From the Desk at the Public Library in the Former Nepean City Hall, Ottawa

I spend these days skulking around the libraries a lot; first, the one down in Rue Rideau, which plays hosts to a dazzling array of vagabonds and other desperadoes including myself; then, the one in what used to be the City Hall of Nepean, a jurisdiction recently absorbed by the capital in what many see as a shameless money-grab. I almost forget to mention a third: a study room tucked securely in a residence for university students run by Opus Dei, and a fourth: a picturesque little lounge in the National Gallery from where I took this pretty picture of Gatineau. These venues give me ample supply of books, space to study, and distraction from the protracted visa paperwork with the embassy. The affair was anticipated to take only a few days, but evidently, it will drag for weeks to even a month.

I have decided to become Canadian in the meantime. To (interiorly) thumb my nose at the Yanks I have bought new clothes, bought a public transport card, registered myself at the library, mingled with the parishioners, and sharpened my French. Family friends have graciously taken me into their home, so that I have a taste of the most mundane Ontarian suburbia, and do not have to change hotels every few days while I wait for an indeterminable time for news from the embassy. New friends and acquaintances feed me so many opinions on how the country is (or should be) run that I almost begin to share in their anguish in the woes of Canadian society and politics, even though I do not have business in this country other than that wretched paperwork. Maybe, when things are going better, I will look back on these times and laugh.

Miracle Child

Picture source

Mikolaiki arrived at the abbey in the dead of winter in the war years. A ten year old boy, with dark hair, attentive eyes, and rosy cheeks. He surprised everyone: no one believed a child could be caught wandering the country like this. Violence was everywhere in Taimiria, with the battles between the Sultan's men and those of his revolting Satraps. It took some time for the folk to find that the child could speak, and did so in the dialect of the Midlands ("war orphan" was the term people used for these individuals). He also surprised everyone for not having a name — he did not even seem to have a notion that people should have names. So they named him Mikolaiki, after Saint Nicholas of Myra, whose feast was celebrated on the day he showed up.

A wild child, they said at first — maybe even raised by a wolf-mother! Mikolaiki were not bound by any of the customs and traditions found among the families who have found shelter in Amatodate Abbey. Presenting himself to each of them, in turn, wandering just as he was used to, Mikolaiki learned the Pripyatine dialect from the friars, classical Turkish from Osman-bachi and his family, and Lowland Taimir in the company of Irannika Yasin and her servant-girl, Olivia Hutanonoyong. These he mastered, curiously enough, in the same amount of time they got him to eat using utensils instead of his own bare hands. This boy is precocious! they all said. They trusted him enough to delegate to him the cleaning chores, then to the kitchen, then to the gardens, a position that little Mikolaiki took to with relish.

The garden was where Mikolaiki revealed himself to be something like a miracle child. Green fingers — that was they said of people who took care of plants very well — the fingers of Mikolaiki are amazingly green. The vegetable patches flourished in the days after he took up duties. In the spring, when some of the manpower were succumbing to illness, a roster had to be drawn up to divvy the work between the helpers. The groundskeeper swore that the garden looked to be in much better shape on the days the boy was in charge. Around this time, the pear tree at the northern corner, which everyone assumed was dead, bloomed and sprouted leaves for the first time in years! Of course they said that young Mikolaiki did it. And they all began to fear him.

The summer of the following year, General Tansukchin had ousted his own lord in Totte Muran, rallied the other lowland satraps through tactics persuasion and intimidation, and gathered an army to march northward to meet the men of Hakim Sultan. He named the Abbey of Amatodate a prime target in this campaign, as it had admitted casualties from the Sultan's army into its tents, and also abducted the Princess from the House of Yasin. Yes, everyone can see that Amatodate had apostatized from the true faith, along with whichever Christian who chose to take shelter with them. The abbey shored up their defenses, amassing a hundred fighting men and women from the inhabitants to match the thousands who now march upon them. When the abbot had finished the count, all were murmuring in dismay, uncertain of their survival. But little Mikolaiki spoke, his eyes fixed to the chapel:

"Not a hundred, Father Abbot, but tens of thousands have joined us."

