Watches

I have only two watches. One was given to me by my mother on my 20th birthday; the other was given to me by my wife on my 45th birthday.

Both have titanium bracelets; the older one runs on a battery and has a smaller face, the younger one runs on solar energy and has a larger face. I wear both of them in turn, depending on what the day looks like it's bringing.

The older one has had its glass smashed twice, once during a hockey match and once when my newly-bound PhD thesis fell on it. Each of those events marked a watershed in my life; the first marked the end of a period during which I had come to love the first school of my professional career, the second marked the end of a long period as a returned student. I've changed the batteries four times. The first battery lasted more than a decade, but subsequent batteries have not been so long-lived; they don't make batteries the way they used to, I guess. The bracelet clasp is slightly damaged, but still holds. I would never dream of getting rid of this watch.

The younger one has a very secure clasp. It is a solid-looking item, beautiful in a different way. It does good work, and I am also very happy to have it. It might have less history, but it is also my watch, and I will keep it always.

I have only two watches. I like to think of them as different personalities with different stories, who have somehow ended up sharing the same wrist at different times.

Faery Tale

Wolff sits on the hill crest and he looks far into the distance, before the sea's edge and where the brooding buildings hide. The relationships are simple. Why has nobody bothered to understand them? When Wolff was Sir Wolff, he was bound not to discuss them, because he was a gentleman.

But now that they have told him he is no longer entitled to be called 'Sir', is he still a gentleman? Must he still keep their secrets and their horrors? Wolff is afraid that he too might brood, like a hen. It would be a sad fate for a knight.

So he begins, talking to himself as he counts on his fingers. He tells the story of the ladies and their dreams, and he talks even as his fingers twitch, trying not to be part of the story.

"Once upon a time, there was a mad king who had several daughters."

The distant thunder crashes, as if to evoke Lear, who had three, or Macbeth, who had none. There are so many kings, so many varnishings and tarnishings. Wolff resumes.

"And he had three stepsisters, each by a different father."

He remembers. One was lenient, and she was kind to all. One he nicknamed 'Lady Macbeth', but it was only a nickname. And the last one looked after the household expenses.

"He got it into his head to be king forever, or perhaps a high priest after the line of Melchizedek."

Wolff is unsure, here. Somehow, the story is coming out a little mixed in its antecedents. But he continues, and his fingers tingle.

"His four daughters were called Teach-Me-Not, Touch-Me-Not, Boots, and Beets. Obviously, the first two had been named by one of his stepsisters, and the other two by another stepsister. Or maybe, that is just the way they were."

Wolff remembers. It was all very funny, very amusing, and yet very tragic.

"The king was afraid of one stepsister, but she closed both eyes and he was reassured. He was scornful of the other, but that one opened both eyes and was safe. And the third worked at the back of the castle, and was not troubled by anything."

He looks at his fingers. They are cringing. Perhaps he should not continue. After all, it is a rare story and a dark one. Like most dark tales of the faery, the King in the High Castle is also the King under the Old Hill. The faery are not good people, but little people with sharp knives and sharper tongues. And the King of the Faery was the worst of them all until his inevitable downfall.

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It was a long time ago that the Rhymer told Wolff the old stories. Wolff had been Sir Wolff back then, and he tried very hard not to believe them. But the day came when he knew they had to be true.

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Note: The fictional adventures of Sir Wolff do provide much that is of interest. You can find them linked here. Just ignore the one about earwax. That was an accident.

David's Meditation on Isaac Newton

Sometimes, you wonder about the less obvious story behind the obvious story. You read the accounts, you see the humans and their intimate tales of sorrow and loss, triumph and power, blessings and curses. And you wonder. A lot. Here is one of my wonderings.

The Rock That God Moved

I have such stupid brothers.
They could not wait to pass
the sheepwatch duties on to me
and get out of the grass.

I am smarter and I learnt.
A five-pound lump of stone
and a leather thong, ballistics
and boredom set the tone.

Israel is full of morons.
They're all archers, you know.
To stand and fight in armoured might?
A stupid way to go.

Why is everyone surprised?
Twenty-five centuries
more and Isaac Newton will lay bare
the force-fed mysteries.

