Reflections on life, good-and-evil, family, humanity, and anything else that occurs to me, usually when I travel. Right now I am on a 6-year trip through Lebanon, the homeland I had never really lived in before.
posted by Walid @ 4:46 PM
0 comments
It's the end of my first day in Lebanon. Amber street lights dominate the constellation on the mountain slope across from the valley outside the balcony. In fact, I can probably see electric lights form at least three mountain ranges, one behind the other, Twinkling traces of finally electrified civilization. Pinpoints of light on a mountain slope always remind me of home, and here I am at home.
We had had a nice cozy family lunch for 22 and I ate so
[So I start a diary ...]
I imagine the mind as an imperial court in ancient Rome, with a palace full of potential intriguers, some of whom have the emperor's ear, and some of whom are in the dungeons. Each person in that court has an ambition. Each tries to elicit any actions by the emperor which bring them closer to achieving that ambition. Sometimes, this is done by convincing the emperor. Sometimes, it is done by waiting for chance actions that unbeknownst to the emperor do advance that aim of the court denizen. But very often, it is done by presenting a new aim from the mouth of someone in favor, which has the effect of inducing imperial action that clandestinely furthers the aim of the imprisoned ex-wife or detained general or out-of-favor courtesan who encouraged that putative aim. The goal of any sufficiently aware human being should be to inform the emperor of their conscious thought about all the aims of all the court, visible and invisible, so as to see which actions will lead to furthering the goals of the undesirables, and which will not; which desirable companions turn out to be no more that mouthpieces for the out-of-favor and which have their own legitimate and worthwhile aims.
I must have fallen over two dozen times in that exact same way, but only two left bruises. Those were both after partial competence had made me faster and fatigue had partially dissociated my leg muscles from my more confident brain.
This morning, I woke up hungry and had my fill of the myriad treats lying around the house. Turkey sandwich in the oven, chocolate cake in the dining room, tangerines on the kitchen console, dried peaches on the counter and pies on the kitchen table. A piece of Godiva chocolate from the bookshelf in the library. I need energy for the skiing trip later today, but it is looking as if the trip will be sacrificed to premature forecasts of the day's weather based on the heavy pre-dawn rain we got. Walking around the sleepy house munching, I remembered the scene half a day ago in the entrance hallway. A light bulb had burned out and the sun was going down. The fold-out ladder we had was only 8 feet high and the bulb was suspended from the two-storey ceiling.
We went up to the slopes and found that the rain down here was drizzle up there. Only the "baby" ski lift was operating, so we turned back, making do for the day with a nice drive and a "man'ouchee" (thyme & sesame thingy) baked on a "saj" (a dome-shaped hot plate) by a woman who according to my sister always wears a short-sleeved shirt even in the bitterest snowstorm. Winding narrow roads with half-assed new asphalt jobs offer views of miraculous limestone formations too often encroached upon by some ugly cinderblock building. Less often, it is a rather eye-catching stone and red terracotta cottage or chalet or a modern-day 5-storey equivalent thereof. Getting back down to the 700 meter altitude of home brought us in to a dense rainy fog bank which still shows from the window as I write this. Had a little tiff with mom over my polypropylene underwear: I wanted to wash it in cold water and mild detergent to avoid losing it to the customary boiling-water laundry practices of our live-in maid, but mom insisted that washing anything in her house was none of my business. I moped around the kitchen until I saw the pants soaking in a tub of cold water, then came up here to finish the account of the day. The fog is so thick that the
balcony railing right behind my computer screen is the furthest I can see: it might as well be the balcony at the edge of the earth.
Also today was the first day of Ramadan, prompting last-minute cancellations from half the people who were supposed to come to the afternoon party May had organized at our house. The remaining 12 of us mingled and sampled mom's supposedly last-minute snacks until we could not hold any more.
After all that, it was 2am when the phone lines were finally clear enough for the email to be received. The things we do for love....
