Alphonso Daudet suffered from a form of syphilis that caused his back to waste away. (What’s with writers and venereal disease? Maupassant had syphilis. Tolstoy was treated for venereal disease when he was 22. Hasty Generalization?)

Julian Barnes writes:

His response, both personal and literary, to his condition was admirable. “Courage… means not scaring others,” Larkin wrote. Numerous witnesses attest to Daudet’s exemplary behaviour. His last secretary, André Ebner, remembered Daudet sitting with a friend one morning, eyes closed, barely able to speak, martyred by pain. The door-knob gently turned, but before Mme Daudet could enter, her husband was on his feet, the colour back in his cheeks, laughter in his eye, his voice filled with reassurance about his condition. When the door closed again Daudet collapsed back into his chair. “Suffering is nothing,” he murmured. “It’s all a matter of preventing those you love from suffering.”

This is a difficult, correct (and nowadays unfashionable) position. It led Daudet to familiarity with all the ironies and paradoxes of long-term suffering. Surrounded by those you love, and unwilling to inflict pain on them, you deliberately talk down your suffering, and thus deprive yourself of the comfort you crave. Next, you discover that your pain, while always new to you, quickly becomes repetitive and banal to your intimates: you fear becoming a symptoms bore. Meanwhile the anticipation of indignities to come – and the terror of disgusting those you love – makes suicide not just tempting but logical; the catch is that those you love have already insisted that you live, if only for them.

I’ve taken down some posts today because I didn’t feel comfortable about putting them online where people know my identity. But to continue indulging in my exhibitionistic tendencies, I’m going to start another blog where I’ll be anonymous and can put up more personal stuff like potential personal scandals, nude photos and sordid accounts of my sex life. Haha.

A truly frank, open, vulnerable confession and record but all anonymous. What a wonderful idea! Like a picture of a naked person with the face hidden. You can see all the important parts except the face.

I wish I wrote these words instead of Lin Yutang:

A sad, poetic touch is added to this intense love of life by the realization that this life we have is essentially mortal. Strange to say, this sad awareness of our mortality makes the Chinese scholar’s enjoyment of life all the more keen and intense. For if this earthly existence is all we have, we must try the harder to enjoy it while it lasts…As Sir Arthur Keith puts it…”For if men believe, as I do, that this present earth is the only heaven, they will strive all the more to make heaven of it.”

...Wang Hsichih wrote that…

...Now when people gather together to surmise life itself, some sit and talk and unburden their thoughts in the intimacy of a room, and some, overcome by a sentiment, soar forth into a world beyond bodily realities. Although we select our pleasures according to our inclinations – some noisy and rowdy, and others quiet and sedate – yet when we have found that which pleases us we are all happy and contented, to the extent of forgetting that we are growing old. And then, when satiety follows satisfaction, and with the change of circumstances, change also our whims and desires, there then arises a feeling of poignant regret. In the twinkling of an eye, the objects of our former pleasures have become things of the past, still compelling in us moods of regretful memory. Furthermore, although our lives may be long or short, eventually we all end in nothingness.

...Belief in our mortality, the sense that we are eventually going to crack up and be extinguished like the flame of a candle, I say, is a gloriously fine thing. It makes us sober; it makes us a little sad; and many of us it makes poetic. But above all, it makes it possible for us to make up our mind and arrange to live sensibly, truthfully and always with a sense of our own limitations. It gives peaces also, because true peace of mind comes from accepting the worst…

When Chinese poets and common people enjoy themselves, there is always a subconscious feeling that the joy is not going to last forever, as the Chinese most often say at the end of a happy reunion, “even the most gorgeous fair, with mat-sheds stretching over a thousand miles, must sooner or later come to an end.” The feast of life is the feast of Nebuchadnezzar. This feeling of the dreamlike quality of our existence invests the pagan with a kind of spirituality…

Deprived of immortality, the proposition of living becomes a simple proposition. It is this: that we human beings have limited span of life to live on this earth, rarely more than seventy years, and that therefore we have to arrange our lives so that we may live as happily as we can under a given set of circumstances…There is something mudane, something terribly earth-bound about it, and man proceeds to work with a dogged commonsense, very much in the spirit of what George Satanyana calls “animal faith.” With this animal faith, taking life as it is, we made a shrewd guess, without Darwin’s aid as to our essential kindship with animals. It made us therefore, cling to life – the life of the instinct and the life of the senses – on the belief that, as we are all animals, we can be truly happy only when all our normal instincts are satisfied normally. This applies to the enjoyment of life in all its aspects.

As part of my project of organizing my life and working towards resolutions 3 and 4, I bought a notebook to record down all the errands I need to run.

Now, I have three notebooks that I always carry around. One notebook for writing down random ideas, observations, quotes and anything that catches my fancy. Another notebook for keeping track of my expenditure (and boy I’m starting to be shocked by how much I’ve been spending. I could have saved a small fortune by now. But I’m taking action to change now.). And another notebook for keeping track of my errands and taking down notes of stuff I want to remember.

