The final words uttered by anyone dying in Rome should be, ” The Light!”

There’s little need to try and capture the sheer devastation wrought by last week’s earthquake in Haiti.  It’s impossible to follow the news without feeling daily sickened about a country that had much promise long ago as an idea, but in practice has been little more than a compendium of uncertainty, desperation, and perseverance in the face of failure.  All week long, this song by Arcade Fire has been going through my mind.  Lyrically unattached to the earthquake itself, but like much good music and good writing, it captures what has just happened to the country.  An unofficial video here.

HAITI — Arcade Fire

Haiti, mon pays
Wounded mother I’ll never see
Ma famille set me free
Throw my ashes into the sea

Mes cousins jamais nes
Hantent les nuits de Duvalier
Rien n’arrete nos espirits
Guns can’t kill what soldiers can’t see

In the forest we are hiding
Unmarked graves where flowers grow
Hear the soldiers angry yelling
In the river we will go

Tous les morts-nes forment une armee
Soon we will reclaim the earth
All the tears and all the bodies
Bring about our second birth

Haiti, never free
N’aie pas peur de sonner l’alarme
Tes enfants sont partis
In those days their blood was still warm

  A good year for book reading was 2009, but more importantly I discovered again the beauty and power of the short story.  It was partly a function of time — short stories are often perfectly packaged for those bits of travel or in-between spaces of my life. 

A number of “Best of” lists include Daniyal Mueenuddin’s collection, and although I enjoyed his work and working with him, there’s a piece of me that thinks that this collection has captured imaginations in part because Pakistan is so much in the news.

The environment too was in the news frequently, and William Cronon, opened my eyes not to the impact of the changes man has wrought but to the connectivity of history, geography, and the ecology.  A classic that’s just as relevant today.

I remain disturbed by much of Nam Le’s collection since reading it.  I wasn’t moved by the actual writing so much as left with a sense of the anger and earnestness contained within his stories.  There were very few tidy endings, and even when he drifted close to cliché, the suffering of his characters (outward and inward) was more than enough to leave an impression that I can’t quite shake.

So the best this year have to be some of the individual works themselves: A River Runs Through It (Collected Stories of Norman MacLean), Seiche (Granta 108), The Lightless Room (Granta 108), Lily (In Other Rooms), and Cartagena (The Boat).

It appears that some kids are taking a break from Facebook because it takes up too much of their time.  I don’t mind FB, though there are some folks who appear to be on it constantly.  I’m intrigued less by the daily updates and more by the other changes people make, like changing their profile picture.  One friend, who is smitten by a new-found relationship, has updated with a soft-toned, warm picture.  Another’s pictures reflects his mood, particularly on Sundays after a football game.  And another changed his because his Mom (his Mom is on FB?) didn’t like his photo.  Sometimes people just don’t want to be seen.  And sometimes it’s just nice to see people.

Fifteen inches of snow on the ground is enough to bury me in blankets, itching to get out.  So while browsing the bookshelves of the world wide web I was reminded of my favorite band this year — Mumford and Sons (video below).  I took in three of their shows in London.  The first up in Camden Town, among barrels of 18-yer-olds who were waiting to see the opening act.  In my old age I consoled myself with a beer before remembering that 18-year-olds can drink in the UK at that age anyway.   The band only had a repertoire of eight or nine songs, but they struck me with their updated folk sound and their enthusiasm.

Post-show I walked with the only donor kebab I purchased in a year in London all the way around regent’s Park to my home.  I still recall the taste of the kebab, the shredded roughage and the hot sauce, and my fingers warmed through the tissue wrapping that I carefully peeled away as I ate.  During later shows I saw them again, though I was with friends.  There’s a difference between watching concerts alone and in the company of friends, and I always made sure to walk home afterwords by myself, I think so as not to spoil the memory of the music.  It strikes me that London, being such an expansive city, is so appealing because of the multitude of simultaneous stories in it.  Sometimes I see myself from a far off distance, walking in the shallow darkness of Camden and Marylebone, and I see all the others moving about as well.  Some have grabbed onto a life, while others unknowingly wait to grab on.  They are all connected and yet disconnected, and I am unclear on how to make sense of that.  Perhaps this is why the beginning words of this song always strike me:

As the winter winds litter London with lonely hearts…

Mumford and Sons – Winter Winds

Getting old for me has less to do with my creaky bones and rigid beliefs than it does with recycling.  Tomorrow the President unveils (poor word choice) the latest strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and it already feels like recycling of a bad sort.  AfPak has been done before.  And before that.  And again before.  Juat check the speeches, and you’ll know.  You can’t help but think that while Obama has taken a good, long look at the options, there hasn’t been a real understanding of the region or of history.  Of the mindsets that accompany Pashtunwali, a country without the real idea of a country, and  faith — in this case, Islam.  Of course, there’s the challenge of politics complicating these matters, and by that I mean U.S. politics, but honestly, the Vice-President is closer to right this time around.  Jim Hoagland summed it up beautifully yesterday in WaPo.

