Family Tree

Sometimes people tell me the strangest things. One said, your Family and The Family, they are inextricably intertwined. I laughed. It is quite clear that since the Old One left South China eight generations ago, my Family has established itself far more deeply than people think. The clan is a large one, and while it is not as large as The Family, it is diverse and wonderful in its ways.

Classic pronouncements:

• "While I am not a member of The Family, I would say that some people who make statements in public are certainly a lot more indiscreet than you ever were."
• "As a member of The Family, I would say that it is amusing to watch people mess themselves up while you idle around outside."
• "As someone who does not particularly like The Family, but who has put one son through its mill, I think what has happened is perfectly normal."
• "As someone who does not have a high opinion of The Family, let me tell you that you got what you deserved by not listening to me and leaving that branch of The Family's business four years ago."
• "As one of The Family's leaders, I think you should have just stayed outside that business, like many of The Family's junior members."

I am amazed by the diversity indeed.

My Family I was born into. It sometimes seems that I was also born into The Family. But I am intrigued by the differences, and humbled by the facts. In the end, I concede that I cannot really leave either. When I go to the annual gatherings of The Family, I will still be on first-name basis with all but the most senior (who I must call 'Uncle' and 'Aunty'). They will not let me go, despite all that has happened so far.

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Update: Logging the IP addresses of people reading this shows an unusual fact. Why do so many people from that branch of The Family's business keep accessing these pages? Surely they have better things to do. I do this in my spare time, not during working hours. Heh.

The Greater Trumps: (12) The Family

A man and a woman, with two children; a traditional family to the casual eye. But look at the background: that forest foliage is a single great tree - a twining entanglement of darkness and light, and the knowledge thereof. A huge serpent awaits in the shade of the tree. And this traditional family has two very dissimilar sons, one handling a lamb, the other holding wheatsheaves.

The imagery is ancient; in ancient Egypt, the father and mother might have been Shu and Tefnut - the twin powers of dry hot radiance and moist cool darkness. More likely, they would have been Geb and Nut - the heavens and the earth - whose children Osiris and Set would war against each other, the bright king of fertile crops and the evil prince of animals, and lay waste to the land of Egypt. The serpent would have been Apophis, the monster that chases the sun on its path through the underworld.

But those familiar with the Biblical account of Adam and Eve would see a different symbolism: this is the family outside Eden, an allusion to the fallen nature of man. It is not a happy family - soon, the two sons will grow older and Cain the elder (whose sacrifice of grain is rejected) will kill Abel the younger (whose sacrifice of a lamb is accepted). The tree in the background is that of the knowledge of Good and Evil, whose fruit it was death to consume; the serpent is the agent of Satan, or Satan himself.

The Family is the symbol of Nature, animal and vegetable, dark and light, good and evil, male and female. Like Nature, it always appears to be in balance. But this balance is an illusion; Nature is as inexorable in change and progress as anything else. Like the Chariot, it moves; like the Lovers, it has duality and complementarity; but Nature moves towards its own inscrutable and imbalanced end. It is an end which is buried in Entropy and the end of all songs; there is no 'happily ever after'.

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To my mind, this image really exposes the false dichotomy between Nature and Nurture. It is natural for humans to do things to their world, to impose their strength upon the world and remake it in their own image. We are Nature's unnatural offspring, but we are part of Nature nevertheless - and the other face of Nature is Entropy.

The last two verses of Auden's intriguing poem, After Reading a Child's Guide to Modern Physics, describe that odd dilemma we face: are we of Nature or not? Is it Sin to want to know?

This passion of our kind
For the process of finding out
Is a fact one can hardly doubt,
But I would rejoice in it more
If I knew more clearly what
We wanted the knowledge for,
Felt certain still that the mind
Is free to know or not.

It has chosen once, it seems,
And whether our concern
For magnitude's extremes
Really become a creature
Who comes in a median size,
Or politicizing Nature
Be altogether wise,
Is something we shall learn.

And so, we work our own uncertain way within the Family of Man, trying to control Nature (of which we are a part), accusing one another of perverting Nature and perverting ourselves. Perhaps the only neutral arbiter is He who made Nature, and often, He does not comply with our incessant and importunate requests.

Family Roots

One should never forget that Families are seldom perfect. Even in a Family that holds together well, there will always be dissenting voices. What is difficult to understand is that sometimes the head of a Family might bring in a consigliere from outside to help impose order. This is not necessarily a bad thing.

If the consigliere is loyal to the Family, it becomes an instant asset; an infusion of new blood, perhaps new enthusiasm and the possible bonus that this man might want to prove himself (and thus perform far above the mean). However, such an asset must always be checked against certain criteria and balanced by other Family members. A marriage helps; a marriage of convenience is suspicious.

Yesterday I heard from a gathering of the Family Elders. I was included in the conversation as a loyal consigliere from within the Family. What I heard was interesting, to say the least. You can take the boy out of the Family, but never the Family out of the boy. This is true. But does the converse hold true as well? Can you really put the boy into a Family such that the Family is put into a boy?

You can, especially if the boy is aged 6-18 or so. The prognosis is somewhat uncertain beyond that.

I heard the rumours of civil war, and then the Elders said to me: No. There will be no war. We will settle this.

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.

Dover Road

Tonight I feel an aching melancholy. It is almost as if the elves are going back into the uttermost west and I shall not see them again. I sat in a wood-panelled room on the High Hill, with my kinsfolk. The red wine was deep with spiced oak, and so was the light. We ate, we talked, and I was homesick for the isles and the cold and the damp.

And behind it all, I realised that here too was part of the Family. In the things they said and the secret knowledge that they shared, the Family traits and the family traits shone clear. I felt at home, and yet I knew that I was not, and unlikely ever to go home. Part of me wanted to follow them across the seas, but they wanted me to stay and keep the flame burning.

And that great old masterful poem came to mind, that anchor and touchstone of the long, melancholy, faithless 19th century. You can see for yourself what significance has been attributed to it.

That poem has always filled me with wanderlust and discontent. I remember one evening, having just thrown the garbage out for the night, it came to mind. Before I could stop, I had walked to the boundary of the north and was looking at the narrow causeway to another land.

Why should I stay? I stayed in this country to the loss of my citizenship in the Far Place. I worked, I strove, I used my mind and wasted my body for the cause. I fought under the banner of the Wyvern, I wore the blue and red and gold, I was both hero and champion, and eventually, ronin. I watched as things lost their meaning and their shape.

And so, I leave you with Matthew Arnold, as he watches one form of thought take the meaning out of another.

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Dover Beach

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Family Realignment

Over the last three years, the Family has begun regrouping. For more than a decade, corrupt and greedy officials have undermined the Family by all kinds of curious means. In one case, a perfectly good clock tower was demolished to make way for a less perfectly good (but larger and more lucrative) replacement. The old one was iconic; the new one was big and empty.

I say this as one who has read the transcripts of the big Family meeting that was held in Parliament House. I was reminded of this only yesterday when I met up with Adobe and Rocky. The meeting that ensued restored some of my faith in the direction of the Family. When 'our dark ages' was mentioned, I could sense that the healing might begin.

The thing is that we've always had cuckoos in our nests. Some turned out to be very fine birds indeed, men of integrity and creativity. Some, not so fine. It's painful to see that a good hard look at history can turn up some of the latter with very real influence.

And yet, that's what is to be expected. In every large Family, tests, trials and tribulations must be part of the process which has made them Family in the first place and continues to shape them. A Family that overcomes these and somehow retains its values is one that is stronger and collectively wiser.

I smell change in the air. Paradoxically, acts which are designed to stop this kind of change are those which eventually, with hindsight (or in retrospect, if you prefer), lead to a speeding-up of change itself. And then those who have been obstructionist to preserve their own little fiefdoms will be swept aside in the tide of history.

Avoiding The Family

I've written many times about The Family, so much so that people ask me which family I mean, whether it is my gens or my family; my kind, kin, bloodline, consanguinity or house. I suspect that gens in the sense described (follow that link) is probably closest to it; in this city-state, we are of the gentes maiores.

But these few weeks I have been avoiding The Family in a specific sense. The thing about the gens relationship is that it heeds most of all the ties of familial ritual, law, reflexive relationship. When one member takes a hit, the gens rises up around him, regardless of individual preferences. Even if individuals do not approve of that member, the general feeling is that blood is thicker than plasma, acid, or suspended scum.

An elder of the clan said this to me, "Oh, it is all right for young people like you to pretend that nothing has happened, forgive and move on despite the umbrage, the inconsistency, the fact that our name was used in vain and with deceit. But The Family remembers all these things. Just because some of us have an infatuation for certain things does not mean that we forget a wrong. If these lies are told in public, we will burn the tower to the ground."

Well, I am a man of peace. And so, with due respect, I am posting formal avoidance. Thank you very much for your support, each one of you. It is hard to hear lies said about the good you have done and the people close to you. But magna est veritas, et praevalet, and while I am no saint, I am sure that I am far less deceitful than some. I am also better at documentation (the real stuff, not the forgeries that some people create). Heh.

The Global Achievement Gap

Just last year, Tony Wagner published a book with this title. In the book, he pointed out that the high school graduation rate in the US is about 70%. In most other developed countries, that's closer to 90%. 40% of those who do enter college need remedial courses, and 50% of those who enter college never graduate at all.

Wagner thinks that the US school system is not merely failing, but obsolete. If you've followed the figures, it means that only 35% of those who complete high school education make it out with a basic degree. The United States makes up for it by importing talent in huge quantities to fill up the great universities — Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, MIT, Caltech, Stanford and so on.