The chapel was empty at that time; everyone knew that. Few heard the random nonsense of a miracle child, even if his fingers were very, very green. The ones who did knew what it entailed to see things which are not there, and chose to pay no comment to Mikolaiki. But they still told me after everything had happened, and that is how I knew.

In the kid's eyes, the chapel must have appeared very crowded indeed.

The abbey's fighters fought valiantly in the siege, weathering the first and second waves of assault. Few would think such an outcome possible; the abbot had anticipated the abbey's total annihilation, going the same way as its previous incarnations. My personal opinion would be that we had help from elsewhere: from the guardian angels, from the faithful of faraway lands, the "tens of thousands" counted by the miracle child during the counting. Those who were near Mikolaiki at the time heard him say these words, and so we know they are true.

As everyone knows, the abbey did not survive the third assault, when the reinforcements opened with their fateful artillery barrage. Thanks to the borrowed time, most of the inhabitants fled before the fall. We remember among the slain the Father Abbot, Princess Irannika Yasin (whose remains have never been found to this day), and a small company of friars who had taken charge of the evacuation but failed to leave themselves. Tansukchin took Mikolaiki alive, knowing him to be close to the Princess. He hoped to learn of the whereabouts of the Princess from him, but found him unresponsive and tight-lipped. The next interrogator was called in: the Satrap of Toyogarov, a wretched and evil man. In a fit of sadistic rage (for the Princess had been his betrothed), he had the boy's tongue ripped out, his eyes gouged, and left him to die in agony in his cell.

Note that I do not know if the things that happened to Mikolaiki after the fall of the abbey were true or not. Of course, I was not there to see them happen. But more than a few people who I met later knew the story and told them this way, and a few of them I know to be close to the Satraps, and so I think them reliable. The version of the story that I shall tell now comes ultimately from the words of Toyogarov himself, who has become insane. I came to know of it thanks to people who took the trouble to sift through his increasingly incomprehensible ravings for snippets of sensible speech. This is what they heard him say:

Three weeks after they had buried the child, the Satrap woke up in midnight, in cold sweat, only to find the boy standing at the foot of his bed, alive. The resurrected Mikolaiki lacked the distant air and unearthy mien which typified such apparitions. He appeared as if no death or trauma whatsoever had happened to him — he had all his features seemingly restored, his disposition human. Except, to the Satrap's horror, he was holding: in his left hand, a pair of eyeballs; in his right, a severed tongue. "You have nothing to be afraid of." said the boy to him.

"You have nothing to be afraid of!" raved the Satrap to his advisors ever since that night. And because nothing new has happened after that time, I will end my story here.

Notes
1. The name "Mikolaiki" comes from the Polish name of St. Nicholas's Day.
2. The apparition to Toyogarov is loosely based on the story of Saint Lucia of Syracuse.
3. The stories of Irannika Yasin and many other characters mentioned here will be written in future posts.

The Adventures of Nasreddin and the Hat he Bought for Six Tangas

Nasreddin bought a tubeteika at the bazaar for six tangas. Everyone he met asked him: “How much money did the tubeteika cost you?” Nasreddin answered to the first of them, he answered to the second of them, he answered to the third of them, than he said: “If I answer to everyone, I will go crazy.” He took the tubeteika off his head, ran to the bazaar, and cried: “Hey, people! Go quickly to the square, gather somewhere there! The Big-ones have something to tell you.” All the people gathered at the square, and no one else remained in the city. Nasreddin came upon a high place, and cried: “Hey people, just to let you know, I bought this tubeteika for six tangas”

A tubeteika

[source]

That Ten-Hour Hard-Seat Joyride from Beijing West Station to Jining, Inner Mongolia

Datong station, August 2018

I remembered that ten-hour hard-seat joyride from Beijing West Station 北京西站 to Jining 集宁, Inner Mongolia because of this article which was about mean people who hogged seats which didn't belong to them on a train somewhere in China.

