While it might be exceedingly hard currently to physically travel McCandless's route through America, I am at least able to trace his literary trail. He read and admired the works of Leo Tolstoy and one book that accompanied him during his wandering was Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich. I fortuitously stumbled upon this book at my local library while browsing and borrowed it after realising its connection with the movie and book I liked.

It is a snappy yet profound read that stirs up much interesting thought about the purpose of life. I am penning some of my thoughts about what I feel the book has to say here.

The past history of Ivan Ilyich's life was the most simple and ordinary and the most dreadful.

"But how could I have not lived right when I did everything properly?" he said to himself

It occured to him that what had previously presented itself to him as an utter impossibility, the idea that he had lived his life not as he should have done, that this might be the truth. It occured to him that those scarcely noticeable, feeble hints of his of a struggle against what was considered by people in the highest positions to be good, th ehints, scarcely noticeable, which he had immediately driven away from himself - that it was they that might have been genuine, while all the rest might not have been right. His work, his arrangements for life, his family and those interests of society and work - all this might not have been right.

---

It is human nature to not fully appreciate or think about something until it is on the verge of slipping out of our lives. Ivan Ilyich ponders on his death bed the life that will soon be extinguished, and questions the fruitfulness of his corporal existence.

The parallels that can be drawn between Ivan Ilyich's life and my life is shocking. Ivan was a lawyer, went to top schools and walked a path of academic excellence and social normality. In other words, he did everything "right". I daresay that similarities can be found between Ilyich's life and that of most salaried, "gainfully employed" and law-abiding Singaporeans. More so for supposed "elites" of the education system who took the time-honoured path of least resistance through top schools, prestigious university professional degrees, cushy armchair jobs and happy graves.

What's similar? Ivan lived a life of unthinking social conformity. As Tolstoy puts it, it was so "ordinary" that it was "dreadful". He did what society deems to be correct and proper, what is considered high class, with all the trappings of social snobbery. Don't most of us rats running in the education rat race do the same? We study so hard in order to avoid the stigma of being labelled failures at school. Parents want their children to be in prestigious schools so that they can be paraded like trophies. We strive to earn more and more to gain more and more social status.

What was right to Ivan was what society agrees with. What was tragic was that what society thought was right was actually wrong, worthless and immoral at times. Marriage was considered a rite of passage that everyone should go through. Law school was the de facto route to social recognition and a meaningful life. All this Ivan did, and indeed excelled in, but for what? The trajectory of Ivan's life is downwards; Ivan muses: "the further from childhood, the nearer to the present, the more worthless and dubious were the joys." Life got progressively less meaningful as he achieved more and more of what society thinks is good. His marriage was partly to fulfill social expectations. His work as a lawyer was just that, work, and nothing else. The life that Ivan led was an empty kernel, one of form, not substance, and the hollowness of it all troubled Ivan at his deathbed.

Nadine Gordimer opined in the foreword to the book that Ivan was fatally sickened by his times, by the zeitgeist of his age. I disagree. This seems to absolve Ivan of culpability for his pointless life, and fails to recognise the role of free will and Ivan's tacit approval of societal values. To accept that Ivan has no role is to accept what Sartre terms as "bad faith": the rejection of one's absolute free will.

The fact of the matter is that Ivan had a choice. To follow the well-taken but pointless path without circumspection, or to examine his actions at every step with a keen attention. Ivan took the former, and paid the price for it.

Ivan's life is a warning to those that sleepwalk through life, and lead a life of unexamined monotony. I am guilty of that at times. Now I try to align my actions with a path towards meaning and truth, and to consciously examine the arrangements of my life.

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The mist was so opaque in the sky today that she felt as if her eyes were grey with condensation. Hours before she decided to accept or reject M's coming she had consulted her female friend, of whether it would seem wrong to Soju. She was tired and dazzled and unable to make proper decisions. Her female friend reminded that it was the intention that mattered, and that there was the option to pre-inform him with the matter or not. She thought about it and decided not to. It was a day where everyone in the fervent mist of September seemed emotionally overloaded. It would not be wise to stir up another hot plate.

