Like putting the horse before the cart
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At some point in our lives we are shocked and amazed by the quality amusements that television such as the Discovery channel offers, something along the lines of:

"Locusts are nothing more than your common garden variety grasshopper gone awry. When the back legs of a grasshopper are tickled, they become agitated and begin to change colour, eventually becoming so overwhelmed by pure rage that they tear around with the sole aim of forming a swarm and devouring everything in their sight. Their erratic movement often causes other grasshoppers to be tickled likewise, giving rise to unimaginably huge numbers of deviant grasshoppers, better known as locusts."

or

"When the common starfish (Asterias rubens) is threatened, it often expunges its internal organs in a bloody (as bloody as starfish can get, surely) stream to stun and distract its attacker. It then moves away and regenerates a new set of organs."

Well and good, absolutely fascinating stories that only scratch the surface of nature's complexity. I would have just left them as that, marvelling at them for a while before relegating them to the margins of my memory like those tissues deep in your pockets that you forget about and disintegrate in the wash and leave a carpet of tiny white fluff on your best pants before an important dinner. But sometimes, when faced with such tasty nuggets of hardly any consequence, people like to turn them into metaphors for other, supposedly more important and weighty matters. It's not difficult to do this:

"The good side of mankind, like the grasshopper, is separated from immutable evil by the thinnest of lines, tipping into this dark pool at only the very suggestion of a stimulus. Evil, being universal and all-pervasive, then quickly subverts other forces of good, "etc., blah and so on about good inevitably being the victor (how many people have seriously seen a real, buzzing, snarling locust? What about a charming green grasshopper?) and about the starfish representing people who would rather sacrifice their inner morals than their image/material comforts in the face of danger and adversity.

But that's like putting the cart before the horse, the peanut butter before the bread. Metaphors were invented to explain a particularly knotty circumstance or concept by translating them into easier to understand terms, without losing much of the meaning (though this seems a tall order if the most common metaphors are things like buying fruit at the market or washing a plate) and not vice versa. Often, it's because people think that a certain phenomenon or situation of a certain exquisite but wholly restricted perfection is just itching to be a metaphor for something. Something like seeing a nice cue ball and buying a pool table to match (this is probably the source of some of the worst metaphors ever, a crime that I am terminally guilty of).

In some respects this is better, fitting aspects of real life to some hypothetical but entirely probable situation like a canvas where the palette of infinite possibilities provided by human nature can play upon rather than imagining some contrivance of real life that would adequately describe some scene of the climax of human pathos. It does lend itself much utility in finding for us increasingly apt means of representing things that we encounter every day. In a more or less certain search for meaning of varying degrees, it is one of our more powerful tools.

(Like a sledgehammer, rather hit-and-miss.)

Because I am dreadful at writing fiction

Clyde had had it up to here with those damned cyclists, zipping around, beholden to no one, and always thinking that they were better people because they weren't sending the planet to hell in a handbasket; those forgetful old ladies on cycles with those huge wicker baskets, young people talking on their mobile phones and riding without hands, punks with awful hairstyles and their shiny BMX dirt bikes. There were those who rode on the pavement, those who rode the wrong way of the street, and those who rode on the pavement in the wrong way of the street. Too often had he been forced to brake and avoid some fresh-faced cyclist darting in from a side lane, who then, as he rode off into the smog of exhausts, flipped him off in a triumphant and menacing manner.

The table rattled as Clyde slammed his mug on the surface. This would not do, and Clyde decided that he would have to have his revenge. Drumming his fingers absently on the old heat marks, he thought up a plot: he had to knock off a cyclist – that ought to show them. He pictured the H-- linkway, where impatient cyclists frequently came charging in from the opposite direction on the way to their stupid little appointments. That would be perfect – noone would see him, and, after all, those cyclists had been asking for it all along. It would have to be the first unfortunate soul who, to his discredit, had decided to shave a few minutes off his final journey that day; tomorrow.

