It came from beyond
“Here, you guys must read this,” his message said. An e-mail I’d just got from a friend, with a Word file attached. It’s rather long, the message went on, but you really should read it. “It’s very well written and it makes a lot of sense.”
So I opened it. And recognised the first sentence right away. It was an article I had written, what, must be two years ago now. Posted into the ether and forgotten about, like all the others. It was like getting a postcard from the past.
Funny how things come back to bite you in the arse like that. And funny how good that can feel. Apparently, it’s been making the rounds anonymously, like so many attachments. Which has always been how it’s supposed to work. But - heh - doesn’t hurt to gloat once in a while, eh. Flattery, even when it’s unintended, does add a certain spring in your step.
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“Here, you guys must read this,” his message said. An e-mail I’d just got from a friend, with a Word file attached. It’s rather long, the message went on, but you really should read it. “It’s very well written and it makes a lot of sense.”
So I opened it. And recognised the first sentence right away. It was an article I had written, what, must be two years ago now. Posted into the ether and forgotten about, like all the others. It was like getting a postcard from the past.
Funny how things come back to bite you in the arse like that. And funny how good that can feel. Apparently, it’s been making the rounds anonymously, like so many attachments. Which has always been how it’s supposed to work. But - heh - doesn’t hurt to gloat once in a while, eh. Flattery, even when it’s unintended, does add a certain spring in your step.
And since we’re on the subject, this is the second time I got forwarded my own article. Sorry. Couldn’t resist that. Hee hee.
Gutenberg’s Lament
Are you a lecturer, the man behind the counter asked.
No, I said. He must have seen the slightly puzzled look on my face, because he proceeded to explain that he figured I must be a lecturer since I was buying so many books on science. Just catching up with evolution, I said, and left.
It’s funny how reading is still treated as being outside the norm rather than the norm itself. Here I am thinking we’ve been living in an Information Age for the past 10 years at least. Visitors to my office almost always remark on the stack of books I have sitting on the windowsill (for, that’s what books do: sit). Why do you have so many, they’d ask. And then, noticing that the subject matter varied wildly between one tome to another (I tend to buy books almost at random): why are you interested in so many things?
Peculiar things, humans. To paraphrase a smart guy, I love humanity; too bad the people smell.
“Why?” Tch. The correct question is, why not? But that’s just it, isn’t it? For many people, learning is only about one thing: getting a good job. They read simply to get a degree, following which reading as an intellectual activity may stop. No wonder Malaysians on average only manage to finish one page per year. (There is the other possibility, which I honestly cannot discount, that we are just a nation of incredibly slow readers).
I sometimes wonder why God did not give us modular brains - you know, once we’re done with part of it we can give it back to save space in our heads. Imagine how much cooler that would make our heads. We can then use the empty part to store the really useful stuff, like beer (for those who drink) or a handphone.
If books had self-awareness I could quite confidently say that they’d be continually stressed out and in need of perpetual therapy. A few might turn positively suicidal. When they ran the first Survivor series, those who got kicked out had to undergo two months of therapy (something like that) to cope with the trauma of rejection. Imagine how it must be like to cope with the knowledge that so many people don’t like you (and some simply hate you) throughout your whole life.
Reading is witchcraft
Once upon a time in the West (and East) you could get burned at the stake simply for writing or reading a book. It seems to me that history is always suspicious of bookworms. Maybe it’s because many of them have really bad fashion sense, wear teeth braces and have pale skin. But the first people to be put to death after conquest are the ones who can read. One of the first casualties of an invasion are books - see what the grinning idiots did to the Library of Baghdad?
Ironically, the grinning idiots were Muslim. And what was the first command that God sent to the Muslims? Reading, according to Islam, is not just in the literal sense: we are encouraged to read not just the printed letter, but also the signs of nature. But some Muslims are too busy grinning for photos to care.
Sometimes I wonder what the power of the book is all about and where this all came from. How can something that makes my fingers dirty and take up more space in my home than Maggi mee threaten anyone? Books, like I said, just like to sit and be idle all day long. As a person they are about as threatening as a stuttering dwarf mugger with a spoon.
I wonder too how books acquired the position of power they seem to enjoy. I’m not quite sure but my theory is Adam did not come to Earth with a library in tow. Our forefathers gathered around the fire with nary a book in sight. Did they use to tell spooky tales of books - which, like a pontianak, no one had actually seen but they all know someone who claimed to have seen one - that sneak into caves in the middle of the night and carry children away to snack on? Was this how our genes acquired the fear of books?
Regardless of the origins, books continue to be our favourite bogeyman. Just the mere act of reading one can drive you mad. Some books today are still off limits to the common person. Hindu scriptures, for one. The Quran, I’m sure some people would really like to believe, is another.
Ignorance is hip
In the Information Age we now find ourselves in, knowledge is power, someone exclaimed triumphantly in a movie in the early 90s. Hardly earth-shattering, you tedious prick. Not even correct. Knowledge has been power for all time. Why else would the ancient peoples keep prosecuting those with knowledge in their midst?
Throughout time, people have been broiled, burnt, quartered, hung, imprisoned, starved, crucified, vilified and ridiculed merely for possessing knowledge that an elite group wants to keep to themselves.
In the old days (ie, the period that Western grinning idiots like to refer to as the “Dark Ages” for the simple reason that Europeans of the time were still sleeping with with goats, metaphorically and literally speaking, never mind that the rest of the world had central heating/cooling and flushing toilets), books acquired their allure due to scarcity. They could only be replicated by people dressed in flour sacks and proto-Beatles haircuts by hand. The process was excruciatingly slow (which was perhaps when Malay genes acquired their slow reading ability).
After Gutenberg invented the printing press books literally exploded onto the world. Suddenly, we have too many Delia Smiths to contend with. But strangely enough, we have been living with the flood of books for 500 years now, and we’re still thinking that people who read books are weirdoes and academics (which often is one and the same thing, I concede).
One time, a friend and I were wandering aimlessly in a shopping complex downtown. This was at the height of reformasi, and tensions were a little higher than usual. A bunch of skinhead types (Malay skinheads: have you ever seen this ridiculous phenomenon?) ran past chanting “Reformasi! Reformasi!”. We thought nothing of it, until we were stopped by a burly Indian.
The guy wanted to check our bags. Are you reformasi people, he wanted to know. No, we’re just walking, we said. Then a middle-aged burly Malay came up. I assumed him to be an inspector or something. He looked into our bags.
“Student ke?” he asked.
No, we said.
“Habis tu, kenapa bawak buku?” (Why do you have books with you?)
And then he intructed the burly Indian to do a body check on us. I still think it was just the stinking peasants’ lame excuse to grope two hunky intellectuals.