After all, she accepted the visit reluctantly as he gave her half an hour less than she had asked for, since she just finished tidying her room and had just got out of the shower with a bundle of wet hair. He ranged the bell at precisely the moment she was getting dressed and, since he did not hear her announcement that the door had been unlocked, she had to put down her hair dryer and open it for him.
He wore the olive army coat and was feeding on a bag of chips engagingly.

They ended up at Denny's where she ate nothing but appreciated the purple sky instead. He told her it was the rain in the air breaking up the light shining from the Skytower. Of course it was. He feasted heartily on the omelettes from the breakfast menu, relieved that it was no a wrong choice. She was not relaxed until now.
She had too much on her own plate, in her mind.
He took it as the fact that she had "absorbed" the radiance of his food that she had felt better. She argued otherwise and had to provide evidence. She, then, put it in the simplest way possible: "We had a small conflict after some very, very good sex." The listener ooo-ed and ahh-ed as if it solved all the mysteries in the world for him. She opted silence from then onwards while he showed her his music picks of the week on the internet.

As soon as he left she was glad of the briefness and effectiveness of his eloquence to amend her mood as she has expected, though she began pondering what stage exactly her own relationship was at on this Monday night. She could not read Soju's mind and she'd left it at that. Sometimes boys are simpler than one would believe. He was, after all, a quick healer, and there was no need to worry for him, she supposed.

I aten't dead

Ho no.  I've gone on me hols, to a lighthouse in the Shetland Islands since you ask.   I may pop in to the odd internet cafe on the way up and the way back and if I do I may post.  But if not, then I'll be back towards the end of September.

If the weather's good it'll be walks, photography, seabirds and binoculars.  If the weather's bad it will be slopping around in PJs all day, drinking tea, reading up for my MSc and playing Scrabble.  

Both sound like bliss:  I'm not sure which I'm hoping for.

it's hurts...

and dunno why...

or just pretending to hide something....
 

sungguh ku lelah... ku ingin ada bersamamu. ku ingin juga bahagia, dan itu ketika ku bersamamu.  jiwa ku haus akan kasih mu. ku rindu manja mu.. walau kadang kau suka ngupil dan kentut didekatku... hwaa.. gulis- geulis hitut na bau!!

kuharap 25 september sang Khalik mengijinkan kami untuk bersua barang sebentar saja di suasana yg bahagia. ku harap ku diberi kelapangan untuk mempersembahkan semua waktuku hanya untuk dia, ku harap ada rezeki ku untuk sekedar bisa berbuka dengannya di tempat yg nyaman setelahnya. ku harap ku bisa memandangi senyuman yg indah yang selalu dapat menyejukan hati ku saaat bersamanya.

pastilah semua bilang kalo ibadah ramadhan terpopuler itu cuman dua, yaitu

ta-darrus dan ta-tidur....ituji.

komentar:hari ini saya sudah mempelajari relasi walaupun banyak kesulitan.

memperbaiki table pada SQL.

As Christ would say, you can know a tree by its fruit.  An apple only sprouts from an apple tree and a mango blossoms from a mango tree.  This principle can be applied to men and women, our fruit bears who we really are.  A heart can be put to the same test.  Matthew mentions in 12:35 that a good man produces good things from a good heart and a bad man produces bad things from a bad heart.  But how can a human even begin to measure if someone has a good or bad heart if they've never lived in their environment and percieved the world as it is presented to that person?  How can we understand someone without acknowledging their upbringing and the factors that were impressed on their life coming from their hometown?

I come from a family of five, and it is my strong belief that each one of us kids can tell you the way it was and come out with distinctly different stories about our home life.  There are similar events and facts that will presented in an unique point of view that personality, maturity, and self esteem will distinguish the shape each story takes.

We've all had moments where we've run into differences of opinion, mentality, perspective, personality and attitude.  This happens when we have all grown up in the same neighborhood and when we've grown up in different countries.  But I can claim - and maybe you- that we you have shared your formation with others whether families, friends, neighboors, classmates or enemies, there's a special understanding between those individuals, as if the past is already filled in and needs no second explination or essay response.  It's as if the missing numbers in the sequence are already accounted for.   That same information is lacking in relationships created with other people from different backgrounds, families and cultures.  It's as if we relive the tower of Babel all over again, no body understands anybody.