Clyde sunk noisily under the duvet as he grunted in self-approval of such a clever scheme, envisioning delightful crunching noises.

Sandra jerked awake, mildly aware that something was amiss. Clutching the digital clock at her bedside, which had failed to go off, she realised that she was running late, something that she could not afford to do, not since her husband had died, shot by those robbers he was trying to stop, and she had to hold down that cleaning job at the hospital, scrubbing furiously with bleach, trying to remove the urine stains on the baby blue carpet.

Throwing the sheets aside, she dashed to rouse her young daughter Emily, cozy under the covers. She had to bring her to the crèche, which took up a worryingly large proportion of her already meagre income, but there was no one else after her sister Marianne had succumbed suddenly to that rare and excruciatingly painful nose cancer.

Emily in arm, Sandra trooped to her slightly rusty commuter bike, one that had a problem with the gears and the pokey seat, but it worked well enough and she didn't have enough money for another one, unless the extraordinarily large conglomerate that hired her decided to reduce their profit margins a little. She strapped Emily into the bent child seat at the rear and hopped on, pedalling the pink contraption furiously. At this rate she would never make it on time, but if she was late she knew she would be fired, having already been forced to be tardy many times when Emily had that worryingly high fever or her suffering father died in his sleep and she could only go long enough to see the dirt land on his coffin.

She could take that shortcut down H-- linkway, instead of turning left at R—street and going around that one-way system that would suddenly spit you out into bursting traffic. That would save about 15 minutes and she would be only slightly late, which she could excuse herself for because of women's problems or the like. The problem with cycling was that you always knew, to the minute, exactly how long a journey would take. She forged on.

Clyde tapped his steering wheel, prowling just outside H—linkway, waiting. He had the day off work, and he could sit here all day puffing endlessly on cigarettes, eyes gleaming with anticipation. He turned on the ignition suddenly, and sped off down the road, setting his mind straight about those damn cyclists.

In the end, Sandra didn't take the shortcut, and ended up at work quite late indeed, but was set to work scrubbing stains without a whimper.

Instead, Clyde ran down a bicycle courier named Darren who had been a waste of space anyway.

Plucking the Heartstrings
Specifically, the 'D' String.

Having been forced by circumstance to feed upon the classical music equivalent of the thinnest millet gruel, with a few tasty mealworms thrown in for good measure, whilst others feasted on the plumpest of pheasants and richest of soups, it was of course no surprise that I lunged at the opportunity to attend a 'live' concert like an emaciated beggar lunges for a dry crust of bread on the ground.

Just as there is something about the smell of freshly-baked bread and a good game of Free cell, live (classical) music has something about it that tingles the senses, heightens acuity and purifies the spirit, something that a recording, even a very good recording, cannot provide, something like being shown a card with a picture of a bowl of soup on it as opposed to actually eating that soup (namely, the deprivation of one or more senses that fires up the imagination).

Driven by hunger, and a lack of choice, we nevertheless settled upon a tantalising concert that offered the whole chronological smorgasbord of violin music (though the violin is not the most favourite of my solo instruments to listen to, it being a dual character rather like a shrill little girl at times and a sultry, enticing woman at others.) I was looking forward to enjoying a concert in the company of others who did not rashly applaud in between movements while balancing a sick child in the lap of another who thought that expressing his appreciation in the form of acute noises like those made by a paper shredder with a tin can (of lychees, I am thinking) jammed in it) while her handphone pumped out the Overture to Rossini's The Thieving Magpie (the perfect music to cook pasta to) in all its polyphonic glory (mitigating circumstances include a dead parent or a catastrophic stock market collapse, but other excuses are ridiculous otherwise).

That was what we mostly got really, a large but terribly ugly concert hall building with fully-stocked bars, knowledgeable and cultured, and most of all, appreciative and polite audience. Not a single rendition of Ein Kleine Nachtmusik was heard during the concert, for example. It was thoroughly impressive, losing out only to the virtuosic splendour of the violinist of course.

