flemmings | Entries tagged with religion

Well, today I did All The Things what I have been putting off forever. Put through a laundry and got it on the line, not that it dried completely because humid cloudy Septembers don't do that, even with intermittent sunshine and a breeze. But mostly, and the trousers can go over the upstairs railing until the elastic dries. Cooked up a bunch of root veg and a pork tenderloin in cider (alcoholic) and cider (non) in the crockpot. Did not include onions because those are iffy when added raw. Intended to sauté them and add later, but TFL was cramping all morning for reasons best known to itself and I had a hard enough time prepping the veg. Finally finally got to the laundromat for sheets and pillowcases and microfiber robe, which washed in spite of the coin machine being out of change. Got change from Starbucks and put stuff in dryer. Also alas bought more cider (alcoholic) and have been sipping it all evening, even though I suspect cider gives me headaches. Did not clear any of the overgrown garden because back cramp, also TFL.

And shall sleep in for the next three rainy days in lovely AC coolth, like I wanted to do this morning.

Following various internet rabbits down internet rabbit holes, discover that Stoppard's Chinaman (sic) of the Tang dynasty and by that definition a philosopher, lived during the Warring States period and is the other main Daoist. Had never even heard of Zhuangzi, but now have a translation of his on hold at the library. He sounds like much more fun than the Dao De Jing.

Weird Chinese tales are still weird, though the chapter on the netherworld is very homelike, as in, these guys who have near death experiences don't see tunnels and glowing lights. No, it's all bureaucrats and government office buildings, which may just be that the dying brain sees what it expects to see. And when people do see their relatives, they're miserably in a Buddhist hell because they didn't worship Buddha when alive. Those stories one can safely discount as Buddhist propaganda while being annoyed at how all religions seem to default to We Are It. Well, maybe Shinto doesn't.

Also all ghosts seem to be ten feet tall and wearing black caps, which sounds just as bureaucratic to me.

But when I look at the footnotes where the editor gives variant readings from different mss, all 'hanzi hanzi hanzi hanzi hanzi I don't know any of these guys', I feel a distinct hope that next time around I'll be born Chinese and start studying these at a young enough age to remember them.

Otherwise gardening fallout was as expected ie stiff as a board when I woke up. Some day I'll learn to stretch before and after. Or maybe it's that I woke up yesterday with things spasming and shouldn't have been gardening at all. Dommage. Had to be done because all next week is supposed to be, what else, rain, and even today, which was forecast sunny and gave me hope of getting a wash on the line, yielded to thunderstorms mid-day. At least I got the garden waste bags indoors/ under cover before the rain began.

A weirdness in the Heart Sutra set to music video. You get to the bit about

No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind;

in whatever language it is-- Chinese? Japanese? 'cause they're going from the hanzi/ kanji, and the subtitles follow it with No cookouts. Doubtless cookouts are as lacking in form as anything else, but still sad.

The word should actually be colour. One suspects an auto-fill glitch.

Because I live under a rock I never heard Somebody That I Used to Know until that dance vid came around to tumblr. I am now earwormed by multiple repeats and intend to stay earwormed because otherwise I'll have I Am Your Mother, You Listen to Me instead. Loblaws has it on their mix tape or whatever they use nowadays, along with Made You Look and Flowers, and if I needed another reason to boycott Roblaws, that's it. But it has a Starbucks and Starbucks has cold brew which no one but Ninetails will have until the summer, and Ninetails has nowhere to sit because the Apple Core are there with their damnable laptops all. day. long.

Also Ninetails has financiers and I have no resistance to mini poundcakes. Starbux has egg white and English muffins, and I can resist their cakes just fine thanks because they list the calorie count.

With all these articles about how living alone is like smoking two packs a day as a way of decreasing your life span, I think I may start keeping a record of who I talk to day by day, rather as I track my steps. Of course virtually none of my conversations count (according to the articles) because they aren't deep enough or intimate enough- are generalized social chitchat. But like, even when my bro and s-i-l were next door, our conversations weren't deep and intimate, largely because my s-i-l has a ph.d in philosophy and a philosopher's notions of what serious conversation is ie following rules I never learned about topics I never studied. Or winning debates, whichever. Which was fine: I was quite happy to hear her and my bro talk about case law that required no input from me.

And certainly I had no serious convos with my coworkers. If there are kids around, one must focus on the kids.

But anyway, I have adopted the theory that, just as extroverts are energized by social chitchat with warm bodies-- any warm body, she says sourly-- so I too can be vitalized by the same. I breathe in their life essence and that replenishes mine. And if that doesn't work, I can try emulating Buddhist ascetics meditating on emptiness. Which apparently leads to a heightened state of happiness if you do it long enough.

Woke limber enough to go down the stairs and weigh myself before breakfast and am chuffed to learn that I've dropped four pounds (1.8 kilos) in the last three weeks. Heat has its uses after all.

I googled the plot of Spring Snow to see if it was all going to end in the disaster the narcissistic protagonist seemed to be taking it towards. Evidently not-- kind of Tale of Genji whose end I cheered loudly at-- so I may keep on with it in my listless fashion. Also have a book about a western recluse Buddhist nun in Tibet which is cheering. I'm not sure how I feel about reincarnation. Is it reassuring to think you'll somehow go on, or is it the doors slamming 'You don't get away from here that easy'?

Continue on with Pratchett's witches. The first two Tiffany books were more fun than I remembered, the third is proving oddly resistant. Sofa and fan weather, and my copy of Wintersmith has very tight binding that makes it hard to keep open.

Once again, after a mere thirty years, I come across someone who thinks an 'access' of some emotion ought to be 'excess'. Which it isn't, but you might have to read French literature to know this. As in, I first encountered the construction in the translation of Claudine at School, where she has 'a sudden access of stupidity.' What was the French original? Probably accès, because Larousse will give you the medical definition of 'sudden and transient disorder, usually violent.' But English is quite happy to follow, because there it is as definition no.2, literary, 'an attack or outburst of an emotion.' (Really, there's a point where 18th century French reads exactly like 18th century English, because both were modelling themselves on Latin; and then alas the vernacular took over and I could no longer read French writers.)