It was a little different on the ten-hour hard-seat joyride from Beijing West Station to Jining, Inner Mongolia, because when it started, there was not enough seats for everyone. I had a ticket in hand which had my seat number on it, and I assumed it was same for the others, too. Even so, many people had to be content to stand in the aisle. How this works is still a mystery to me.

Jining is not very far away from the capital, just about 500 kilometers. Train-wise, this translates to eight hours, because although rail between major cities in the country have largely become high-speed links, the region of Ulanqab ᠤᠯᠠᠭᠠᠨᠴᠠᠪ remains for now a forgotten backwater country brimming with clean air, friendly bogans, barbarians on horseback, and a crap ton of nothing. No high-speed rail just yet for this place! Seats on Chinese trains came in four grades: soft bed, hard bed, soft seat, and hard seat. The last one has the sole advantage of being cheap as dirt. It was also the only one available because I booked my seat too late. I say this in my defense! No one in their right mind puts themselves through this ordeal willingly.

Before the train left the civilized world, I had some time to text Mom: my train is now sprinting towards the open steppes, at snail's pace! I spoke too soon! Very soon the train came to Yanqing District 延庆区, a mountainous area which (I learned later) was prone to landslides. Rail operators here become tetchy over the mildest drizzle and would grind the train to a halt whenever it began to look a little wet. The PA system put it this way: we are stopping the train because of heavy rain. What rain? I looked out to see slightly damp trees swaying gently on verdant slopes. Meanwhile, the eight-hour ride morphed into a ten-hour ride before our very impatient eyes.

I must mention here that the rail service hires peddlers to sell anything from packed lunch, stationery, cheap toys to spectacles and medicine to the passengers. These people are overjoyed about the delay and wasted no time making the biggest profit they could out of our misery, raucously announcing their goods up and down the aisle. You have no idea about the amount of useless crap people would buy when they have been jammed in together in hard seats and needed something to distract themselves with. I bought a novelty smartphone holder this way; I bought two, actually, but they weren't very good. 

Milk candy for the lactose tolerant, USB cables for phone addicts, reading glasses for old people — and, of course, who can forget the local produce? To the refugees from Beijing's apocalyptic hellscape, Mongolia must have seemed God's own country, flowing with milk and honey! We grow blueberries here, announced one, rattling off a list of health benefits of the fruit which erupt from the soil of the unspoiled steppes with the most bombastic wholesomeness. You! She pointed at me — I was wearing my Dad's Xiamen University 厦门大学 shirt that trip, accidentally marking myself as a hapless southerner — Betcha don't get that good shit in Fujian! And so this show played out all ten hours, while the train swung first by Kalgan 张家口, then by Datong 大同, then finally to Jining, where my friend Peter and his parents were waiting.

An eight-hour train ride is terrible, but a ten-hour train ride is something that will forge undying friendship between complete strangers. I offered my seat to a random dude in the aisle, feeling slightly guilty of keeping the seat all to myself. This he accepted until a short while later when he offered it back to me again, and I would sit for another half-hour, etc. Eventually, we both agreed that the hard seat sucked, and that we would very much prefer just standing in the aisle together. He tried to start a rapport with me by asking for some light reading, but demurred when I said it was a Taiwanese book, written with traditional characters. 

A lady was bringing her daughter to see her grandma in Jining. The girl was cute and smol and hyperactive, in other words a huge headache for her mother, who wailed: come back! What's wrong with you? They'll kidnap you and you'll never see me again, you little devil! as she ran up and down the length of the cabin. I laughed and rooted for the kid inwardly, because she is meant to be as free as a bird, and this metal tube is no place for her. Gosh, I hope they are doing well now.

I think I'll always remember this Ten-Hour Hard-Seat Joyride from Beijing West Station to Jining, Inner Mongolia. This shall go down as an unexpectedly awesome decision that I would never make again. All you future pilgrims and tourists, best be flying in next time!

