Two Truths

Today I have come to realize two truths:

1. The truth that doesn't really matter: It would take a miracle to get 85% for my second year. I am looking at about 83% right now. This means, very simply, that I will not be renewing my $2500 Scholarship, which saddens me.

2. The truth that matters: I finally understand Beethoven's Eroica Symphony. Previously, I have always liked the first movement, since it is energetic, gigantic, powerful - revolutionary, in short. The second movement (the Funeral march) bored me; the Scherzo is too dull in comparison to the first movement; the last movement, a huge Fugue, confuses me - it was just not as exciting as the typical jolly finale (cf. Schubert's Finale for his Ninth Symphony). But today I listened to the last movement again, and it finally made sense. The profound truth that Beethoven wanted to tell us is in the Fugue, and today I finally understood. I suppose the truth itself is nothing big: ultimately, what Beethoven wants to say through his music is this: let us live happily both in the glory of change (he had in mind of the French Revolution) and inspite of the terrible pains we suffer from nature or war; we shall celebrate life and humanity, but let us not forget the pains, and let that remind us why we value life and happiness. But the moment of truth (when the Fugue climaxed, but falls back into the Funeral march theme from the second movement) was a moment of ecstacy! This is the very meaning of music: it is a means, not an end, to achieve higher truths that is hidden behind our everyday petty politics. As Virgil wrote in his Fourth Eclogue: Let us sing of higher things!

Reply to a Comment

An annoymous person wrote in response to my last entry: "So you feel that the harmonic sounds computers are able to compose by following the mathematical rules or parameters set to them by their programmers are not music because the computers themselves are not aware of the different forms of music?That's a little like saying that given a monkey, a typewriter and an infinite length of time, the monkey will never be able to compose a Shakespearean play because it is not aware of the rules of grammar or the meaning behind figurative language..."

I think this is a very good criticism. I did not consider to what extend would randomness exclude music, and what not, for, given a computer that "composes" according to mathematical rules or parameters set by programmers, the combination that comes out of this program it is by my definition music. Form is indeed inherent within the piece of music. So, the monkey that, at the end of eternity, finally wrote Hamlet, that I must consider it as great as Shakespeare's Hamlet.

This, I must point out, is true only if we consider reader/listener response. This, in fact, is a tremendously post-modern position. This takes away authorial intention, as the reader/listener constructs all the meaning of a text/sound. For many, this is very liberating. Freud, for example, would have a ground for applying the Oedipus Complex on Hamlet (although, of course, it is possible that Shakespeare actually meant that...).

I am a humanist at heart (even if those disgusting post-colonial critics would call my values to be "white-male-middle class values"), so I certainly would not like a piece of music in which I listen to to be a work that is randomly generated, like the Monkey version of Hamlet. What I grasped as human beauty, I most definitely wish it to be human generated. Better to have one Beethoven who went through the entire creative process, tremendously affected by physical, social, cultural suffering to produce one Grosse Fuge, then one hundred computers to generate hundred thousand more of the same music.

Computer generated music - yes, it is music, but music that has no significant for the humanist me.

The Importance of Form in Music

1. The essence of music is not sound, but form. Sound is anywhere and everywhere - where there is the human ear, there must be sound.

2. Music must be organized sound - no random sequence of sound is to be considered as music.

3. In this case, it is true that all genre of music can be considered as music under this definition.

4. The greatness of a piece of music - musicality - is to be determined by the complexity of its form.

5. There are two kinds of form: micro and macro forms.

6. Micro forms have to do with harmonic structures, melodic lines, polyphoncity, rhythms, etc.

7. Macro forms have to do with large structures, like the cyclic structure, binary and ternary form, sonata-allegro form, etc.

8. Most people will agree that micro forms are important. Only the few avant-garde would be as absurd as having music that is randomly generated by a computer. While they would argue that the "randomness" is itself a pattern, it is a pattern that is the same thing as combination of tones and pitches in which you would call "the closing of a door". But that is not music. Music must be music; when a person is listening to a set of sound, the interpretation of the sound must be as music, not as something else. When we hear the ringing of the fire alarm, that set of tone/pitch pattern creating that irritating sound is not considered as form, because what we attach to that sound is the idea of fire. A form, on the other hand, is purely musical; one is not reminded of anything; a micro form of a sound contains no connotation but music.