But the point of all this is that talent is blossoming all over the world. And that talent can travel as fast as an aircraft, or alternatively, as fast as data can be moved for the people with the right talent to process it. In such a milieu, the country with the nimblest minds will make it big; the country with the artificial and unthinking conservatism will decay from the inside out.

The knowledge economy is of course not the only economy in the game. Raw materials and the performing arts, sports, games, and sociocultural structures are hard to shift around as quickly. But these too have economic rules bent out of shape by the warping of time and space called globalisation.

Take Skype and all the other forms of electronic communication for example. They have allowed for distributed family networks across the world. The debility of age is now less of a barrier for the wisdom of the ancients. Modernity has something to contribute to tradition and the idea of family. My parents can now afford to disappear to another country for three months while I handle their stuff by remote control.

Yet the plants still need watering. Even though my brother the plant genius has hooked up an automatic sprinkler system (and would probably add CCTV if he had the time and talent), plants need personal attention. In that respect, plants are like pople.

In this age of mass differentiation, the personal touch is required, and bespoke goods are the greatest of luxuries. Never mind that our ancestors all needed tailors and shoemakers in the narrow streets of the old city; now if you have a personal tailor, people think you must be of a higher social class. Cars are designed with the ability to remember your ideal posture (or lack of it), and perhaps do this for every driver in your family.

All this seems to be part of a world where opposing trends come into conflict, and the centre cannot hold. But that's nothing. What is the problem is that everyone wants to keep the past static and stagnant. What people are not doing is thinking about the past and what should be kept — and what should be discarded.

The global achievement gap is not a thing by itself. It is the manifestation of difference between people forced to discard some of the old stuff so that they can travel fast and light, and those who want to hold on to everything until they collapse under the weight of history. And the sad thing is that neither bunch knows what is going on.

La Cosa Nostra

Many are the times I've felt that I am a member of some venerable secret society. I have lived and breathed it; each family gathering, the signs and questions are exchanged. Our loyalty to the cause is unquestioned and unalloyed. It would therefore be poignantly and mordantly insulting should collateral members, associate members of the grand old association dare to think of me as disloyal.

These would be people who at some deep level just do not understand what it means to be of the Family, of the Cause. They might have tried to make it their own, they might have done much in the service of the House. But they would certainly not be Family. They are likely not of the Cause. Sometimes, one might have cause to worry whether they, at the very least, have even the Faith.

Of course, we invite new members. Of course, we change with the times. It is a matter of the course that all things must take, adhering to the fundamentals (gravity, chemical and physical erosion) while allowing the odd meander and diversion. But sometimes, there are those who just cannot get it, to whom loyalty is a false flag to be replaced with one of their own.

But in the end, our own loyalty to such a cause might be an equally false banner. What should not be forgotten is that the Family, the Cause, the House - the entities whose virtues are sealed in the Badge and the Anthem - obey a deeper and greater covenant. And it is to the Master of the Covenant, eternal and almighty, God of all ages, of all hosts, that we should look. The Family is nothing without allegiance to the Master, and we would do well to remind ourselves of it always.

God and Victor Frankenstein

It just so happened that today I got bored while thinking about education, globalisation and reform. So I looked at things I have always been slightly more interested in, and I came across the essay I quote in full at the bottom of this post. Essentially, the essay says that Dr Victor Frankenstein and his monster in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein resemble two other characters from another famous novel. So I had a closer look.

It turned out that this other famous novel was a certain 'Lost Paradise' (sic) by John Milton, and Dr Frankenstein and his monster are supposed to resemble God and Satan. It is an interesting hypothesis. You should read right on to the bottom to see how the anonymous author ('bigshaggy') proves his point.

I disagree with bigshaggy's point somewhat. It is clear that God and Dr Frankenstein are both creators in their respective tales, the epic poem of mankind's fall and the epic novel of inhuman horror and pity. However, the resemblance ends there, for it is quite clear that Frankenstein is a cautionary tale warning of the consequences that might ensue should man attempt to emulate God.

Frankenstein's monster, like Lucifer, has no hope of redemption. That perdition, as developed in their respective mythic contexts, has more to do with Lucifer's pride and the monster's subhuman status than to any other resemblance (spiritual or metaphysical) between them. Lucifer is a monster because of his pride; the monster is a monster because he isn't human. Lucifer has rejected God; the monster was rejected by his maker.

In Lucifer's revolt against heaven, he suborns a third of the Host to his purposes, turning them away from the face of God. The monster's revolt against Dr Frankenstein has nothing to do with politics or a difference of opinions – it has instead everything to do with the animus of the monster.

The author of this piece says it is quite remarkable that the characters in these two texts should resemble each other (although in the first line he seems to think it is common in any two novels). Actually, in this particular comparison, it is not remarkable at all. Shelley's Frankenstein is subtitled 'The New Prometheus'; it is a response to her husband's epic poem Prometheus Unbound, in itself a response to the traditional Christian story of the revolt in heaven. If you like, Frankenstein is a response to a response to a retelling of the Fall of Mankind.

(It is also quite unremarkable that bigshaggy thinks the characters are similar because he picked two texts with what he thought were very similar characters in them. It is remarkable because they are actually very unalike. And so it goes.)

If anything here has any degree of truth about it, it probably comes from the fact that Dr Frankenstein is likened to Prometheus, and Prometheus has a lot of similarities (and at least one major difference) to Satan. I've compared Prometheus and Satan before; there is indeed some meat there. Maybe the problem is that Shelley's novel has got both a Prometheus-type and a Satan-type running around, but the former is a failed Prometheus and the latter is more like Caliban than Lucifer.

Bigshaggy says in his last line, "...if you look deep enough, you can see similarities between many things you wouldn’t expect." Well, in this case, if you look superficially enough, you will see a resemblance. On closer examination, the resemblance is not really there at all.

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Before you read what follows, I must caution that this post is taken verbatim from an essay farm – that is, a place where they produce essays for students to (ahem) learn from other students who may have written papers on similar (or identical) subjects. I have preserved the exact text for your pleasure. I reproduce it as a service to students of literature who should be learning what NOT to write. Enjoy.


Frankenstein vs. Paradise Lost - How characters are similar
Written by: bigshaggy

Striking similarities between a duo of novels are not unusual. The novel Frankenstein, by Mary Shelly, deals with a scientist named Victor Frankenstein who embodies a creature, who eventually wreaks havoc on his life. The novel Lost Paradise, by John Milton, exposes the cruelty of Christianity or the Christian God within the characters God, Satan, Adam, and Eve. Victor Frankenstein and God have many similarities, as they are both creators of incarnations. Victor’s creature known as the monster shows striking similarities with Satan and Adam. Characters from different novels have similar personalities.

As creators of another creature, God and Victor Frankenstein are very similar, in that they both lose part of their “family,” and they let the war between them and their creations go on too long. Victor says, “ I collected bones from charnel houses; and disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame.” This shows that he creates the monster out of corpses, just as God creates Satan. Furthermore, Victor is disgusted with his own creation, “the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.” Victor rejects the monster, similar to God’s disgust with Satan’s pride. The monster wreaks havoc on the Victor’s life, “; I called myself the murderer of William, of Justine, and of Clerval,” leaving him with a burden of guilt, just as God loses his angels to Satan, Victor loses his family and friends to the monster. Victor at some point feels even more guilt because he didn’t destroy the monster earlier. If God could so easily order the fallen angels to be pushed out of Heaven, why did he let the war go on for three days? This truly is remarkable, two novels of different time periods, with characters of startling resemblance.

God and Frankenstein’s creations stunningly resemble each other. The monster relates to Satan, Adam, and Eve. Victor quotes, “You may render me the most miserable of men, but you shall never make me base in my own eyes,” this is when the monster asks for a companion, Victor refuses. The monster also shows that he will go to any extent to be happy and complete vengeance when he goes on a murder spree. Adam quotes “ for with thee/ Certain my resolution is to die; /How can I live without thee?” Resembling the monster, hence he wants a companion, Eve. Moreover, the monster is much more like Satan, then he is like Adam. The monster cites, “ I, too, can create desolation; my enemy is not invulnerable,” when he decides to rip Victor of his family and friends. Satan moreover does the alike, when he “takes” God’s angels. In addition, “Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded,” the monster is rejected, as his second, excluded on account of his pride and envy of God. This shows that both commit improper acts caused by their own creators. Both, the monster and Satan are rejected by society because of looks and attitude.

Remarkably enough, two novels from way different time period are very much alike in personalities of characters. God and Frankenstein are very much alike by reason of both are creators of “unfit” beings. The monster and Satan similar on the account of both being rejected creations. This shows society that if you look deep enough, you can see similarities between many things you wouldn’t expect.

School Quality

In 1966, the Coleman Report on Equality of Educational Opportunity was produced under the LBJ administration in the USA. The findings in that report were of great interest, because the main finding was that the effect of school quality on student performance was less than the effect of family background, by a large margin.

The initial reaction from the Johnson administration was disappointment; President Johnson had wanted to establish a fairer society by reducing unfair social advantage through a level educational playing field. Since school quality effects were minimal, it was thought that perhaps making better schools was not necessarily a good thing; rather, they would just magnify the advantage of family background.

However, this was not the whole story. As researchers sometimes observe, some Americans tend to think that because of the amount of published research they produce, their story is the whole story. But in 1982-3, Heyneman and Loxley showed that across nations, something else was in play.

In fact, Heyneman and Loxley found that the 'Coleman Effect' occurred mostly in economically developed countries, while larger school effects and smaller family effects occurred in less wealthy nations. At the same time, achievement in mathematics and science was strongly related to national economic development; about 1/3 of the difference in math/science achievement could be attributed to this. These effects became known as the 'HL Effect', a reversed Coleman Effect which implied that schools were more important than social background in some cases.

