Spira dear,

A strange day today, the weather hot and heavy as ever my childhood drought-days were, except I am displaced, nowhere near my native soil, and parched as hell. What is New York City to some small town (pretender to a city) called Benoni? (Son of my Sorrow: I remember learning the dread meaning of this epithet. Who in god’s name would call a place by such a name and expect to thrive, to celebrate life and propagation of life?)

This time last year, I had just left Buenos Aires — Recoleta is a memory now, this image taken in the cemetery there: this whispering woman, silencing us all as tears escape her. She embodies silent suffering; stoical loss. There is something very Afrikaans in that. Whatever happened to keening, mourning that can be heard across land and sea? Do the dead not deserve such a loud eulogy? And I wonder: what is her story?

This week I find myself cooking dishes my father made: potato and green beans with onion, drowned in white pepper. The taste of this is forever Sunday dinner. I explore Babotie, tomato-and-onion salad, pineapple upsidedown cake; these are for my mother, my grandmother, my aunts, who loved my father and saw in him a brave and irreverent man, full of pranks and piss and vinegar and innocent laughter.

So I chose this image for Dad’s birthday: he would have been 89 today. Instead, at 74 his blood consumed him; he starved, in a sense, to death. Starved of company, of love, of adventure, of happiness. What strange relationships are marriages, intense partnerships, life-long commitments. Even though I too have committed to something that I hope lasts my lifetime, I can see how tenuous such promises are. It’s unreasonable to assume a person can fulfill you for the rest of your lives, or theirs. So why do we do it?

Once, travelling in the Philippines, I met a German man who was convinced the younger couples were who got together, the better their chances of growing together. He assumed growth at an equal rate. What of those who grow in different directions, or at a different pace? What of those who experience some kind of enlightenment not related to their union? What then?

This is a bridge I will build when I have to, if I have to. In the meantime, I am grateful once more (and forever) for the connection we share that has transcended time and some kinds of space …

xxx

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One looks down from the Brooklyn Bridge on a spot of foam or a little lake of gasoline or a broken splinter or an empty scow; the world goes by upside down with pain and light devouring the innards, the sides of flesh bursting, the spears pressing in against the cartilage, the very armature of the body floating off into nothingness.

– Black Spring, Henry Miller

Info

Images taken on May 24, 2008, on the 125th anniversary of the bridge’s opening in 1883.

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(And what if the price comes back down? Not a hope in hell, I hear you cry! Once the US public is used to paying prices higher than they have ever paid, the government will just go with it…)

Gas or gun?

But here’s a real doozy: $250 free gas, or a certificate to pick up your spanking-new handgun? This is a deal being offered in Butler, Missouri. Here’s the scary thing. Walter Moore, from Max Motors, claims 80% of the buyers are turning down the free gas and taking the gun instead. It’s all ok of course: those certificate-holders are subject to the routine background check that’s done on all applicants for small arms licenses. And look how well that’s gone, aside from the odd school massacre…

If it isn’t a choice between guns or gas when you buy your new vehicle, it may just be that you have to do without the next generation Ford monster, er, motor. And all because there is a trend (gasp!) of folks actually downsizing their SUVs to more economically sized cars — after all, those pesky Europeans somehow seem to manage, even the soccer moms. (There must be soccer moms in Europe, right? Or did the US invent soccer too?)

Never mind that Europeans and their children are, shall we say, often somewhat trimmer than their American cousins, and for decades now Euros have been paying nearly twice the price for their fuel compared to US consumers.

Ford focuses on economy drive

So anyway, Ford is cutting production in North America in an attempt to break even in 2009, and maybe turn a profit in 2010, which is what Ford was aiming for next year. It’s primarily pickups and SUVs which will be affected since sales have dropped off more than expected.

