March | Cycling, Writing & Reading
Barbara Tuchman, Eugen Herrigel, Jonathan Steinberg, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sylvain Tesson
Hey all — hope you had a great month. Let me know what you’ve been up to by hitting reply. I love hearing from you.
So here's my monthly reading list email in a different format… with maps.
I am wary of maps: they encourage destination obsession, they promote 'progress' for the sake of it. Both these notions are what I'm trying to re-educate myself from. (First, it's the journey that matters, and second, most progress is illusory).
However, in the spirit of not getting too directionally attached, you'll notice I've been cycling west. Given the name of this blog, and the fact I want to get to Japan, this is the wrong way. I know. And next, I intend to go southwest, further away from Japan. I’m certain the deviation will be worth it...
Cycling
The countryside in Sri Lanka is exquisite and diverse. I began the month in the Knuckles Hills in Sri Lanka, and headed west to Colombo, where I spent a week. I loved my time in the capital. It reminded me of Nairobi.
With my bike in a box, I flew to Chennai — it’s hectic, I only spent a day there. At dawn I escaped the city before rush hour, following the coast, and rode south to Tiruvannamalai’s Sri Ramanasramam (an ashram of a holy man, Sri Ramana Maharishi who asks “Who am I?”, noting he is awareness). I wish I had spent longer in Sri Ramanasramam as I did not visit the cave where Maharishi spent 12 years meditating. Next, east, to Pondicherry on the coast. There, I visited Auroville and Sri Aurobindo’s ashram, the latter I found deeply moving. And from here, further south, alongside fields being harvested, into the interior of Tamil Nadu.
India is hot and big; it’s going to take ages to traverse. At the end of the day my clothes are white with dry salt. The country is also spiritual: I ride past temples, ashrams, churches, mosques, and monasteries. Now I’m writing from a hill station, high in the mountains. It’s colder here, but not cold. In a couple of hours, I’ll spend a week in Bodhi Zendo, a Zen Buddhist ashram, absorbing the philosophy.
Writing
In Sri Lanka, I wrote, with the help of Ram and his adorable family, about how creativity won’t change (despite the AI apocalypse). We then explored how — in Gandhi’s words — “there is more to life than increasing its speed”; I explained that “Sri Lanka has taken the wind from my sails in a good way. After all, the wind was blown out from an unhealthy place of ‘needing to make progress.’ — I have discovered I needn’t.” Later, while waiting for a visa in the Indian embassy we explored the origin of the “growth mindset”, and how it “spread like wet rot into our culture. As with many evil ideas, it sounds innocuous and even quite helpful. However, without questioning it, we become like manic gardeners fertilising our driveway and pouring pesticides onto the lawn.”
I arrived in India, and wrote: “Life is close, hot, hurried; I eat all day. Chennai is a moving, living city.” While in Chennai, I found respite at the Madras Literary Society and was shown books “sent from Gaza — they escaped. Their libraries are destroyed, and their librarians cannot leave (or much worse). Looking at these books, I'm reminded of my unbelievable privilege to travel freely when so many at this moment are terrified and cannot.”
Finally, I got caught up in an election rally, which I found uncomfortable… “I am hot. Trapped under the sun and caught in some rally. Again, I move my arm, but it can’t break free. The baker has strong hands. Good for kneading dough? Good for holding people prisoner?? Good for strangling???” — I vow not to get caught up in other people's politics.
Reading
A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman. This book covers the period between 1350 and 1450 in France (which was, at that time, a third English controlled… the Channel was not always seen as the national border). In fact, nations didn’t have armies, nor sophisticated states, and feudal (mercenary) armies frequently pillaged towns and villages, and those who survived were taxed heavily to fund further absurd feudal excess (crazy weddings, parties, crusades, campaigns).
Europe was simultaneously ravaged by plague, making the period feel apocalyptic. God was, it seemed, taking his revenge. By the end of the 1300s, the continent’s population had fallen by half. Still (if you’re European), your ancestors lived through it — remarkable really.
Per the title, the period is a mirror to today. A time of rapid change, of excess and of inequality. Plus, who here thinks we’re on the cusp of apocalypse? Technology changes, human nature doesn’t.
The most profound point of the book is in the intro (my bolding):
Disaster is rarely as pervasive as it seems from recorded accounts. The fact of being on the record makes it appear continuous and ubiquitous whereas it is more likely to have been sporadic both in time and place. Besides, the persistence of the normal is usually greater than the effect of disturbance, as we know from our own times. After absorbing the news of today, one expects to face a world consisting entirely of strikes, crimes, power failures … neo-Nazis and rapists. The fact is one can come home in the evening—on a lucky day—without having encountered more than one or two of these phenomena. This has led me to formulate Tuchman’s Law, as follows: “the fact of being reported multiplies the apparent extent of any deplorable development by five- to tenfold” (or any figure the reader would care to supply).
This book was excellent throughout.
Zen and the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel. Follows the journey of ‘letting go’ and becoming a Japanese zen archer in the process. He explains, with some genius, his recursive confusion of Zen and archery:
…even the simplest things have got in a muddle. Is it “I” who draws the bow, or is it the bow that draws me into the state of highest tension? Do “I” hit the goal, or does the goal hit me? Is “it” spiritual when seen by the eyes of the body, and corporeal when seen by the eyes of the spirit — or both or neither? Bow, arrow, goal and ego all melt into one another, so that I can no longer separate them.
Bismarck, A Life by Jonathan Steinberg. I had forgotten everything I once knew (from school) about the man who unified Germany and prepared Europe for the First World War. Steinberg concludes that Bismarck’s life life was full of irony:
…the civilian always in uniform, the hysterical hypochondriac as the symbol of iron consistency, the successes which became failures, the achievement of supreme power in a state too modern and too complex for him to run…
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. A joy to read; I found it in a coffee shop in Colombo.
“And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.”
Consolations of the Forest by Sylvain Tesson. He lived for six months alone in the Siberian wilderness and wrote daily. I keep re-reading this book, and one section leapt out at me in particular.
You’re always late to your own life; time doesn’t hand out second chances. Life can ride on one roll of the dice. And me, I hared off to the forest, leaving her behind.