Meanwhile, Ceci (1991) found that for every year of schooling, after accounting for all other factors, students gained 0.3 to 0.6 of a point in effective IQ. That is, by standardised measurements of cognitive effectiveness, being in school made students do better in cognitive tasks. (Yes, of the kind that schools are designed to produce and measure, so this shouldn't surprise anyone.)

Such findings can be linked directly to the history of education in Atlantis. Initially, when few people went to school, those few had a huge advantage in achievement as society's manpower markets required people with certain kinds of cognitive skills. However, when many cheap schools were built and mass education took hold, the overall achievement level rose throughout society, and those who came from 'early-adopter' families found their competitive edge eroded.

This competitive edge eroded even more when more and more students, from all backgrounds, began to spend more and more time in school. This unprecedented amount of schooling acted as a massive socio-economic leveller and raised a large middle class in the Atlantean population.

In modern Atlantis, one would expect to see the Coleman Effect in play again, since Atlantis is now very highly developed. And indeed, that is exactly what one might see. The effect of general school quality, although good, now produces a fairly standard, fairly good-quality product — some studies rate the average Atlantean as one of the best math/science students in the world.

Because Atlantean schools in the 1980s and 1990s produced little differentiable product, and all of reasonably good quality, the effect of socioeconomic background again began to be felt. Richer families could support even more extended and diffuse education opportunities beyond the state provisions. The state countered by attempting to finance its own talent supply, in a classic free-market spiral.

The current state of play is interesting. There is still that huge middle-class plateau, but rising above it are the twin peaks of extreme family background and extreme state sponsorship. Of course, being able to pile Mount Pelion upon Mount Ossa, as the Giants did, would allow an Atlantean to reach Mount Olympus and wield the thunderbolt against the Gods. And few realise that there is much that remains below the plateau, bound in Tarteros.

A Matter Of Principals

Today I was partaking of a leisurely rite of caffeination with a friend. Most unfortunately, that friend managed to press the 'Autobiography' button and I found myself rather impolitely dominating the conversation. Fortunately, I have very tolerant friends. Some thoughts, however, carried over into well after I had come home. And here they are...

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It was in May 2004 that I was required to take a course on Principalship and Teacher Performance – an odd-sounding course, to be sure, but I've endured stranger than that. There were two assignments and three presentations to do, all before a class comprised mostly of senior educational officers and principals; the point of the course was to examine the link between what a principal did and how this affected the qualitative development of the teachers serving with that principal.

There was a certain quality of desperation to my efforts. I was scheduled to go on research leave to Columbia University, New York, just days before the course officially ended. The kind course managers said they would allow me to submit the unfinished business by email, as long as it was before the deadline – but it was rushed, rushed, very rushed.

It has been three years now. I survived, and I note with a slightly bemused air that I actually aced all my courses that year. It leaves me with an odd feeling; that year was, apart from Columbia and a few other things, quite a dead loss. Yet, when I look at what I wrote, I realise that I still stand by it to a large extent. Some of my coursemates might have submitted assignments just for the sake of earning their qualifications; I am certain only of my own motive, and that motive was that I believed sincerely in what I thought and wrote about educational leadership.

What follows is part of an essay I wrote in partial fulfilment of the course. It has been edited very slightly to protect the innocent, as well as the guilty.

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Reflection On Educational Leadership

This module is about being an educator. Looking through my notes, it is only too easy to say that it boils down to ‘Know thyself’. If you were more sophisticated, perhaps, you might say, “Know thyself, know thine enemy; fight a thousand battles, win a thousand victories.”

But if you were to take this easy way out, you would probably not get the point. The role of educational leader is a lonely, exclusive, powerful, humbling, paradoxical role. It was never easy, and it was always sure to be double-edged.

Why?

The leader has to see further than those he leads. He is the man on the mountain, the Moses, the Mohammed, the Messiah. He has to be closest to the truth, most certain of the revelation, most daring of vision. Yet, because leadership is a double-edged role, he must be most honest of himself, most analytical of what he sees, most willing to gaze into the abyss. Tolkien writes in his fantasy masterpiece, The Lord of The Rings, ‘Hope I gave… I kept no hope for myself.’ And this is sometimes the whole raison d’etre of the leader.

Leadership begins small. The seed comes from within, the faint spark of inspiration with which one realises a sense of mission. Some are thrust into the role by circumstance, some by ‘accident of birth’. I believe in all three – in my personal context, I am defined by what I believe, what the world believes of me, and what my empirical experience has been.

Mini case study (very much shortened):

For example, I am the eldest of three siblings in an obviously hierarchical family – this is the ‘accident of birth’. It is supposed to predispose one towards leadership. (It seems not to be always a necessity – my principal is not the eldest in his family.) I became faculty dean four years into my teaching career, by sudden act of appointment; it was not obvious to many that I should be so honoured, and I myself felt rushed into it – this is circumstance. And yet, being made a leader by appointment, I had to do my best. I turned out to have some talent for this ‘visionary leadership’ thing that departments of education seem to love. Quote from one of my fellow heads: “I think you should be an administrator, you have the gift for it.”

The point is, you develop confidence as a leader when you realise that these factors can conspire to guarantee your effectiveness if you see them in a positive light. Yes, there are what appear to be accidents, sudden upheavals, sudden changes in direction (like my friend G who switched subjects overnight). But it is the way that people cope with the realisation that determines if they will make the best of their leadership or not. After all, the more the upheaval, the less likely it is that anyone will be in position to know what to do next, and the more likely it is that the one who becomes leader is the one who can do something about it.

So, there are three things the aspiring educational leader (or any other type of leader) must do: 1) assess the state of reality – what the current environment is like in terms of people and things and relationships; 2) assess the things you can do, or that you have done – you like encouraging others, people will do things for you when you ask them; 3) assess the ‘spark’ – do you feel the urge to do your best in the role, will people be inspired to do things because of you?

This sounds rather abstract still. Is it possible to define the three areas further?

The first area is reality in the external sense – what is the physical and political environment you will be exercising leadership in? You need to ask how many people will respond to your leadership, how many people will oppose it, what your tacit authority will be, what your appointed authority will be, what kind of well-defined material and environmental resources are available. This is the kind of environment all kinds of business and management books talk about when they discuss structural features of organizations. It really corresponds to the Greek word kratos – the authority which comes with circumstance.

The second area is reality in the way your internal set-up interacts with the external set-up. Do you have the strength to lead, the guts to make difficult decisions, and the instincts to make them wisely? You need to know what your capacity to move things is, how hard you can work and how much effort you are willing to pour into the environment. You need to know if you can apply leverage and shift people. This is the kind of authority that people talk about when they say, “She is a mover and shaker.” It corresponds to the Greek word bia – the authority which comes with employment of force.

The third area is reality in the way your internal set-up reacts with other people’s internal set-ups. Do people see what you do and feel driven to follow your example? Do you inspire, do you encourage, do you make people feel good when they do what is according to your vision? When they hear you coming by, do they think of the Angel of Death, or do they think of you as a source of light in a dark world? Or do they just think, “Let’s be compliant and he will leave us alone”? This area is the hardest to assess. It is the area of authority that corresponds with the Greek word dünamis – the authority that comes from personality projection.

The bottom line therefore must be that exploration of context is the necessary preamble to effective leadership. As Sunzi said, “Know thyself, know thine enemy; fight a thousand battles, win a thousand victories.” I quoted that at the very beginning, and I said it was too easy a statement to make.

Yes, it is too easy. It is a statement which cannot stand alone. Sunzi also describes appraisal of terrain, appraisal of resources and appraisal of men. To him, knowledge meant a pragmatic, practical grasp of every real factor in the environment, and the ability to find out more and see more than the other person.

This is why leaders are what they are. They have a job which never ends, a job which never gets easier. Yet, it is a job that they can grow into; it is like a burden that one learns to lift, and that one will eventually develop the muscles for.

Like any other burden, sometimes it may be too heavy, and you will need help; sometimes just watching another person with a heavier load may be good enough. And at the end of your days, like all good leaders, you must know when to lay your burden down and rejoice in a job well done.

=====

The last paragraph proved prophetic; five months later, I would lay down that burden in (some say) dramatic fashion. There are days that I wish I had never sipped from the oft-poisoned chalice of positional leadership. There are days I wish I had drunk more from that spring. But most days, I know who I am and I see it all for what it truly is: one of the many games which God gives to people to occupy their lives and allow them to grow whichever way they can.

Terminus

A terminus is, of course, a boundary; and of all the boundaries we know, the most common are the boundary between self and non-self, the boundary between day and night, and the boundary between land and sea. There are termini which are more subtle: boundaries between love and hate, masculinity and femininity, time and space.

But today I saw a poem which called to mind an old friend. There are so many boundaries hid within these crucifying lines; each line targets the bird within us, which as Chesterton once wrote, "...went singing southward / when all the world was young." But this is no raven, no albatross, no phoenix or other legendary avian. This poem is about a member of that family Scolopacidae, who somehow finds himself in the exalted company of birds who have something to say about humanity.

Here is Elizabeth Bishop's 1949 poem, Sandpiper. I am thinking of breaking with tradition and adding commentary.

The roaring alongside he takes for granted,
and that every so often the world is bound to shake.
He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward,
in a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake.

The beach hisses like fat. On his left, a sheet
of interrupting water comes and goes
and glazes over his dark and brittle feet.
He runs, he runs straight through it, watching his toes.