C’mon people — what were you thinking? The Iraq war was going to bring down gas prices? Hybrid would only catch on in a few years? Oil is a renewable resource? How could you not see this coming? Just over a year ago, reported US sales of hybrids were up 26%. Last year in November, sales of hybrids in the US had risen 82% year-on-year. You have the Escape Hybrid (pictured below) — what have you been doing with it? (for one example of Ford losing the faith, see below…)

Ah but, you see, it’s about big fat profit margins, and the smaller Ford vehicles just don’t deliver:

The smaller cars for which it will ramp up production — Ford Focus, Fusion, Edge and Escape, the Mercury Milan and Mariner, as well as the Lincoln MKZ and Lincoln MKX — generally have lower prices and profit margins than the light truck models for which it is cutting production, such as the F-Series pickup, still the nation’s best selling vehicle.

— Ford: Fewer trucks, more losses by Chris Isidore for CNN money

So could it be that US automobile of the future will be smarter, smaller and cleaner? Cheaper? Better designed? I suppose anything is possible … once US car manufacturers get a little more can-do instead of just griping that efficiency is too expensive. The other problem is a half-hearted approach where auto companies are producing hybrids that get terrible mileage. Please — do it right or don’t do it at all.

So who are the good guys?

The good guys

In 2005, Wired’s Hacking the Hybrid made mention of a few innovators. Check these out:

Plug in America: This group advocates the use of plug-in cars, trucks and SUVs powered by cleaner, cheaper, domestic electricity. Up to this year, the organization had been a network of individuals who were proponents and users of electric vehicles and led several successful campaigns preventing the destruction of 1,000 of 5,000 production electric cars. One of the companies which held off crushing the cars as a result of joint efforts, was Ford:

In August of 2004, the Ford Norway headquarters was taken over by Greenpeace. 300 Th!nk City electric cars were saved! This reversed a decision by Ford who had purchased the EV maker in 1999. Ford had planned to close the small company and destroy remaining Th!nk City cars. After the activism, Ford agreed to send EVs back to Norway, not to the crusher. Ford also agreed to sell the electric car company to Norwegian buyers, so that the company could remain in the EV business.

— Plug in America website

In January Plug In America became a California Non-Profit Corporation to raise public awareness of and to advocate for plug-in transportation.

Hybrid Consortium: Component Suppliers make up the membership of the Plug-In Hybrid Development Consortium. These suppliers co-operate to accelerate the commercial production of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) with compatible technologies and innovative solutions that make affordable plug-in hybrids possible.

CalCars: The California Cars Initiative is a non-profit in Palo Alto made up of a bunch of entrepreneurs, engineers, environmentalists and consumers who are working to promote high-performance, clean hybrid cars and so build demand for the vehicles.

What can the little people do?

For a start, we can keep up to date with green developments. How else would we know that for around $4,000, you can convert your existing gas guzzler into a hybrid? Connecticut outfit Poulsen Hybrid will provide the kit and suggest an authorized installer or if you’re handy that way, you can install it yourself: there are instructions on their website. Bring it on — we want more of these kind of initiatives. Hybrid cars aren’t going to build themselves while the fat cats are sitting pretty.

In the meantime, we can subscribe to Hybrid Cars put out by tireless proponents of clean green vehicles, Bradley Berman (whose articles have appeared in BusinessWeek, the New York Times and other publications) and his team.

And of course, we can always start our own cooperatives, consortia and organizations for the furtherment of clean transportation!

Images

- Chrysler Town and Country vehicle from this wikipedia page
- Screenshot of the Guns or Gas ad unashamedly grabbed from the Max Motors website. Find your own link — I’m not playing for their team
- Ford Escape Hybrid from this wikipedia page
- logos for the good guys captured from the named and linked websites

See also

Tickets for the Gas Guzzlers: Your 20-minute crash course in driving green, number 5 in the series b radical, the seat of armchair activism

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The bigger the issue, the more money and politics and human lives it involves, it seems to me, the less the chances are of the Right Thing being done.

Some background to the conversation: everyone (sane) is up in arms about no aid being allowed into Myanmar by its powers-that-be. Official figures released by that military government on Friday were 78,000 dead, 55,917 missing and 19,359 injured. On May 6, 2008, the Burma government representation in New York formally asked the United Nations for help. But the junta seems to be keeping what aid does reach those shores, for itself.

Where’s the big stick?

