Sunday night marking

I remember, exactly ten years ago, sitting down at this hour (11.38pm) in front of the two decrepit second-hand computers I had piled on top of each other and interlaced with cables (in an effort to get them to hold on, in their grinding silicone dementia, to more than twenty-two hundred words at a time – and, incidentally, which I had painted red and blue, scratching naïve rocketships and flowers into their thin acrylic skins, long before apple computers discovered bondi blue – ) –

 

I remember sitting in that baggy corduroy chair, swinging back, staring at that old screen with its scarlet fringe, getting up to pace about, putting on a record and standing by the open window, turning around, admiring my couch for a good while, debating a cigarette, getting out some charcoal pencils and fiddling them about, turning back to the night, then closing my eyes tightly and growling and setting myself back to the computer. That essay took me eight hours and it was always the same. I’d read and fret and worry, right up to the night of the day before, then realise that I was out of time. I had that creeping panic and loss of circadian time; the essay gods were on my tail and the task, which only I could acquit myself of, closed in, bringing with it a comfortless isolation that insomniacs also know.

 

In Bangkok once I had a moment of clarity in the middle of months of anxiety and stress and illness, catching sight of my own shape in a window backlit by a fluorescent from the bathroom, as I was staring out from a high floor. The sheets on the bed were clean; there was a TV; on this side of the glass it was hushed, with just the occasional bell from the liftwell. I heard myself breathing and my eyes shone out strangely from that temporary mirror like the hundred thousand other pinpoints that were windows and doorways, streetlamps and neons and vendors' torches. I didn’t know what part of town I was in and I realise as I write it now that it could have been any moment in the passage of the night; I couldn’t tell. I had wandered there desperately by foot and tuk-tuk after making a mistake with a visa and finding myself stranded at the airport; I booked in and started to count. The visa took another ten days and in that time I had nothing to do but walk around Bangkok at all hours, manufacturing diversion and praying that sleep would find me, which it didn’t. Looking out of that waiting-room window, in a room that was not my home, too proud and alone, I thought—this is bleak.

Sunday night marking is not that bad.              

But it does suck.

The Zeno Drive

Meanwhile Achilles of the nimble feet continued his relentless chase of Hector. As a hound who has started a fawn from its mountain lair pursues it through the coombs and glades, and even when it takes cover in a thicket, runs on, picks up the scent and finds his quarry, the swift Achilles was not to be thrown off the scent by any trick of Hector’s… And yet he could never catch him up, just as Hector could not shake Achilles off. It was like a chase in a nightmare, when no-one, pursuer or pursued, can move a limb.

(Iliad, Book XII)

Eventually, of course, Achilles does face – and slay – Hector outside the gates of his own city, with his mother and father looking on. He strips Hector of his golden armour, ties him to the back of his chariot, and defiles his corpse. The Trojans look on and weep; the Greeks take turns to stab the body with their weapons, jeering now that their enemy is “easier to handle”. 

But here’s the thing: Achilles is only able to vanquish the man because Hector decides that enough is enough, a real man can’t run forever, and he should turn and bravely face his foe. The point is, Achilles can’t catch the guy. Hector has to stop.

(Well—actually—Hector is tricked into it by the goddess Athena who is disguised as Deiphobus, Hector’s brother, and she is supporting the Greek cause because… well, look, there’s a whole back story to do with love and jealousy and revenge. Go read Robert Graves.)

So -- I have been wondering about this alleged swiftness of Achilles. It’s a bit late for Hector, but maybe it’s time to revisit the reputation of the great Greek hero. What do we know, after all? He is quick to take offence—but slow to action. He can’t dodge arrows (which puts him in a category way below Green Arrow); he has one of his biggest fights with an angry watercourse (you think he could have avoided that one); and then, when Homer gets to the climax of his epic, he has to use a deus ex machina to get around his champion’s deficiencies. Reading between the lines, Achilles needs a lot of help for the son of a goddess.

And then there’s the tortoise.

 

Homer doesn’t mention this episode, but according to the paradox attributed to the philosopher Zeno, ‘fleet-footed’ Achilles is unable to even catch a casual tortoise.

