johandp
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A deeper silence
One of the most striking differences for me between my home in South Africa and Amsterdam is something I find hard to describe. It has something to do with sound or at least an impression of sound. It feels to me that Amsterdam is (almost) always silent. But this silence seems to not only be in the sounds of the city – even when I am next to a road and I hear the cars drive by, still it feels quiet. In the Centrum, in the midst of the bustle of tourists, it is not quiet, but mostly everywhere else, this quiet is like a thick fog, dulling all the other sounds.
Perhaps there are sounds from home that I am used that are just not present here – I lived near a dam with geese and ducks, so perhaps an absence of bird sounds. Somehow it strikes me as something deeper though – something in the nature of this city, the nature of Dutchness, that is more aloof and, yes, even more cold (and I’m not referring to temperature) than home. But also peaceful and calm, despite of cars and traffic and people.
I think there are few cities as quiet as Amsterdam. And Amsterdam on a Sunday morning (when almost no one is awake or about), when I bike to church, is as quiet as an undisturbed meadow or a forest. The sounds of people seem more like the sounds of birds and deer or other wildlife.
Not long after arriving in Amsterdam, I remember thinking about this quiet, trying to draw inspiration from it and I could only find the following lines:
In this quiet city music lights the darkness and i feel a little less lonely
If you want to read about my other impressions of Amsterdam, see the posts The church in the redlight district and Being a mathematician in Amsterdam. My thanks to all those who have liked, reblogged or commented on previous posts. As always, any comments on this post are welcome.
Firelife
Fire appears to be a symbol intimately coupled with both life and death. Life is a kind of fire, burning hot for a time and then dissipating. By life, I do not mean just individual life, but all life. Physically (simplistically) of course, we are just vessels for burning oxygen and harnessing the energy so obtained. Humans are just tiny embers of the grand fiery life that is Earth, fuelled by the sun, which will one day die. Have you ever thought of God as a fire? Not just in wrath, but in the same way that life is fire, but (hopefully) eternal. Out of this fire comes our own fire, both spiritual (think holy spirit) and physical. I think these are the kinds of disparate thoughts that went through my head as I wrote the following poem quite a few years ago:
The Fire The Fire burns and rages with warmth and soft scorching heat from an eternal omnipotence brought forth in life, and death and life in death prosperity, despair love and punishment The blistering glow releases tiny embers like little fire-balloons that fall to the Earth and imitate a million times tinier the power, and glory of their Father and quickly die leaving little grey bodies that are stamped into the ground
The lonely boy
I remember that once, in primary school, I went out for break and immediately just sat down outside the classroom with my lunchbox. Some minutes later the teacher saw me and asked what I was doing. The break was in fact only after the next period and my entire class was in another classroom. I am not trying to illustrate how bad I am with time and schedules (I have mostly learned to handle such things). Rather, this shows just how isolated I was from other children. I did not even notice there were no other children about – I would not have been where they were in any case.
I have learnt to interact with other people. I am no longer as cut off from them as I was when I was young. However, I sometimes feel like it is all just pretend. As if inside, I am still that little boy and that (almost) no one has managed to reach him – because he is out of reach. That little boy is sometimes lonely, I admit that, and I should try to let him out more of the time. But often he is also merely alone, content with his own being.
Here is a poem that expresses the contrast:
I speak, but the little boy is silent
I smile at you, but the little boy smiles at his own thoughts
I laugh at your jokes, but the little boy laughs at the book in his hand
I enjoy your company, but the little boy is impatient to be alone
I make myself known, but the little boy hides away
I bellow with confidence, but the little boy stutters
I hide my tears, but the little boy wails unheard
I talk to you, but the little boy wishes you would talk to him
Post-stress lethargy
Posted in thoughts on 17/11/2012
I would like to share a state of being that I sometimes experience and which I think may affect many people like me (but admittedly there are not many people like me). I find my life is often divided into two phases.
- Phase 1: very busy, too much to do, very little time for recreation or projects.
- Phase 2: all the time in the world for whatever I want.
Since I am a student these roughly coincide with term and holiday periods respectively. I want to share why phase 2 is sometimes agonising.