Despite having slept only 1.5 hours today, I went to meet Sonny. I sent him a text message last night and wanted to bail out on him today because I felt too tired. When he replied that he cancelled two appointments so he could meet me, I could not but change my mind and turn up for our appointment today. In his words “Friendship comes first” and he had missed the first rehearsal and a photoshoot for the next World-In-Theatre play so we could meet. I was honoured and touched. If he could sacrifice committments, I could also sacrifice rest.

Well, I was glad I met him. We relaxed, swam and chatted in the children’s water playground area, jacuzzi and pool of his Tanjong Rhu condominium. I sought his views on some personal problems. No wonder he always seems so humourless with me in person but so humourous over email, I realised it was because I always brought up serious humourless topics during our conversations!

During the conversation, I found out that like me, Sonny realised late (later than me) that the world does not operate rationally and that rationality is not a value shared by the majority of the world.

Digression

I am suddenly reminded of a passage by Raymond Smullyan in his This Book Needs No Title:

A Paradoxical Rationalist

Once there was a man who was constantly and irritatingly rational. when asked, “Why are you so rational?” he replied: “Because it is irrational to be so rational. Basically I am irrational – I love irrationality; the more the better. The most irrational thing I can do is to be as rational as I am. That is the reason I am so rational.”

Back to Sonny

Back to Sonny. He also told me a story about living for the moment. He knew a couple who waited till their kids were 18 years old before planning for their round the world trip. A few weeks before their kids turned 18, the wife died of an asthma attack. The moral of the story: Don’t wait to do what you want to do.

We had mee siam after our swim and I showed Sonny how to set up a blog. It was really the good life: good conversation, exercise, and good food when hungry. Sonny’s wife, Serena, is a wonderful cook. Thanks for sharing the good life with me, Sonny!

Some History

I met Sonny Lim in 1997 during an Asia In Theatre performance of Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha. William Teo (who incidentally was also Lee Hsien Loong’s barber) was the director of the play and Sonny Lim was the script writer. At that time, Siddhartha was my favourite book and I never had a favourite book till then. I had stayed back after the play to give my two cents on what I think about the play. That was one of the few times I was glad to have opened my mouth because that led to a friendship with Sonny.

The last time I met Sonny was on 31 May 2005, when he just moved to his new Tanjong Rhu condominium. I know the date because he wrote it on a book he gave me. It was a book on William Teo. Sonny did not want to give the book to someone whom it would be wasted on and he felt that the book would not be wasted on me and that I would understand it. Earlier on during dinner, we had a little intellectual exchange of views on what I felt was lacking in Asia In Theatre and World-In-Theatre performances and he wanted me to read the book to understand William’s views better. I finished the book that night. It left an impression on me. Perhaps, I’ll write more on the book another time…Just like I was supposed to watch a short film starring Sonny and write a review on it some years back…I still want to do that! The spirit is willing but I keep procrastinating.

To read:

1. Barbara Partee’s personal account of the development of formal semantics;
2. Her article on Montague Grammar;
3. Her two page biography of Richard Montague; and
4. In Memoriam by Furth, Chang and Church.

Items 1 and 3 via Semantics archive.

Can’t believe the weekend is here. Slept till 3 p.m. today. Been so tired it’s affecting my libido (That normally indicates to me how fatigued or depressed I am). Going out daily for the past two weeks. No time to do my shit at home. I was planning to go for a swim and get a tan but since I have so much undone stuff at home, I’m gonna stay home and pack. Will be moving out of Dunearn Road hopefully during the middle of next month. April is going to be such a mad month, with work, moving out of Dunearn Road to some temporary shelter/holding place, HDB upgrading at Clementi and then moving back to my home in Clementi.

But at least the past two weeks have been good for me on the personal front. Have been keeping to New Year Resolutions 13 and 14. Was just at the beach again till 5 this morning and was also at the beach last Saturday.

I’ll be attending the 10 year ACJC 1995 cohort reunion dinner later at Raffles Town Club. Why? Because I hope it’ll be fun and a morbid sense of curiosity compels me to see how it’ll be like and how some of the people I used to go to school with 10 years ago have turned out (I’m thinking of stories like how some depraved gangster has turned into a pastor or some holy boy has turn into a pornstar or adult site webmaster kinda metamorphoses). I may even meet nice people I’ve forgotten about but would like to keep in touch with. Perhaps I’m maschoistic, subjecting myself to a public stock take of where I am now since 10 years ago. I’m quite relieved I’ve got a proper and minimally respectable job as a civil servant. Jobs are really handy for relieving anxiety in public stocktaking situations like this.

Just got home from my bike lesson at Ubi. Wah lau eh, I still haven’t cleared my first practical bike lesson after going for it three times. Instructor Aziz said I need to improve my cornering and speed control. I was doing the figure of 8 too slowly. At least I’m getting better.

Today, I’ve learnt these things:

• Release the throttle before changing gear or slowing down.
• When braking at high speed, release throttle, use both front and rear brakes, press the clutch and shift down gear, release the clutch and then the brakes.
• When braking at slow speed, e.g. 1st gear, press the clutch first, then the brakes.
• When doing the figure of 8, keep the throttle constant and use only the rear brakes.
• Brake slowly in a steady continuous manner. No need to jam brakes on the circuit.
• When coming to a stop, look in front and lean your weight slightly to the left.