Radial acceleration
And a single solid rock.
The book won't ever really say
Goliath died from shock.

You wonder why the real story was never written. And then you realise that you are looking down Time's wrong-way telescope. The old stories are truly the best. My more prosaic meditation can be found here.

Doctor Evil

The archvillain in the story is always over-the-top. His nature encourages the audience of a melodrama to boo and hiss his every action. Slowly as he begins his fall, his acolytes and henchmen desert him or are eliminated because they fail him. He becomes sensitive to every implicit slight, no matter how slight or how imaginary.

And then comes the revisionism. Slowly, the story of how a plodding scientist wades in blood becomes the narrative of a brilliant scientist steeped in white robes and the holy sanctity of the laboratory. Slowly, the story of how a defiant chap mauls his mentors and badmouths them at every turn becomes the story of how his mentors were never good anyway, and besides, he too has his detractors who were once mentored by him.

And the stories come out all over the place, each one more fantastic than the one before. Where a distant figure attempts to manipulate a young person, now we have the father-figure who teaches the child every week, only to be betrayed. The lies accumulate. The evil doctor eliminates anyone who objects to the stories, and then tells more stories. He doctors reality, and indoctrinates the unwitting.

He hears tales he wants to believe, about imaginary crimes committed by otherwise hardworking and decent folk. These legitimise his own deeds, help him believe that he is not so evil, just misunderstood. And he weaves those tales into his narrative. He creates a hero myth for himself, for all villains deep down want to be heroes in this kind of drama.

Will he be believed? There's no doubt that some will believe out of the innocence of their hearts. There's no doubt that others will believe because it suits them to believe. We wait with bated breath, but sooner or later the denunciation comes — the truth will be spoken, and the evil which has clouded the minds of his tools begins to disperse.

But what's this? These tools love to have their minds clouded. It spares them the bright touch of reality, a reality in which they lose significance and power. They would rather the darkness, within which their poison has an impact that they perceive more fully, that they feel is more real.

It amuses us, we who are the audience. But for some of us, before the lights come up and the actors take a bow, we wonder: "What if it were true? And what if there really were people like that?"

And the reason we feel uneasy thereafter is that, yes, there are.

Nesting Tendencies

The other night, in the company of both family and Family, I heard a terrible story. It concerned a venerable ancestor of mine, who had hoarding tendencies.

The uncle who recounted the tale spoke of how this old man, who was both family and Family, accumulated newspapers. He stacked them neatly against all the walls of his palatial room, and then stacked them against the previous stacks when he ran out of room.

"When he died," said my uncle with ghoulish relish, "He was all cooped up in this tiny space in his formerly huge room, sipping stout all day and being grumpy.

"They had to hire a fleet of trucks to cart the newspapers away, and when they did, they uncovered nests of scorpions and snakes and rats, some dead, some alive and wriggling."

If that's the fate of those with the archival gene in my family, I am doomed. What a way to approach one's 42nd birthday.

Goings On

Sometimes the stuff you know is true and that underpins the fabric of reality is not the stuff in the hardbound grey and brown covers of the books they sell to you. The real story is gold, and blue, and red.

Gryphon Rising (Part II)

The Old Road is a hard one, and we who wander it hear many things which are about as welcome as a sudden scream in the night. I was with the Padre when we heard the call of the heralds. They were announcing that the Gryphon would take back under its wings the Gryphlet that it had shed so many years ago.

What did not surprise us was that the High Mistress of the Gryphlet, that industrious and point-scoring madam who once ruled the Atlantean College, had been placed as First in the roll of those who would rule. I believe in her prowess. She is not quite totipotent, but she is valiant in war. She is also a darned sight more intelligent than many of those we have seen rising like winter gaslights in the realms.

What amused us was that the Mistress has been pursuing, it seems, an even higher status. The doctoral scrolls are poised to rack up another victim at the Educational Academy of the Southern Ocean.

All that taken together seems to express a stand explicitly denied by her. She will rise to rival her counterpart at the College of Wyverns, and she will have a well-oiled machine of undoubted vigour and size to help her in that endeavour. Will she come to reign supreme in every sphere? Only time will tell.