 

Surely this can’t be the case? Sure, the tortoise came from behind to beat the hare, but we’re not talking about Egyptian fables anymore. This isn’t donkeys and frogs and scorpions; this is big bloody men, familial vengeance, golden tripods, funeral games, a shield made by an ugly immortal with a limp. A tortoise? Really?

 

The paradox runs like this: if the tortoise starts galloping away from Achilles, by the time that Achilles catches up to where the tortoise had started the tortoise has moved further on, which means that Achilles has to then get to that point. But, again, by the time Achilles reaches the second point, the tortoise has toddled on another few plods. Achilles can never catch up to the tortoise because to reach it he always has to first get to the place it started from, by which time the tortoise has hightailed it, is looking back over his shoulder at the frustrated warrior, and is presumably relieved that he is wearing armour.

It’s a lovely paradox.

 

And if we take Zeno seriously, there are several significant consequences.

 

The first, and most immediately important consequence in an Olympic year (note the continuation of the Greek theme?), is that we need to re-train our athletes so as to maximise their chances in relay events. Our coaches should be telling them to stand still while waiting for the baton, or it will never get passed from one runner to the next.

 

Second, if you get the jump on a Yarra Trams ticket inspector, you’re safe. This is good to know.

Third, there is a possible application for a new type of split engine which could be used for interstellar travel. Generally, if one tries to visualise Zeno’s paradox of Achilles and the tortoise, common sense tells one that Achilles must be covering shorter and shorter distances between ‘points’. Common sense, though, is assuming in this case that Achilles is actually the swifter party, and that the tortoise is travelling at a steady pace. But what if this is not the case? What if, instead, we conceive that while the following party is indeed the swifter, it is the following party that is travelling at a steady pace? In this case, to uphold the paradox, the forward member of the pair must continuously accelerate, getting exponentially faster and faster and further ahead.

So my contribution to science fiction is this: a dual engine system in which one rocket is sent out in pursuit of another, travelling at a steady rate, while the forward rocket is pushed out to the stars. All we need now is the Zeno drive: the field binding and enclosing the rockets into their special relationship, that force suspending common sense for the perpetual expansion of the human sphere.

Oh, hang on…

 

*

 

There’s been fire somewhere near Melbourne this week, and through the smoke haze the moon has been glowering yellowly over the city like a distempered eyeball. I’ve been thinking about fire and flames now that the season is changing to Autumn and the plane leaves have started to flare up and fall, and I’m waiting, I suppose, for the first fever, which has been doing the rounds. Not long now until I pack up my stuff and head off for Europe; I wonder if distances really are so hard to bridge, and what the moon will look like from that, different angle, and whether… many things.

 

Purple

I know. But I'm rusty. And I'm trying.

The test

They were scribbling away--actually scribbling in some cases, and I wanted to kill myself--when I saw one of them pause, and breathe out gently, as though something had come to mind. This boy, who drives me crazy--but whom I have a great affection for--swung on his chair a little, stretched out his right arm--and then deliberately, carefully, rapt in it, brought his fourpen up to meet his crossing eyes, and balanced it across the bridge of his nose. 

He slipped at first, and the fourpen dropped. But he caught it and replaced it and this time he made it stick. He was completely oblivious to the rest of us. How could he know we were watching? His eyes were occupied. No one was speaking. Most were writing; the rest looked with a slow curiosity. The pen swayed a little, a short see-saw on its fulcrum. 

I've never seen him concentrate like that before. I couldn't do it. I know: I tried later, instead of correcting his essay. (Well--role modeling works both ways.)

Time passed. I crossed the quarter hours off on the board and their essays lengthened from a half, to one, to two pages, to three. Then, at no special moment, he dropped his head. The biro fell away from proboscis to palm; he started to write again.

I knew that this student hadn't prepared adequately for the task, and he wasn't really breaking any rules, and he wasn't really disturbing anyone, either. I had glanced at his work, and he had written about as much as I had expected. So I didn't feel the need to interrupt the project. But here's the lesson for me--he wrote for another twenty minutes. My expectations were totally wrong. Whatever he was doing, it worked. And I-- I was ready to let him be! Shame on me! Getting soft.