9. Macro forms, in principle, are equally important to the creation of music. All music must be arranged in a pattern: it is not a matter of showing off formal skills, or allowing the listeners to remember the melodies more easily. It is the logic of the musical language. The Romantics, beginning with Franz Liszt, thought that form (especially the sonata-allegro form) is too restricting; so they began to write "symphonic poems" - music with no structure, and they call that a "form". Foolish romantics! They have lost the essence of music; instead they replaced it with pictoral or literal form. The symphonic poem is not a form at all! It is a blend of all the arts: poetry, painting, music, etc. But in doing so they are no longer writing music: they are merely writing pretty combinations of sound.

10. There is a reason why all the greatest composers pay the greatest attention to forms. Bach is a master of the fugue form; Beethoven and Brahms the sonata-allegro form. This is also why Schoenberg, after liberating music from its tonal restriction (in other words, he dissolved a key aspect of the micro form), he quickly re-established a new, more rigourous macro form for his music - the twelve tone method. All sensible composers know that form is the essence to music.

11. The composer Richard Strauss would be a good example to how a real composer is sensitive to form. Early in his career he was a Brahmsian: he wrote two symphonies, a violin concerto, a few sonatas, etc. Then in his mid-career he felt into the spell of Liszt and Wagner, and started to write symphonic poems. His best works are Also Sprach Zarathrustra and Ein Helleleben (A Hero's Life). But "conservative" critics complained: although Ein Helleleben is his masterpiece, and it directly challenges Beethoven's Eroica Symphony, the problem for Strauss is that his is not a symphony. So in his old age, the decade before his death, he began to write "conservatively". The two most moving works, I believe, are his Metamorphosen for 23 Strings and his Oboe Concerto. The Metamorphosen is a complicated piece, like a set of variations, that ends with Beethoven's Funeral March from the Eroica Symphony. The Oboe Concerto is a look back at Mozartian Concerto tradition, a full embracement of the sonata-allegro principle, with Strauss' own addition of the cyclic form. Thus Strauss, in my opinion, died as a great music master, because after the hurly-burly of the great symphonic outrages, which refuses forms, he went back to them.

12. Those who deny the importance of form in music - perhaps they are no more musical than an orchestra comprised of all the animals from the zoo.

Mendelssohn and Rachmaninoff: Musical Depth

In the newspaper today, a columnist named "Richard" (or Li-Cha, in Chinese) have quoted Einstein in saying that the music of Felix Mendelssohn lacks depth; coincidentally, dearest Tiffy told me (after we got off the morning bus at UBC) she found Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto absolutely beautiful. Now, generally, critics and musicologists have argue that Mendelssohn is the better of the two. So, here is the question: does Mendelssohn's music have depth? Does Rachmaninoff's music have depth?

I think one would have to define "depth" with care to really know the answer (especially if we want to see if the claim that Mendelssohn is the better composer). If "depth" means "emotional depth", then of course Mendelssohn would have no depth: Mendelssohn born, lived and died a rich man. His life was almost perfect: he was brought up to do what he wanted to do. He had his own orchestra! Imagine poor Schubert (with his amateur "orchestra" with one cello and like three violin) with his own orchestra! On the other hand, Rachmaninoff had a mental breakdown before he wrote the Second Piano Concerto (it was because of the failure of his First Symphony). So, of course the emotional depth would be different. Also, we have to note the fact that Mendelssohn did not have Rachmaninoff's musical vocabulary: Mendelssohn died before the birth of Wagner, Mahler and Tchaikovsky. Mendelssohn had to invent his own Romantic language (he was an early Romantic composer, arguably after Weber and Schubert); Rachmaninoff, when he wrote the Concerto back in 1920's (I think), much of the musical vocabulary is already there; in fact, Rachmaninoff would be considered as a great conservative.