So I find myself doing my own recycling, as if by fate. I came across this essay by the one writer who I continually seem to return to — V.S. Naipaul.  It’s worth reading and considering once again — perhaps as a way of stopping the simple recycling of bad ideas, or maybe going beyond statistics and numbers that military men provide.

A London acquaintance of mine, John Freeman, was on the Diane Rehm Show last month discussing his new book, The Tyranny of Email.  Some of what he talks about is obvious, and the discussion occasionally veers toward a radio call-in sentimentality, but there are some nice moments in the conversation about letter writing in particular.  It reminds me that just as important (and difficult) is taking the time to consider — really consider — the people and experiences one has in life.  I only met John once in person, over coffee at Paul near the Granta offices.  He seemed hurried (and was late), but I remember enjoying the book I was reading while sipping coffee on the sidewalk that morning as much as the brief chat we had about supporting Granta’s work.  It would have been nice to have had time for a longer discussion, but in many ways that’s the point.  We’ve emailed a few times since that meeting and gone about our working lives.  Good to see he’s doing well.

 

One of the better heartbreak albums of 2009 has to be Noah and the Whale’s The First Days of Spring.  If you can bear it, listen to it straight through — particular highlights are Our Window and Blue Skies.  And on iTunes you can download the accompanying 48 minute film, a beautifully shot homage to a break-up and life afterwards.  At least that’s what I think it’s about…I had to watch it twice. Other interpretations welcome.

There’s a scene in the movie that includes a telling of the scorpion and the frog story. Which I heard twice in one week in entirely different contexts.  Odd.

 

In Washington DC, Fall has arrived.

The seasons were more similar than different in London. With the more frequent, but not overwhelming, occurrence of rain there, I began thinking more about shoes (for some reason, I rarely notice dress shoes in the U.S.).  Specifically, I concerned myself with the likelihood of my shoes getting wet and perhaps damaged during my walks to and from work.  One pair of casual boots I’d purchased weathered the rain well, their surface dusking over time like an aging human being.

I don’t remember winter’s approach.  The temperatures cooled somewhat, but not intolerably so.  London sits at a favorable position in the jet stream current — the winds dip down from the north and west and across the city as they make their way towards the European continent.  As a result, the city is actually much warmer than you’d expect.

In late January, the city fell beneath the spell of a rare heavy snowfall.  I took off to Islington in the north of the city and met two friends at a wine shop called The Sampler.  We topped up a pre-paid card with about 15 quid each and set about the roomy shop sampling quarter and half glasses of wine.  Mostly whites.  Warmed significantly after 45 minutes, we walked to a nearby Italian restaurant and watched through the steam rising from our bowls of pasta as the snow begin to fall in cottony flakes.  I skated on streets near my home , knowing what the next day would look like. And I prayed that work would be closed as I turned on the television to watch the Super Bowl.

The connection of intertwined history, whether you accept it or not, does exist.  And so, it was oddly unsurprising that in my first month in London I was idling up the Marylebone High Street and recognized an Indian face.  Or rather, his white hair.  My encounters with Amitav Ghosh in person began in Kolkata, and have been brief and accidental.  First, it was outside the Bengal Club as we were waiting for our respective cars.  Then it was at a small party given for him by a friend of a friend, and then on the street in central London.  He was in town because his novel Sea of Poppies had been shortlisted for the Man Booker prize.  It didn’t win.  This year, Hilary Mantel took home the 50,000 quid for Wolf Hall, a historical novel based on Thomas Cromwell, adviser to Henry VIII.  I haven’t read her book, nor Ghosh’s latest (lingering distaste from The Hungry Tide), but I’m interested that such a novel won this year, and on what basis.

Chairman of judges James Naughtie said: “Our decision was based on the sheer bigness of the book. The boldness of its narrative, its scene setting.

Jabberwock has a nice review here.

It is difficult, in a year, to come anywhere close to comprehension of a city like London.  At best you perhaps start to understand why it has enthralled so many before you.  London is a city built on narrative and meta-narrative.  I suppose the same could be said about British society.  That narrative was the cornerstone of their colonialism, and if I can remove myself from the weight of that empire for a second, I have to say that they are pretty good at it.  So in that spirit, now ten days removed from the Big Smoke, I’ll be adding some thoughts on particular moments in London.

Sherman Alexie’s recent story in the New Yorker is worth a read.  His writing always manages to contain a sense of rage — at life, at being an Indian, at history, at white people, at other Indians –  often using deeply developed sarcasm and humor.  He’s not afraid, however, to let his fear show through.  Fear of the knowledge that life is often about the struggle to hold one’s rage at bay.