31 Dec 97
Snowboarding was the order of the day. It was finally clear after days of rain, and I spent the day on the "school" slope working on my left turns and right turns and accidental somersaults. The sun quickly burned through the early-morning fog and my sisters and their friend, all of whom had skis on, went all the way up to the top and could see Beirut 60 miles away. I stuck to the training slope and drilled myself in simple turns. Every other skier up there had a cellular phone in a pocket somewhere; even among the four of us there were two. Did I ever tell you how ostentatious the Lebanese can be? In this case, the total inadequacy of ground phone lines following 20 years of wartime neglect combined with the unusually low rates negotiated by the government with the providers to reinforce the natural Lebanese yen for the latest little gadget. In effect, the cell-phone is our new national symbol. "You'll never guess where I am" was probably the most frequently transmitted greeting over the cell phone lines from that ski slope that day!
I napped in the afternoon and had some interesting discussions around the New Year's Eve dining table. Among them, I got a good lecture on how to stop putting my foot in my mouth, and how to avoid picking the "wrong" woman...
1 Jan 98
Skiing today. I used my brother's skis, and got to go all the way up. The fog persisted this time, and skiing from the high slope was a wispy dreamy all-white experience which dizzies some and confuses others. It was only in the afternoon that we got some sun. The snow had the beauty of the desert (think "The English Patient") and the brilliance of the Alps. One of our companions that day was from Switzerland and she could not stop enthusing about the beauty of the gently rolling mounds and the wave-like ripples in it and the contrast of slope between the windward and leeward sides of the snow dunes. We surmised that the wind we get here must have the same speed and distribution as what blows over the Sahara - probably comes from the same place.
In the evening we eat out in honor of May's departure tomorrow.
2 Jan 98
A cool air mass dominates Lebanon's airspace today.
That's meteorologese for "I can see for miles and miles and miles!" I made the 20-mile drive down to Beirut three times, and every trip was a pleasant series of clear postcard-perfect landscape views. The sea was three or four darker shades of blue with green tinges, the sky was a uniform pastel, and the distant mountains were various shades of pearl-grey. Coming down to the coast, at one turn, one could see two or three coves much like Big Sur, only here every one was a major city. In Beirut, I'm taken by the novelty of the brand-new underground tunnels that get you into and out of the same areas that I had spent hundreds of hours trying to penetrate when I used to commute here in 95. Not too different from any tunnels you already know, they shine only be contrast to the dilapidated alleys that you need to take to get to the mouth of the tunnel.
Anyway, I get all my chores done, shop for presents on the way back from the third trip (when the traffic finally became heavy enough to remind me of where I was.) Exhausted by all the car-time I can hardly stay awake past 9 pm.
3 Jan 98
: having had my full 9 hours of sleep for the first time all week, I'm up at 6:30 watching the sun rise behind the mountain. The distant amber road lights on the opposite mountain are still going on strong on the right side of my windowpane, almost matching the shade of the first glimmers of daylight all the way to the left. The sky in between gently leaks mauve from the hidden sun into a background of baby blue. It's hard to tell if the blue is a cloud or clear sky. As I write these lines, everything shifts, first to a blush pink on the left and a more distinct pattern of blue-grey cirrus clouds separated by the palest of blues. As the still invisible sun gets higher behind our mountain, the pink first suffuses almost a quarter of the sky, then fades back to orange then mauve again, and I realize the skiing will be good today again.
Other pleasant thoughts go through my head too but I'll save them for later.
Enough light has now leaked into my scene to show that there really are white clouds behind the wispy grey ones but they're all too high and too bright to be rainy. As good a time as any to fill in the gaps in my accounts of the past few days.
4 Jan 98
The first thing that catches my eye today is the red splotch to the right of my right eye, a bruise from where the sunglasses made an impact on their way off my face as I was rolling down a hillside yesterday. Yes, we did go skiing again.
I visit the church and say hi to the whole village, and the day passes by with family visits and tidying up around this house which I still have not decided whether to call home.