Phase 1 is ok. There is a lot of stress, but I never really have to worry about whether I am being productive or whether my life is going in the right direction. I’m just too busy. My horizon only stretches so far as my next hand-in or my next test. This is so until there is no next deadline – when, bam, phase 2 hits me like a wall of cold water. What should I do now?
It’s not that I can’t think of anything to do. I am ambitious enough that there about a trillion things that I would like to do – writing books and stories and reading all kinds of interesting things and posting on my blog and generally being productive.
But then I am faced with the immediate choice:
(a) do something productive (write a story, read Dickens, work on my novel, go learn some interesting maths), or
(b) relax (watch series or something, read something brainless like Harry Potter, or worst of all, watch anime).
The problem is (a) involves some effort and (b) involves pressing play. And by now, I’m drained from phase 1, so I choose (b). Once you’ve chosen (b) once, it is very easy to choose (b) again and so you can easily find yourself spending hours, days or weeks doing nothing. I have decided to call this state of being “post-stress lethargy.” It is annoying.
How I imagine I will spend my free time
How I actually spend my free time (except that I do not eat chips, and there is usually no couch)
The problem is that choosing (b) comes with the following cost: guilt. I always feel like I should be enriching my life in some meaningful way or doing something to achieve my goal of doing something worth remembering. Any prolonged period of not doing so tends to keep me up at night. The more I do nothing of value, the more I feel I should be doing something of value. But the tension this creates makes it harder to do anything of value and so I end up still choosing (b).
I’ve managed to overcome this to some extent over the years by relishing the times I do manage to conceive of doing something useful and acting on the impulse. Forcing things does not always work. But perhaps it is this repetitive Phase I, Phase 2 cycle that needs to be broken (this may or may not happen when I enter the working world). I wonder if other people experience this. If you do (or if you don’t) leave a comment.
(Disclaimer: the pictures are not mine. I found them here and here.)
An angry poem
Posted in poetry on 15/11/2012
For months now South Africa has experience labour unrest as it has not seen since the days of apartheid. Much property has been damaged, our economy has been weakened, our international image marred, and far too many people have died. I fear the inequality and the urgent need to magically fix every wrong perceived to be caused by apartheid will completely tear my country apart. Something broke as I read another article on this today, and so I had to write something about it. Here is a poem. I hope in future there will be a time for the opposite sentiments to be expressed.
The struggle is not dead, not in Rustenburg and not in Ceres the fires still burn how will they forget the past? piece by piece as they tear the future apart the fruits of comradeship are pangas, struggle songs, dead boers and Lonmin massacres dig your treasure out of the ground and out of stone white hearts smash the ore to pieces smelt it in the furnace of your hate and sing Lord, bless Africa our land with the blazing blue sky
Pro-life? Have you been asking the right question?
Posted in thoughts on 12/11/2012
I think that often, in the pro-choice vs pro-life debate people ask the wrong question. The question we should ask is not “Is abortion right or wrong?” The answer to this question is of course of great personal relevance and it is a very important question, but like the question of whether there is a God, I believe it is one that must be left to individuals to answer for themselves.
Whether abortion is right or wrong is a hard question and it ultimately involves drawing an indistinct and necessarily arbitrary line between what is considered sacred human life and what is not. The Catholic church, banning contraception, draws the line at one extreme. There are even people who advocate killing babies that have already been born can be justified (see here), who take the other extreme. The point is that the answer to this question depends on your personal ethical, moral, and religious convictions and that there is good, well-reasoned (even if not unassailable) justification for many viewpoints.
So instead of asking a hard question, let us ask an easier one: “Should the government be allowed to decide whether abortion is right or wrong?” If you accept that the government should be secular, that is that it should not support any one religious view over others, then you might agree with me that the answer is no. Both secularists (often pro-choice) and Catholics (notably pro-life) should be able to live in accordance with their views.
Because the question is so hard and because each individual abortion case is different, legislation is going to be a blunt and unwieldy tool. If you forbid abortion entirely, you also forbid abortion where it would save the mother’s life. As soon as you start making exceptions, you create grey areas, uncertainty. You cannot possibly account for the myriad of circumstances which people may face. There will be unintended consequences such as illegal abortion clinics (yes, this is in fact inevitable) where safety standards cannot be enforced. And you deny people the right to make a very important and difficult choice.