Good, that's settled. Now back to the conundrum in Cohen's Here It Is: what's the meaning of 'list' in the line 'and here is the love/ that lists where it will'? Always assumed it was a variation on 'the wind bloweth where it listeth' (which is the Gospel of John, surprise surprise, because I thought it was OT: mind, read the whole chapter and it's very much John being umm transcendental John again.) But list there, which this keyboard keeps rendering as its cognate lust, just means 'pleases', 'as it will', which thus turns Cohen's line into that rhetorical device whose name I've forgotten, saying the same thing twice. (Tautology, and you wouldn't believe the googling it took to find that.) Ergo it must be a different list, but which one? Lean to one side? Surely not itemize? Or did Cohen simply misremember, or misunderstand, John?

Caught the tail end of a dream in which a bunch of other stuff was happening, but in this fragment I was sharing a house with a bunch of guys and one woman who lived in the basement apartment. We were all in the kitchen with the sun shining in and I was hurrying to get dinner ready for Jenny, my fat old grey cat (decidit 1995) who was winding about my ankles, yowling. One of the guys started to piss on the pile of plastic bags that were piling up in a corner in plastic bag fashion, and I yelled at him because that was the door to the basement apartment where the other woman lived. Idea was that he didn't feel like going upstairs to the bathroom to take a leak. I took Jenny's dinner around the corner and the other woman came up into the kitchen but her two little black kittens came with her. They found the food and started either playing with it or eating it while Jenny looked on in puzzlement. And then I had to hurry off to the other part of the dream, which is on the tip of my memory but won't come out unless I stumble on the right word that will bring it all back, something that only occasionally happens.

Cold today so stayed inside and finished The Forest of Stolen Girls by June Hur, set in Joseon Korea. I don't have the wherewithal to watch Kdramas, so this is the next best thing. Also reminds me of that work about Korean shamans from ten years back. I'm all for shamans, especially if you live in a buttoned-down repressive Confucianist country. I now have holds on her two other books. Though I could really have done without her including Jesus in the acknowledgements. My cradle (French- important!) Catholic's attitude is that Christianity is an excellent cover for organizing against Japanese occupiers but there's no need to keep on with it afterwards: and if you must, mon dieu, do not make it evangelical. Though for all I know, the factors that made shamanism agreeable to Confucianist Koreans is what makes evangelical Christianity agreeable to modern day Koreans. Am reminded of a friend's friend who converted to Catholicism from Buddhism because, he said, he wanted a God who was personally interested in him, and no eastern religion gives you that.

Marvellous Tokyo February afternoon, meaning worrisomely warm for Toronto. 6C, 42F. This summer will be hideous if other no-winter winters are anything to go by (2012, 2016). But the sweet cold, the glowing sun, the walking in shoes! I shall enjoy the moment for what it has to offer.

Have also discovered that if you set the Heart Sutra to music, the Heart Sutra suddenly starts making sense. Possibly the Heart Sutra isn't really agreeing with Ecclesiastes' vanity of vanities and all is vanity, but I believe the word vanity in the original is a lot closer to 'emptiness', in which case it is. Or seems to be. And what about Strawberry Felds Forever? Oh dear.

Forgot to mention the pleasant dream I had Friday morning, travelling something that purported to be the New York subway but was more a long stone-lined passage, with Nora Jemisin on our way to the Met, where she had to leave me because of an appointment. Entrance to the Met from the subway was up a set of stone stairs with gilded or at least brass art deco gates at the top, all curving lines. Unfortunately awareness of real life conditions intervened and I was eyeing those stairs dubiously when I woke up.

Somewhere in this here journal I noted that the coda to Bede's story about the sparrow in the meadhall* was actually a passage from a Russian short story by I think Gogol. Can't find it anywhere, can't think what else I might have tagged it with, cannot find it online, cannot find it.

Argh.

* "The present life of man upon earth, O King, seems to me in comparison with that time which is unknown to us like the swift flight of a sparrow through mead-hall where you sit at supper in winter, with your Ealdormen and thanes, while the fire blazes in the midst and the hall is warmed, but the wintry storms of rain or snow are raging abroad. The sparrow, flying in at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry tempest, but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, passing from winter to winter again. So this life of man appears for a little while, but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all."

The coda is the oldest of the king's men saying 'Even in the dark the sparrow is not lost but knows her nest.'

ETA Ha! Ha! Ha! Found it, and it's Turgenev after all, Rudin:

"I remember a Scandinavian legend,' thus he concluded, ‘a king is sitting with his warriors round the fire in a long dark barn. It was night and winter. Suddenly a little bird flew in at the open door and flew out again at the other. The king spoke and said that this bird is like man in the world; it flew in from darkness and out again into darkness, and was not long in the warmth and light. . . . 'King,' replies the oldest of the warriors, 'even in the dark the bird is not lost, but finds her nest.' Even so our life is short and worthless; but all that is great is accomplished through men. The consciousness of being the instrument of these higher powers ought to outweigh all other joys for man; even in death he finds his life, his nest.’"

I had wondered why RBG's funeral was postponed for a week. Googling around, I find, "It is forbidden to allow the body of the deceased to lay (sic) unburied unless it is being left unburied for the honor of the deceased."

Which certainly fits the case here.

Got a call from work: two of the Infing staff wondering how I was doing. So nice to hear their voices again, as well as the yelps of the currently two babies present, both of whom wanted to play with the phone. And now, having been reminded of what work is or can be like, I miss work.

Feeling scratchy and out of sorts, an emotion I trace, oddly, to Pico Iyer's The Open Road, talking about the Dalai Lama. There's no logic to this, just as there's no logic to the mental muzak being stuck on Night Moves. Usually the mental muzak bears some relation to the happenings in my life: as for instance, when I used to CPR and Amtrak it down to New York, having Phil Collins stuck in my head:

So you're leaving
In the morning
On the early train...

or Springsteen's Independence Day last winter when next door was moving out. Bob Seger, I just don't know.

Newest mask arrived, is wearable. Roasted a chicken with dressing and then ate the veg I made with it instead. Otherwise, meh.

I'm kind of delighted by this horse story found over at

incandescens' twitter feed. Go Her Maj!