- Watching, rather, the spaces of sand between them
where (no detail too small) the Atlantic drains
rapidly backwards and downwards. As he runs,
he stares at the dragging grains.

The world is a mist. And then the world is
minute and vast and clear. The tide
is higher or lower. He couldn't tell you which.
His beak is focused; he is preoccupied,

looking for something, something, something.
Poor bird, he is obsessed!
The millions of grains are black, white, tan, and gray
mixed with quartz grains, rose and amethyst.

=====

Random Notes:

This remarkable poem seems to be about the boundary between chaos and order, perception and the lack of it. The protagonist struggles (despite himself? unknowingly?) to find meaning, and adopts several coping strategies.

In the first stanza, he ignores the background noise, tries escapism (runs), tries seeking refuge (traditionally, southward), tries to control the panic ('panic' from Greek 'pan'='all' – a response to immensity, terror), and seeks meaning in every grain of sand (student of Blake).

In the second stanza, he ignores the signs of apocalypse ('unveiling') in the form of 'sheets of interrupting water' and the sizzling of the sand as it shifts in the tide; although he has feet of clay (dark, brittle) he continues running as long as he sees he still has the means to run (watches his toes).

In the third stanza, he is actually watching a 'Red Queen's Race' – it is the sand that is shifting while his desperate efforts keep him above the instability. We remember that the Atlantic generally symbolises strife and violent disruption (cf. 'Pacific', ref. Atlantis myth) of order. He is fascinated by the fact that he survives while the world is in continual flux.

This flux is the theme of the fourth stanza; the world is mist – out of focus, huge and diffuse – and then minute, vast, clear. The contrast between minute and vast recalls Blake's line, "To see a world in a grain of sand..." It also brings to mind the phenomenon of focus - to see everything with a lack of detail or to see very little with great detail. The protagonist, however, seems to be only following his nose.

The first line of the last stanza creates a significant break in the rhyme-scheme. What is lost, and rhymes with 'gray'? Obviously, the protagonist has lost his way, and doesn't know that he has. In his obsession with the individual grains, he does not see the whole picture, the picture in which he is a single organism in a continually changing immensity.

Perhaps the poem as a whole is about existential terror, the fear that one might be insignificant in the grand scheme of things, be nothing, be overwhelmed by what is 'more real' and lose all identity and self. Hence, perhaps, there is the obsessive need to focus on small details and make worlds out of grains of sand. The sandpiper treads the terminus, the space between the void of the sea and the minutiae of the sandgrains which make up the volatile substrate of his existence.

Perhaps, also, the poem can be compared to Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach, from the 'grating roar' as the ocean flings pebbles up the beach to the 'long, withdrawing roar' of the Sea of Faith. Sigh, so many random thoughts, each a grain of sand. Like Whitman, I contain multitudes.

Atlantean Standards (Part I)

I am beset with images from my past as a young man in a world of crusades and crusaders. I remember the hymns: in one, exhortation to lift high the Constantinian standard; in another, to follow 'standards of worth, o'er all the earth'. In all of these, the idea of a standard is literally that of a rallying-point, a banner, a flag, a sign that will 'stand hard' against all enemies.

It was in the age of the moderns, from the 18th century or so, that the meaning of 'standard' finally fell into the sense of 'a definite level of attainment or achievement'. No more knights keeping watch on the mountain heights, no more banners unfurled o'er all the world.

Tonight I was with family, and not for the first time, the talk drifted into the realms of a curious statistic that all present had cause to track out of interest. It was something to do with standards, in the latter, weaker sense.

In Atlantis, split the healers into two groups. For every hundred, take fifty into the first group and put fifty in the second group. Call the first group 'private healthcare' and the second 'public healthcare'. This is the Atlantean healing ministry. Now take all those who are ill and unwell, who suspect their bodies are failing and who are sick in the organic sense. Divide them, for every hundred, into twenty and eighty. Put the twenty into the first group, the eighty into the second group. Yes, this is true; in Atlantis, half the healers attend to one fifth of the unwell — this is the private sector. It follows therefore that the healers in the second group work four times as hard, normally for about half the pay (or less). The main consequence of this is that healers in public service often want to move to the private sector, where their quality of life will improve eightfold or more.

It is the same in the teaching ministry, although the pay differential is not that great. Rather, the independent fiefdoms of education may sometimes generate gross inequities. There are idle sods in some of those fields who cultivate and nurture a bare fraction of the crops that others do, but yet earn twice as much for their clever neglect of the more difficult crops.

It is this which makes me pessimistic for the future of Atlantean standards. An infamous study shows that whereas the mighty mercantile arm of Atlantis generates a whopping GDP on par with some more-established mercenary economies, her people's prosperity payload (PPP) is more akin to that of some of the poorer pirate 'nations'. Atlanteans are mostly poor; it takes them decades to pay off the burden of their 'public housing' which once was a beacon of hope in that island of the main. As my mother pointed out (and as I have mentioned before), her salary in days of yore would have bought six thousand bowls of noodles a month, of which she only needed sixty or fewer (since they were BIG bowls) — for me, her poor firstborn, my far larger salary would not have sufficed for a thousand, and those rather scanty unless concocted by the generous couple at the noodle stall in the old place.

Our money, it seems, is not up to the standard it used to be. And neither is the quality of our striving. What is the point, then, of throwing inferior money at superior problems? Most of us have already surrendered to economic temptation and fallen into the ways of the dark side. Just consider how many professionally unqualified scum are out there making easy pickings from people who want their flab surgically removed, while the poor and sick get treatment of a much lower level than they would otherwise have got from these greedy louts called aesthetic physicians.

Free market? 'Faugh!' I say. No market is free when the information symmetry and the level of intelligence (and greed) are so disparate. We should string the self-advertising, pocket-enhancing buggers up to dry, from the highest of our standards, and let real surgeons do real work for those who need it. Perhaps the teachers should do their part too, so that the daft will know that sucking the fat out of the abused body confers no health benefit at all, but increases the chance of an ignominious death.

The Patriarchal Ranking System

Somebody asked me a question which has only just sunk home. That person said, "Why do you always have to think differently? Isn't it dangerous? You might be a heretic."

I must admit I was a little shaken, in the sense that it is obviously true that if you think differently, you might be a heretic. But this was with regard to my habit of saying odd things about biblical characters. (Incidentally, I don't like that phrase – it seems to imply that the people we're talking about are factitious personae in some drama.)

So I trawled through the deep-freeze of my organic datastore and realised that there are perhaps a few things that make me say things most other people wouldn't. Here they are, in order of influence:

1. Family: My family has always been an amazing resource; my great-grandfather translated the Bible into Peranakan Malay, my grandfather did his daily bible study in Greek and Hebrew, and my father has always been able (as long as I've known him) to give the Bible chapter and verse for any quote read out to him (and vice versa).
2. Database: The natural outcome of coming from an academic family is that you tend to have huge hands-on experience with data sourcing and processing. In the days before the Internet, and even now, the man with the library-trained brain will normally beat the untrained brain given the same software and hardware.
3. Education: I was brought up as if my life would be spent teaching literature and history, but I was trained to teach chemistry and computing. The mixture of disciplines allows me to look at a given topic in many different ways.

I think the blend of these three elements makes me a little unconventional. However, any mistakes I have made are mine alone and should not be blamed on my family, my sources, or my education.

That said, I wondered how I actually put these things together. Well, perhaps this is a good time to say that I don't exactly know. However, I have a rough idea. My training in computing, which began a long time ago, makes me attempt to gather all the data I can find in a single brute force search (which is easy to do nowadays because you can find thousands of Bibles online) and then try to put them into a logical construct. The outcome of this construction process tends to be unusual. For example, doing an exhaustive search for anything to do with Jonah produces a psychological picture you won't see in Sunday School. Better still, it will be completely defensible since it is built by analysing everything in the text that has anything to do with the subject.

The best way to explain is to do it on the spot and see how it works (since I don't know what I specifically do, I should just do it and blog about it). So without further ado, let me leave you with yet another construct (or the outline of one). Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you the Patriarchal Ranking System! (Please don't take this too seriously; I don't actually prepare sermons or bible studies this way.)

Let us begin by defining 'patriarch'. Essentially, we begin with node 001 (i.e. Adam, the 'son of God' – see Luke 3:38) and note that the term is used rather narrowly if defined solely by the text. Such a definition could conceivably cover Abraham (see previous post), Isaac, Jacob and his twelve approximately immediate male descendants. That gives 15 candidates. However, a slightly broader interpretation is given from an historical survey of usage, which would include the line of Adam via Seth and Noah to Abraham.

Since all the subsequent nodes are contingent on node 001, it looks as if we must rank Adam as #1. But this would mean that you would then be numbering them off in genealogical order, which is a trivial solution. Surely we can do better than that.

Aha, the Bible compares Jesus to Adam directly. Surely that trumps everything? Well, not quite. If it were so, we'd have to look at all the various people Jesus is compared to, and this would include that infamous psalmist David and a score of others. Besides, it's only Paul who is doing that comparison.

Maybe we should consider the amount of space given to them. Actually, this would mean that Abraham would win hands-down in a head-to-head fight (argh, this is why you should never mix metaphors). But this solution tends to make the Jews unhappy because it would mean that the next patriarch on the list ought to be his eldest son, Ishmael (and there goes the West Bank haha).

By this time, you can tell that it isn't easy being me. I don't really have a patriarchal ranking system, and I apologise for being a little offensive along the way – but I must say that anybody who thinks I think differently from anybody else is making a very trivial statement. After all, each of us must demonstrably think differently from each other one of us. Nobody has exactly the same neural net, right?

