The Wet Desert

“Yet complicated people were getting wet – not only the shepherds. For instance, the piano-tuner was sopping. So was the vicar’s wife.

E.M. Forster

Thursday

It is raining, again, which means it is flooding, again.

Working from home.

Yesterday I put this quote up for the class –

“To tell the truth is very difficult, and young people are rarely capable of it”

Leo Tolstoy

I then asked the class who thought lying was ok.

Of the twenty students, 16 raised their hand to declare that lying was fine.

I have not decided what to do with this information.

We go for a walk in the afternoon. I look down at my phone to check the football score. There is a van parked with its rear door open across the footpath and I walk into head first.

I am not sure what was worse, the noise, the pain, or the embarrassment of look at my phone and walking into the door.

“Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.”

Susan Sontag

I finish Determined by Robert Sapolsky.

It is beautifully written. The texts grapple with some heavy science and Sapolsky manages to explain the complexities with simplicity.

I can’t bring myself to agree with his proposition, even if all the evidence supports his arguments. The idea that there is no free will is so incompatible with my belief system, that I simply cannot accept it. I find myself walking to the edge of the cliff, convinced, yet unable to jump into the abyss of determination.

How can we argue that someone who commits an offense, had no free will to do otherwise? On a more personal level, every choice I make that I am proud of, not eating the chocolate, training every day, completing university…. is determined, and of none of my choices have brought about these positive outcomes.

“There is no justifiable “deserve.” The only possible moral conclusion is that you are no more entitled to have your needs and desires met than is any other human. That there is no human who is less worthy than you to have their well-being considered.[*] You may think otherwise, because you can’t conceive of the threads of causality beneath the surface that made you you, because you have the luxury of deciding that effort and self-discipline aren’t made of biology, because you have surrounded yourself with people who think the same. But this is where the science has taken us.”

Robert Sapolsky

I am a compatibilist. I accept that biology, not just immediate, but thousands of years of influence, and environment matter. It should be considered when determining how to punish people in society, but I cannot accept that we all have a choice.

I will read some Daniel Dennett to get some balance.

“we are nothing more or less than the cumulative biological and environmental luck, over which we had no control, that has brought us to any moment.”

Robert Sapolsky

I finish Cities of the Plain straight after Determined.

Cities of the Plain lacks the brilliance of its first two books, All The Pretty Horses and The Crossing. It does bring together the well crafted characters of its predecessors, Billy Praham and John Grady Cole. I am emotionally invested in these protaginists, making Cities of the Plain a great way to wrap it all together.

The Border Trilogy, in my opinion, is superior to Blood Meridian, probably McCarthy’s most popular work.

“He sat a long time and he thought about his life and how little of it he could ever have foreseen and he wondered for all his will and all his intent how much of it was his doing.”

Cormac McCarthy

I have started No Country For Old Men.

I don’t think I will attempt another entire catalog of novels like I have with McCarthy. It is fatiguing, and I am reading less and less and looking to non-fiction more often, mainly as a break and diversion.

My next author is Hemingway. I might research his top five books and go from there.

Bed early.

No paddling tomorrow, the storms have damaged the canoes.

Friday

I hit the gym and we go for a walk. In the end we do over 10km before it gets too hot.

I am listening to a podcast by Rob Walker on ‘noticing’. He sets a task where you go somewhere familiar and take two photos of something you might not have noticed that you consider interesting.

These are Rachelle’s

These are mine

I prepare dinner, Sara is coming over. The theme is Italian. I am cooking beef cheeks in Chianti. A French dish, Beef bourguignon, but the Chianti makes it Italian.

The beef cheeks are on and I spend the afternoon reading waiting for the Pies game to start.

The Pies win a thriller.

Dinner is excellent.

Tonight’s wine –

2021 Mazzei Belguardo V Vermintino (Chianti, Italy)

Citrus and green herbs. Plenty of acidity. Great wine.

2020 Marchesi Di Barolo REIS Barbera d’Alba (Barolo, Italy)

Excellent. See previous notes.

We will paddle tomorrow. The canoe at Ras Al-Khaimah is out of action after the storm. The OC6 at Nikki Beach is fine.

Saturday

I feel a little under the weather despite only drinking a few glasses of wine last night.

We head to Nikki Beach. There is no swell but you always feel better after a paddle.

The water is filled with stuff. It is clear, so it makes the stuff easy to see. Soft, furry-looking stuff. If oversized dust were suspended in water. I decide not to go in at the first break. By the second break it is so hot I don’t care.

When I climb back in the canoe, I notice a black, oily scum building up on the side of the canoe. Each wash of the small swell deposits another layer of black scum.

“Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.”

Jacques-Yves Cousteau

Home to read and not much else.

Sunday

I have woken up with another cold.

Time for a blood test. There is clearly something happening with my immune system.

Shell predicts leukemia, I remain confident it is AIDS.

I prepare my lunches for the week.

Time for another round of school.

We have booked flights for summer break. Back to Europe.

“The secret of happiness: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.”

Daniel Dennett

Rachelle has decided that Sunday is her special day. A day in which she does not have to do anything.

In reality, the only difference between Sunday, and every other day, is that she does nothing, but on Sundays, when she asks me to do something, she adds, ‘because Sunday is my special day’.

For example, on Friday –

“Make me a coffee, Grant. I am not doing it’

Rachelle Griffin

On Sunday –

“Make me a coffee Grant, it is Sunday, I am not going to make myself a coffee on my special day”

Rachelle Griffin