City's relief for Impoverished Elderly Homeowners (which is kind of an oxymoron, since any house in this city is effectively a money tree) came through this month ie they didn't deduct my property taxes, so I indulged myself by cancelling my 11 o'clock acupuncture appointment at short notice. For which I shall have to pay, but fine. This is the humid achy season when people so disposed (me and the cook and coworker S) are troubled in all our joints. Add allergies to that and you get super-doped me who really didn't want to leave her bedroom, let alone bike the pot-holed streets for half an hour. Who didn't want to wake up before 10, actually, and is sorry she did. And who was rousted from comfort by a real estate agent cold-calling with 'we recently sold a house in your neighbourhood and...' Jackals. It takes three lifetimes living in shanty towns and under bridges to expiate the guilt of having been a real estate agent.

Fast-cooking oats (not instant) make the best overnight oats. Lemon yoghurt takes away most of the oatmeal taste. But no matter what I eat in the morning, my insides rumble disconsolately afterwards, is why I'm not a breakfast person.

My current mission is to clean one kitchen bookshelf of books. This involves, alas, finishing Halprin's Winter's Tale, which I suppose is magic realism and which I don't actually *mind* except for its undefined but pervasive Written By A Guy-ness. Makes me think of Little, Big which I then think I must reread except that life is short. Maybe follow with Love in the Time of Cholera which is also (I assume) Mag.Real, and is also a kitchen book.

Purple Hibiscus also chugs along. There's some hope that Papa the wife beater will get his comeuppance some day, but meanwhile it reminds me why the religion of my childhood is, at the very least, something men should not be allowed near.

Crossposts: https://flemmings.livejournal.com/988870.html

September does this occasionally, the sudden hot spell just as the leaves are turning and the first cold nights start you thinking about furnaces or at least space heaters. After last night's prolonged thunderstorm and monsoon rains blew in a warm front, today was 28C and blistering in the sun, though breezy and pleasant enough in the shade. But as ever, high heat and humidity make me feel like a water-logged bag o' flesh, and everything hurts all the time. It's supposed to thunder again tonight and return us to a high of 19C tomorrow, but I doubt if that's enough to debloat me, if the chilly weekend didn't manage it.

However the daycare top-up, which our (speaking of bloated) smug thug of a premier was supposed to cancel, came in today, and I have 600-some extra dollars I wasn't expecting, so yay for that.

Reading-wise, I managed to finish Roger Lancelyn-Green's Myths of the Norsemen in a battered copy from the Front Lawn Library, read to remind me what the canon of it actually is before I go on, if I ever go on, to the Eddas themselves. What happened to my childhood copy of Norse Myths and Legends with the black and white Beardsley-inspired illustrations? Oh, it's Padraic Collum's The Children of Odin, and here's the bit I remember where Loki eats the witch's heart. Mh. Maybe I won't read the Eddas after all. I don't care for trickster gods, and the rest of the Aesir are prime examples of Men (or gods) Behaving Badly.

Currently working on Kari Sperring's The Grass King's Concubine, which is fun but doesn't need to be as slow as it is. I'm even skimmimg bits, which I rarely do. My downstairs reading, for as long as it lasts, is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus, because I'm not sure how much I can take of abusive Nigerian Catholic paterfamiliases.

And there's still lots of Rainy Willow, though vol15 isn't quite up to the heights of 14.

Crossposts: https://flemmings.livejournal.com/987702.html

Is it still full moon? Does that explain the three testosterone-poisoned loonies on bikes encountered this evening, zipping round corners, passing me on the right, zooming past me on the left only to brake abruptly in front of me when the light turned red. Add to that one pedestrian oaf ambling into a red light and not bothering to stop when I rang my bell and missed him by inches.

And the worst of it is that all of these goofuses are still alive, in spite of their evident death wish.

Just finished?
WJ Burley, Wycliffe and the Last Rites
-- a series, but not an inspector who really grabs me that much. Probably as well: autumnal will-less reading of British Inspectors is a bad habit.

Agatha Christie, The Sittaford Mystery
-- on the tablet, where it didn't parse very well. Well enough, I suppose.

Nalo Hopkinson, Brown Girl in the Ring
-- reread from 2010 and even better than I remembered. Helps to have a little knowledge of voudoun under one's belt and not just a vague awareness that there's a loa called Baron Samedi. As a regionalist, I'm for once delighted by the specific Toronto locales. They work because the book is set in a post-societal breakdown world where the well to do have fled to the suburbs and downtown TO is left to the mob and the cast-outs.

Reading now?

Still with Tell My Horse. The horse in question is the voudou priest that a loa takes possession of and 'rides'. The loa passes on messages by saying 'Tell my horse' ths and that, and when the priest comes back to themself, the onlookers do jut that.

There's someone who's reading through Shakespeare a few scenes at a time, which tiny morsels approach might work for me and my doorstoppers. So possibly I'm still reading Piers the Plowman while still not convinced it's worth it. As middle English goes, it has neither the fun of Chaucer or the strangeness of Gawain and the Green Knight and I'm probably reading it for sheer nostalgia's sake when I can't even remember which university course it was that I was *supposed* to read it for.

Next?
Forest of a Thousand Lanters by Julie C Dao.

Abandoned?
Raymond Buckland, Cursed in the Act
-- the one with Bram Stoker's stage manager and walk-ons by paper-thin historical people. Henry Irving has been poisoned! Henry Irving is not sufficiently poisoned that he can't go on tonight. Harry Rivers says, 'We must first find out who poisoned Henry Irving.' No, really? Not the most intelligent of books, this.

Mark Chadbourn, World's End
-- oh dear oh dear. As many Goodreads reviewers note, the premise is amazing. "All over the country, the ancient gods of Celtic myth are returning to the land from which they were banished millennia ago. Following in their footsteps are creatures of folklore: fabulous bests, wonders and dark terrors: there are dragons buzzing jet planes and shapeshifters on industrial estates, but their existence threatens the very fabric of the modern world." The execution OTOH is- oh dear oh dear.

Crossposts: https://flemmings.livejournal.com/936963.html

We survived the 70-80 kmh (45-50 mph) gale without losing power, go us. I did walk the bike to Fiesta in the working-up-to-a-gale high winds in order to get bread and raspberries, and let said winds blow me back. Very dusty by the newly landscaping corner lot. Downpour later on must have settled the dust, temps went from 31 to 24, and are now headed to a seasonable 8C overnight: though possibly another cold front may blow through before that happens.