I have been married for a year and a half as of the 14th of this month, and these differences in our environments growing up fases me less and less.  My childhood was loaded with family oriented moments, perfectionism, safe places, moments to be creative, wonderful teachers, Sunday school, and a family imperfect but who stuck together through thick and thin.  My husband is the other side of the spectrum: a drug and alcohol infested home, lack of mom and dad, violence, and little food.  His memories are stuffed with reminders that he would rather not remember, while I wish to relive many of my memories in a new way in our family together. 

This battle surges in the community as well.  As I chaperoned today for a group of children sponsered to attend school in a church activity with their sponsers, it was captivating to hear them speak to one another and the topics they chose for choice: horror movies and violent acts.  One girl in the minivan with her face plastered to the rear window of the van, when she saw a security car driving past she screamed "oh no! the Police are coming!  They're going to kill us!"  Interesting that her, coming from a violence infected community, would percieve the police to be the bad guys who were coming after her.

So how much does our hometown effect us?  How much can we learn from visiting someone's hometown and experiencing a piece of their olden days?  Perhaps we encarnate part of our hometown in the tastes and textures of the fruits we bear.  So if Christ isn't part of the picture to transform your fruits into His, what flavor are you offering to the world?

Went to work and got quite a lot done actually.

前幾天才有人對我說, I can do nothing for you, 重復了很多次. 她不是壞人, 我知道, 沒有人可以為我做什麽, 我甚至都不能為自己做任何事, 對這世界更加無能爲力.

我也知道, 時至今日, 身邊還有很多好人. 還有人說願意等我好好過日子；還有人和我一起分擔人在異鄉的孤獨；還有人對我那麽友善, 主動無償教我義大利文還送書同DVD給我；還有人搭火車從附近的小城來, 只為請我喝杯咖啡.

我縱使依舊悲傷, 也理應感激蒙主恩典.

I could believe in myself.
And sometimes the world becomes just as strong.

It's 12:34pm. The weather is cloudy and drizzling today. Last night felt like the first time he and I "conflicted." I disliked it lots. This morning I woke from a disturbing dream of me milking cows who could talk and the youngest female was to marry. Nick was also in my dream and I held on to him and he accepted it. Of course, Sojung was also in the dream, but his house was big and white and beautiful and rich. I took a shower at his house and met his uncle who nearly saw me naked.
I woke twice during the night, which was as unusual as anything.
I had taken two Panadols before sleep but the awakenings had disturbed the anticipated quality.

I should proceed to university as soon as I change out of this uncomfortable gear. Dressing has come to emphasize comfort these days.

Birth

1957. Margot Chapman (Starland Vocal Band) born in Honolulu, Hawaii.

On Tour

1965. Sandie Shaw announces she's cancelling a week's residency at a cabaret in Manchester and two television shows due to laryngitis. Sandie suffered from the same problem only three weeks ago when she was preparing to leave for a concert tour of New Zealand.

In Court

1966. Vivian Martin Prince, 25, former drummer with The Pretty Things, is fined a total of £ 102 at Marlborough Magistrates Court. Prince pleaded guilty to possession of three Drynamil tablets (for which he is fined £ 50), a gas gun (£ 50) and seven cartridges of tear gas (£ 2). He is given 28 days to pay. Prince told police that the drugs had been left by a friend and the gun was a souvenir of his German tour last year. Prince already has a drugs conviction from 1963, for which he was fined £ 25.

In Hospital

1997. Julio Iglesias's 31 year old Dutch girlfriend, Miranda Rijnsburger, gives birth to the couple's first child, Michael Alexander, at Mount Sinai Hospital in Miami, Florida. The 53 year old crooner was present for the birth. He already has three other children in their twenties.

On Television

1976. Rockpalast (WDR, West Germany) Mallard (WDR Studio-L Köln). "Back On The Pavement" 3m 40s.

Death

1978. Keith Moon's body is discovered by his 23 year old fiancee, Annette Walter-Lax at the couple's penthouse flat in Curzon Street, Mayfair, London. The couple had spent a night out at the London premiere of "The Buddy Holly Story" after a large dinner with Paul McCartney and other friends, where they'd announced their engagement. In the morning, Moon got up, had some breakfast and took some pills to help him sleep before returning to bed. He never woke up again. Initial reports indicate death was due to an overdose of Heminevrin, prescribed for insomnia.

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