This leads to the next point of discussion: what kind of "depth" does Mendelssohn have that ultimately allows him to become the better of Rachmaninoff? I think we really need to understand what it means by "depth" in another, perhaps more important sense. We can call it "musical depth", and this has to do with how a composer treats music as music itself. What is music? I would feverishly disagree that music is an expression of the soul using sound. Music, I would argue, is listening to sound as sound. For when we listen to people speak, we do not call that "music" because we listen to the content of the given speech. When we listen to "city noise", we draw various interpretations and the corresponding connotations from it. But with music, we listen to the violin as a sound of the violin. When we listen to a vocal work, we are more concerned with the sounds the voice makes, not the content of the words. (This is why Wagner is so famous; he is no poet, but he is definitely a composer.) If we use music to express emotions, then we take away the real music element: we are now focused on the content of the music, and we neglect music itself. To be able to write music as music is how we can determine which composer has greater depth. Of course, I do not mean you should go into super technical analysis of all the chords and polyphony, etc. "Musical depth" (as I would call it now) is quite easy to determine, once a listener is willing to listen carefully. There are many indications to "musical depth". One important one is see if you are able to tell, in a given piece, who wrote the piece. I mean, for example, there is something about the mature Mozart that one can just listen and be able to tell that the piece is a Mozart piece. I have in fact had this experience: my friend gave me some music, and while I could not tell the first piece, the next piece I knew it was Mozart. Now, it was not because I have heard of the piece before, but because the last piece was "Mozartian". (It turned out the first piece was his early quintet, and the last is his late quintet.) There was something about that gives the feeling of musical maturity, sophistication, yet unmistakably Mozart. The piece had no program; it was pure music, and it was tremendously pleasurable.

To say that Mendelssohn lack musical depth is certainly a mistake. In fact, along with Schubert and Korngold, Mendelssohn is the fastest composer to reach the kind of musical depth that would be considered as great or incredible. His Octet in E flat is a fantastic work of art, written at the age of 18: it was musical, carefully constructed, and it has an 8-part fugue finale. His Overture to Midsummer Night's Dream, written when he was 17, is another such masterpiece. Mendelssohn is careful to form (it is in sonata-allegro form with four themes); his instrumentation is colourful and brilliant; his sense of rhythm is attractive, with an element of surprise. There will be those who argue that Mendelssohn's music does not develop after its early maturity; and that is a reasonable objection. But look at music by Debussy - as soon as Debussy achieved his impressionistic style, he does not develop further. Both composers have reached their ideal way of writing music as music, so why develop? It can only be perfected, and it is perfected for both composers. The late Violin Concerto in E minor is simply brilliant writing; it is Mendelssohn in absolute perfection; it is a violin soloists' Divine Comedy. Is it expressive? Of course; it is an agenda for the Romantics to write music with feeling, but it is a concerto, with abstract musical form, and every element of music is always places before personal expression. We listen to the concerto not because it is a great biography of Mendelssohn or an expression of that great German spirit, but because it is good music.