Fell asleep last night round about 7 or 8 with lens in and light on. Single glass of wine doesn't usually have that effect on me. Pulled myself back down to sleep whenever I came to the surface in order not to have a troublesome three or four hours of wakefulness, because these days it might have turned into 'irrevocably awake from 1 a.m. to 9.' Instead I was up finally at 6 something, did my exercises, and got to the coffee shop before 8 when the pastry was still warm, and still being brought up from the kitchen, and the place was empty. Dispiritingly, it starts to fill precisely at 8 when I shall never again be awake to repeat today's performance.

Reading Hurston's observations of 1930s Haiti is also depressing. Should skip that section and go back to the voudoun chapters, but my completist conscience won't permit. The voudoun section has its own blinkety-blink passages, like the one where a master is being interred and the title passed on to his successor. Hurston has no problem with the bit where the dead master is asked if he agrees to the succession and the corpse sits up and nods, but she's totally kerblonxed by an overwhelming sense of evil that attacks the assembly a few moments later, source unknown. 'American readers may not credit this'- the sense of evil- but are expected not to turn a hair at corpses that sit up. Yes, I've read similar things about Tibetan lamas as described by Americans, but enh- you expect that sort of thing from Buddhists.

Crossposts: https://flemmings.livejournal.com/936448.html

tumblr discussion of Cohen's Hallelujah in context.

Since I only know the song in its original avatar on Various Positions, and the few covers I've heard were all whine whine whine without the sardonic edge, I didn't realize people left the last verses off. The sense of Cohen talking to a lover is muted in that first version- no cold and broken hallelujahs, no remember when I moved in yous, certainly no Christian holy doves ugh Lenny what were you thinking of- so the primary interlocutor sems to be God himself. And that, frankly, is how I like it.

(I have a tumblr account now. People, you don't need to tell anyone how to go from tumblr to DW, you nee the exact opposite; because all I see are 'posts recommended for you' and no way to unfollow people I've followed by accident. Really annoying interface in that wakamono 'press a few buttons and see how it works' way that computer developers thrust on us generations ago. 'No one read the manuals so we won't have one. Problems? Just google it.' Shakes cane- argh.)

Crossposts: https://flemmings.livejournal.com/915453.html

Partly due to half an ativan taken as corrective to a late afternoon Pepsi and the need to be up at Silly a.m. to get a cortisone shot tomorrow. But partly due to superb summer weather: warm in the day with fresh breezes, and dry and cool at night.

The summer poses problems for the philodendron in the east-facing study. Curtains, shutters, shoji, and sheers must all be moved about to exclude the brite painful morning sun and the brite painful mid-day heat. So Phil gets no light at all, and pines. This year I've moved him to the front porch, on the table shielded by the spindly evergreen bushes and the low-hanging linden branches. He seems to flourish well enough there, but if he looks wan again I'll move him back inside to the study and stick another philodendron outside.

The new tile in the hallway may stick up a little in the places it was jig-saw puzzled into the little spaces between the banister's uprights, but I've been able to remove the winter's runners from the hall and can now walk on cool smoothness down to the bathroom. Well, lately I haven't been able to walk at all with my puffy knees, but that's what the cortisone is for.
( Wednesdays come closer together lately )

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/872442.html

1. Three days of cloudburst and storm and heavy pressure, and both knees very unhappy. Cortisone is no match for mug, evidently.

2. My rain gaiters are the latest in the Vanished Objects dep't, unless they're at work in some unexpected place. But I suspect I left them in my pannier justincase, and someone took them from same.

3. One of my two under the kitchen cabinet fluorescents died. Took it to the oyaji at Weiner's who tells me it's a gro-light and they don't have them. Oh well, let's get a proper daylight fluorescent then. Put it in and shrink from THE LIGHT THE LIGHT IT BURNS MY PRECIOUSSS... The other tube gives a soft greyish-white light; a daylight bulb, yes, but Sylvania. This harsh atom-bomb glare is Phillips. The gro-light was a cheery soft pink and I miss it. But the Phillips does show where the dirt is, certainly.

4. Went out to do some fast gardening. Keep telling myself to put on garden shoes, not just traipse out in my Birks. Never do. Will from now on. Long grass hid some critter's poo and it got into the cracks of the Birkenstock's sole. Maybe they'll be dry by tomorrow but don't bet on it.
( Wednesday again )

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/865025.html

So many people this evening, on my walk around the neighbourhood, saying 'Oh isn't this lovely? Isn't this just perfect weather?' High of 30, humidex of 35, brassy burning sun, sodden unmoving air. Let them move to Singapore, say I. My revenge: we go back to the autumnal teens for the long weekend.

Went down to Eating Centre and bought half a dozen tanktops. None as nice as the first ones I got a decade and more ago, but they will do. Will I throw out the thin ratty bleach-stained and much-darned ones now? Probably not; they might come in handy as dusters...

Having lost two kilos, plus/minus, I now feel flabby and fat.
( Unambitious memeage )

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/862430.html

I much prefer March Easters to April. March has a chance of feeling like November- dry grey, cold, invigorating. April Easters follow an invariable pattern: unseasonably warm, unsettled, thunderous, with sun too bright when it breaks through the clouds and air too stifling when it doesn't. Mother of headaches, of which I have one building now. But the wind is blowing a cold front towards us and tomorrow may be better.

Easter weekend is uncomfortable anyway. What's supposed to be the joyous climax to the Christian saga has very little joy to it, to my mind. After you've waded through the tsuris of Good Friday (which as a cradle Catholic I used to do, spurred on by the morbid masochism of Irish Catholicism in its pre-Vatican 2 days) there's little consolation in an empty tomb and chocolate easter eggs so sweet you feel your teeth dissolve. Christmas is all happy anticipation crowned by happy event, plus presents and turkey. Easter is penitence for 40 days followed by indigestible lamb and said chocolate. Also easter eggs, which were overly-boiled with iron rims around the yolk.

My Greek co-worker unintentionally summed it up in her account of their traditional Easter dinner. 'After forty days of no meat and a week of no dairy either, suddenly you spend the whole day gorging on a roast lamb and your body just--' There's a special Greek word for the stomach cramps and diarrhea that follows this regimen.

Anyway, as a corrective, Cohen's Elegy.