5 Jan 98
We have fog and drizzle again this morning, so I stay home and read a book. "Betty Blue", ever heard of it or the movie they made out of it? On this first Monday I had resolved to get back to work on my research. I hope [Mora] sees more sunshine today in Santa Rosa that I do here: the dark really does flow into your blood and your soul. I got an email from a guy in the department at Stanford offering to fly anyone anywhere in his 4-seater plane for the price of gas. I guess that, besides being a nice fellow, he must need the flight hours. It crosses my mind that taking plane ride might be really neat....
6 Jan 98
My worries somehow manage to manifest themselves in a weird dream:
I imagine I am charged with drawing a perfect straight line in black ink over a billowing downy blanket. It's impossible. I wake up and make my first New Year's resolution. My general resolution from the 31st was to make myself biweekly goals and try and meet them, and for these two weeks my goal is to grind away at my research.
8 Jan 98
I've done a bit of work on my research while it rained, but yesterday was too good to pass up skiing. Enough had melted that the white mountain face was showing a blond and orange five o'clock shadow of crags and shrubs. Up higher, the duney slopes also exhibit tufts of something akin to the third day of shaving. Beautiful.
In the afternoon, I take a 4-hour drive up the coastal highway and manage to watch the sun sink into the Mediterranean for the first time in over a decade of pollution and life near the congested city. My mind is more troubled than usual over where I'll wind up a year from now. I'm scared. I go to sleep early.
10 Jan 98
I feel like making some major progress on my research, and I do not mean just reading. Time to put this diary to rest and thereby keep it small enough to be readable.
For the first time this trip, I turn down an offer to go skiing with Becca.
This won't be a regular diary anymore, but today is noteworthy because we woke up to over 2 feet of snow right outside out house! We had had three separate snowstorms in the past day, and it was still snowing, albeit slowly, when I woke up this morning.
Without any shovels in the house, we are snowed in until our reduced to squeegee mops can clear a path to the road that may get ploughed if the snow clearing equipment ever makes it here from six towns uphill.
posted by Walid @ 11:15 AM
0 comments
Since we are all former MIT students, we all know that there are more pressing causes of reluctance to write than a feeling of general well-being! But there is a part of me that easily jumps to the conclusion that my letters are unanswered because not welcome ... I trust you will enlighten me, perhaps over the Thanksgiving break, since it's already Columbus day and I am still typing this. Enough of that though.
This morning, Kuwait smelled like a Syrian kitchen; honestly, the smoke that descended to street level for the first time since I've been here did not smell too different from a kitchen where a particularly heavy ethnic meal was being prepared. Later in the day, the stuff acquired an incense-like tinge, perhaps because of someone's perfume. I must escape to Lebanon for a few days of fresh air. Wishing to be back in the USA is too emotionally draining, so I console myself with thinking of wishing. What a concept! But honestly, I'm not really unhappy here on an emotional level, only intellectually dissatisfied. It's hard for me to see any future in this, and I only fear that at one point in the future I will start feeling more happy than "not unhappy", and then my life will be shot for good. But what with all the reading and cooking (we're all males in the house now, Mom's in Lebanon) in my spare time, and the seven-day work week, I keep myself content. The time I have for writing is a happy balance between zero and every day. Phone calls tend to take up most of my income in theory.
But in your case, I don't know, you might have to do something more drastic, like pin up a picture of an old lonely spinster aunt of yours and swear to do ANYTHING to not wind up like that. Either that or recognize that the only pleasure you get out of sex lies in the ne-night-stand, and make THAT your goal. Given the way men's sex drives are constructed, you won't have much trouble.
The puppy dog is not the only part the cares about touching. There is also the love of the monkey. Monkeys have hands and they like use them to give each other hugs and massages, and to pick fleas off each others' backs. The love of the monkey is something that we all need because we all have backs that sometimes need to be massaged, and we are not physically built to be able to put suntan lotion on our own backs. Nor can we cry on our own shoulders or give ourselves comforting hugs - we need someone else, and the love of the (whoever it is) to give us these things. The love of the monkey is what says "I love to scratch you back as long as you scratch mine afterwards". Too much fear of the love of the puppy dog is the only reason why the love of the monkey rarely allowed to flower. The love of the little boy is what keeps the puppy dog in check. The little boy wants to see you happy because that makes him happy. If you are happy and he does not see you or if he sees you and you are not happy, then he is not happy. The little boy wants you and you alone, no matter how old you are or you look. The little boy takes a few months to fall in love and a few months to fall out of love. The love of the little boy is capable of destroying itself, because if the little boy wants to see you happy and your being with him makes you unhappy, then the love will eat itself up. It takes a few months to finish digesting, and then it can go to the bathroom, relieve itself and start looking for someone else.