Earning the Funny Hat

Col de Mollendruz, June 2013

Four years' apprentice work to advance human knowledge; what kind of life is it? We could see how it is from way off: thankless, isolating drudgery — no wonder so many have been repelled by what they see, and never consider going down such a path! But those who do go down such a path do so despite this same clear view. Some do it because of a vague sense of destiny, and I just so happen to be one of these loonies.

Four years ago, I joined the PhD programme in a mixed state of boredom interfused with a feeling that I could do anything, marching in with a prayer on my lips — not so much a prayer, but more like a haughty demand to the almighty: I demand the right to be stupid! If what scientists do is exploring the unknown, then what greater raison d'être do we have other than our ignorance? Confront us with what we do not know, and let us charge right through it! And my Rabbouni answered my prayers (or acceded to my tantrums) all through four years. This is his still ongoing story.

Ignorance is in abundance, and there is no question about it. One of the first thing that would strike one freshly entering a community of scientists is how ill-equipped everyone is for tackling the frontiers of human knowledge. At least, it seemed to be the case coming from the undergraduate days, where questions have answers and those same answers could be unearthed in a week by a brilliant enough person. Every answer to a research question, by its very necessity, a stab in the darkness, an oppressive darkness where one could no longer reliably tell between right from wrong, rigour from quackery, or gravitas from frivolity. I did not know much, and the supervisors, with all the experience to bring them where they are now, are only just slightly further ahead, engulfed by the same ignorance, pawing about blindly, just as we are, for a glimpse of the same certitude of truth that existed in memories of bright school days long gone.

It is at the precipice overlooking this snarling void where my supervisor perched me, and let me plunge — or shoved me right into it; it was hard to tell.

With the darkness came failure — persistent, repeated, soul-crushing failure, fatigue and the laughable blunders that it brings, are the demons who walk with us and torment us in our waking hours. I lost sight of any chance of easy victory. If I had fantasies of becoming a trailblazer of scientific progress, I cast them behind me. Failure! Failed attempts became so frequent and numerous that any victory, however small, came to be met with a mute surprise rather than jubilation. Yes, I throw up my hands in excitement whenever things go according to plan! But then I have to weep and repent, because I am again reminded of the weight of my sins, of all the time I have wasted in my failures.

My self-worth was no longer bolstered by achievements, because such events seemed too much like providence, and so I accepted them as such. Defeat is my natural condition, while victory is foisted upon me most undeservedly.

A salient feature of this part of my faith journey is how secular the environment was and how much of my Rabbouni's message was handed down to me by my colleagues, most of whom were non-believers. A collaborator wrote this as part of his email signature: "The role of the scientist is to produce as many bad ideas as possible". Soon after, another colleague whom I have come to admire lived out this role, during our discussions, rattling out all sorts of outlandish ideas at me for me to try for a study. The volume of it was overwhelming, and the bulk of it was bullshit. But it was such apparent frivolity that betrayed a certain nimbleness of mind and a sense of adventure — he was sailing in the darkness, slicing huge gashes into it, not merely prodding at it timidly. Looking at what he does, I realise that despite my conceited demands for ignorance, I was not yet ready to embrace it. I was still a proud man who refused to bend down and lash his nose to the plough, rather than the small Therèse who accepted the littleness of her spirit and could therefore embrace the world in all its oversized and overwhelming ineffability.

No miracle of the sun marked the reconciliation between work-life and prayer-life. The two halves circled the arena like fighting cockerels in a pen, breaking out at times in spectacular bouts of combat... and then, imperceptibly, work took on the intensity of prayer, and prayer took on the rigours of work. My Rabbouni guides me wordlessly, holding me up by the arms like I was a child taking my first steps. He tuts, he hums absently, he says nothing in words. I take a step, I take two; I discover a new corner in the room, and then a new corner again, each new place a paradise of wondrous delights, ever a pleasant surprise.

 (April-June 2018)