amateur birdwatcher and fisherman, and moving onto images such a  crowd rushing to see a moon so powerful that it shifts large tides on the river (“like the interstellar cold come suddenly into the world”).   It’s riveting, and surprising on a reread.

When I came to see her after a reading of Memorial, I asked Alice what she was working on next. She said: “A dictionary that undefines words.” Her answer was characteristically unexpected. It takes a very sceptical mind to undermine the very grounding of language in this way, in a manner as contrary to a lawyer’s work as can be. But on further thought her proposed dictionary is much like the river, removing the ground material that we take for granted and moving it in an unexpected direction.

The World of Nature in Man

I have never met a person who is displeased by green spaces. As a species, we take great pleasure in making gardens and parks. An extreme example is Los Angeles, a city hundreds of miles from a major clean source of water. To make the city, water was stolen from the Colorado river and transported all the way to the coast. Yet gardens abound in millions of backyards.

            Ethically, too, mankind has long recognised the care we must take of nature, and the care we feel from nature. In the monotheistic religions, the story of Jonah and the tree is instructive. Jonah, abject and abandoned on the shore, is left to suffer fierce heat. This lasts. Then God makes a tree grow near to him. Jonah feels the shade of the tree and develops a keen love for the tree and its protection. The tree dies; and Jonah complains to God for his cruelty in killing the lovely tree. Thus nature is a pivotal sustaining force in man’s life, ever present as a source of self-renewal during hardship. All that we eat and breathe ultimately comes from organic sources.

            Yet as my cousin Ewan adroitly observed, “If outside was so good, why do we make indoors?” If nature were purely a source of pleasure, man-made structures would be a bane on our existence. Of equal importance to our continued wellbeing is security. We need to be secure from the ravages of nature – extremes of heat and cold (right now, feet of snow fall outside the NYC window); disease, human and agricultural; natural disaster; and our own waste. Each culture sustains its own vision of the relation between nature and security.

            In many parts of the world, security is winning out. In China, millions have moved from centuries-old rural serfdom, suffering the most appalling deprivations, to the city. In the past 25 years, worldwide poverty has reduced by half – a substantial portion of which was in China. At the same time, more concrete has been produced in China in the last 3 years than in the USA in the 20th century. As a consequence the pollution in major Chinese cities is legendary. A more destructive impact on nature cannot be imagined – and yet at such benefit to humanity. Of similar significance is the Electrify Africa Act 2014 – the very title promises such a massive improvement in the conditions of a billion human beings.

            Discussion in the energy industry centres around resolving the energy trilemma – how to achieve sustainability, security and affordability. For example, I suspect that most eco-warriors little consider that, by prioritizing sustainability and blocking energy projects, they deprive millions of energy affordability and reduce energy security (of course the energy companies are to blame, in their view). Of those who do consider this, they may argue that the current pleasure of millions is nothing to the preservation of nature for billions in future generations. I have much sympathy with this argument, though do not find it fully convincing.

As a geographer friend at Oxford pointed out, by making more energy and providing opportunities to more of humanity, we increase the chance of developing a technology that will solve the energy trilemma. In particular, where energy is scarce, human ingenuity comes up with new ways of providing it – given sufficient support. See this video - http://www.ted.com/talks/william_kamkwamba_on_building_a_windmill?language=en. Moreover, if we are to solve the problems of man-made climate change, we need the reasoned consent of all world citizens, not just of the privileged few. This needs energy investment now.

            On the other hand, many uses of energy are just plain stupid. In the height of summer in Houston, air-conditioning is so strong that you have to wear an extra layer or two. This is a ridiculous waste. You could hardly put nature at a greater distance than making wintery conditions in summer.

The ethics of using energy in other instances is more complex. Consider Wang Jianling who began his career installing toilets in Chinese apartments – a major benefit to the health of the Chinese. He thus extracted our own undesirable natures from our dwelling places. Now he is a multi-billionaire who profits from building dozens of Dalian Wanda plazas and shopping malls. Having gone through the unpleasant business of relieving human necessities, he now seeks ever more diverse ways to supply consumer wants. This consumes a vast quantity of earthly resources. But who am I to deny to the Chinese what I have benefitted from my entire life?

My attention to the Chinese has a point. The Chinese vision of nature is very different from our own and it will play at least as decisive a role in the future of our planet as the USA, and certainly more than the UK. Many (if not all) societies are having an internal discussion, often a mixture of rationality and feeling, about what world of nature we would like to see in the Anthropocene age. And undoubtedly the world of nature in each of us will play a role in the world of nature we see outside us.

I have to admit to not knowing any truly native Chinese people. My closest encounter to a proper discussion was with my room-neighbours in my first year at St Catherine’s, Oxford (‘Catz’). On both sides I had Chinese neighbours. They were third years and not very interested in talking with non-Chinese, in integrating. I felt it jarred with the communal spirit of Catz. St Catherine’s itself is beautifully integrated with nature. The floor-to-ceiling windows look out on lawns, moats, fields and trees where swans, moorhens and ducks take their leisure. The back leads out to Mesopotamia, a splendid natural area.

But my brief discussion with them about what was weird about Oxford revealed a very different perspective. They had grown up in southern China surrounded by millions of human beings. The emptiness of Oxford was to them extremely unnatural. Their vision of nature was shaped by the norm that being immersed in innumerable other human beings is natural. Of course the Chinese revere nature as much as any other society; but their perspective on how we are as beings in nature is very different from our individualistic, Wordsworth-like sense of the self alone in the universe.

Given our current stupid uses of energy, I have little doubt that each society needs to cultivate a more favorable attitude towards the environment. Some progress is underway. But a key element to progressing in this direction is to generate better visions of nature in man and man in nature. We need better rationality in discussing the tradeoffs of the energy trilemma. We need artists and writers, marketers and advertisers, in every medium to create myths that will persuade us emotionally as well as rationally of the sustenance that comes from the world outside our homes.