Rachmaninoff's musical depth is often overlooked because of his capacity (and also the musical vocabulary available to him) to write big expressive stuff. All popular Rachmaninoff works tend to be huge works: his Second and Third Piano Concerto; his Paganini Rhapsody; his Second Symphony; his piano preludes and the Second Piano Sonata (huge as pianistic works). He has that great Romantic Russian soul in him, there is no doubt about that; his flashy virtuosity is simply far too attractive for our now visual-orientated audience. But we must give Rachmaninoff credit for his "musical depth": the opening of the Second Concerto is absolutely sublime - eight simple chords, followed by a deep, sorrowful tenor melody; or the opening of the Third Concerto - one single melody dominates the first few minutes. In either case, Rachmaninoff's orchestration is beautiful. His harmonies, melodies and instrumentation matches perfectly (for an imperfect example, listen to Brahms' opening of his First Piano Concerto: the strings and bare brass definitely are not enough to sustain his melody; in fact, I don't believe any instrumentation can suit the melody). Rachmaninoff's sensitivity to form is also admirable. A re-listening to the Second and the Third Piano Concerto made me appreciate Rachmaninoff's skills in seeing how the sonata-allegro form should be expanded or tricated depending on his musical material. The first movement of the Second Piano Concerto is a full sonata-allegro form, with the recapitulation greatly disguised; the movement sounds like a huge rhapsody, substantial and formless, when in fact, Rachmaninoff very carefully blended in all the elements of the sonata-allegro form into the movement. The Third Piano Concerto is even more impressive; the recapitulation of the first movement is cut short after the cadenza. Initially I thought this was a point of criticism on Rachmaninoff; but now I have realized that he needed to cut the first movement in order to give the entire concerto a sense of unity: a fully recapped first movement would take away the musical flow of the entire piece; the first movement would have been a piece on its own, leaving behind two dangling movements on their own. Rachmaninoff, however, did not seem to master the idea of form in purely symphonic pieces, such as his Second Symphony. To me, it is a beautiful symphony; the musical ideas, however, seemed to be very artificially put together. It lacked the grace, rhapsodic flow of the Piano Concertos. But this is scarcely noticable, because much of the time the listener would be captured by the beautiful melodies Rachmaninoff orchestrated. (The third movement is especially exquisite. It is quite a treat to listen to the clarinet singing its beautiful melody.) The Paganini Rhapsody, a set of twenty four variations on Paganini's Caprice in A minor, shows similar artificiality. For me it lacks the spontaneity of Elgar's Enigma Variations, or the harmonic tightness of Brahms' Haydn Variations. Rachmaninoff's variations stand between the two extremes, creating an uncomforting balance which is nevertheless interesting and captivating. Rachmaninoff's sense of musical depth may be depreciated by his lack of polyphonic writing; on the other hand, it would be just as bad comment as to say James Joyce is not as great a writer as Shakespeare because he does not write sonnets or in verses. Rachmaninoff's musical depth is different from that of Mendelssohn: Mendelssohn's musicality is pure music; for Rachmaninoff, his music and the context of his music is never separated.

"Depth" can also be taken in another sense: it has to do with how a composer handles a musical tradition. And in this sense, Mendelssohn is definitely better than Rachmaninoff. (But I must, however, point out that this is unfair to Rachmaninoff because he was born later and in another place. But facts are facts...) Mendelssohn, at his time, can be considered as the beginning, development and the ending of a German tradition of music. He is the beginning the Romantic style; Schumann and Brahms are tremendously influenced by him; he is the development of an early Romantic style as given by the middle Beethoven, Schubert and Weber. He is also ending the classical tradition of Haydn and Mozart: Mendelssohn's String Symphonies and his First Symphony are beautifully Haydian and Mozartian, with a blend of Beethoven and Schubert. Haydn's effortless Allegros are reproduced in his early works; Mendelssohn's late works are just as effortless. Mendelssohn's influence spreads as not just a composer, but as a complete musical artist. His music is example of music, not emotional sounds (Schumann and Liszt) or a landscape of the ear (Wagner, to a concern extend, Debussy).

Rachmaninoff, on the other hand, is the end of a tradition. In fact, I would argue that he was the very end of classical music. Rachmaninoff follows the brief Russian Tradition of Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky. Historically more important is the fact that Rachmaninoff is really the last great composer who writes entirely in tonality. Of course, he mastered much of tonal music. But he is not much of an innovator: he is not a Stravinsky, a Bartok, a Schoenberg or a Hindemith; he mastered the art of a previous century, and made it popular to a modern audience, who is mostly sick of modern music. Rachmaninoff, the great Russian Soul, he is someone everybody can understand; nobody understands Alban Berg (who's that?). This is his lack of musical depth: he is not able to continue the tradition of classical, artistic music. He perfected the art, and did not allow any other tonal composers to come after him. After all, how many post-war composers are popular? You may have Barber, Copland; maybe Lutoslawski, KabalevskyMessaien or Hovanness; but how well known are they compare to Rachmaninoff? With the exception of Barber's Piano Concerto, one is safe to say that there are no Piano Concertos that are popular after the Second World War. Music as music is gone; the Paganini Rhapsody, certainly Rachmaninoff's most popular work and his last work for piano and orchestra, is almost a betrayal to the musical world: it ended with a whimper, not a bang. Mendelssohn has great musical depth; Rachmaninoff, seeing him in this light, is really the surface of it all.