Contrary to what one would imagine, no-one is getting out the big guns and forcing the military leaders to allow aid to the Burmese people. No. It seems that’s only done for oil and gas. On the subject of which, the US and France could potentially have some leverage directly against the junta, if only they would use it:

There has been some discussion, a second senior administration official said, of whether the United States and France should take measures against Chevron and the French oil and gas company Total for their work on a natural gas pipeline in southern Myanmar, from which the military junta derives much of its wealth. American sanctions against Myanmar ban most companies from working there, but Chevron owns a 28 percent stake in the pipeline, which is operated by Total.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that so far, talk of suspending Chevron’s payments to Myanmar, formerly Burma, had not gone very far.

— New York Times, U.S. Frustrated by Myanmar Junta’s Aid Limits by Helene Cooper and Thom Shanker, Saturday May 17, 2008 (login may be required to read this)

China seems to have the US and its allies dancing on a string:

The United States and its close European allies had considered requesting United Nations authorization for a relief mission even without approval of the military authorities in Myanmar. But they dropped the plan after it became clear that China would veto any Security Council resolution calling for “humanitarian intervention” in Myanmar.

— New York Times, see above

This, from the country which requested and is receiving humanitarian help to deal with its own earthquake crisis, which has resulted in 28,881 confirmed dead (the figure from Beijing as of this morning) with the figure expected to rise. At least 198,347 people are injured, 15,858 critically. These figures are less than half of what has been recorded to date in Myanmar, and without aid, numbers of dead from exposure, disease, untreated injury, thirst and starvation are going to sky-rocket up to 1.5 million or more.

R2P — ineffectual little stick

WTF? The Bush administration of (let me get this right) the leading country in the free world, is letting China call the shots? Two founding members of the UN are on opposite sides of the fence while in the meantime thousands and thousands of people are dying. Trudy Rubin asks,

So should, or can, U.N. member states force the junta to accept the world’s outstretched hand?

Ironically, U.N. members adopted a concept back in fall 2005 that would seem to answer that question. At the urging of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the General Assembly endorsed the following principle: The international community has a “responsibility to protect” civilians when their governments can’t or won’t stop genocide or crimes against humanity — even if this means violating a country’s national sovereignty.

This concept, known variously as “humanitarian intervention” or by the abbreviation “R2P,” has gone nowhere. It has not proved useful in dealing with Darfur. Authoritarian regimes view R2P as a potential cover for western military efforts at regime change.

But if it ever had any relevance, the concept ought to apply to the horrific situation in Myanmar. The issue at hand is not changing the country’s regime (which has kept Nobel-prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for 16 years after voiding 1990 elections). The issue is saving lives; the junta’s stonewalling could create a humanitarian catastrophe.

— The Post Bulletin, Why can’t the U.N. be more forceful for Myanmar’s humanitarian needs? by Trudy Rubin, May 14, 2008

So apparently R2P is a very small stick with which to lightly smack the natives into submission (this gentlefolk, is known as irony; calm yourselves), and achieves next to nothing. Especially when it’s not applied.

Diplomatic morality

Robert Kaplan has this to say about why humanitarian intervention is a difficult option:

[…] China — along with India, Thailand and, to a lesser extent, Singapore — has been put in a very uncomfortable diplomatic situation. China and India are invested in port enlargement and energy deals with Myanmar. Thailand’s democratic government has moved closer to the junta for the sake of logging and other business ventures. Singapore, a city-state that must get along with everybody in the region, is suspected of acting as a banker for the Burmese generals. All these countries quietly resent the ineffectual moral absolutes with which the United States, a half a world away, approaches Myanmar.

Nonetheless, the disaster represents an opportunity for Washington. By just threatening intervention, the United States puts pressure on Beijing, New Delhi and Bangkok to, in turn, pressure the Burmese generals to open their country to a full-fledged foreign relief effort. We could do a lot of good merely by holding out the possibility of an invasion.

The other challenge we face lies within Myanmar. Because a humanitarian invasion could ultimately lead to the regime’s collapse, we would have to accept significant responsibility for the aftermath. And just as the collapse of the Berlin Wall was not supposed to lead to ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia, and the liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussein was not supposed to lead to civil war, the fall of the junta would not be meant to lead to the collapse of the Burmese state. But it might.