During the time of little boy love, unless another kind of love comes in, one person is almost certain to get tired of the other, because they are after all two different people and there are bound to be times when one is happy and the other is not, so something else has to be there to cement the relationship during these times.
There are two variants related to the love of the little boy. There is the love of the teenager, which makes me want to be with you no matter whether you are happy or not. The teenager will find his heart beating faster when he is with you or even thinking of you, and he will find his appetite almost gone when you are not with him. There is also the love of the father, who wants you to be happy even when he is not with you. I call it the love of the father because it also applies, I think, to the relationship between parents and children.
While we are on the subject of children, let me tell you about the love of the scientist. The scientist believes that the reason for all these love feelings is in the end the production of children, and he wants his children to be the best and to have the best. He will not trust his other feelings about you until he is certain that you will make a good mother for his children. He will see that attraction of the puppy dog to beautiful women as a healthy way to assure that his children will be beautiful too, but he will also look for qualities that the puppy dog cannot see but which the little boy can, such as intelligence and kindness, which will also affect the children. There are elements that the scientist might consider which do not concern the little boy either, such as your family, background and formal education. The love of the scientist without the love of the little boy is the stuff out of which comedies are made, but the love of the little boy without some amount of the love of the scientist is the stuff out of which tragedies are made.
Then, there is the love of the philosopher. The philosopher knows that children are important for the continuation of society, but he is not so sure that the continuation of society is in itself a good thing. The exploration of Truth is the only good thing to the philosopher, and the continuation of society is only good if the society has as one of its goals the exploration of Truth. The philosopher wants someone who can be a partner in his search for better understanding of the Truth : of why things are the way they are, how they can be changed for the better, and what it means to be "better" or "worse", and what "good" and "bad" really are in the first place. The philosopher wants not only intelligence, but an open mind and a deep understanding of things and most of all the willpower to follow up on your beliefs, to do what you believe is right no matter how difficult it seems. He wants his children to grow up in an atmosphere where they too can learn to contribute to the search of the Truth, and not only to grow up to feed and clothe themselves and have more children to continue the society without aim. The love of the philosopher can only grow with time, because the more you explore the different corners of Reality with someone who is reasonably intelligent and keeps an open mind, the more you will want to explore the other corners of infinite reality with that person, and the more you will learn to respect that person's views even (or rather especially) when they differ from yours.
The love of the philosopher can serve to cement the love of the little boy forever, allowing the love of the puppy dog to surface without fear, because fear is just another (especially dark) corner of the reality that we will explore. It can also serve to ease the pain of the destruction of little boy love, whether that be due to an over-eager little scientist or to whatever other reason.
These are all different types of love that can exist between a man and a woman. They are all good and natural feelings if they are applied in the correct manner and in the right combination, and I personally do not feel afraid of any of them. There is, however, one kind of love that I am afraid of. The love of the hunter. The hunter loves his prey, and he will do anything, including the use of the other kinds of love, to catch his prey. But when he has caught it, then he will have achieved his goal, and he will abandon all the other kinds of love. This kind of destructive love probably only exists to help us catch animals to eat and clothe ourselves, but it becomes a dangerous weapon when it is applied by men against women and vice versa. I am afraid of the hunter in me, more than I am afraid of a huntress who will want to catch me and throw me away, but that is only because I have seen the hunter in me but not the huntress outside. If I saw her, I might be too caught up to be afraid until it is too late. I hope this never happens, though. So. . . .