The Uncles

When you live with a Family, when you are part of a Family, it is inevitable that you will have Dinners with the Family. Last night there was one such dinner. And here I must highlight my encounters with two members of the huge clan which is my adopted Family.

Uncle #1, aka 'The Fisherman', recounts a story to me about his experiences in Thailand, where senior officers of the most powerful force in the country (except for the King, most revered and potent) told him that assassination was not a problem because 'nobody gets assassinated without approval from us'. The details I shall leave alone; at times like this, we do not want to know or bruit it about that we know. Having powerful people offer to terminate your opponents according to a tariff is something fundamentally blood-curdling; I was told that you can contract for individual body parts, careers, relatives, and other assorted people, places and things.

Uncle #2, aka 'The Don', lifts a few slender beverages while we chat. He really looks like one, and his voice is a gentle and soothing baritone. His hair is silver, his demeanour is aristocratic, his bearing is graceful. He tells stories about how family should stick together, and why the Family is important, and what the significance of family gatherings (or Family Dinners) and genealogies really is all about. He smiles, he chats; he is one of those you instinctively like and have an affinity for. And then later, other Family members take you aside and tell you about his interesting history of tactical elimination and other diplomatic activities for the Family.

It is heartening to know that such people have got your back. It is disheartening too, as one desperately tries to value oneself as having value apart from that conferred by the Family, to learn how much extra power and prestige can accrue simply by being a member. This is something that is hard for many to understand: after all, why not use it if you have it?

I suppose, very tentatively, my reply is: if I had used it, there would have been ichor all over the floor, in all its viridian majesty. But I've never been that sort, and the Family is too polite, as a whole, to do things for members who don't want them done.

Orchiditis

There I was, sitting in the farther road from the Hill of Tin. And I was hearing a truly peculiar story involving a hybrid orchid, the man who ran off with its name, and the myriad (in the literal sense of ten thousand) clones that the local Methodist church council intended to make of that orchid. All in the name of charity, I heard.

It was an interesting tale. I remember the dreams we had of an orchid hybridisation programme. My brother, fortunately, knows all about it and is able to provide me with access to the insider secrets of the dog-eat-dog (?!) world of the orchid.

Just one last factoid: you do know, don't you, that 'orchid' comes from the Greek orchis which means 'testicle', right?

Argonaut

I speak with the Argonaut much more frequently these days, and we look back across space and time, across the parade square which is no longer there, across the staff room that is no longer what it was, across the days that look as if they were turning to evening and night, across the seasons of what may yet prove to be an indian summer.

And we count the poppies, row on row. Perhaps they should be some other flower though. As John Barnes's elegant fairy-tale has it:

One for the morning glory;
Two for the evening dew;
Three for the man who will stand his ground;
And four for the love of you.

We count them all. It is a story of countability, if not accountability. It is an interesting story, with many little threads, some of which look large to some participants, some of which look small, and all of which seem to be of different colours to different people. It begins with 'once upon a time' like most fairy-tales do, and we do not yet see the 'happily ever after'.

Or perhaps, it all began when we collectively started losing our heads. Old heads, younger heads, most of those with the blue and gold. Former heads were not exempt; uneasy lies the head which wore a crown (or more than one head, or more than one crown). I watched, a passer-by, a chronicler, a man with everything archived. He watched, a man to be trusted, a clever man, a man with everything to live for. And we counted, and continue to count.

We have not seen such heavy losses ever. It is the end of the age of men, and the beginning of the age of the machine-gun, the trench, the barbed wire and the pillbox. Verdun and the Somme. "In Flanders fields, the poppies blow..." We haven't written an epitaph yet, because there is yet time for more to come.

Soothing Stories

Over the last ten years, during the period that I completed my Master's degree in Education and began on my doctoral campaign, I have come to realise a few interesting things about the world of research in this field. Here are some brief notes, not designed for completeness but as a sort of quick overview.