[…]

It seems like a simple moral decision: help the survivors of the cyclone. But liberating Iraq from an Arab Stalin also seemed simple and moral. (And it might have been, had we planned for the aftermath.) Sending in marines and sailors is the easy part; but make no mistake, the very act of our invasion could land us with the responsibility for fixing Burma afterward.

— New York Times, Aid at the Point of a Gun by Robert Kaplan, May 14, 2008

Well, moral is one of those words that gets bandied about, and Kaplan does make a good point in referring to ineffectual moral absolutes with which the United States, a half a world away, approaches Myanmar. And by the by, that Arab Stalin Saddam Hussein, was put into power by the US in the first place (how’s that for moral?):

Another very good example of a CIA-organized regime change was a coup in 1963 that employed political assassination, mass imprisonment, torture and murder. This was the military coup that first brought Saddam Hussein’s beloved Ba’ath Party to power in Iraq. At the time, Richard Helms was Director for Plans at the CIA. That is the top CIA position responsible for covert actions, like organizing coups. Helms served in that capacity until 1966, when he was made Director.

— Regime Change: How the CIA put Saddam’s Party in Power by Richard Sanders, October 24, 2002

All too often we hear politicians and diplomats claiming a solution “isn’t simple” and claiming that delicate diplomatic balances will be disturbed. And yet, the approach used to “liberate” Iraq looked good on paper; as Kaplan says, it was not supposed to lead to civil war and according to Bush on May 1, 2003, it was Mission Accomplished. Who then is oversimplifying?

[M]y fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.

Here be dragons

The Iraq war is largely about oil; it doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out. Myanmar, well; on one hand, the US just can’t afford another long-term commitment of the kind Kaplan mentions, taking responsibility for a country which might descend into civil war. Especially not with Afghanistan still US-occupied and indications that Iran is the next target of US “intervention”.

Then there are the Chinese who also need help from the US, and whom the US doesn’t want to alienate further — after all, how much of the US economy is dependent on Chinese labour and trade?

In October 2007, Mr Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve Chairman, warned of the coming sea change in the global economy when “the glory days of low-cost imports from China were over.”

Coming on top of growing financial turmoil, mortgage crisis and recession, the threat of inflation should be traumatic for an average US consumer already over laden with housing and credit card debts. Further, the dependence on Chinese imports for an array of consumer products ranging from footwear, apparel, clothing and toys to household items is near total.

Data suggest that Chinese imports account for 7.5 per cent of consumer spending in the US. On individual items like toys and footwear, the dependence is over 80 per cent. On clothing, it is around 40 per cent. On average, it could result in an increase of 10 per cent in consumer prices. With inflation rate running at 4.1 per cent in 2007, up from 2.5 per cent in 2006, the burden could be onerous.

— K Subramanian for The Hindu Business Line February 16, 2008

And of course there’s the recent touchiness to do with that dang Olympic torch and all the protests it attracted on its journey across the world; protests which sought to highlight the politics of Beijing, home to the next Olympic battleground, with regard to Tibet, human rights abuses and little things like that:

As the sponsors of the Olympics have learned to their cost, while consumer- and shareholder-activists in the West demand they take a stand against perceived Chinese abuses, in China itself firms’ partners and customers are all too ready to take offence. Western policymakers also face a difficult balancing act. They need to recognise that China has come a long way very quickly, and offers its citizens new opportunities and even new freedoms, though these are still far short of what would constitute democracy.

Yet that does not mean they should pander to China’s pride. Western leaders have a duty to raise concerns about human rights, Tibet and other “sensitive” subjects. They do not need to resign themselves to ineffectiveness: up to a point, pressure works: China has been modestly helpful over Myanmar, North Korea and Sudan. It has even agreed to reopen talks with the Dalai Lama’s representatives. This has happened because of, not despite, criticism from abroad.

— Angry China in The Economist, May 1, 2008

But see what The China Vortex blog post had to say about the clumsy Western approach to China. The New Voice makes a point about the arrogance of the West in assuming it is a veritable cornucopia of solutions, despite being responsible for a healthy share of problems.