Do not look for him
In brittle mountain streams:
They are too cold for any god;
And do not examine the angry rivers
For shreds of his soft body
Or turn the shore stones for his blood;
But in the warm salt ocean
He is descending through cliffs
Of slow green water
And the hovering coloured fish
Kiss his snow-bruised body
And build their secret nests
In his fluttering winding-sheet.

I mean, for all I know it *is* about Orpheus, but who cares?

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/855558.html

St Ijanel, saint of anti-procrastination.

Psalm to same, courtesy of

fadeaccompli

Ijanel is my saint; I shall not linger.
She maketh me to rise up from soft couches:
she leadeth me unto the work waiting.
She restoreth my nerve:
she leadeth me in the paths of productivity for my deadlines' sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of doubt,
I will fear no hesitation: for thou art with me;
thy goad and thy hook they encourage me.
Thou preparest a racecourse before me in the presence of mine doubters:
thou anointest my hands with ink; my spirit runneth over.
Surely action and determination shall follow me all the days of my life:
and I will stand at the riverbanks with Ijanel for ever.

The March winds roar, a month or so early. Am used to 'winds gusts up to 54 kmh' happening in early April because they regularly stop me from getting birthday alcohol for my bro. This is-- oh well, the new order.
( Cut for meme )

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/847764.html

Went to a workshop on Tonglen practice at the Shambala centre down the street, partly because I never do anything new and partly to see whether my understanding of the practice is at all accurate. Well no, it wasn't quite, but the- err- lecturer is a very laid-back type who maintains there's no way to do it wrong. Tonglen always struck me as the more woo-woo version of metta. Metta is where you wish good things for people and is not much different from God bless Mummy and Daddy and Teddy and Nana and me. Tonglen is where you visualize breathing in someone's sickness or sadness or whatever and breathing out relief and refreshment. 'Now don't worry,' all the sources say, 'it won't really make you sick'-- as if that were possible. No one until today has addressed the question of what it *does* do, and the guy today said that indeed, the effect on other people is like the effect of prayer, whatever you think prayer accomplishes. The effect on *you*, however, is pretty immediate, in that it tunes you in to other people and gets the focus off oneself. Which probably leads to a bunch of other stuff.

(I managed to get up in time for this by the expedient of turning up the heat so I was sleeping with a duvet only, not duvet and heavy heat-holding wool blanket which is both physically and psychologically hard to get out from under. This week has seen me regularly sleeping in to 10 or 11 precisely because of oh cold! and if I stand up I'll hurt! and just one more dream OK? Kills a day faster than anything.)

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/820740.html

What a lovely weekend this weekend was. Sunny and cold and invigorating, a quiet corner away from the world. Biking through the superb afternoon, I wondered (and not for the first time) why the fact that a day is a holiday changes the whole tenor of the city. It's not like this on my rare days off; it's not like Bloor St and its restaurants are any less crowded than on a weekday. Am I picking up a relaxed vibe from the people around me? Am I subconsciously registering fewer cars and bikes and much less aggressive modes of driving both? Whatever, it's really lovely and I love it.

Must admit, if it was warmer, as past Thanksgivings have been, I suspect the mellow vibe would be less in evidence. Something about warmth in unwarm seasons makes the Torontonian soul determined to get out and ENJOY!! before the long winter begins. And must say, the crowds inside Sushi On Bloor were as loud as ever. That I got into that trendy eatery is down to me showing up at 2:30 because normally I wouldn't even try. Their portions are as big as ever, including the servings of wine, but I still prefer Next Generation across the street, just as good and much more subdued.
( More food )

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/816666.html

Just finished?

Brennan, A Natural History of Dragons
- slow for most of its length. Alt.victoriana is Victorian still, which is not my period; natural history dragons are lizards, which are not my creatures. Enterprising Victorian women travellers, whether real (Isabella Bird) or fictional (Amelia Peabody) are much of a muchness to me. The one intriguing thing about the book is the suggestion I got that this is a Jewish world, and so it is. (I love the name 'velveteen rabbi', by the way.) Didn't catch the early references, but when you have people sitting shiva for the dead- yes, well.

Should another volume wander my way I might read it, but natural history remains very much not my thing. I'm merely pleased at having removed another book from the living room stack.

Reading now?
Campbell, still. Dipping into Celtic Miscellany, still. And began Terra Nostra to see how weird it reads 35 years on. Dense, is how it reads. Pre-internet moi had staying power I can barely imagine now.

And next?
Masks and Shadows and Cannonbridge on their way from the library, as ever, which might be as interesting as the blurbs make them sound.

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/797272.html

And I did, late last night, at which a load lifted from my spirit.

Book is The Conference of the Birds by Farid ud-Din Attar. The blurb calls it 'a great mystical poem', 'an allegorical rendering of sufism- the secretive and paradoxical form of Islamic mysticism.' Cool! Reader, I bought it.

Reader, always look at the text first.

Because Conference is written in a Persian metre that has one rhyme-word halfway through the line and a second at the end, and the translators decided to express this through heroic couplets. And I am so very sorry but the heroic couplet belongs to the eighteenth century, to Dryden and Pope. It's the epitome of rationality and civilization, and once you get to Pope, of wit and flippancy as well: and neither at all is of any use to Sufism. Or what little I understand of sufism from reading this work, whose one virtue to me was all these stories about caliphs and their favourite male slaves. Oh yes- also learned that Joseph in at least one strand of Islamic lit is the avatar of desirable male beauty.

But otherwise, I feel like someone tried to translate Julian of Norwich into rhyming couplets.

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/778782.html

October long weekend with promised pleasant weather- even if I'm a fan of grey cold and rainy holidays, because of the coziness factor-- and alas my Sei Shonagon Syndrome cuts in and says The Watchmaker of Filigree St would be the perfect focus for this lovely weather, and if I read something else my holiday will be less than perfect. Note that I am 31 out of 32 in line for this book at the library. (The no. of people waiting gradually decreases, but not my ranking as second last. After me, nobody wanted to read the book, it appears.)

Instead the library comes through with Americanah, that I barely remember ordering, so to the library I go to renew my card and withdraw the book. Open my wallet and find my bank card inexplicably missing. Can't recall when I last used it, but vaguely remember mid-week, at the branch a happy block away; and there they automatically cancel and give me a new one. These long work days lead to brainfry by evening, even though I *try* to be mindful at ATMs, as in 'I am taking my money, I am taking my card, I am putting money and card in wallet.' (They order these matters better, I say, at the Royal Bank, where you don't get your money until you've removed your card from the machine. The Royal has few forgotten cards.)