The letter has ended, but you are probably expecting a conclusion too, so here it is. Writing these words has been a pleasurable experience for me. I have put in words the thoughts of many long hours spent thinking about Reality, Right and Wrong, You and Me, and what I can really believe. I am sure I left many gaps in my hurry to finish so that you can read it when I promised you could read it. I would love to write a lot more about anything in this letter that you ask me to explain in more detail. sleep well.
Let's see: a weighing function of one everywhere is socialism of ideas: it does not matter what you think as long as you believe. A weighing function of one at a single point is dictatorship. Perhaps a function equivalent to the inverse of the distance from a defined point is equivalent to mysticism: you can approach that point with your knowledge until you are one with Truth, Beauty and God. A function that is a binary filter, where some arbitrary set of points is one and all else zero is a step, as yet undefined in scope, towards a sense of paradox; dialectic might be a good word for it if only I was sure what "dialectic" really meant and whether anyone really knows. Then there is the hope that there is a subspace of indeterminate topology which is defined by reality and which yields a weighing function defined by distance from the nearest of the points in the subspace. That is Kuhn's scientific method: each field will approach and eventually achieve its own truest possible state, but there are any number of fields each with its own true paradigm. Perhaps the sense of mystery I wish to convey is illustrated by a slight variation on the above: a subspace defined by reality which is infinite in one or more dimensions, and which thus has no defined center of mass, which is also topologically convoluted such that the center of mass may or may not lie on it, and which of course defines a weighing function by some combination of distance from this center of mass and a constant which is added when you are in that subspace.
Perhaps with that kind of meta-model, I can justify some degree of ignorance and laziness, even of deceit and cruelty, when it is inevitable to the combination of two or more greater goods. Does this theory provide any protection against unnecessary evil? My mind reels at the concepts involved, but I still do not have the answer. I do not yet know if I have approached a solution to how to define what a solution means, or whether I have added another "Great Turtle" theories of what the earth is carried on. Or the "Great Green Arkleseizure" for that matter (you have read the "Hitch-hikers' Guide to the Galaxy", right?
Please take the time necessary to give me a frank, straight answer. Since this is neither a commitment nor a promise (yet), but just a cross check of shopping lists, so to speak, there is no need for excuses, justifications, or discussions of logistics. They can come later.
That was last time. Now I am struggling with the issue of communication (again). What is the way to be most honest given that different people attach different meanings to the same words or patterns? Remember that honesty is metaphysically desirable because deliberate misrepresentation of reality makes it harder for all of us to cope with it, hence we should not do it whimsically or for selfish gain. However, (as I am learning from being in the contracting business much more readily than as a student worried about his social life) it is essential to be as aware as you can be of the likely interpretations of anything which you might say; doubly so in case you are to reflecting a simple honest truth. To pick an example from the social world first, supposing I meet a very attractive member of the opposite sex. In some circumstances, simply stating that this person is attractive may be interpreted as meaning that I have a romantic interest. In other circumstances, not praising the appearance of someone who is not necessarily attractive to me might be interpreted as an insult! Many a time did I fall into such traps in my constant zeal to champion the truth as a child. Today, if I state something obvious such as "of course I did not personally inspect every square inch of the concrete for possible defects" or "of course I know that there is ten centimeters of steel rebar less than the drawings specify - it would have been structurally superfluous anyway", I know it would be interpreted as either "I am too lazy to turn out a decent product" or "I believe I know better than you do, hence my open contempt". Instead, I say "Everything is fine" meaning that in my best educated estimation and in compliance with my ethical prerogatives, I believe I am turning out a decent product. This is not quite the same lie as "Everything is fine" although I know that the building is going to leak but I cannot be bothered to take the flak for fixing it now and I'll be out of the country by the time it does anyway. A finer distinction might be between "I'll send the letter out tonight", meaning if it does not go out it will be out first thing tomorrow morning, and "I'll send it tonight" [... or if not then as soon as I have time, which might be in two weeks, I'm so busy...].