It seems to me it’s all about money, trade and who gets what how cheaply from whom, in varying degrees. To hold onto that ultimate narcotic, power those in power too often excuse immoral actions with old chestnut, “the sacrifice of the few to save the many”. But it’s the many who are dying to keep the few rich and powerful.

So who will take responsibility and do the Right Thing, get aid to the Myanmar many who need it the most?

Reading

- Humanitarian Information Centre for Myanmar
- Final report (.pdf) from the International Conference on Preventing Mass Atrocities: Asian Perspectives on R2P (Responsibility to Protect), February 12, 2008

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Last year, Toshikatsu Matsuoka, the sitting Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan hanged himself on 28 May 2007, hours before he was to face questioning in the Diet over a series of scandals in his political career.

In the late 1980s after the economic bubble burst, the suicide rate among the working age population rose sharply. There was a further surge in 1998, and despite recent economic recovery, more than 30,000 people a year are killing themselves in Japan. Excessive pressure and bullying at school, unemployment, illness and bankruptcy are cited as some of the major causes.

There is none of the condemnation of Christianity that labels suicide an unforgiveable sin in that country; in past times, the act was even regarded as one of taking an honourable action to end or escape an untenable situation. These days there are more intervention and support services available for suicidal people.

However, the less condemnative attitude and history of the act within the culture is perhaps reflected in the Japanese language: here are seven Japanese words used to describe suicide in some of its variations.

Not being a Japanese language speaker, there are bound to be nuances in the various words below of which I am unaware and it’s possible I have misinterpreted one or other of the terms below. I apologise in advance for any error or oversight below and I welcome corrections.

1. Jisatu

Jisatsu seems to be the usual (informal) Japanese word for suicide. Karo-jisatsu is said to be the more specific term for suicide by overwork or, apparently less commonly used, anxiety.

Jisatsu should not be confused with Karōshi, which refers to death from overwork usually heart attack or stroke caused by stress. The term came into use in the late 1980s during the Bubble Economy when increasing numbers of executives with no previous medical problems died in their prime.

2. Hara-kiri or Seppuku

Hara-kiri was a social class bound privilege given only to samurai in order to protect them from being killed by executioners. In formal Japanese language, this act of ritual suicide is referred to as seppuku.

3. Jigai

The word jigai means something akin to self-harm, but is understood to mean fatal self-harm.

As far as I can tell the word, akin to seppuku, often refers to suicide by women but can also be applied to suicide by men, including samurai. Historically, jigai was often done to preserve honor if a military defeat was imminent. For example a woman would kill herself to escape being raped.

When practised by women, to maintain dignity in and after death, the jugular was cut.

4. Jiketsu

Jiketsu can mean resignation (from a post), or self-determination (n,vs) but also refers to suicide, self-destruction; self-annihilation. It refers to suicide with motive, manner, place, timing specifically in mind. To call someone’s suicide jiketsu is to express that the act is seen as heroic. Shûdan jiketsu is associated with compulsory group suicide.

5. Shinjyuu

Shinjyuu is the more usual word used to describe suicide committed between or among people who have a relationship of one kind or another, including familial. It is applied to from lovers’ suicide, from which Japan developed the genre of suicide literature.

Boshi-shinjyu refers to mother-child suicide and Ikka-shinnjyu, the suicide of an entire family.

6. Shinjū

Shinju can mean several things in Japanese: a euphemism to refer to the female breast, and has been thought to refer to breast bondage.

However, Shinjū is the word for double suicide, often referring to simultaneous suicides of two lovers whose ninjo, personal feelings, love for one another, are at odds with giri, social conventions or familial obligations.

Double suicide is an important theme of the Bunraku or puppet theatre repertory, for example The story of the Forty-Seven Ronin.

7. Kamikaze and Shinpū

Kamikaze in Japanese is literally God-wind, spirit-wind, or divinity-wind; the common translation is generally divine wind. In English the word usually refers to the suicide attacks by Japanese military pilots against western war (Allied) ships in World War II.

The Japanese semi-officially used the word Shinpū (also meaning divine wind) for their suicide units.