This is perhaps not at all a fair criticism on Rachmaninoff: after all, he is not the one who controls the destiny of Classical Music; he did what he liked to do, which is to composer. He would still be the same even if there is somebody after him. The fact that almost all great composers leave a legacy behind for others after them to pick up, Rachmaninoff certainly fails in this sense. Many innovators (including Mendelssohn) inspired others to do something else; Rachmaninoff only invited others to copy. This is not to say Rachmaninoff is a bad composer: there is no doubt that he is among the greatest there ever will be. But as listeners, we should compliment as well as criticize: there are plenty of compliments made for Rachmaninoff, so why not entertain a few criticisms?

Observations and Reflections

Presented a paper on T.S. Eliot's Little Gidding today. Read out most of it (with eye-contact, of course), the criticism part is improvised. I stepped out of myself for a moment when I was doing the criticism, and I have come to realized that I stutter a lot when I speak. I really doubt if what I have said makes any sense at all, but apparently I do (as Dr. Sirluck and my fellow classmates told me). Maybe I should stop being paranoid, or stop stepping out of myself when I am speaking.

Of course, I do understand that one reason why I stutter is because I simply did not know enough to talk what I want to talk about with confidence.

* * *

Riding the bus home, today I've realized how easily we treat one another as mere tools. The bus driver today was a terrible driver: he lectured me when he forgot to (or intentionally forbidded) let a guy out on Kerrisdale; he attempted to turn left on a red light; he had problems braking in general. After he lectured me, I had an imaginary outlash at him: "You are paid by us and your job is to drive the bus. As a servant to us, representing the bus company, you will and will only obey according to the rules of the bus company, and afterward obey to the customer. Your attitude is unacceptable, especially when the mistake is on your part. You deserved to get fired. You may complain to your wife and kids after work, but you have absolutely no business in lecturing the customer, who is always right." Then I have come to realize: I have treated him as a mere machine! Knowingly too, he has become a tool for me, day in and out, on and off the bus, a tool for me to get to where I need to go. All bus drivers, as tools, are the same: they are part of a great machine. I have totally forgotten about bus drivers as human beings. Alas, what have our world become, when even the most sensitive poet or conscious philosopher treats his fellow man-brother as a mere machine? (This, of course, shows that I am not much of a philosopher or poet...)

A Motto for my life

A friend asked me if I have a motto for my life. I remember that I did have one, but I cannot quite remember what it is. I suppose that if I have forgotten it, it probably means it no longer suites me. I do wonder: to what purpose would a motto achieve? After all, we are constantly becoming someone else (Heraclitus says we never step on the same river twice); a motto will only limit one's potential. Plus, whatever the motto may be, it takes will power to believe in the motto; ultimately, everything is "an act of the will". If you are confident and believe in yourself, then having a motto or not really does not make a difference; if you are not confident, then having a motto will not make a difference either: you will doubt yourself, constantly asking yourself if that is the right motto or not, like our dear friend Prufrock (remember the hundred decisions and revisions?). But if my dear friend shall insist on a motto for her, I really only have two:

1. Will to power (Nietzsche)
2. In my end is my beginning (inverted T.S. Eliot)

The first one is, well, will to power: always believe in yourself and take action. Do not be hindered by Joycean paralysis. The second one is to remind you that you are in a constant state of change: what you have achieve today is merely a start for whatever you will be achieving tomorrow.

O friend! You told me that both mottos are too grand! Yes they are! One should always strive for greatness; after all, what would a motto like "life is rotten cheese, so stick to it!"do?

Sonnet: You have forgotten

[Note to readers: While I do not know if I am capable of writing great sonnets, I do know that I am capable of writing bad sonnets. Here is an example, addressed, again, to my imaginary Immortal Beloved.]

