The young will replace the old.
The old will then vanish.
The young becomes the old.
And the cycle repeats.
Laskar Pelangi by Andrea Hirata. Making my way through the tetralogy again. So far the first one is the best. Somehow his writing lost his charm when the first book was successful. Anyway, anything from Andrea Hirata better than nothing, beggars can’t be choosers.
Was planning to read Laskar Pelangi earlier but was distracted by two Arthur C. Clarke books: Rendezvous With Rama and Childhood’s End. Rendezvous was written after he did 2001: A Space Odyssey; his most famous work. I find it interesting and full with wonder. It’s only weakness is the dialogue. Somehow stilted and seems added upon the story, to somehow make a connection with the reader. So as not too lose the humanness of the people in the story.
I find Childhood’s End the better of the two even though it’s was written in the late fifties much more earlier than Rendezvous With Rama. The people in it seems much more human, they have frailties,they are sad, happy, curious. The late Sir Clarke seems to succeed making these characters human without trying to. Though who can tell what the rough drafts read like?
The story does have a weakness too though. I find the ending a bit underwhelming and there were some parts that seems disconnected to the whole. Though understandably the story is divided into parts of different time scopes so as to make it clear to the reader that the story is going on a much longer timeframe, much longer than that which is usually understood as a lifetime. several lifetimes in fact.
The point I’m getting at is that, there seems to be a lack of cohesion between the parts. The same plot, some recurring characters but when reflected upon, it feels that Sir Clarke combined a few stories together to make the whole. As a whole the book feels like a multiple storied building that have a different architectural style for each floor. The first floor a modernist reminder of the cold war, the second floor art deco, the third classical chinese and so on.
The ending and the view of the whole one would get after finishing the story, with it’s diversions into the ideas of utopia and the prediction that some of humanity would reject this utopia with a counter utopia; mentions of Jung’s racial memory; and the idea of a transcendent post humanity that would be unrecognisable to a normal human is a bit hope crushing.
Next, after the Laskar Pelangi tetralogy, I would be diving again into Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. WW2, psychedelics, Pavlovian conditioning, sexual pervesrsion, rockets and a dude killed while wearing a pig suit. Hell yeah!
1. Friends. Keep them near and see them often.
2. Freedom. Be your own boss in everything, at work, at play and in life.
3. Reflect. Take time to contemplate life, yours and others ’.
All is to be mixed in the pot of daily life simultaneously. Money is optional, need only enough to sustain life, too much is to add worry.
“Take your pleasure seriously” - Charles Eames.
but remember,
“Too much of a good thing is can always be bad” - Old English Proverb.
As I’m reading Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZaTAoMM) after reading Anathema, I couldn’t help but draw some affinity between the two. both talks about the scientific method, it’s aesthetics and the aesthetics of the output derived from it.
The nature of Quality and it’s undefined aesthetics.
Anathema touches much on the multiplicity of cosmi, the question between of the universe and the consciousness of the observer. the realisation that if one observes one also alters what is being observed. all this while telling you of a riotous story of intrigue, adventure, comedy and ideas. set in a world in which the scientists, philosophers and learned people lived in isolation to outside world. while also delving much into maths and philosophy. Sounds boring but the author throws in some martial arts action, sociology, a few love stories, science fiction goodness of space travel and mystery. The author himself said that his inspiration was the long now foundation which aims to promote thinking in long terms as in in terms of century or in time-frames of millennium, this accounts for the grandeur of the setting of this book; Ancient metropolis buried under the slow march of glaciers, a train that goes over the polar region. Ancient religions that seems silly. A history, a culture.
While ZaTAoMM tells of it’s author search for a philosophy of value, the question of what is Quality while telling you the story of a father son trip on a motorcycle across America. It’s philosophy seems a bit weak in the face of reason though but that is what the author argues, that reason isn’t much of a deal. The audacity of saying that the basis of western thought is corrupted by the works of Plato, Socrates and Aristotle. The author pleads the case for humanity to return to the pursuit of ereté (excellence). all while telling you that the narrator actually goes mad while thinking of this matter. One suspects that the narrator is actually a recovering manic depressive on his down cycle missing his manic past but I think that is just because I saw Stephen Fry’s excellent documentary on manic depression.
Delving into these two you cannot but connect the ideas laced in them.
Next I’m reading The Algebraist by Iain M Banks, I’ve read it before so I know I’m in for a ride that spans millions of years…
Imagine you are a non-earth based self-conscious entity that has the ability to appreciate music. However hard it is, imagine.
There was news of an artifact that was passing at great speed through space, the artifact was intercepted, it’s every detail recorded and analyzed.
Some of the information was in form of sound and you, chosen as the first of your kind to hear sounds from another culture, unimaginable and utterly foreign. To hear this:
UK’s Capital Children Choir’s Choral tribute to Lily Allen’s ‘Chinese’
Promo for the new Thomas Pynchon book. Soon I’m going to read it.
…Fortunate Son
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