Images

- image of Onodera Junai’s wife (one of the 47 ronin) preparing for jigai, found here on wikipedia released under the CeCILL license
- image of Sanbaso Bunraku puppet at the Tonda Puppet Troupe puppet hall in November of 2006 found on here on wikipedia, taken by Shinobo and released into the public domain
- image of Akashi Gidayu writing his death poem before committing Seppuku, found here on wikipedia and released into the public domain

References and reading

- Karoshi and Karojisatsu in Japan by Sugio Furuya
- Women Warriors in Japan by Ellis Amdur
- The Dying Game: Suicide in Modern Japanese Literature by Wendy Jones Nakanishi
- The Battle of Okinawa in Japanese History Books, by Koji Taira
- Suicide as Japan’s major export? A note on Japanese Suicide Culture by Dr Kayoko Ueno (Sociology)
- How is suicide different in Japan?, a November 2007 paper from the University of Tokyo
- Bullying and illness blamed as thousands take their own lives, Times Online, June 9, 2007

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Dearest Spira

It’s a ragged morning. I am thinking of Chinatown, San Francisco, with you, that oriental connection that drums us. Today the pounding is deafening, echoing from across the Himalayas. Any minute I think the day may quake, fold in on itself. How can it not, when there are thousands upon thousands swallowed by the ground, broken, lost? All our pillage and plunder of this Earth’s gifts demands a price: the sins of the parents are not particular over which culture they cast their shadows. We should not be surprised.

Gaia is not alone in keeping account; all the guardians of soil and sea and sky have their tallies. Beware, the Dragon Kings are stirring over China; there is a drenching afoot to fill the fresh chasms. Already Burma is drowning her children in the tears of so many deities. Now it is the turn of Tu Di Gong to charge us for our sins. The siblingless have been taken in a country where the Only Child is born by government decree. A man, a woman come together for love (perhaps), and procreate. They have one chance.

Sometimes with enough paperwork, enough money, enough luck, another soul is permitted to enter that nutshell family. But for most, it is not like this. They have one chance, and so they pour all their wishes into that one new being. It is a wonder those solitary buds do not burst from all the wanting, pushing inside to grow them.

The population minister has praised this frugality of birth, celebrating how many lives have not seen the light of day: resources will be plentiful; the majority will not be left wanting. But the mourning hearts of mothers and fathers are shrivelling and black with loss. This week, 900 Only Children were buried under the weight of too much wanting. How many will see the light of day again?

Ah Spira… Each of us has lost children to our worlds. Unconceived, unborn, untouched: they are no less a loss.

xxx

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This morning is sun-drenched,
buildings afire with orange light.
New York city is peaceful beneath clear skies,
the hum and thrum of daily life
just beginning.

Here, we are not dying
by the thousand.

On the other side of the world
corpses lie rotting on river banks.
Ten days ago
entire villages were wiped out by Cyclone Nargis.

Who is left to bury the dead?

This is Burma,
Myanmar,
Deathtrap.

Ten days on
the Burmese (military) government
hoards supplies meant to save the survivors.

After all the floods,
there is no water to keep them alive.
More rain is coming; death
still sits in the skies.

Ten days on
the Burmese (military) government
still gags and blinds media, blocks aid, closes ranks.

They do not care to see the unburied dead.
It is believed that the government
does not grasp the extent
of the crisis.

I do not believe this. The stench of death
reaches every nostril.

To date, 62,000 have died.
More than a third are children.

Ten days on
is when disease creeps in,
taking more souls, making more orphans.

If they live that long.

Aung San Suu Kyi is tethered to her
(now damaged) house
by a body of army rulers
still afraid of this tiny woman
after so many decades.

She has been forbidden from helping cyclone victims.

Ten days on
ships sit off the Burmese coast
laden with fresh food and water
that cannot reach their intended.

Aircraft wait on runways, heavy with packages
that hold dry food, concentrated nutrients,
the best our technology has to offer
to save lives.

Volunteers are held up at borders,
forced to wait, desperate and furious;
some are close enough to smell decaying flesh.

Why is so much military power on call
for the sake of oil
and so little to deliver food?