You have forgotten all that I have said:
My aphorism or my punning joke
That always seem to go over your head
Despite all the repetitions I took.
You have forgotten all that I have written:
My serious sonnet blossom'd just for you!
(And the mock reply - my hand in your mitten,
Adding, of course, my little response too!)
You have forgotten all that I have done:
The places I have suggested to see
And faces you would not have met alone.
(Although at times you'd have to pay for me!)
You have forgotten my existence now;
And I, in turn, have forgotten to rhyme.

The Immortal Beloved's Reply; and the Poet's reply

[Note to readers: Read the Sonnet below first]

Dear sir,

While I thank you for your lovely poem, I must take this occasion to point out a few errors which renders this poem to be a sort of enigma. Firstly, roses do not bud in Febuary; unless you are refering to greenhouse roses, and surely, no girl would like to be a sheltered, helpless, passive greenhouse rose. Secondly, insects are actually creatures that are not "self-absorb'd"; as a matter of fact, insects like ants and bees greatly care for the general well being of their colony - Only human beings are self-absorbed. Thirdly, how can the morning breeze be "warm"? Morning breezes are always at least cool, if not cold. Fourthly, do winds actually carry sound waves? Fifthly, assuming it does, how can the morning dew dream, when morning dews are actually formed early in the morning? Sixthly, how does one drown a flood (refering to line 7 and 8)? Seventhly and most importantly, why do you write me this poem, telling me that you have an undeclareable passion? Isn't this a contradiction? If you dare to declare your passion, then you are lying in the poem; if you do not dare to declare your passion, then why write the line? The only sensible lines in the poem are the last couplet: it is true that roses will die; it is also true that you will always love me. Whether the other way is true, you can only speculate.

Your Immortal Beloved

* * *

My Immortal Beloved,

At times like this I am really glad to know that roses will die, but my art is immortal.

At your service,

The Poet

Sonnet: The Rose

Written on the Occasion of Valentine's Day, for my Immortal Beloved...

O beauteous Rose! Thou stand tall, and erect
Upon the sodden Febuary soils
Amongst a crowd of self-absorb'd insects;
Sweet is thy laughter, mocking trivial toils
As the warm breeze gently carries thy voice
And thy fragrance to my nose and eyes, spoils
The dream of the morning dew, drowns the noise
That flood'd the air with language of despair,
And stirs the dormant trees from wintry poise.
Th'ascending sun illuminates thy fair
Smile, casts the only shadow in my heart,
And flames the passion I dare not declare.
So fragrance must dissolve, and life, depart;
My love for thee is everlasting art.

Remorse

I have done a bad thing today.

At lunch, I ditched a friend for badminton.

Details do not matter, since I am only going to weave excuses in my narrative.

The point is this: despite of the miscommunication, I should not have ditched/dismissed (depending on how you want to see it) her, but I was far to anxious to play, and I did what my boyish spirit told me to do, instead of listening to my brain.

It was a split second decision; but nevertheless a decision, in which I will bear the full consequences.

* * *

Many apologies ready to be sent to your heart, if you will lent me your ears.

Brave New World Revisited

Since my new student has to write a paper on Huxley's Brave New World, I took the opportunity yesterday to re-read this work. (The last time I've read this book is when I was in grade ten.) Rereading it refreshes in my mind a vital questions for a philosopher: What does it mean to be human? I had not had a good chance to really think about it until the time of the lesson. After destroying the first page of my student's essay (which is quite typical: most of the people I know of do not write good first drafts - I am not being arrogant, as this also include myself; anybody who has seen my editing process will be scared), I decided to tell my student to rewrite the essay after thinking about what the novel is really saying. She wanted to write that the ideal state in Brave New World is a failure. I asked her why, and after much persuasion, she was persuaded to agree with me that the ideal state lacks an outlet for the expression of humanity. (I did not forcing her to agree with my view; it's just that her original thesis, while it is essentially the same, lacks the clarity of expression as well as the depth of thought.) Then I pushed on, and asked her "what does it mean to be human?" She seemed to have no answer, and I gave her a two hour talk on how Huxley depicts the "lack of humanity" in Brave New World.

