I won't be blogging here anymore, Microsoft is quite a hassle. Instead, check out http://ben--low.blogspot.com

Thanks for reading everyone :)

Politicians, please make sure your country turns out nice and linear. Historians will thank you for it.

To SEA: your (or our?) histories are marked by anti-colonialism with little solidarity beyond it. Your ethnic tensions admit of various degrees of internal colonialism. Your politic are either very undemocratic or embody the worst form of anarchism imaginable (laying siege on an airport!? YOUR airport?? What will that do). Please be rational, inclusive, respectful of peoples' autonomy and identity, and don't get carried away by nationalist fervour - which tends to turn awry in times of peace of prosperity.

P.s. I know capitalism brings many ills along with its blessings, but recognise that it is human nature that's to blame, not the system or a particular class. Go ahead with socialist economics - indeed you should - but work within the laws of economics. We only conquer nature by obeying it.

As a history student, I am at times inspired by SEA, sometimes aghast at its atrocities. I do not believe in nationalism, only fraternity, collective necessity, and compassion. Truly, the heroism of humanity arise from its horrors, and I would rather not have the former if that means having to suffer the latter. No, don't bring God into the picture - men make gods devils - we'll probably end up with blood on the streets. Keep the monks and priests out of politics, for unholy tragedy has often followed their holy footsteps.

That was today's KI tuition topic. I was confident, more so than I had ever been in awhile. I've slept well, my school work is in order and I've brought my literature back to the pre-Condition 'C' grade. My classmates are a lot of fun and I'm getting to know them better each day, laughing and learning. With this mood I stepped out of the house in optimism and arrived at Mr. Spencer's place.

We covered politics recently and despite my readings about Marxist theory and my history background, it was still rather unfamiliar. Today, we covered history, a field I'm more at home in. It wasn't too difficult. We covered truth, evidence, and society in how they all play a part in history. Because I asked for historiography notes as well, I managed to find out who it was that said "the history of the world is the history of great men" and of course, EH Carr with "history is a series of accepted judgements". Interestingly enough, he notes also covered historicism and prediction as well as how cultural relativism hampers historical inquiry, along with the problems of verstehen. This is not to say that history is rubbish, but rather our understanding of it is incomplete and even if we had chanced upon the 'true' version of how things were, I say we would not know it.

History deals not just with what occurred, but also why it occurred. Suppose I ask "why did Ben Low leave Mr. Spencer's place demoralised?" Simply stating "because Mr. Spencer asked "did you do your essay on whether government needs theory?" - no, that would only explain what occurred. We need to state that that question was asked because of the preceding lesson's content and Ben's unfamiliarity with it, and the fact that Ben couldn't finish the essay to his own satisfaction and when asked about it, he was reminded of his history of sudden and drastic essay failures. That recollection, coupled with his unfinished essay, is what CAUSED him to head home with a heavy heart.

As a consequence, he will not be revising today's KI lesson on historical inquiry, nor will he attempt the question "Are there no standards by which we can call historians right or wrong, good or bad?" lest it turn out another farce. Indeed, he has cooked two bowls of instant noodles and finished a whole can of pork in bean paste. That will be his dinner and comfort food, their saltiness replacing the salt of his heart's tears.

"What is history?" "Its just one fucking thing after another" - The History Boys (movie)

I looked through my old essays:

PAE – A (19/25)

JAE – B (16/25)

J1 – C

J2 – D, S

What went wrong? If the poems got harder, it means I didn’t improve fast enough. If they didn’t, something went wrong with my head.

I need to work on my language as well, something beyond regular expository writing. Perhaps the long absence of formal discussion and non-expository writing is to blame for my appalling phrasing, sentencing and vocabulary.

That’s how long it took me to write my essay. It was a critical analysis of poem 21 lines long. I chose it because it spoke right out like a paragraph and didn’t take obscure twists and turns – gosh I hate those.

4 hours comprised of: selecting from a list of poems I short-listed; finding enough content to fill 3 pages; getting over the phobia of writing; fighting the sense of futility; and lastly, writing it – together with all the cancelling and liquid-paper corrections.

Am I going to hand it up? Another interesting question. I could use the feedback, but I won’t want any poor marks. I didn’t write about the human condition, although the poem displayed the private nature of grief and meaning. At least that’s what I saw in it.

Oh, now my perfectionist self urges me to incorporate that and rewrite – or type out – the whole darn thing. Not a bad idea actually… should I?

