I love reading my brother’s blog. His is a world of realism, but nevertheless one full of childhood memories and hopes. I suppose seeing the world as it is in numbers and figures, he could not help but feel codified in that way too. A refined sort of normalcy, if there was a word for it. You can throw any sort of ideas to him, and he would bounce back things to you, A delight, a delight. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have begun cycling through the neighbourhood back in those days. I spent the first eight formative years of my life in the same grade as him, played with the same friends, the same games, watched the same tv shows.
See, we both had a thing for mathematics, and I would remember during school holidays, Akram would come up with some sort of math quiz, consisting of ten questions, and we had to compete to answer those as quickly as we could. This, together with board games, Pokemon, mengaji – I developed a sense of competition with my brothers. I wasn’t a nerd or anything, I simply liked calculating. Math made sense to me, so much that I would time myself answering simple arithmetic question to the hundreds in my head, seeing filled pages and water-filled bottles in terms of fraction and then turn them into decimals (I would always say I filled 2/3 or 3/4 or 2/5 of a page whenever I write essays. I am an all rounder). Turned into words, this would simply mean I always skim through a passage and describe what it means, rather than spell it word-by-word. I get impatient over processes, of showing calculations (Can one equate the two, to begin with?). But later through life we all learn this process of deferred gratification, or as my brother would say, leverage. Time is a great thickener of things.
At any rate, my essay has been handed back to me, and I am happy with my marks. The whole reason of my taking these English Literature subjects, is to learn how to formally approach and analyse a text. We read but only remember the sensations and impressions it has made on us, but sometimes fail to see what was the book all about, and how it places itself on the culture, history, and the people that surround him. It is not only enough to locate ourselves in a book, but it is as important to locate the book in its surroundings. This is the primary lesson I’ve learned, that is.
Orientalism is the subject of this week. Now only do I see what Al-Attas meant by these Orientalists (again, I never understood most of what he write). The tutor quotes Edward Said a lot, and I am stuck regretting having not read Orientalism when I borrowed it from Kak Z. Paintings. Otherness. How generalizing the West is, lumping everything that is not them as Oriental. Then the question of free will. Classmates arguing that one can is free to do what he wants to, as long as the other party (or parties) consents to his rights to do so. One is free to construct his own morality. Is man thus the measure of all things? Moreover, are our morals ever changing?
Blegh. I’m going to listen to Foal’s This Orient.
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perkaraperkara 