Info

Image taken in New York, in April this year. The sculpture is found at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, on 2nd Ave. Called Sfera con sfera, A Sphere with a sphere, the work is by Arnaldo Pomodoro and was a gift from Italy to the United Nations in 1996.

It is one in a series of Sphere sculptures by the artist which are displayed at various locations around the world, including at the Vatican Museums; Trinity College, Dublin; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.; and the University of California, Berkeley. In Italy, the Sphere at Pesaro which the locals call Palla di Pomodoro, Pomodoro’s Ball, is one of his most famous in the series.

- You can see more about artwork owned by the UN at United Nations Art collection.

See also

Like a pearl: Aung San Suu Kyi turns 61

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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
by Mark Haddon

MARK HADDON did not start out to write a book about autism or Asperger’s Syndrome. In fact, nowhere in the story is Asperger’s mentioned: the only references to the condition are usually found in the blurb on the back of the novel. Haddon says he would just as soon have no label attached to the story.

The principle character, 15-year-old Christopher, tells readers everything they need to draw their own conclusions — and those conclusions can vary widely. One of Haddon’s most treasured (if somewhat naive) reactions from a publisher (who did not end up publishing the book) was, “Oh, I didn’t realise there was anything wrong with Christopher.”

There is a little of Haddon in Christopher; Haddon at that age, the way he would see things, his facility with mathematics and love of puzzles. Haddon presents the other characters in the book through Christopher’s austere observations; the reader fleshes out the characters and so experiences the novel uniquely. Reactions vary, some weeping from page one, others finding the humour that Haddon saw and wrote. Some readers identify more with the teen than his supporting cast, feeling he is normal in an abnormal world.

The book started out with a dog killed in a bizarre way, and Haddon was looking for the right voice to tell the story as he wanted. That voice came from a particular way of seeing the world: the way that Asperger’s enables the brain to process and see.

In these extracts, Christopher is being questioned by police who believe he is responsible for killing the dog. Here we get insight into how his mind works and how he deals with different types of information: outside stimulus not under his control versus the way he explains the world to himself, which is within his control:

He was asking too many questions and he was asking them too quickly. They were stacking up in my head like loaves in the factory where Uncle Terry works. The factory is a bakery and he operates the slicing machines. And sometimes the slicer is not working fast enough but the bread keeps coming and there is a blockage. I sometimes think of my mind as a machine, but not always as a bread-slicing machine. It makes it easier to explain to other people what is going on inside it.

The policeman said, ‘I am going to ask you once again…’

I rolled back onto the lawn and pressed my forehead to the ground again and made the noise that Father calls groaning. I make this noise when there is too much information coming into my head from the outside world. It is like when you are upset and you hold the radio against your ear and you tune it halfway between two stations so that all you get is white noise and then you turn the volume right up so that this is all you can hear and then you know you are safe because you cannot hear anything else.

[…]

The police car smelt of hot plastic and aftershave and take-away chips.

I watched the sky as we drove towards the town centre. It was a clear night and you could see the Milky Way.

Some people think the Milky Way is a long line of stars, but it isn’t. Our galaxy is a huge disc of stars millions of light years across and the solar system is somewhere near the outside edge of the disc.

When you look in direction A, at 90º to the disc, you don’t see many stars. But when you look in direction B, you see lots more stars because you are looking into the main body of the galaxy, and because the galaxy is a disc you see a stripe of stars.

And then I thought about how, for a long time scientists were puzzled by the fact that the sky is dark at night, even though there are billions of stars in the universe and there must be stars in every direction you look, so that the sky should be full of starlight because there is very little in the way to stop the light reaching earth.

Then they worked out that the universe was expanding, that the stars were all rushing away from one another after the Big Bang, and the further the stars were away from us the faster they were moving, some of them nearly as fast as the speed of light, which was why their light never reached us.

I like this fact. It is something you can work out in your own mind just by looking at the sky above your head at night and thinking without having to ask anyone.

And when the universe has finished exploding all the stars will slow down, like a ball that has been thrown into the air, and they will come to a halt and they will all begin to fall towards the centre of the universe again. And then there will be nothing to stop us seeing all the stars in the world because they will all be moving towards us, gradually faster and faster, and we will know that the world is going to end soon because when we look up into the sky at night there will be no darkness, just the blazing light of billions and billions of stars, all falling.