Here Be Dragons

I wrote this story 20 years ago, when I was young and the memories were fresh. Shiv has spoken of magic-realism. There is some truth in this; the supernal is everywhere, and all things possess a surreal nature which transcends the mundane. This is a very long post, and if I apologise for it, it is because it might not be good enough. But it's mine. I wrote it in 1987 and it was first published in Tesseract, the Science Fiction Association (Singapore) magazine, 1st Quarter 1991. This version is almost completely free of edits. Almost.

=====

I:

Al, as usual, was a bronze dragon: intelligent, romantic but a little cynical, satisfied with the quality of his life. We sat in a pizza restaurant somewhere along Bukit Timah Road with wine and pasta before us, and journeys behind us. We spoke of futures, as mythical figures often do. I was trying my hardest to be a sorcerer: mysterious but unsure, skilled but unwise. I looked sidelong at him, trying to read his careful expression.

"When you're out of national service, what will you do?"

"Become a geologist," he replied. "I've been reading this book on the tropical rain-forest.

"What's that got to do with geology?"

"Nothing, really. Why?"

I sighed. A dragon should know better, was what I thought; although, of course, you shouldn't say such things to them. This one was a friend, though. I waited for the explanation.

He continued, as if unveiling a surprise, "Really, I'm interested in plate tectonics." He paused for a while, looked at me expectantly. I remained, inscrutably, a sorcerer.

"Continental drift, earthquakes, that sort of thing." Musingly, he said, mostly to himself, "The rain-forest book had some very good photographs in it; I would have bought it, but it was rather expensive."

Dragons are like that - they window-shop a lot. What they do buy, they hoard. Bronze dragons have an entertaining little quirk: unlike most other dragons, they don't believe so much in possessing things. Intellectual property is more their sort of stuff. When looking at grimoires or enchiridia, if the price asked is too great, they'll haunt the book, but not buy it unless they must. They'd rather visit it respectfully from time to time, memorizing it in little bits. The reason dragons keep the company of sorcerers is that they find it convenient to borrow books from them. And why do sorcerers keep the company of dragons? Ah, because they make marvellously entertaining companions, of course.

The conversation faded into the background. It went on while the rain came outside, borne by the thin wind and the storm. Amber light glinted through the sharp and rainy night on the windowpanes. I was thinking of dragons. Maybe, dragons were thinking of me. I'd known lots of them. It's always useful for a magician to be able to understand and speak to dragons.

Mentally, a review.

My friend Shen, a silver dragon: without certain purpose though of great rational intelligence, a good friend but subject to temperamental instability, lethal when roused. Like most of his kind, he excelled at games of skill and reason. He'd been one of our best chess-players until he'd gone seeking wisdom elsewhere: the arts of healing, in the English midlands. Shen still writes with great conviction mixed with many questions on the nature of things.

Sean, on the other hand, is a red dragon, one of a bright and savage race. He's got typical red traits: a tendency towards violent solutions and fiery resolutions, gracefully aesthetic artistic abilities, extraordinary strength and endurance. The red dragon is a beast of a thousand contradictions. This fellow plays the piano, behaves impeccably in unfamiliar company. He's also been known to run after people, knife in hand.

Al's saying something about Sean.

"... so I gave him a lift to this girl's house. He said she had reddish hair, which he thought was rather exotic. I misheard him: I thought he'd said 'erotic'."

Indeed, Sean's a red, even down to his colour sensitivity.

The bronze dragon looks curiously at me. "Did you say something?"

I speak almost by reflex. "Two days ago, I met a female unicorn. I asked her to marry me, and she told me to wait five years, and she'd consider it then. It's hard to snare a unicorn, even if you are a virgin."

Al snorts. He's definitely got a streak of the horse dragon in him: a passive, almost docile, disregard for authority. He's not the rapacious sort of dragon, stocking up on bright gems and fair maidens. Several pretty girls have caught his eye, but only one has caught his heart. He's the sort who will wait, regardless of how many graduate and remain unmarried.

Likewise, Shen. The heart of the silver dragon is a noble one; once lit by a spark of idealism, its flame will not die. They mate for life, and so, the other must be perfect in the dragon's eyes. The friendship of a silver is legendary: a flood would not quench it. And I, a sorcerer, only wonder that I have known such a one.

The wine dwindles in the candlelight, as if it fuels those distant flames. We let it flow away untapped, although it was within our talents to have taken that magic for our use. I smile reflectively. Perhaps I should've been a dragon too, forever chasing after a precious pearl and never knowing its true beauty for my own. A sea-dragon, then, glinting copper-gold on deep armour forged of greenness and of light? She'd not have cared, no, not for dragon, not for the sorcerer within, not for the man in sorcerer's guise. She'd have wanted to know it all, mercilessly all, exceedingly well. There's a formula to these things, and most sorcerers know it: when a sorcerer is no longer inscrutable, he is no more a magician.

"What shall we do after this?" he asks, as dinner draws to a close. (Time has passed. The mind hides between times; it hides in the bones of things, iron in tall buildings, granite in my country's spine, our own bones. The underlying reality is mightier than the obvious. It is a larger, more complete world.)

Time kept passing by for a while. We were passengers waiting for an altogether different train, and it was a sluggish river full of fish and winter ice. As the wine disappeared, along with the pasta, I cast a line into the water. "Whatever. The vehicle is yours; let it carry what it will, to wherever it will go."

The river rolled on, serene. It was too lazy to care.

I found myself outside, on the main road with Al. The rain had tapered off to a thin, whispering drizzle. The old white chariot, a driving-instructor's oldest vehicle it seemed, was waiting as always, and it sighed with chill and impatience. A mellow knocking rose about us as Al ignited the flame within, and as its sweet breath caught fire, we fell away into the outer ring. The world receded, a pebble in the pond.

The night was cold, and dry despite the rain. It was as if the world were a vast eternal sponge, absorbing softly all the waters of the upper air. Al said to me, not really questioning, "You've been thinking about dragons again?"

"Yes," I answered, "And I've decided you're a bronze."

He kept his hands on the wheel, mulling it over. Then, "Let's go visit Pat," he said, chuckling. "She won't mind entertaining a dragon, although his wizardly friend may be a matter for doubt."

I remained inscrutable. My profession would serve me well for a while yet, I knew. In the darkness, under deep shadow, the sorcerer's heart sang like an iron bell, and stopped.


II:

Pat. A fire rises, yellow, normal, friendly, an enemy, a tree, a diamond. As Amergin, bard of bards, said, I have been many things. Yet, Pat has been nothing save whatever she has wanted to be, and occasionally, I look for her, hoping to find my place.

Tonight, the night melts in parts. Like a womb, a shaft of light, a chariot of flame, Al's old nag carries the darkness before her. Darkness looming, blooming. Darkness. Amber light growing, glowing. Amber fading. Darkness comes again. Every few moments, each time the cycles come and go, the same cycles. How many revolutions per minute, of death and rebirth? The chariot lunges on, forever chasing its lost horses, the golden destriers of the sun.

We talk to Pat because it is convenient, and if not, we don't.

I am the Magician, I told myself once, juggler of the metaphysical, he who reassures others of their innocence. I might have been wrong. I might be the Sun, triumphant always, yet ever constrained to repeat the cycle of his life over the endless circles of the world.

In the library of the heart, I strain the metaphor, and nothing much is left behind. Pat is a Wheel of Fortune, Chance, the smallest of God's fingers. There too, I was nearly wrong: I thought of her as Temperance once. But Temperance, her dreams are less troubled, and her blessings more comfortable.

Looking out of the left window, the National Junior College sits easily, like a colony of petrified monks after vespers, more befuddled than sinister. Al says, "Have you read anything interesting recently?"

The sorcerer looks at the inquisitive dragon. Indeed he has, he thinks. He has read The White Goddess, by that flawed but brilliant master, Robert Graves. The sorcerer parts his lips; I speak.

" 'I was with my Lord in the highest sphere / On the fall of Lucifer into the depths of Hell, / I have borne a banner before Alexander; / I know the names of the stars from North to South...' and it goes on, Al; Graves works a new tapestry from Taliesin the bard, and you might be interested. I'll lend the book to you some day."

Gentle smoke curls from the bronze nostrils. The dragon is appeased. Absent-mindedly, he sweeps past Watten Estate, leaving cold grey smoke scudding like baby fog behind him. "Graves, hmm? He wrote some interesting poetry, but I preferred Frost."

A creature of refinement and culture, though hard as nails. I smile. Hard as frost, perhaps. Idly, my thoughts uncurl, stand up, and wander. They too have miles to go before they sleep, and I, I have promises to keep.

Yesterday, as always, I was in the Army. Today, as always, I am a sorcerer, a power of music and of verse. It is hard, and it gets worse. The Army, by the nature of the creature, is cautious about creativity. Everything must be tested, evaluated, weighed and metered before tentative acceptance, careful adoption, before the gods who rule in Tanglin (now, no more even there!) smile and give their blessings. Thirty months, it has been, my life like a fish in a closed pond.

Now? 'They shall seek me, but they shall not find me. They shall call for me, but I shall not answer them.' For (almost) a thousand nights and one night, we dream of the Army, we dream of the jolly green giant, the titanic defender, the career commanding respect. Some others dream of Spartans at a pass. The Army watered us, and in the darkest night, like mandrakes, we grew. Another cycle thus unfolds.

This night was a dark night not too long ago. In it, Al was saying, "How many more days do you have?" and I was replying, as if by conditioned reflex, "Four hundred and thirteen." I had been a defender of men for five hundred days. Although we had counted our days with such care, our dreams were still intact, the dreams of a sorcerer and his friend, the dragon.