M--, more the screen name of some C class Japanese (ahem) film actress than the name of an accomplished musician proved that the first calling of anybody to commits a career to playing an instrument (inadvertently I typed this out before realising it as an awful double entendre, though a rather clever one, as above) is the music and not the style. Compared to the flash-in-the-pan "violinists" we have these days, spending a dedicated 20 years playing the violin professionally, practicing tirelessly, it may be said that these are the people who uphold the entire existence of the sphere of classical music that make it always pleasurable and welcoming (these are completely unintentional, I assure you).

Near the end, with great trains of running notes sending a warmth through my spine, I was once again brought back to the times when I used to attend many such concerts and relish every single one of them, applauding maniacally at the end in varying stages of euphoria (except for a select few poor performances, like how you sometimes find a mouldy orange lurking in a bag of fragrant, juicy ones). Unparalleled technical superiority and maturity, warm, lush expression, good repertoire and an all-round good spirit made it a memorable return to the realm of live classical music, reassuring us how, if Bach's music had survived the last 300 years, then surely it would survive another 300.

TGIGF

If I remember correctly, it has rained, with a variety of intensities, on the Good Friday of the past 5 years. Many people have remarked to me that it is a reflection of the pain, suffering and anguish associated with that particular day - rain being a traditional symbol of grief (as some people like to say, 'tears from heaven'). However, I usually tell them that it usually rains on Easter as well. Surely then, those Sunday showers would be tears of joy? The personification and addition of a temperament to the geographical phenomenon of weather then seems rather ridiculous.

But people still stick to their theory of why it always rains on Good Friday, an explanation that does not involve high evaporation rates on Thursday nor cloud formation on Friday. It is, to them, nature's (which is, depending on what they think, God's nature or the nature evoked in science) way of marking the occasion with a fitting backdrop. Naturally, attaching too much significance and implications to something that is caused merely by a random coincidence of factors and conditions, though in itself quite harmless, is a sign of more dangerous inclinations.

This being the (religious) holiday season, the above observation might be taken to be the customary seasonal anti-religious tirade. But it does not deny any tenets of the religion in question, nor does it query the truth or correctness of the whole affair. Even the secular have been known to partake in such speculations that are more in the court of the religious.

Weather is a powerful thing after all. It has awed and aided humans, and in its most terrifying manifestations has resulted in near-instant conversions of people to the faith at the head of whose is the deity who has the power to cease the calamitous outbursts. But if such things (in the above case, the seemingly improbable annual coincidence of precipitation and a day associated with sadness, and in this case, the demonstration of seemingly omnipotent powers) can cause religious stirrings in the hearts of the secular, it makes one wonder if the converse is as possible i.e. will there be events and consequences that encourage a step-up (loaded adjective really. It implies secularism is on a higher plane than religious faith) to secularism, from being religious. It would seem to be more difficult. Faith is one restraining factor, for example.

Yet there is beginning to be evidence that even for the most hard-line of religious extremists, and I say it without prejudice here, the Islamists, recent events may well prove to be the trigger for such a transition. If we are talking about the behaviour of nations and governments, after their successive defeats in Iraq, Afghanistan and the wars against Israel, political leaders and citizens all over the Arab world will surely realise that they can never defeat or seriously threaten America or its allies by force of arms, as evidenced by the intense but ultimately brief resistance in Iraq.

Religious faith, courage and self-sacrifice are no substitute for technology, organisation and wealth. It may be true that Americans (as well as Britons and Israelis) are scared of dying and their governments will go to great lengths to avoid risks to their soldiers’ lives. It may even be true that "Muslims love death, as your young people love life", to recall bin Laden’s chilling (but empty) threat just before the invasion of Afghanistan. But the jihadist contempt for human life, expressed in the worship of suicide, is a liability, not an asset.

