Thursday
“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive– to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love”
Marcus Aurelius
It has been a big week.
Six weeks of calorie deficit and I am finally back under 100kg.
Shell had an inspection that was not an inspection, a ‘visit’ from an important accreditation which she is almost solely responsible for. The not inspection was outstanding.
Shell is a natural leader. Her team flourishes under her stewardship and no one was surprised with the positive feedback after the visit.
All this and she was under the weather, losing her voice and needing a rare day off after the inspection.
I could not be more proud of her. I have never met a more remarkable person.
“It’s not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It’s because we dare not venture that they are difficult.”
Seneca
Friday
Up early and hit the gym.
We are driving down our street after grocery shopping. Dust and sand and filth. Industrial buildings on the left, and low socioeconomic highrise on the right. It is 10.00 am and it is already 39C.
We live in an industrial estate, and while our apartment is an oasis in a not sought-after area, our view is the garbage dump and the smell is the cattle yards that swelter nearby. It is crushing to think that when our two year contract finishes, we will have spent 70k AUD on rent.
UAE is no longer the cash cow it once was.
We will have achieved much here, and I have no regrets about the time we spent in Dubai, but it will never be a place I could spend a long time. If there is much to love about the Middle East, I am yet to discover it in the UAE.
“No matter the self-conceited importance of our labors we are all compost for worlds we cannot yet imagine.”
David Whyte
I finished I’ve Been Thinking by Daniel Dennett this week. Dennett had an extraordinary life and his contribution to philosophy has changed the landscape in which we understand the brain and its consciousness.
“There is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination.”
Daniel Dennett
I will revisit my three favourite books by Dennett, starting with Consciousness Explained.
Pies play today. Ravaged by injuries, away from home. Expecting a loss.
I spend the afternoon reading and waiting for the game to start.
Another draw.
Saturday
Sleep in and hit the gym.
I’m not too fond of cardio, but it must be done.
Since reading Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity by Peter Attia, I have changed my training ethos from looking good naked, an entirely ego-driven endeavour, to longevity. Not living longer in years, but ensuring that I can make the most of the time as I grow old.
And let us be honest, I am getting old.
“The single most powerful item in our preventive tool kit is exercise, which has a two-pronged impact on Alzheimer’s disease risk: it helps maintain glucose homeostasis, and it improves the health of our vasculature”
Peter Attia
I have finished The Road.
McCarthy fans tend to get carried away with Blood Meridian as his darkest work. The Road is a much more brooding and malevolent writing.
It carries McCarthy’s beautiful prose, but the novel has fatalistic despair. His previous books are a roller coaster of darkness where you have no real idea how the journey ends, The Road is deliberate in its tragedy. Yet you read on, not even hoping for a happy ending.
I jump straight into The Passenger. With Stella Maris, the final two novels McCarthy released before his death.
“He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.”
Cormac McCarthy
This is a real conversation.
Grant – My book is interesting.
Rachelle – What is it about?
Consciousness. How consciousness might be explained.
That sounds fucking terrible. I am leaving the room so I don’t have to hear about it.
Rachelle & Grant
We watch the documentary Cup of Salvation. It follows the story of Armenian winemaker, Vahe Keushguerian. A story in two parts, Cup of Salvation looks at the vineyards where wine is believed to have originated.
In the first instance, it looks at the 2020 as war breaks out between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Caucus Mountains. Ancient vineyards, over one hundred years old, planted with the archaic grape variety, Areni. The local villagers harvest the grapes with war less than a kilometer away. A year later, with Russian intervention, a cease-fire is agreed upon, and the same vineyards now sit in Azerbaijan with the borders are redrawn.
The second part of the documentary follows Vahe in Iran, widely considered the birthplace of vitis vinifera, where wine all began. There hasn’t been wine made in Iran since 1979 when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took control. Religion, politics, religious-politics, whatever you wish to call it, banned wine.
What this means is that for over 40 years, there has been officially no wine produced in Iran. Further, it means that wine has never been produced in Iran using modern winemaking techniques. Despite being the oldest winemaking region in the world, religion has effectively robbed the world of its most historical vineyards and wines.
Vahe travels to the village of Sanadaj in Sardasht County, northwest of Iran on the Iraq border. He sources grapes from locals grown in secret on the sparse hillsides of this mountainous region. He smuggles the grapes back to Armenia by road and makes Iran’s first wine in over 40 years.
Great viewing.
“Today, we’re carrying the torch of 6000 years that was almost extinguished during the Soviet era. We’re spreading the gospel.”
Vahe Keushguerian
The rest of the afternoon I lay around and read.
Sunday
“From the very fact, indeed, that I am conscious of the motives which solicit my action, these motives are already transcendent objects from my consciousness, they are outside; in vain shall I seek to cling to them: I escape from them through my very existence.”
Jean-Paul Sartre
Sleep in.
Prepare my lunches. Extra rice now that I am at my goal weight.
These small things make me happy.
Nothing to do but read.
I am thinking about which author to move on to when I finish McCarthy.
Jack London
John Steinbeck
Ernest Hemingway
John Updike
This list is feeling external pressure from Shell who is reading the Larry McMurtry Lonesome Dove series and wants me to read it with her.
“He had known several men who blew their heads off, and he had pondered it much. It seemed to him it was probably because they could not take enough happiness just from the sky and the moon to carry them over the low feelings that came to all men.”
Larry McMurtry
School tomorrow.
Six weeks and we are back in Europe.
Not that I am counting.