Dreaming is a human thing. Along with it comes Myth, the tenuous condensation of Dream, like a cloud of hypnotic vapours. The first among the myths is Creation. The libraries of Man are filled with remnants of failed and partially-succeeding creation myths: Ginnungagap and the Ice-Cow, Ouranos and Gaia, the Five Universes, the World as Illusion, the First Principle, Ea, Nun, Varuna, and all their successors.

The Road was never this long! The night is endless, with lamps lighting our way a short while before and after, but never all the way to the end or back to the beginning. Indeed, some lights have been disconnected, and most travellers don't even miss them when they're gone. If each light were a deity, a pantheon, an idea, or a philosophy, it's almost as if many of them have been lost through their own inadequacy, and no-one wants them back because no-one needs them. How sad! How... necessary.

The bronze dragon mutters. Al says, "There's been an accident ahead. We'll have to turn around and enter the Court from the other side. I hope you know the way."

This is simple. I nod, assenting - wizards are used to the other side, the hidden ways. Al brakes, breaks the golden river, creates a tributary. White in the golden light, we turn towards the distance and are gone, pale in the many shadows under the wide trees.

The Dream takes worldly responsibility away from the Dreamer. A true Dreamer has only the responsibilities given by the Dream. The Dream is all-inspiring, all-devouring, all-powerful, like an emanation of the Most High, although not all are such. It inhabits, indwells the Dreamer utterly, and the Dreamer becomes priest, warlock, champion of his Dream, the Dream, the only Dreamt. There are many types of dream, but for each of us, normally only one Dream. Each Dream is light to its Dreamer, but most of us are trapped in the lighting.

Al laughs to himself, the dragon like a kingfisher flashing over a green lake. I look questioningly at him. He sees this, and replies to the unspoken, "You know, you were once so spellbound by that girl that everyone knew it. One night, I was speaking with Sean, and he said you spent an entire Applied Maths lecture drawing hearts with her name in each of them. Were you really so much in love with Pat?"

The Dream gets most of us at one time or another; in my case, while idling my way through Numeromancy 102 classes. The magician's only foe is the Dream of Woman, his only failing the Dream of Power; yet, his only goal should be the True Dream, and that is, while hard for all men, harder for him.

"I suppose I was. She is such a nice person to be with, even now. There were others, you know, who were just as enamoured."
The bronze dragon risks an equine snicker, to which the sorcerer can only raise a mildly embarrassed eyebrow. The night falls away, and three years ago, it falls into day, a lazy Wednesday, in the leaf-light dappled heaven-haven of the College of Wyverns.


III:

The college is a grey lichen-white, resembles a rectangular eggshell, made into a dwelling from wood and glass and stone and people. There are many people. All of them have been hatched, it seems, from the same egg, for their plumage is mostly identical. There is also a breeze.

Bronze-green and ash-brown, undernourished tenacious trees stand apart from the building. A girl, one among many others, walks from the foyer. My friend Burn says, "That's a classmate."

I turn to look. History, now, has poured its ocean over the facts, and some have dissolved. Of them all, very few, stubborn rocks in the lashing salt-spray, have retained their shape. She was Pat. There was something pleasant about her, which I liked. I don't know what it was. I don't know where she is. The pages have turned, the trapdoor has closed.

Even the college has changed now, or will have once been changed, or twice. We must avoid being perfectly tense. Things change, and the tense is seldom immutable.

Al and I are in his old vehicle. Burn and I are out on the bleachers, and Burn tells me about his class, three years ago. Al and I walk purposefully up the brick path, a deep purple night wheeling above us, hunter-starred. Burn and I walk leisurely across the asphalt, on a warm and dusty day; the sky is a pale half-electrified blue.

The lift arrives, we enter, and it rises. The trapdoor falls away. Three years ago, Burn says, "This is Pat." Three years ago: "Hello, I'm Alex." She is a strange mixture of embarrassed and pragmatic. I open the door, look into the house, and find no-one really at home, although signs of habitation are evident.

Three years later, I have been lifted up, and the bronze dragon with me. We stand on level ground, overlooking the city of a million souls, the amber stars, the grim greening of the night. I am a very young man, but feel a very old sorcerer. The bluish-grey smoke-scented wind twists into a zero and cancels out, while its careworn rain renews the shadow of the heart. The entrance is inviting, a simple metal grille outside an unornamented wood door. The plain figures of the apartment number remind me of her. I grasp Al's shoulder, hear a dragon's exhalation of surprise.

As we leave, nothing has seemingly changed, but I am different. By rejecting one thing forever, I have become more than I was before, but less than a magician. I will become a wanderer. Al is silent all the way to the waiting car.

In my several years of exploration, I made many friends. Literally, you understand; I made them from words and craft and poetry - their sinews were prose and their flesh was story. None of them had 'real' names - after all, these days, which of all the people have real names anymore ?

Well, there are a few. Soldiers whose names are 'known only to God', they rest as reminders of war, as our guilt-price. These are the Unknown Soldiers of a score of nations, the only ones with true names; and those, hidden by gunshots and smoke, poison gas and blood-smears.

My unknown soldiers were the crystals of my saturated imagination. As the heat of my age diminished, they were forced out, through the filtering paper of my writing, through the careful tubing of my pens. They had names (oh, all so false, and yet so true to me) like Tom Aquine and Maradaine Chase. They lived the lives I could not lead, the lives I dreamt.

Al asks, "Where to, now?"

He turns a restless eye on me, sees I am on the edge of nothing once again, asks carefully, "And what are you thinking about, then? You still thinking about Pat?"

"No, not Pat; she's out tonight, I've only just remembered. I was thinking of those who 'saved the sum of things for pay'. Do you remember all those characters we wrote about in the bad old days? I think they're all dead now; wouldn't write about them these days at all, now that so much time has passed. Except to make a bit of money, perhaps."

The bronze dragon chuckles, like the sucking of a summer river past winding banks. "You, at least have an art you can prostitute. I shall be content with photography, taking private photographs of the last hidden places of the world."

And that's the way of memories. We cultivate them until the fateful day in which they take on lives of their own and colour the processes of our reason (writers who can only write about one set of characters, actors who will always be known for only one role...). Then, we have no more need of them and must destroy them utterly.

Somewhere in time, we move out into the roaring river of light which is the Road at night. The track of each hurtling headlight-bearer burns an image on the retina of each eye. 'I knew a girl, and she went away / And the rain came down the face of my day.' Memories inhabit us, inhibit us. They are lessons we have learnt, whether for good or for ill. They burn their tracks into the screens of our minds. To learn some things properly, we must forget everything else, which looks like a waste.

Down in the dark brightness of this autumnal day, Al's heading home. I go with him, for the security of his home is a minor, but very marvellous thing. It's a very short trip from the Court to the Garden. The time-and-space bending properties of an old flame which still carries much weight must still be in effect, for the journey is short, and the warm house far nearer than it really is.

Why dragons? Why should I, failed magician, keep the dream of a lost race forever? It's like this: once upon a time, there was a dragon coiled on the hill near Al's house. It was another time, a summer day, and the predominant scents were dry grass and haze. I walked up the hill, wondering, and came upon him. The poor old thing, he was ancient but powerless, huge but decrepit, the sorry ruin of a mighty hunter.

I spoke to it; it winked sightless eyes at me and said, "Soon, the Village will be all commerce, and no one will dream the dragon-dream anymore. I will be less and less, your people more and more. One day, a little boy will weep for loss, and not know why, because there will be no more dragons, and no memory of them."

It went back to sleep - perhaps, forever. The sun set behind its apartment-crowned ears, and its placid breath was dilute in the fires of the burning leaves. There I stood, and there promised: always, dragons. No little boys crying. No worlds lost.
I seal the portal, but it will not hold for me, no longer magician. My hands find edges, but are blind, will not grasp the whole, too late. Somewhere, we have come home, to love and family comforts. Here, the trapdoor opens on infinity.


IV:

We sit in the patio, with carefully-distilled coffee and the hospitality of shortest notice. Out there, the wind giggles, pirouetting through palm and vast canopy. Inside, Al and I sit, muse, caffeinate and reminisce. We talk rubbish. We, together, dream. And the product is the old world, lost forever except by the seldom and infrequent windowing of this world through to that.

High school days, another summer, the season of Clavell's Shogun. Al sees, retrospectively, says, "Remember Sean's act, his famous mock suicide in courtly Japanese tradition? A broom for a sword, and fake poetry!"

How could we forget? Sean looked funny, there on his knees atop the teacher's table. A broken broomstick, ancient chairs in formidable array, and apart from them but in the same time, an old piano, a dusty laboratory full of apprentice glassblowers, a broken window. They stick in the corners of the mind, like cobwebs.

Let them stay. They do not hurt or hinder anyone. They were never harbingers of doom, but the slow sedimentation of the wind, the tide, the flow of years. They are a benign past, made desolate by ceaseless passages.

In that background, a desk slams shut, and a German submarine from the Second World War sneaks through the trapdoor. At its helm, five of us, captain and crew. We order the torpedoing of an enemy ship, we are sonar, hull, and tired submariners all at once. There are many other times within that time, and the spaces are infinite as well. There are no horizons, and our imaginations swim wide.

Then, we have grown, and the walls of the cup appear, leaving us like coffee-sodden ants within. Confinees of a new confine, most of us will drown somewhere here. In the present, as I reply to Al over coffee and cookies, many of that company have already gone, swept aside and down, into the abyss or the wasteland, and the roses have all died.

"What was it between Pat and you, back in college?" Al asks. He is genuinely curious, although not very much so.