Like free market economists, I believe better outcomes can be attained by giving people as much freedom as possible, only intervening when the market or, in this case social norms and structures, clearly fail. This is why making murder illegal is necessary. The consequences of not doing so may be total anarchy, an inability for society to function because no one feels safe. This is not the case with abortion. Nor is it the case with assisted suicide, to which I think the same principles should be applied. The ones best placed to make the decision are the ones closest to it: they are emotionally invested, they have the most information and their futures depend on it.
Some mathsy poetry
Posted in poetry on 10/11/2012
During a small group meeting not very long ago, I found myself having to be creative on the spot. I came up with a little poem riddled with maths references (and some other things – there is a religious element too). I would be interested in seeing how many of the references people get, so please post some comments.
coffee cups and donuts somewhere, not too far to reach orbits a teapot the Pope cannot see it monsters fly around it telescopes search for it and planets with four stars bear gifts of coffee cups and donuts; spheres knot and cannot be untied, the Primes march in a line the universe is but Your shadow
Arguments
I think most children experience times when they must listen to their parents argue. I think children experience a special sort of helplessness at such times. Without emotional maturity they have no reason or mental abilities with which to dull the pain – they must feel it completely. Perhaps this does not entirely go away as one ages. Perhaps people are always little children, not only in the eyes of their parents, but in the presence of their parents. Here is a little poem that I hope gives some expression to the feelings of a child listening to his parents argue.
listen to the rain and the closed door don’t listen to them argue turn the music up not just in the room but in your mind where the argument continues long after the sound stops don’t feel powerless, child don’t listen to the words that you can’t drown out because they’re not in your ears don’t think about right and wrong and peace and making up think about clouds and stars and space don’t think you’re too old now to cry don’t think because thinking hurts don’t listen pull up the sheets over your head pretend to be warm pretend to be hugged don’t cry don’t be torn apart because they are
Unrequited thoughts
Posted in thoughts on 03/08/2012
I often wonder what people think of me. I really want to know how they see me. I probably never will, though. Still I wonder, if I peer into their minds, what will I find? It struck me recently (as it has struck me before) that I probably won’t find too many thoughts about me. I am the centre of my existence, so it is only natural that I should be thinking of myself all the time (I like to say I live for God, that I put Him first, but I must admit even my views of God are centred around me. I can’t really help it. I don’t think anyone can).
Extrapolate: other people think of themselves all the time. Unless you made some huge impression, or unless you’re constantly popping up (and if they don’t unsubscribe from your facebook posts) they won’t be thinking of you all that much.
Here is a hierarchy of how much I reckon people think about me
- Me (all the time)
- My parents (very close to all the time)
- My siblings (often, I hope)
- My friends (sometimes)
- My acquaintances (quite little)
- People I have met (very little)
- People who have heard of me (almost never)
- People I have never met and have never heard of me (never ever)
It’s obvious, but to my self-centred mind, admitting that category eight is not just the largest category, but is about as big as the universe is compared to Earth, isn’t fun.
I recently struck up an old acquaintance. (I am pretty good at losing touch with people – something I need to remedy. This seemed like a good place to start.) Our coffee meeting went well. But it was superfluous. My acquaintance had not given me much thought (if any) in the time since we last saw each other, and has probably not thought of me very much since, except to wonder why I would show up after such a long time, and even then, probably only very briefly.
People who are infatuated (I shall not say in love, because love requires two people) often experience my little existential revelation (at least they do on television). The guy can’t stop thinking about the girl, but at some point he realises (or chooses to stop ignoring) that she does not even know his name, that she does not have any opinion on him, really, because she has had not even thought about him.
Now I wonder (and this is a stretch for my mind) if there are any people that have experienced this, but where I was the one not giving a thought, where I was not paying attention. Because I experienced the opposite side of this particular one-sided interaction, I have to admit that probably it has happened. So if you are one of those people whom I did not think of, know that I am not really thinking of you now either, nor do I apologise. So if you want my thoughts, come, make me notice you, and make sure you’re interesting.
Meditations of Lambchop 