The bell tolled as it inevitably does. I let them out, save for one, who was still looking from bicep to bicep with his sleeves rolled up. 

Later in the evening, after dark, when all the parents had gone home from the information evening and the displays had been taken down, the pizza boxes thrown away, the doors shut and lights turned out, gates padlocked and bags packed--seven of us found ourselves locked inside the school. "See you bright and early guys!" called J-- from the other side of the wire, and none of us had the wit to do anything but stand there dumbly--dim and dimlit. We wandered through the school like a posse at Timezone interactive laser, fumbling at doorhandles. One of them opened, then another, then eventually we fell out into the carpark--refuse from a trap in the side of a ship, a clump that then drifts apart on the black.

Present fears are less

Fittingly, the rain was drifting down today in a slight, chilling mist as the bell rang to end recess; I shrugged and shook myself and and attempted to will my blood to move again, then crossed the quadrangle to the doorway where my year elevens were standing about, miserably, like dead trees leaning at all angles, and chattering like harpies. We greeted each other and smiled and I enquired of T-- why he was carrying an oversized wooden set-square, knocking it against his leg: he was too cold to speak, and I thought that was a good deal so I left it at that.

Inside, we progressed with the first act of Macbeth. Reading through the initial scenes we took our parts and I acted as go-between where needed. It had been about half an hour of good work when we started to get fidgety and decided that enough was enough. So I threw it over to them: Macbeth's first moments of temptation and uncertainty. 

MACBETH 
(Aside) Two truths are told
As happy prologues to the swelling act
Of the imperial theme. (To Ross and Angus) I thank you, gentlemen.
(Aside) This supernatural soliciting
Cannot be ill, cannot be good. If ill,
Why hath it given me earnest of success,
Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor.
If good, why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs
Against the use of nature? Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings.
My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man that function
Is smothered in surmise, and nothing is
But what is not.

"Your task," said I, "is this. Easy: working in pairs, look at the legend on the right-hand side, and figure it out. You've got five minutes. Write down what he is saying in your own words and hand it up to me. Best answer gets a prize." 

I hoped to move on from this point to a discussion of Macbeth's character and the nature of ambition. But, aptly enough, I was brought back to the present by a very fair question:

"Well, what's the prize?"

I thought. (Not very hard.)

"You're doing it for the glory, N."

So they did it.

And the best (though not the most accurate) answer was:

Macbeth is thinking that he wants to be king. He has new power. Because he's perfect. And he wants to get in with the ladies. So he wants to cut Duncan. And throw his body in the Yarra river.

Apologies to Dante

but I think his schema needs updating:

non-squawkers from nowhere

Drilling headache - decided to leave my year seven marking on the table and skive off for a watery coffee in W--. Snuck out five minutes before the bell, thus avoiding the end-of-day rush. Roll marking, detentions, staff, bustle. 

I want you to know that I did come back; I am very dedicated.

Discovered a new thing: a new local - very exciting - a café that I didn't know existed, and maybe an entirely new concept. It's a café-cum-butcher. The coffee is not far superior, but they do sell sausages. Tongue and steak and kebabs.  The space is divided down the middle using one of those elasticised-tape barriers you find defining the queues at airports and cinemas. On one side there were laminated tables and chairs, Herald-Suns and sugar-holders and a few idling souls. A counter down one side with some cheeses and jam tarts and sandwich-ingredients. On the other side: flesh. I think that the wife does the brewing and the husband the butchery - or perhaps I just wanted them to be together because it seemed such a perfect picture of independent cohabitation. 

Is this the biggest thing since petrol and milk teamed up?

On my way out, just opposite the school gates, I saw a grey flock of cockatoos circling tight behind the branches of the pines. There must have been at least a score, but they weren't wrenching the air with their scream-squawks like cockatoos do. They were just circling on a diagonal, brushing the roof of the house, rising, diving, rising, in a great big ring. Really strange. When I stopped to look, a parent honked me.