There is a book of old roses, locked up in old rooms. In it, you may find almost every variety of beauty, any hue, any form, any texture. All around, the smell of antique wood, books, leather; everywhere, the rich and heavy aura of age upon age piled deep, like a carpet. I come here once in a while to visit old roses, to live apart from stainless steel and white cement.

Looking back, it is hard to decide whether I ever really loved them; harder still to know if ever they loved me. Of all things, one thing is sure: when a rose blooms in the watching hand, the heart might burst with joy.

In the cool darkness of the memory's mausoleum, my heart grows large, my body too small for its happiness. Here in the dusk, scribbled in the dust, are some haiku. One reads: 'One slim girl smiles here / Bright eyes burn and walk away / I am happy now'.

These lines are the potent image made into words, life and beauty molten in the forge, shaped in the cylinder of the heart. Even on the greyest of days, the cadences are not robbed of their power; each wise bright thought - though made less wise, less bright by mortal pen and vision - is still a fragment of the song.

I have learnt, I tell Al, that one love can foster many other friendships. The dragon nods, waits for me to continue.

"Love is the excelling way, the only one through the wilderness of the human heart," I say aloud. The coffee's aroma is still in the back of my nose.

Al looks at me with half-amusement. "You should know."

Once again, conversation fades into a buzz as the lower air unfolds around me. I feel tomorrow in my hand, an unknown weapon. It's time to get up. Ahead of me, the half-minute which is the wall of sleep looms. Struggling, I climb over it, land on the floor. I am awake. No. I am awake! No! I place feet carefully on their way to the bathroom. Noooooo... oh, very well then, have it your way. I am awake.

Thinking these thoughts in one year, in love with the last (and best) of all my roses, is hard. Three years ago, another year, and in love elsewise with an older rose, I hurt in my innermost parts. The only thing which firms the fastnesses of my life is the awareness I feel of God. In my mind, ideas of God unfurl, flutter like defiant banners. Bright love, word of creation made flesh, whose Spirit roars like a mighty wind among the towers of my thought - may this day be Yours, I say, brushing my teeth, washing my face.

In the corner of the mind's eye, December will be coming soon. We can expect showers in several areas in the mornings and in the late afternoons (are they always late?), and perhaps at night... and back in time, Al says, "Go on; what exactly did Pat say to you?"

Long ago, in the first quarter of 1984, we spoke for the third time. Her voice was soft. Her eyes were big, intelligent, careful and shy. She was gently dark, slim, and walked without care.

There was something I had to tell her. My heart beat in tympanic reverberation. It was grey and cool and quiet, for the rains had come and gone. I said all I had to say to her, quietly, distantly. My voice returned to me like the singing of a lone whale in the ocean. Of what had happened that day, I told no one.

Somewhere, in the deeps, my botanical brother whispers, "Old roses are the best." I agree. Before Pat, there were others; after her, others again. One thing differences them, makes their stories different, though: after Pat, my poetry would not be the same again.

The bronze dragon snorts, crunches chocolate chips. He chews, swallows, drinks, asks, "And that was how it all began? I would've thought something more dramatic might have happened, seeing your subsequent behaviour. I'm sure you're not telling me everything, O necromantic one!"

I'm sure I have most definitely not told him everything. I am also entirely sure of not being a necromancer at all. I continue. I tell him of the days which came after. He makes few interruptions, and I come eventually to December, and the painful wisdom of the dying year.

The coffee has gone, and the story ends, its last notes trailing away into despair, and a heart as heavy as the sea. Softly, the dragon's voice whispers, "We thought it was a pity too, you know. Nevertheless, it's better for you this way. Your life is different from hers. You are too... unalike. Now that all that is over, you're friends again, and what could be better?"

Indeed, not much could be better. I am happy, I am still in love, which is 'a great way to be', as Pik the brass dragon says.

Someday, I shall end my wanderings, join my princess, and be free... and old roses will bloom.

Ω

Examinee (Part V)

"Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more!" Whenever I reach the fifth installment of something, I cannot help but recall the days of my youth, and my father reading Shakespeare's Henry V to me. The quote is, of course, taken from Act III, Scene I.

But yes, after a year of mucking around with 2-bromobenzyl bromide and silanes and phosphines and triosmium clusters and the fatal lure of x-ray crystallography, I went back into school to do my postgraduate qualifications in education.

I will never forget my early introduction to silliness in the educational world. At my entrance interview, the chairman and then-director of the Institute of Education asked me, "Are you trying to tell us that your father is Professor [name omitted]?"

I replied rather heatedly, "On the contrary, I have been trying hard to not bring up the topic of my heritage. It was not my choice to be born into such a family, and I think it is not right for you to keep trying to bring it up." I think I looked sufficiently disgusted that heads began nodding round the semi-circle and I was told, "Thank you, we are sure you will make a good teacher."

And so, I entered the admittedly comforting halls of what used to be the local university and had by then been converted to the sole institution of teacher development in the land. Examinations were interesting. They were held in a converted lecture theatre, where the heat prompted me to complete my examinations even more quickly than the cold of the previous experience.

It was in this milieu that I made friends among senior staff only to find that they were already friends of the family. I made friends with classmates who to this day continue to struggle on bravely and "close the wall up with our English dead". I was very fond of my classmates, and we went to each other's weddings and later in life got to attend courses together.

But examination technique became a very different animal at this level. I had no idea why I hated the textbooks so much, but I swore to build a philosophy of education by learning from what my tutors and lecturers taught and what they did which worked — rather than what they might have said which didn't seem to work on us who were their students. They were a mixed bunch, but they taught from their hearts and their deep experience. And when I sat down to examinations, I was pretty sure that textbook learning didn't come into it.

I was proven right. In the examinations we got, the papers required answers that were reasonable, sound and showed effort on the part of the student to make coherent sense out of a chaotic mess of theory. The psychologists warred with the sociologists, the anthropologists with the historians, the linguists with the biologists. The grades went to anyone who made a cake out of the grungy bits, and somehow along the way, I learnt the art of baking a good one.

The recipe was pretty straightforward. You wrote about existing theory. You showed how existing theories contradicted each other. You offered a better metaphor and pursued the metaphor to its logical conclusion. You designed a plan for executing the implied strategy resulting from that pursuit. You broke it down into steps, tactics, learning points. And you linked the whole package with careful welds and joints, making it as steady as possible while flexible enough to work.

It was a great game. But it was also deadly serious. I never lost sight of the fact that all that knowledge engineering had eventually to do something useful. I prayed hard that one day I would be of benefit to my students, and not let them down.

I had a bit of a shock on the day the results came out. My name wasn't there. Then someone said, "Hey, it's on that list over there." The list looked ominously brief. In fact, it looked like the list of people who for one reason or other had to retake papers in order to pass. Then I realised it was the Distinction Award list, and I crept away to a quiet corner to laugh.

Very Old Archival Material

A long time ago, there was a young and idealistic (but by no means naïve) teacher. He came from a family of teachers who were always telling him that teaching was an excellent but terrible vocation. He found out how terrible when he was made to write essays like that which follows. It was a very long time ago.

Question No 2:

“Teachers and pupils are seen by researchers to engage in a variety of classroom strategies with a view to gaining control in the classroom.” — R Burgess

“Whatever the dispositions of classroom participants, they have to live within classroom social reality and cope with it. In facing this common problem… teachers and pupils adopt a range of strategies.” — I Reid

Drawing on studies of the classroom, give two examples of such teacher strategies and two of pupil strategies. Discuss how the concept of strategy helps you to understand how classroom order is achieved and maintained.

When one comes across the word ‘strategy’, one tends to think in terms of games such as chess, where considered manoeuvring is carried out for the achie vement of relatively long-term goals. (This is to be contrasted with ‘tactics’, the manoeuvres themselves. For example, little Kenneth’s throwing of paper balls in class is a tactic used to distract the teacher; the use of distraction to escape the boredom of his lessons is his strategy for coping with school.) In the classroom, the teacher’s goals and those of his students may come from wide-ranging spectra and be individually very different. The interplay of the strategies used in pursuit of those goals quite often determines the classroom environment, from a sociological perspective.

With that in mind, let’s consider two strategies used by teachers in the classroom, and two used by pupils.

Lefrançois (1) divides teacher strategies into two types, preventive and corrective. The former is more closely associated with ‘classroom management’ than with discipline, and its goal is that of facilitating teaching and learning in the classroom.

One sort of preventive strategy is the establishment of routine. Routines are indispensable to the smooth running of the class because they define the details of classroom activity: where to, how to, and when to do which things. Doyle (2) says that effective classroom management depends on the establishment of rules and procedures early in the school year.

Corrective strategies are associated with classroom discipline; the goal here is to change or eliminate a particular behaviour, with resultant benefits to teacher and class. One sort of corrective strategy is, of course, punishment. The swifter and more appropriate, the better; nevertheless, it should be noted that there are cases both for (3) and against (4) various types of punishment.

Pupil strategies are, like teacher strategies, aimed at the general goal of ‘dealing with classroom life’. To this end, the spectrum of pupil strategies ranges from those which are socially ‘positive’ to those which are socially ‘negative’. Socially neutral behaviour can mask negative attitudes, as in the case of the apathetic pupils known as ‘puddings’ (5).

‘Positive’ pupil strategies include that of conformist coöperation with the teacher, i.e. discovering what the teacher’s goals are and working overtly towards them in an acceptable (to the teacher) way. Reid classifies this as one of the more positive types of adaptive behaviour in the classroom context (6). ‘Negative’ pupil strategies include the use of ‘subversive’ humour, i.e. humour which is directed against authority and in support of the interests of pupil peer-groups (7).