So, what does it mean to be human? I had given my student a list of things: wholeness, creativity, emotions and freedom. Now I wonder: is this a good list? On the surface it seems so. (I am confident that with that list she will be able to write a decent paper.)

But come to think of it, perhaps I am missing one very important element: pride. As it is the greatest sin, so pride, I now come to think, is also the most human, most earthly quality. This very question "what does it mean to be human?" is not stimulated by emotions, nor creativity, nor a yearning for whole, nor freedom; it is stimulated by pride. Only a boost boy would ask the question "what makes me different from other boys?"; similiarly, only human beings would ask to be differientated from animals and robots.

John the Savage is often considered as the standard "human being" in Brave New World: he read Shakespeare, loved his mother, believed in Jesus, and chose to kill himself. But to me, he does not seem to be a particularly proud person.

A person without pride: how human is he?

Fourth Aphorisms - On the notion of Care

I

The gods have died, and we have ceased to care...

II

To "care" does not mean giving hugs to the needy; it means to stand on a ground and act according to the ground. No matter how many hugs you give out, without a ground, you do not care.

III

What does it mean when I say "I care for you"? It means you have become part of my ground, part of the foundation that constitutes as who I am. Every step I take into future ground I need you to hold me up, or else my ground breaks asunder and I fall into the drift of nothingness.

IV

To care is not only to care with those you love, but also those you hate. As compare to Love, Hatred is equally important to the shaping of your character - you hate because whatever you hate violates your values. This - a personal principle shaped by love and hate - is your ground. Out of this ground you begin to care for the world.

V

The ground, however, is not social; it must be yours and only your ground. Whatever is social is an institution - that is a ground, yes; but it is also a prison. It will box you in.

VI

Ground is itself groundless; Care is itself liberation.

VII

Therefore, Faith is most desirable.

VIII

Ground is reality; Care is the road to reality; both the objective scientist and the subjective sketpic are disillusioned towards reality.

IX

To care requires thinking, but ultimately it demands action.

Observations (with slight reflections)

This morning when I was waiting for the 407 bus at the bus stop I saw two raccoons trying to cross Gilbert Road. The bigger one crossed successfully, but the smaller one tried several times. Everytime it tries, it would walk about one lane (Gilbert Road has four lanes); when it saw cars approaching from a far, it would freeze in the middle of the street (oh Mother Nature! What have you taught to your progeny?) and when it realizes that staying frozen is futile, it ran back to where it came from, instead of running towards the other side. After several attempts, the bigger raccoon, seeing the failure of its kin, decided to run back. What happened to them afterwards, I do not know.

* * *

Later in the morning, again, when I was waiting for the bus, the bus was approaching the stop, and as it approached the stop, the side mirror smacked a guy's head. It was frightening for a second. The guy seemed okay. But I thought that was kind of weird...

* * *

When school was over, I was, again, waiting at the 480 bus stop, and there were two people from Fairchild TV, who were out to shoot and interview people. The reporter came towards my direction, and interviewed the girl behind me. I do wonder: why not me? What was it that made the reporter choose the girl instead of me?

* * *

On the bus today, I was reading Ovid's "The Amores". Outrageous stuff, but perhaps a very good reflection of the Roman patriarchy, or even masculininity and sexuality in general. Catherine was laughing at me for reading "Roman porn"; Debbie was thinking how weird I am to read ancient porn (instead of modern stuff, I guess, where there are pictures). But Ovid is fun! Here are the opening lines:
Arms, warfare, violence - I was winding up to produce a
Regular epic, with verse0form to match 0
Hexameters, naturally. But Cupid (they say) with a snicker
Lopped off one foot from each alternate line...
So let my verse rise with six stresses, drop to five on the downbeat -
Goodbye to martial epic, and epic metre too!
Come on then, my Muse, bind your blonde hair with a wreath of
Sea-myrtle, and lead me off in a six-five groove!
This is just great stuff! No other poet writes like that!

Perhaps my sense of humour have much deteriorated by my intense studying of literature...