(rhetorical question. My unknown self decided it before it asked)

I wish I could pause time in this dimension and take a holiday in an exact copy of this world. That would be nice.

“A sound interrupted him; a frail quivering sound, a voice bubbling up without direction, vigour, beginning or end, running weakly and shrilly and with an absence of all human meaning into

ee um fah um so
foo swee too eem oo -

the voice of no age or sex, the voice of an ancient spring sprouting from the earth; which issued, just opposite Regent Park’s Tube Station, from a tall quivering shape, like a funnel, like a rusty pump, like a wind-beaten tree for ever barren of leaves which lets the wind run up and down its branches singing

ee um fah um so
foo swee too eem oo

and rocks and creaks and moans in the eternal breeze”

- a 118-word sentence from Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (found in Practical Criticism by Lindy Miller)

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To me, it was a fearful scene. A voice “quivering”, “bubbling”, “weakly”, “shrilly” like a pained and tortured weeping. The strange sounds added to this effect, as if a monstrous creature lay lurking in the “tall quivering shape”, desperate to get out. A dreadful fascination with this fearsome mystery invokes a dark trepidation in me.

If only we could express our feelings like that. Though the words would make no sense, the sentence would.

In an attempt to improve productive efficiency, I’ve been reading up on critics A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It’s quite futile.

Bull, bird, Lucifer, Jesus, flight, eagle, Prometheus, Thoth, Daedalus and Icarus, Parsimonae, Minos – an endless list of religio-mythical characters that fuel so many divergent opinions among critics that one wonders whether the artistry is in the novel or in the critics’ mind (one of the central issues I’ve come across in aesthetics for KI).

Yes, humans like mythical issues even though most of us don’t believe in them. The mere suggestion of its truth, together with the magic of fiction, enthrals and ensnares the human imagination. I won’t be surprised if someone comes to believe in myths simply by studying them.

Myth and religion – thin line, but that’s for another day.

Clarity of thought is necessary for clarity of expression, but it doesn’t create it. No, expression demands intuition, and different types at that. Expository writing – or thinking, for that matter – remains in the realm of fact and science, never to set foot in the hallowed halls of the literary world.

I seek clarification on a number of points:

1. Why is art studied, not simply enjoyed or at worst/best, leisurely contemplated?

2. Why did the NY literature department choose two highly cryptic and obscure texts for the identity paper? (A local free-verse poet and Joyce’s Portrait of an Artist)

3. Why are NY’s history and economics notes written with such poor grammar?

4. Why am I asking these frivolous questions when I should be asking how I may obtain clarity of mind and expression?

5. Why am I still typing when it’s late and my driving test is tomorrow?

Honestly, James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is an interesting and engaging novel(ty). Any literature student in his right mind wouldn’t choose such a dense work for his exam, but it would be nice for a casual read. The novel is rich and full of interesting motifs. Critics have many interesting things to say about it… but I wouldn’t bet my exams on it, nor will my peers. Unfortunately, that choice isn’t ours to make anymore.

1) Foucault’s Pendulum – named after an actual physics experiment

2) The Name of the Rose

Author: Umberto Eco

The reviews for both are THROUGH THE ROOF! According to them, both books are oozing with the OCCULT, HISTORY, and THEOLOGY while being excellent works of literature in themselves.

I WANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(I probably won’t have the time to read them, but nevertheless, I WANT!!!)

I like light pink, lime green, light blue. I like these lovely gay colours, not the gaudy “hot pink” or moss green or faded dark blue shades.

My cousin and I wrote some poems when we had the time, amidst our busy and disturbing lives, to take a bohemian vacation of beer and sushi. Somehow, pain and melancholy seem to be the stuff of the best poems.

I won’t pretend to know what good poetry is, but I do know what art is and what it can do. I won’t claim to be an artist either, because I can’t derive aesthetic ability from aesthetic theory. Frisson, catharsis, transcendence, form, sentiment – these things seem to be derived from art more than art is derived from them.

But then again, I could be wrong. In the meantime, KI has proven to be a panacea for the ills of muddled thinking. After picking up “Conceptions of Inquiry”, an Open University set text, I can feel my clarity of thought and expression slowly returning. Granted, heavy academic writing isn’t ideal – especially when the reader is on sleep-inducing medication – but it helps.

Ok, I’m tired, that’s why things aren’t coming out right. No, I just mean my words and ideas.