The concept of ‘strategy’ (fr. Gk. strategos, ‘general’), as used in a classroom context, leads one to think of the classroom as similar to a geopolitical battlefield, on which two forces or power blocs manoeuvre in pursuit of personal gain. On one side is the teacher, whose power comes from socially-legitimated authority (kratos), or less often from personal force (dünamis) or threat of violence (bia). On the other side are the pupils, whose socially-approved power sources are apathy and inertia (and whose socially-disapproved ones include dünamis and bia as well). The possible spoils of victory include increased morale, peace and quiet, job success, and other things that will make the side concerned more happy in the classroom environment.

The pursuit of personal gain in the classroom is not a zero-sum game, however, and it must be noted that either side or both sides can ‘win’ or ‘lose’, or neither, depending on which strategies are used. Classroom order (or the lack of it) is a result of the classroom reality that is derived from the interplay of these strategies. As in much of human social behaviour, negotiation typifies most of these interactions, although some strategies do not allow it at all (for example, excessive authoritarianism or complete apathy).

Normally, both sides realise that classroom order is a good thing. Just as it is impossible for meaningful negotiations to be carried out unless the parties concerned have agreed to a set of rules, so the conduct of classroom life is stressful and even hazardous if the rules are not implicitly or explicitly known and agreed to by both sides.

The first and most important step towards meaningful dialogue is the proposal of rules by the teacher, representative of higher authority. The teacher’s choice of strategy here is very important. If the strategy is one of authoritarian order which admits no negotiation, then revolt could be the response, and the eventual result loss for both sides. On the other hand, if the strategy is one of capricious and seemingly random reward and punishment, then fear and distress will lead to a similar outcome.

To continue with the analogy, the first side to resort to behaviour considered unjustifiable by the other side runs the risk of severe retaliation or provoking serious guerilla activity. Lesser provocations may be glossed over by diplomacy or other coping strategies. Negotiation is thus the premier vehicle of meaningful interaction in a civilised classroom, including as it does a host of faintly provocative or uncomfortable behaviours and the appropriate responses thereto.

In the normal course of events, once the teacher has drawn the boundaries and the pupils have countered by testing and disputing some of them, the teacher then adopts new strategies to respond to the testing and redefine the boundaries where necessary. This continues until everyone is more-or-less equally happy (or unhappy), whereupon a new set of strategies (sometimes analogous to the mutually-assured destruction strategies of the Cold War) aimed at preserving the newly-engineered status quo is brought into play. Thus is classroom order achieved and subsequently maintained.

From all this, it can clearly be seen that the concept of ‘strategy’ is one which leads to an adequate understanding of how classroom order is achieved (and why), and how it is maintained. As Swift said, “Every creature lives in a state of war by nature.” If the battle for education is to be won by both sides, the nature of the classroom reality must be fully understood and exploited.

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References:
1) Lefrancois, G R (1991); Chapter 12 - ‘Classroom Management and Discipline’, in Psychology For Teaching (7th ed.) (pp.312-339). California: Wadsworth.
2) Doyle, W (1986); ‘Classroom Organization and Management’, in M C Wittrock (ed.), Handbook Of Research On Teaching (3rd ed.) (pp. 392-431). New York: Macmillan.
3) Parke, R D (1974); ‘Rules, Roles, and Resistance to Deviati Gon: Recent Advances in Punishment, Discipline and Self-Control’, in A Pick (ed.), Minnesota Symposia On Child Psychology (vol.8). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
4) Clarizio, H E and Yelon, S L (1974); ‘Learning Theory Approaches to Classroom Management: Rationale and Intervention Techniques’, in A R Brown and C Avery (eds.), Modifying Children’s Behaviour: A Book Of Readings (p. 50). Springfield, Illinois: Thomas.
5) Sharpe, L (1992); ‘The Sociology of the Classroom’, unpublished lecture given at the National Institute of Education, Singapore.
6) Reid, I (1986); Chapter 4 - ‘The Culture of Schools’, in The Sociology Of School And Education (pp. 77-80). London: Fontana.
7) (ibid.); Chapter 5 - ‘Pupils, Teachers, and Classrooms’ (p. 131)

Disdaining Fire

You dig up funny things sometimes, like this story written 24 years ago while skipping lectures. For some reason, it seems to reference many things of the present. Maybe nothing has really changed, as the protagonist eventually shows.

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Disdaining Fire

He woke, as usual, a little after midnight, the old dreams running from his mind like water, like horses of the night. The last fleeting darkness was of women: "From Dawn to dewy Eve," the poet had said, unknowing. Indeed had he fallen, mused the careless man to himself, though both were lovely girls. So many of us, so many dreamers dreaming; those were wondrous days indeed.

He stretched, rose, thought. His raiment was pale blue and appropriate; his eyes were darker, Mediterranean; his slightly curly hair and athlete's body were oddly lustrous with a brown that had the radiance of fallen gold. He sensed nothing in the air around him, felt comforted. What does the old man do now, all alone on the high mountain? Does he care?

He decided not, with a twinge of distant irony. He remembered laughing as Old Clubfoot was cast away, taken from the metal of fallen stars and made to work at copper in reminder of his disrespect. Fallen stars indeed; hah, now, they were all cast down alike, for an old man's paranoia. The light of his countenance could no longer be lifted up, and the careless man had long since passed Regret over in favour of Acceptance.

Is there anyone left to check the bridles, the bits? Do the golden horses wonder where their master is? The men of science, as they walk around my cell, they speak of a warming Earth, of holes in the Aegis of Zeus. Can it all be true?

The careless man asked himself a lot of questions each day. The thrill was not in answering them, but in the asking. In the old days, people had asked him questions, and he had received them all with gladness, happy at the varied flavours of every query, distinct and unalloyed.

He walked around, felt the warm cladding of his recent prison. No fixed abode, they'd said. He had wanted to laugh, tell them with a straight and honest face, hey, we are all wanderers. But something of his ancient cunning had stopped him, reminded him: hey yourself, don't you need a secure place to hide?

They had brought him to a place of lights and warmth and soft inquiring voices (he had enjoyed that familiar sensation), where men in blue worked with men in white, as in the temples long ago.

What's your name? the gentle man had asked.

Ask him if he's got any relatives, the stern woman had hissed.

The gentleman had tried English (insipid stuff), Spanish (rather entertaining), Italian (mellifluous, but spoken badly); in the end, he had decided to answer to Greek (not the jagged style of his youth, though).

The careless man felt Memory tug at him. O Mnemosyne, Mnemosyne, how art the flighty fallen! Releasing his recollection for a while, he fell back into the eternal past. There had been giants in the earth, then. He began to hear the ancient tongues. Why, he realised with some surprise, modern tongues are nowhere as elegant, nowhere as artfully crafted! So much for the intellect of man. They've given up communion for games.

Carefully, he disengaged Memory's fingers, came back to the immediate past with her hand lightly held in his. Yes, the gentle man had spoken in halting Greek, and he had answered. My name? Aristopoulos. A-R-I... yah. Yes? Oh, I was antique dealer... par don? No, I look quite young, yes. My family, they all look young on my mother's side. Yes, I have father and mother. Where are they, you ask me? Father still in Greece. Mother living somewhere else.

The stern woman looks at the paper where the gentle man scribbles. She whispers harshly, Ask this hard-luck kid what he does for a living now, what happened to his job.

Oh, recession nowadays. Not easy to live. Nobody afford antiques, now no money. I also no money. No place to live. Go unemployment office. (He smiled, remembering his imitation of a bewildered immigrant Greek youth.)

And then the gentle man had said, Mr Aristopoulos, we will give you a place to sleep in tonight, OK? and he had replied, Please, yes.

He spent the night in a barred room, a prison cell. And then, he had scented the Seeker behind the walls. It had walked into view, also dressed in blue, but a darker blue, wearing emblems of authority. Of course, it looked exactly as it was supposed to. The Seeker had walked straight to his cell as he ducked into the corner, hoping it was a mistake, and knowing it was not.

The Seeker unlocked his cell, looked at him as he sat in the corner.

Come, said the Seeker, and the steel-barred gate had begun to open (oh, slowly, creakily—needs oiling—and slightly grittily. Time was sluggish, and he needed it all. He would not be taken, would not go home even if the old man begged, threatened, commanded. A loud scream, blood, commotion. Shit, he killed the lieutenant!

Lieutenant? Hah, that thing hadn't even been human.

Then, weeks of incarceration, stupid tests (look at this black picture, what do you see; tell me about your father; why did you kill the lieutenant), measuring of his bodily functions. He had taken care to be completely mad, and they did not dispute it.

Now, they had locked him up, fed him through a door guarded by burly men each day. And he was happy with the walls painted in thick, cheap, peeling lead paint, for they hid his aura. He was marginally unhappy with the creature comforts (especially the abominable lack of good music; muzak, forsooth!)

But the time was upon him. Six-seventeen, today. He was prepared, waiting in the confines of his new locus. Soon, the Atlantic seaboard would receive the waves of the stormy sea, and he would hear 'old Triton blowing his wreathèd horn'.

In the distance came a booming so faint that no mortal heard it above the noise of the cosmos. Yet, it reached through the interstices of the void, trickled through his ears to trigger the ringing in his cochlea, the striking of an ancient hammer against an anvil of bone. The summons to obey his ancient duty, to bear his share of the long burden of his distant brothers, had arrived. Time. No time. And where, called the careless man, O where, Lord Helios, are the golden destriers of the sun?

Skyclad and powerful, in the dark just on the edge of dawn, Apollo smiled. Disdaining fire, he reached out with the immortal fingers of his soul, and, as in every other day in his handful of millennia, brought the sun to life.