Firstly, method. A lot of discourse in the social sciences is neither particularly social nor scientific. It's all about competing narratives, often constructed 'bass-ackward' — that is, you see all that you can see and work backwards to find a reason for why things turned out the way they did. In the realm of qualitative methodology, you can adopt social explanations by questioning participants, on the assumption that if all the witnesses saw the same thing or felt the same thing, it is likely to have been a real phenomenon. But this is only true if you assume that what may be illusory is also vulnerable to mortal discernment. The fact is that if everyone saw or felt the same thing, it might only prove that the illusion was impenetrable. Mere numbers cannot overcome that, even though some people say the probability of being deceived drops as you increase the sample size. Once you start thinking in terms of numbers, you may no longer be a qualitative researcher; besides, all this assumes that the normal distribution is of use to research aimed at detecting anomalies and useful outliers.

Secondly, material. A lot of the discussion in education is oriented heavily around the United States. They probably have more researchers per square mile than anywhere else in the world, and it shows. They do have many distinct threads of research, some diversity and a high rate of growth, but there is a clear narrative bias. While the Asia-Pacific region is probably growing more quickly, the research fraternity on the Asian end is a lot more constrained in terms of information flow, disclosure and accountability. This doesn't make for an excellent research environment in the social sciences either. I know that many will point to the increasing rate of research paper generation in East and Southeast Asia (ESEA), but as far as I can see, a lot of these papers explain little and break little ground in ideas or methodology — just as in other parts of the world, most of it is padding. I actually have documentation proving that some people submit the same paper for different conferences with minor amendments and updates; it's like the undead monster that refuses to die.

Thirdly, message. In ESEA, a lot of social research is government-funded and/or government-approved. A lot of governments have an agenda to push, and the longer that government has been in power, the more it knows what it wants to push. (Alternatively, its lengthy dominance might be a result of knowing the right things to push before the opposition figures it out, or of being able to control the information flow, or of manufacturing a superior narrative from available components.) I have observed that governmental agencies sometimes ignore local research (unless it's their own and favourable) while pointing to irrelevant foreign research on completely different milieux. This can be true for agencies worldwide, but there do tend to be more checks and balances elsewhere — or at least, more independent commentary on social issues. That said, ESEA is changing and has been changing in more information-friendly ways for a while. The fact is that the sociopolitical and sociocultural environment is always complex; simple messages aren't so simple.

All this is not to say that the research is producing bad outcomes. Unlike some areas of knowledge (e.g. engineering) where an hypothesis can be tested by construction of a working prototype that showcases the principle underlying the hypothesis, it is more difficult for the social sciences. Education theory varies over a wide range, from the personal to the political, and sometimes the conclusions at opposite ends of the spectrum come to a practical impasse. It is a bit like the difference between quantum mechanics and astrophysics; two ends of physics with not much rapport.

Rather, what I am saying is that the whole idea of educational research seems to be to replicate successes which by their nature are unique. In the end, it all devolves down into simple bullet points like 'Teach Better' or 'Spend More Money' or something. Not many (although there are some) will write a paper with the point, 'All is Chaos' or 'Learning is not Random but too Diverse to Pin Down'.

This is because we all want to know that the story will turn out right in the end. We all want our nursery narratives, our soothing stories, our 'once upon a time' that leads to 'happily ever after'. But life isn't always like that; it is a messy narrative with no end, and no clear beginning, with key characters which aren't always identifiable as such until their chapter is far in the past. And of course, fairy tales can be rather Grimm.

The Family

I sat in the park. It was a warm, bright, humid day. The trees and grass and flowers provided a beautiful, very restful backdrop. The Emissary sat down next to me. Where there was old scarred wood and a touch of age, an elder statesman in smart casuals now sat. I gave a little start, waking from the daydream of the afternoon.

"Well, young wolf, will you stand forth in the hour of need?"

I was silent. It is hard for a wolf to break clan just for clanship. It is an odd and contrary thing for wolves, even the lone ones.

"You do not ally with the bear just because he claims to have nurtured you."

"I don't; I make it a point to tell the bear that I don't treat him as my defender or my nurturer or my personal ifrit."

"Then take up the cause of the family. Be a leader. And be the master of the bear."

"It is nothing new that you say to me. But to be what you would have me be, I will have to give up the nurture of young wyverns."

"Not really. Slay the bear and you can have all the wyverns you want."