The Author

When Mark Haddon received his M.Sc. in English Literature from Edinburgh University decades ago he probably couldn’t have anticipated the varied route he would take as he grew into writing. And yet, it’s unsurprising as he was endlessly curious about and fascinated by all manner of subject matter as a child, and his first books were for children.

In his early 20s he worked for a while with physically and mentally disabled children and adults, some of whom he feels in retrospect were autistic. This sometimes comes up in connection with this, the first novel he wrote aimed at adults (but ultimately marketed to children as well). But Haddon points out that although his work makes reference to disabilities, for him it’s a part of our landscape, our day-to-day life, and a lens that shows people in an different light.

He teaches creative writing for the Arvon Foundation and at one stage, also for Oxford University. He is as much a visual artist, illustrating and painting, as a writer of all things including poetry, radio drama, tv scripts and articles for periodicals.

Reading

- Interview with Mark Haddon about the writing of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
- Haddon writes about writing for Guardian Books
- The author’s website
- Short, slightly outdated bio
- Latest novel, A Spot of Bother, about a “dignified man trying to go insane politely”.

See also

- Autism Awareness Day
- | To build a wailing wall |, which has an extract from Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees demonstrating the emotional hypersensitivity of one of the characters, May

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Part Three

Part Four

Filming for Dreams money can buy, sounds of Cibella, David Piper’s moustache and rolling credits, mainly. But for the sake of closure…

But so that you’re not left unfulfilled, there’s also the music video for Bathtime in Clerkenwell below! Yay!

Bathtime in Clerkenwelll

Reading

- All about Hans Richter’s original film Dreams That Money Can Buy. And you can watch the full film from Google video

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I LOVE the thought that some day, somewhere, I may walk into a facility which has barely recognisable variations on our regular porcelain thrones, faucets in unusual places, lubrication stations, and possibly mirrors where one might least expect them.

No, I’m not dreaming of a seedy motel somewhere off Route 66, but interspecies (possibly intersentient) restrooms. I love that I might have a reason to enter such a place; after all, where on earth in the universe might I be when the call of nature drives me to negotiate such a strangely marked portal?

In any event, some folks are well primed for such eventualities. These signs (above) are found at Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, in the Experience Music Project (pictured below), Seattle, WA (although I suspect the facilities may still be sadly conventional, for my taste anyway. The world’s just not ready. Sigh).

The Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame is located inside architect Frank Gehry’s landmark Experience Music Project building at the base of the Space Needle in Seattle, Washington, in the United States. It was founded by Paul Allen (yes, the co-founder of that Evil Empire, Microsoft) and Jody Patton and opened to the public on June 18, 2004.

The Hall of Fame moved from Kansas City, Missouri to Seattle that year and became part of the Science Fiction Museum. Originally only authors were eligible for inclusion but in 2005, the Hall of Fame was expanded to include media outside the literary. It had already excluded fantasy authors; the next step was to reduce the number of writers honored each year from four to one. Now nominations and inductions are made in four categories: Film, Literature, Media, and Open.

The museum is divided into several galleries, each with a common theme, e.g. Fantastic Voyages and Brave New Worlds. Related memorabilia like first editions of books, movie props and models are amongst the materials displayed.

Members of the museum’s advisory board include Steven Spielberg, Ray Bradbury, James Cameron, George Lucas (pictured below), and the late Arthur C Clarke. Among its collection you’ll find Captain Kirk’s command chair from Star Trek, the B9 robot from Lost in Space, and the dome from the film Silent Running.

Info

- Thanks to Ricardo Martin for permission to use his flickr images of the restroom signs (top)
- Some text taken about the museum from this wikipedia entry as is
the original image of the Experience Music Project used above, posted by user Cacophony to the site under a GNU Free Documentation license
- Original image of George Lucas taken by Joey Gannon Pittsburgh, PA and posted to wikipedia under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 license

See also

- Arthur C Clarke: 90 orbits completed, a video message from the great man a few months before he died

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