But Nigerians in Princeton are not a patch on whatevers in steampunk London, so I go off to Bakka to see if it might be there so I can have my perfect weekend. It is: $30 plus tax. No, enfin: not for a book I might find a grand disappointment. Adichie it is, I guess, unless I stick to GK Chesterton's essay on Thomas Aquinas. Chesterton writes beautifully. 'Of course, he's all wrong,' as my cousin said of Lewis' take on allegory, 'but such a pleasure to read that it does't matter.'

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/739969.html

I suppose I'm happy that Environment Canada has revised its projected lows this week from 2 or 3C to a more seasonable 6. The neighbour's cherry tree provides all the ersatz snow flurries one needs. Today is classic 'May pretending to be November' grey and white, and if I hadn't misplaced a bunch of my past I'd give you examples of 'on such a day as this.' But as it is- in the moment, for the moment, where rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.

Have kinder gentler knee exercises from the physiotherapist, except for the one that isn't, and hope I've misplaced enough of the three-year-old me as well that I will actually do them.

Still digging through boxes, last night discovered all my Gaiden eps and a bunch of WARDs as well in a box in the spare room cupboard. Removed eps from WARDs and threw the detritus in the recycle. Wonder if I shouldn't have thrown out the eps as well, Buddhist non-attachedly, but tankoubon aren't really the same and looking through those phone books from eight or nine years ago was bittersweet indulgence, a reminder of when the world was more peopled than it is now.

Heat is not kind to me, psychologically and in other ways. But busyness fills the blankness, and so I suddenly wind up with my cotton pants from the 80s neatly ironed, (chuffed of course that I can get into them: but they may actually be the early 90s, and I weigh less now than I did then); my bedroom sheers washed (once every eight years whether they need it or not); my shower curtain ditto; the bathroom sparkling from Merlin's Magic All Purpose Household Cleaner, mixed up by older brother; and a new shower curtain liner to replace the old cracked one. (May be too light a pink: I seem to recall I had maroon to start with, to block the hideous sun. But again, that might have been the old bathroom nine years back and its brite white tile.) These little tasks are something I'd never have done without great protest ere now-- I think I haven't ironed in this millennium at all-- but Buddhist patience or attend-to-the-moment mindfulness has kicked in, allowing me to unhook and rehook the curtains automatically, a fiddly job that usually reduces me to tears.

Merlin's Magic contains tea tree oil so I've sloshed a bit of it on the roof outside the study. To date have seen no new raccoon poop, but the spring is yet young and it's just a matter of time. The tea tree oil should discourage them.

Heat is kind in one specific way: it stops my hips aching. Put a Robax heat wrap round the lower back and got through my meditation session very well thank you. Second last one and not a minute too soon: uninspired is not the word for the way the seminar is conducted. Only plus is that one gets to talk to an absolute stranger and tell them things one has formerly kept for therapists, since no one else but the mythical Best Friend would be the slightest bit interested.

The melancholy of spring has arrived: warm weather, budding trees, a greying and softening of the world. Last night slept with neither hoodie nor socks, warm in my duvet coccoon, and very nice too. But this afternoon I went to the exhibition of painted screens (byobu) at the Japan Foundation, and the sadness bit hard and deep.

For twenty years TJF has been in a building called the Colonnade, which was a groundbreaker in its day: on the tony block of Bloor St just past Avenue Rd, with fashionable apartments above and fashionable stores and cafes on the first two floors, and a little gem of a theatre hidden in the centre. Of course, what was fashionable in the 60s is too declasse for the 21st century. All the little boutiques on the second floor are gone, replaced by one large restaurant, one large jeweller's, one large eye doctor's clinic, a single cafe tucked in at one end, a conveni cum postal outlet tucked in the other, and the Japan Foundation. Articles all say that the renovation in the 80s did for the building. I seem to recall it was still pleasant enough in the early part of that decade, and even in 2001; but now it's not merely soulless, it's down at heels. The floors of the Foundation are aging concrete, the walls tatty plaster, and the screens on display in two tiny rooms are, shall we say, not up to the standards of what I saw in Tokyo. Which is unfair- the artist is modern and Argentinian- but it all seems of a piece with the sense of vanished past ('and it was so much better than it is today') that spring melancholy always carries with it.

(The Buddhist seminar last night had us considering what losses we've had in life, and what we've gained from them. I'm not sure I've gained anything from losing the places I spent my adolescence: but maybe it's only because it hasn't yet taught me to stop looking backwards. 'The suffering guaranteed by wanting things to last' as Pema Chodron puts it.)

Well, whatever else I was doing these last few days, dishes wasn't a part of it. I collect china bowls (usually from the Front Lawn Dollar store) and have at least seven by now. This morning I had to eat my cereal out of one of the Japanese lacquer ones, because the others were piled in the sink. All is clean now, but times I wish I had a dishwasher.

The week so far has been virtuously devoted to accountants (my tax refund shrinks year by year, possibly because my stocks are making money or at least accumulating capital gains), dentists, and doctors. All of which am glad to have over with. Wandering relief workers return from their wanderings and I may be allowed to give my complaining lower back a rest for a while. Am ambivalent about that: spring melancholy bites hard in April and shrieking babies at least keep one distracted from it for a bit.

But I suppose it's time I started to deal with spring melancholy as well as everything else. Have joined a Buddhist seminar/ class that meets on Sundays and am endeavouring not to pre-judge (and dismiss) it just because I still haven't found a comfortable way to sit for extended periods with scoliosis, and the practices fail to entertain me. Patience is also a Buddhist virtue.

So my cell phone,which presented me last night with a blank screen, is not dead either: it was just resting. I am relived, but would still like to know how it got into 'hibernate' mode without me doing anything. I trust the clerk was correct when he said hibernate and not 'the thing that gives you graphics got switched off.' However, if this happens again, I am to hold the start button down for ten seconds and that should revive it.