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It was a warm, bright, humid day. I sat up with a start. I was still sitting alone on my bench. Nothing had changed. Really.

Looking Back (Part 2)

Hey, look: the old folder, and here is a second scrap...

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The little islands are dark, slightly tarnished - ambergris, blue vitriol, rust, deep slumbersome black-brown hues in a night-lake of midnight blue. The Wanderer sits alone on the cliff, warming old hands over a dancing yellow fire and his food. He has placed his weapons by the fire, and the fire’s light dances over them as well.

It is comfortable here in the Archipelago, he muses. There’s no stress. Back to nature, except that you can have modern conveniences whenever you want. He pulls the spit from the flames, lays it swiftly on a clean, flat stone, sucks his fingers. This is a good life. He looks with Dreamtime-seeing eyes out over the twilight sea, waits for the chicken wings to cool. This is a good life, he repeats, with much satisfaction. He tenderly caresses his flesh, feeling the invisible dents where flesh has rejected bullet and healed. A good life for a Wanderer, this is.

In the distance there is uneasiness. The centre is not at peace. The Wanderer looks back and down, and in the distance sees another with his inner eye. This other wears the billowing cape and dirt-coloured leggings of a Walker. Wanderer smiles.

Toilsome, toilsome step by step, the Walker wends his way Wanderer-ward. The Wanderer thinks of slain Hunters, many of them in a catacomb of the mind, all buried, all neatly entombed therein. He smiles again, and knows that for Walkers, he needs no weapons.

The Walker halts in the narrow defile at the foot of the slope and looks up. “Wanderer!” he calls. “Wanderer, come home!”

The Wanderer waits. He can afford to wait. The Walker is Maradaine Chase. Maradaine was always too good, too humane for his job. The Wanderer’s smile is feral.

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That's how the third section goes. What on earth was I thinking of? The question remains unanswered. But still... what was all this about?

Looking Back (Part 1)

Hey, look: an old folder with some scraps of paper in it...

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Little islands in a sea of chaos burn with brazen sunset light. The Wanderer waits there, his hands full of weapons. A stone, a branch, the jawbone of an ass, they are as treasure to his cold eye, their cracked and jagged lines as beauty to his soul.

Other things catch this roving camera’s glance: the dead roses, the test-tubes filled with vicious oils, the keyboard. The keyboard snakes its cable under a rock, a rock which twinkles green in the setting sun. A shadow falls halfway across the green.

The Hunter is here. He wears a black cloak trimmed with silver thread. He unclips the Link from his belt, presses buttons, speaks. “Domine,” he says, “I have found him. He carries weapons.”

Whisper, whisper. Fizzle. The connection closes. The Hunter has been instructed. The Hunter walks up to the Wanderer.

“Wanderer, come home,” he says.

The Wanderer is a blind man now, old and weary. Yet, when intuition strikes, he sees with the flash of its lightning. Now, he looks sharply back from the edge of his cliff, notes the Link at the Hunter’s belt, sees the Hunter’s escargot shotgun (every slug a hit, say the advertisements). His dry lips crack open, oozing an unripe smile.

The Hunter watches warily.

The Wanderer strikes, his hands a blur of bone, and stone, and little splinters from a larger club. There is eventually some blood. The shotgun is firing. The Link crackles with powerful energies. The Hunter glazes over before his eyes do, and is gone.

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That's how the first section goes. What on earth was I thinking of? Ah well... there will be time, there will be time. I was eighteen years old when I wrote that.

Hashish Speaks

It never mattered whether the Old Man of the Mountains was sane or not. The Assassins would carry out his mandate ruthlessly, even if not quite as efficiently as the true professionals. And in the end, history decided that they were all a footnote, albeit a quirky and interesting one. The world is full of such stories, and some are actually part of history; some are actual parts of history, and some have parted with history.

I have always been intensely curious about the patterns that appear to repeat themselves. But like the curling surface films found on an ancient keris, that wavy-edged sword of this region, repetition is an illusion - only similarity and parallelism remain. And those themselves are often illusions of elision, illusions of allusion. Games, every one of them, with players long gone and some imaginary.

The knives are out again. May the right birds be plucked and skinned, may the right feathering be done. Patterns repeat.