So now I know who is a liar and cheat and who is not, and I try not to be one, but do I dare speak out? It seems that the only worse insult that calling someone a liar who is not is calling someone a liar when he knows he is! So when someone says "tomorrow" whom I know to often mean "in two weeks", I use the information and show up the next day to ask about the thing. I do not assume that he will be late, because that would be judging the person instead of the action, and I do not tell him I strongly suspect he will be late because that would more likely slow him down, but I do act on the information that he is more likely to be late and take action. However, the temptations are strong to pass judgment on the person and get rid of my dependency on him once and for all. Hmmmm. Am I taking the first step down the long slippery slope of corruption? I cannot see how long I can stand to be different from all other 26-year olds who never failed to travel that road.
As with all mathematical definitions, the above represent necessary and sufficient conditions, but do not necessarily make apparent all other statements which follow from the definition given a set of axioms and inference rules which are typically well known to students of the field. And as is also true of mathematical definitions, the properties that follow from such a definition are more usually non-obvious than not! Finally, the definitions are always non-unique, and a REAL mathematician takes pride in picking the most obtuse for the purpose (unless it's a REAL GOOD mathematician). What do you think? Have I lost my sense of humor here in Kuwait?
Friday they had a sort of Activities Midway, but if you looked closely you would notice that the largest desks were by the Food Services (buy a burger for $2.40), the Transportation Services place (buy your parking sticker for $42), and Graphic Arts (copies for 2 cents, but read the fine print). I went and got my bicycle registered, then cycled over to a volleyball game and asked to join. After a few seconds' embarrassed pause, they told me they were having a tournament. How was I supposed to know that there are SUPPOSED to be 5 people on a court for this game?
The day before was the day of the Megaphones. The frosh were supposed to be moving into their dorms and the upperclassmen manning the sound systems at each door were making "WOOO Hey" noises which did not quite live up to the standards of the movie in paragraph one, and yelling out the names of the people showing up at the desk, especially other upperclassfolk who, according to the announcer had all either lost a lot of weight, gotten a beautiful tan or had their ears pierced over the summer. Meanwhile, the "International Graduate Student Orientation" function of the day was a tour of the Library and a talk on where the computers were. To get my mind off the fun I was not having, I tagged behind a couple of tall, blond German guys who were having a loud conversation in German, and tried to concentrate on understanding everything. Believe me, it was a lot easier than this understanding this Thai guy "Min" who decided to practice all his phrasebook English on me during he same Library tour. And during the dorm dinner afterwards. He had decided he liked me and we wound up in the same car. Luckily, a guy from Oregon and a woman from Argentina wound up doing most of the talking. But do you know what they did to us afterwards? After the rather not bad Mexican dinner (during which I discovered the joys of wine Margaritas - I'll never get a rum or tequila one again), would you believe where they took us for dessert? What name makes you just break down and howl for just a few hours of home in Cambridge? Cant's guess? They took us to _Baskin Robbins_, for gossakes!
Well, something remarkable happened there. I decided to tag along a conversation in French, between one tall tan very French-sounding guy and another more my height and complexion. When I finally decided not to repeat the morning's non-event and broke into the conversation, I found out that the a) both of them were actually Lebanese, and b) the tall tan guy who sounded sooo French even in English was really called Walid, and he lived across the Hall from me, where they had mistakenly printed his middle name on the door. Fancy that. The shorter guy decided that being in a group of three Lebanese guys in one Baskin Robins was more then he could handle, so he went off to have an intimate conversation with the Argentinean woman. And that was it for the night.
Arguably, it might be a good thing to be able to swim without getting wet, but I sure hope that this is a result of some temporary daze or mental block and not a permanent part of growing up to be over 25. As a fellow member of the college-freshman-at-16 club, I wonder whether you will experience any of this too when the time comes. I went through what I could at the time only describe as a mid-life crisis between that ages of 23 and 24, so if I go by the same time scale, what I am going through now must be the whiz-kid version of senility. Is this too ridiculous? I am sure most of my acquaintances would think so, which is why I am only sharing it with you. I will let you know when I go through death and resurrection before the age of thirty (see, I can laugh at the ridiculous aspects of this even as I embrace the theory for all other intents and purposes!)
posted by Walid @ 11:14 AM