Attended my first group meditation session today, or rather, instruction for group meditation. They let you sit on chairs if needed but that still makes my hip and ITB ache in shortish order. The actual meditation parts, attending to breath and posture, were only five minutes, so a certain amount of core work is going to be needed if I'm ever to manage one of the 30 minute sessions. But it is indeed easier to meditate with a bunch of other people, something I'd rather doubted.* And of course, since enlightenment is not going to happen this lifetime, my main motivation is to find a local crowd I can hang out with, people who share my interests, and who are, umm, also trying to practise charity and generosity, which might make them easier to get along with than, well, people who aren't. Naming no names, as ever, but Torontonians are not known for their sweet and open natures.

*It's easiest to meditate lying on one's back, warm under the covers, IMO. Or at least walking about the neighbourhood, feeling one's footsteps.

Comparison of Pratchett and Tolkien, spinning off a conversation about dwarfs/ dwarves. A tumblr entry with the usual infuriating 'who said what now?' tumblr format (yes, great for art, no, useless for discussion- even when, as here, the replies are colour coded) so I post the pertinent part of the text:
( under the cut )

Watched a few more eps of Otogizoushi last night. Quite aside from the unfortunate choice of voice actors-- the two major male leads grate on me hideously, and only Miki Shin'ichi is worth listening to, but natch-- I find an unplaceable sense of oppression and iya da! in the thing. It ran in late 2004 and I got eps from Katchan usually a month or six weeks later: and I fancy that's what I was watching in the wake of the tsunami, which would explain the yuckies I associate with it.

Finished something called The Tibetan Book of Meditation which of course is not by a Tibetan but by 'Lama Christie McNally.' It has the virtue, if it is, of presenting doctrine straight, not elided for westerners as other western presenters do to some extent. So everything that happens, and that means *everything*, is because of karma. It snowed on me today because of something I did once; I'm myopic because of something I did once; I'm solvent because of something I did once. And the reason Americans are wealthy and prosperous, and Mexicans are not? 'Once upon a time the Americans did something wonderful and generous, and the Mexicans didn't.' Uh yeah. Sure.

Was in depressive don'wanna funk all weekend. Pulled myself out of it Monday morning. Phoned the tree service, to discover that the one I want doesn't work west of Bathurst. 'Only the oldest of moneyed Annex trees for us!' was my subtextual reading. Second choice gets me cheerful English voice who will try to come by Wednesday morning. Well, so far so good.
( But then )
Then started vacuuming bedroom, and was emptying rapidly filled tank when the phone rang from work: and I have been working ever since and no longer feel like vacuuming at all.

Mindfulness helps you recover from cancer. Mindfulness alas is not working for me at all these days. The appointment today that I was sure I cancelled online y'day morning does not register as cancelled on the wp, and I must pay for it when I go to my new app't Thursday.

No more Ford, which is good, except he has his brother's council seat which is bad. Tory is mayor, which is oh well at least he's not Ford. S-i-l says we will enter a 25 year long economic depression on April 21 next year; am disinclined to research why the date is so precise.

Need to work on my Buddhist detachment. A few transcendent moments would help in this, but satori doesn't come just for the asking.

A friend who works in a department store decided some years ago that she would test her belief that everyone is basically good. She wanted to see if she could find anyone she felt was not a candidate. Every day she encountered friendly people, for sure, but also plenty of rude people, arrogant people, manipulative people, and downright mean-spirited people, In each case, she experimented with ways to go beneath their facades, to go past their defenses and contact their good sense, their humor, and their kindness. When we last talked, she hadn't yet met anyone she felt lacked basic goodness, and she's been working at that store for fifteen years.
-Pema Chodron, Living Beautifully

I would like to know what those ways were.

(Using the rain icon though it isn't actually raining. It's sun and steaming. But it was sun and steaming when I went to the cafe this morning and sat with my back to the window, only to hear an exclamation from the man across from me. Turned round to see the skies mud grey and the water cascading down; and this, I understand, is likely to recur all weekend.)

Tim Parks has an article in The Guardian about how meditating worked for him, in the wake of recent warnings that meditation can have undesirable side-effects. I'm bemused by the notion that meditation is dangerous! because it brings up all kinds of scary feelings and memories!! Like, if you don't meditate, the scary feelings and memories will stay away and not ever emerge? I suppose they mean one should be aware this will happen and have a notion how to deal with it: which the books I've read do indeed tell you. Not all, agreed: many of the Zen ones focus on enlightenment and care not what happens to you while you're getting there.
( Which reminds me )

I don't get around to no-sword's blog often enough, because the reminder of how much Japanese I don't know, will never know, and/or have forgotten, is depressing. But sometimes one discovers delights, like the poems of a failed hermit-poet of the late Tang.

I don't stay at the summit that long myself
The air's too thin, it's not good for you
So there I sleep, far below the clouds
With a pillow for my pillow and a nice soft blanket

See also, and again, why I shall never be a Buddhist. Lack of pillows and nice soft blankets, also having to get up at 3 am, also not eating after noon.

Ah well. I'm trying to be Buddhist about not clinging to happiness and not saying to God, 'Encore.' But it was nice having friends here and I'm sad they're gone. And because it was great talking books with M again and because she said Max Gladstone's settei, as described by me, reminded her of C.S. Friedman's, I've rousted out the first volume of the Coldfire trilogy from where I ~~hid~~ tidied it away (after thinking 'oh rats must have despaired of ever getting to it and put it out on the lawn sometime') and started reading it.

(Wish I could remember what I did with Point of Knives as well. This is what tidying does: makes things unfindable.)

Most people would rather torture themselves than be alone with their thoughts

I like being alone with my thoughts; I spend a lot of time that way. What I don't like is sitting in a chair with them. Lying down, perfect; walking, fine; sitting- without the distraction of a screen or book- ouchy.

They should have tried the experiment with a comfy couch.

See also: why I am not (yet) a Buddhist.

My irrational but firm belief that Two Serpents Rise would make much more sense if I read the Acatl books first was in fact correct. What was dizzyingly mystifying last January (with a virus, true) became a fast fun read this weekend. Now I want to reread Three Parts Dead but lack a copy. Somehow I'd thought Bakka had a mass market edition; it does not, and $20 when the tax is included is something that must wait for the next paycheque. Luckily that's Thursday, when the grubby rainy mug may have lifted as well.

My memory of the first book does suggest that Gladstone has a theme of people making really bad people choices. However I'm more interested in the world-building and will let the bad choices slide. Especially as mine have never been any better.