Islamic warriors may have religion on their side, while America has only market principles and patriotism, but in the contest between small arms and a cruise missile, cowardice beats courage and decadence beats faith, every time. Now, even the most fanatical Islamists must realise that they have no hope of defeating “the Great Satan”. And then, perhaps, we will see the rationalist conversion. Maybe they will just give up — or turn to something more fruitful, such as baking cakes or smuggling drugs.

However, it is vastly unfair to establish a simplistic dichotomy of secularism and religion, as there exists too much middle ground. Circumstances may cause the above crossings-over, "blurring the line", so to speak. Except that there is no line, because, well, to put it conveniently (and simplistically), everyone should be allowed to believe what they believe. If a pantheist wishes to think that maybe thunder is a sign of impending trouble, then maybe the only upcoming ill is that someone will call him a hypocrite.

I always take the opportunity on Good Friday (when it is inevitably raining outside) to ponder a little about religious issues over a mug of tea, nodding assuredly to myself.

Souperlative

Whoever tells a lie cannot be pure in heart -- and only the pure in heart can make good soup. Well then the folks over at New C-- Food Co. (actually, appending "New" to the front of any location makes it seems all the more dicey, like "New Shanghai", reeking of dime buffets that give one stomach-ransacking diarrhoea and dollar whores that give one a burning sensation upon going to the toilet) must ironically have the hearts of two year olds, since they are purveyors of such wonderful soups, not just of your pedestrian chicken and mushroom garden variety soups but also of other more glamorous and exhilarating flavours like parsnip and ginger or Moroccan chicken. Much like the Zig "Clean colour" pens that people never seem to be able to collect all the myriad colours of, I just had to plunge myself into the plethora of tastes (at a discount price even!) that the good people of New C-- Food Co. were offering in their soups, the anticipation just quivering on the outside of the neat, appealing tetrapaks, seducing us into challenging them with whatever in the world could one not make into a soup (Wiener Schnitzel, I am thinking.)

As most people will attest to, there's just something special about soup, bubbling with reassurance, breathing with consolation. When a homeless vagrant sips the thin, canned tomato soup at the shelter, is he not temporarily removed from the worry that his cardboard abode will blow away in the winter wind or thoughts of jobs lost and families scattered? Or the affluent, portly stock broker who puffs at his silver spoon of Lobster-Caviar-Foie Gras-Brick of Gold bisque, the anxieties of unseen money piling up in unseen vaults shunted right to the back of his mind? Indeed, soup will remind most people of home, where we pine for those decidedly rather vile herbal concoctions our mothers lovingly conjure up because it is so comforting, despite it tasting like a cockroach was just removed from it.

But as I write this, I too feel like I am eating the thinnest cabbage soup from which a cockroach has been pulled from (and it had died there) because a more cynical me (Ha-hah! It is I!) is telling me to put a sock in it and stop making soup seem like a pleasant, comely woman. You hold this off for a week, and then you come write about soup? Bloody soup? Already, I am finding, in a series of increasingly dire warnings, that the insect content of what I am eating is rapidly overtaking its vegetable content. It's like trying to keep down the nausea associated with the worst gastritis you can imagine, but imagine now that you had, before that, consumed a doughnut that had spent the better part of a week under a wardrobe. And such was the bubbling, and stewing of a certain cynical spirit during the time when I was watching the evergreen The Sound of Music.

While yes, it is truly a very innocent sort of show where there isn't any moral ambiguity about the amiability of the Nazis, one cannot help thinking about the supposedly adult themes it contains, nor the plot black holes as large as the US trade deficit and the embarrassing implausibilities. Yes, absolutely, entirely a world of rampant racism, sordid seduction, prevalent paedophilia where all nuns are skilled car mechanics. Still, if children can become instant singing machines (just add water! Garments now 35% more transparent), it was thoroughly enjoyable.

Is that a leg I see? Yes, under that sliver of cabbage. Hey, it moved!

I'd paste song lyrics here, but I don't swing that way.