Ganpo Abbey has a space open for a one week retreat in mid-August. Am so tempted to take it, just to demonstrate to myself that retiring to a Buddhist monastery is not at all what I want to do. Shan't, of course. Must learn to sit on floors first. But maybe next year, when the thought of being retired sings its siren song in my ear.

Other seasons are perhaps different, but in summer things need to pass the Sei Shonagon test for anything to be worth my doing. That is, certain aesthetic criteria must come together to guarantee an at least memorable occasion. I no longer require me to be wearing the perfect outfit: fashion is for the young. Nor do I need the perfect companion; in fact, any companion at all is usually sufficient (and sufficiently unusual) to raise the event to memorable status. But from June through August, the weather *has* to be good, which means sunny, clear and cool. Otherwise I'd rather stay at home and read, than venture into the mug and lowering overcast to see a film or hear a concert or basically do anything; because the mug leaches any pleasure to be had from whatever I'm seeing or hearing.

But Saturday evening the weather was sunny, clear and cool, so I biked down the street to St Mary Mag, the veddy high Anglican church on Manning, for a concert of early music from Spain by the group Vocem Resurgentis. (Cannot parse the grammar of the name either, but no matter.)
( Read more... )

So, well, went to a Buddhist lecture finally, go me. Speaker for the Kadampa sect of Tibetan Buddhism. Sounded promising- 'Buddha taught that happiness and suffering are feelings- parts of our mind- and so their main causes are not to be found outside the mind. If we want to be truly happy and free from suffering, we must learn how to control our mind.'
( So far, so good )

Today I finally got myself to the museum for the Forbidden City exhibit. Pretty interesting, but I should have brought a list of the Qing emperors with me, because I kept getting the 4th, 5th and 6th ones mixed up. The exhibit has a way of putting these Emperors' quotes on the walls accompanied not by their name but their portrait. -_- The history line with portraits and names was back at the entrance-- and yes, I did keep making my way through the winding and confusing layout to go check which was the Yongzheng Emperor and which the Qianlong. Luckily it wasn't crowded: this would have been impossible at the terracotta warriors. Also the aerial view of the city itself, available on any number of i-pad-type installations with pop-up labels, was all very well: but nowhere was there a map with all the buildings labelled, even though the exhibit kept mentioning individual structures by name. (Nor did I realize these things on the wall were tablets until I saw the usual tech-savvy eight-year-old swiping one to enlarge the picture.)

I could retire to a monastery and contemplate the ephemerality of human existence. After yesterday (three staff sick, 8:15-6, no breaks) and today (chapter of accidents it would be tedious to relate), retiring to a monastery is looking very good indeed. But it would have all the narrowness of a monastery, whereas here has more scope for, oh, whatever: finally working out what works, perhaps.

Understand, this is not cheerfulness or gaman in me. I am speaking from a combination of ativan and wine, not too much of either, but enough to assuage the physical aches of yesterday and the psychic twinges of today. (Also: I could *move* after yesterday's marathon, which as recently as last month I could not have.)

An accomplished weekend, and a very nice weekend for accomplishing. I was too busy being social on Saturday for Doors Open-- lunch with university friend unseen for 20 years or thereabouts, tea with aunt, an evening of The Little Girls. Only had acupuncture on the agenda for today and intended to make it (at last after four years) to the Tibetan Buddhist temple way out west in Junction. But by the time I got moving there was only ninety minutes to my appointment, so on a whim went to the Gardiner Museum (of Ceramics.) Never been in all its 30 year history, since porcelain is so not my thing. But it was free and fast, and off I went.
( Read more... )
Is also the Glorious Twenty-fifth, and the city smells of lilacs. But I have none to wear, alas.

Possibly it's my old Firefox, possibly it's the old version of the Weather Network, but the latter often fails to load on the former when I click the link. Instead I get

Internal Server Error
Guru Meditation

which, like the Autocorrects on iphones, I must think some geek's notion of humour, because otherwise I can't account for it.
( More trivia within )

For the rest of this week I am once again a body that works and does little else. Most people are in this position all the time, so I can't complain. But it adds depth to those Buddhist strictures about one's ineffable good fortune in being born a human who is able to learn about the Dharma, which western Buddhists specifically say means a person with enough leisure to do so.
( Read more... )

The forsythia in the neighbourhood are beginning to flower. This has never happened before. One (warm) day there are no forsythia, next day the city is a riot of yellow everywhere. But on my evening walk tonight I saw three bushes with small drooping flowers, dispirited and fed-up. If it was sunny and over 10C they might perk up, but we have rain and 'feels like 5C' for the rest of the week. (Mind, I'm no fan of forsythia. Overdone. But at least reliable.)

The backyard lilac bush has little green tips but the cherry isn't even thinking about leaves, let alone blossoms.
( And domestically )

Most trees are still bare- buds there if you look for them, but from far away they still keep their late fall silhouettes. (Rather like my icon there). Is also November temps and silver light through flat white cloud, which is a bit disconcerting. 'November the mirror month of March' is a common topos, but to be this autumnal this late is unusual for these latter days. Everything will doubtless pop and fizzle in next week's seasonal warmth: it only takes a day or two to bring the green out.
( Boring thoughts on Buddhism )

Coldest March in thirty years, they say. I suppose: *consistently* cold, and the warmest it got to was 10C. I've been seeing blooming flowers here and there on my bike rides: ascertained today that they're in fact plastic, put out by people who are tired of waiting for the coldest March in thirty years to be over. Have actually seen real snowdrops in certain north-side yards; but the south-side yards still have snow hills in them.

Brainfried, couldn't read Two Serpents Rise on the weekend. Read A Distant Neighbourhood/ Haruka na machi e instead, manga by the Times of Botchan mangaka. Ah, Japan and trains... (Am bothered by the translation of machi as neighbourhood. In this context I suppose it's reasonable, but it feels like there ought at least to be a colloquial word for neighbourhood in English, and there isn't. Is *why* you have the 'hood, I assume.) (Also I feel like the Japanese is reaching for 'Another country' as in The past is, which you can't render in English either.)

Still brainfried (had to be reminded several times that today was Monday) went and got more translated comics- The Rabbi's Cat and Adèle Blanc-Sec. There's no excuse for the latter because I've had the French versions on my shelves for at least twenty-five years if not more; and never read them, of course.
( Read more... )

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