The Curtain, drawn back.

Files recently unearthed from the Soviet archive reveal that Milan Kundera, as a student, may have reported a suspect who turned out to be a Western agent (as a result, the agent was ostracised–that is, exiled from the country from ten years. I didn’t realise that was still a punishment in modern times). In one of his earlier novels, The Joke, the main character reports someone who is trying to escape the communist regime out of love for the girl who has told him this ‘fact’ (except that said someone wasn’t actually trying to escape–it was an excuse she gave him so as not to tell him she as having an affair–and both the ‘escapee’ and the girl were interrogated, the girl ending up incarcerated for covering up for an ‘agent’). A similar situation, perhaps? Was the author writing what he knew? We may never know the truth.

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And I believe there is needing to know the truth for purposes of justice, but not necessarily for literary criticism. Regardless of what Kundera may or may not have done as a 21-year-old before he himself left the country to escape the regime, that doesn’t change his place in literary history as a communicator of Czechoslovakia under the Soviets, a writer of originality amongst his contemporaries, a major player in developing a certain kind of Central European philosophical approach and thought.

I’m listening to the debates on the Czech radio if he has the ‘right’ to be moralistic if he did indeed report a fellow citizen–and yet I’m not sure if they have really read his work, there isn’t exactly anything heroic about his characters. They don’t fight the system and win; the Soviet regime is indeed portrayed as all pervasive, yet his characters are essentially human. The protagonist of ‘The Joke’ is of an unfixed, changing mind, protesting the regime and then fervently supporting the communist philsophy, before realising the impact that his attempts to be both a good citizen and lover (not that it necessarily makes him a better person). His novels are explorations–there is never exactly a happily ever after.

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I think it reflects this kind of hunger that we’ve developed for information on everything about another person–there is so much difficulty in trying to know and come to terms with ourselves, yet an insatiable pursual of all things trivial. Tabloids sell more copies than more sober newspapers, there are celebrity magazines and ‘human interest’ magazines, where the general public are invited to write in their own stories to become a part of the magazine (or at least there is here–they’re magazines like Take 5 and the sort). Celebrities have behaviour clauses written into their contract, their future success is judged against their past actions, we google our companies, our acquaintances, and they return the favour, in order to verify our existence and also to develop their perceptions of us, based on things we may not necessarily have wanted them to know.

The quality and impact of his work should not be rejudged based on his personal history. In The Curtain, a recent book of literary criticism on the history of the novel, he talks about how authors and artists select works they feel best represents their oeuvre, what they feel is their definitive work–and historians (?) still push through to uncover letters, first drafts, revised manuscripts, abandoned juvenilia. That personal ‘right’, if there ever was one, to represent a mature personal philosophy based on selected works is overridden by the sheer availability of information and the curiosity of those who choose to study them.

I had thought along the lines of the literary historian (and as a historian in general); that in order to capture an overview of how an era was lived out and how a line of thought was developed, it is important to gain as much information as is available. And yet, as a lover of literature, I can suddenly see his point when his ability as a writer is suddenly questioned because of the apparent hypocrisy of being caught in the same passion/dilemma/day to day existence of the Czechoslovakian in the 1950’s–and choosing to become a published, well-known author from it.

Kundera’s Czech cycle of novels played a part, albeit much on a smaller scale, similar to Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago and Day in the Life–revealing to the world what it was like to live under the regime. Except instead of tales of hard labour and punishment in the gulag camps, his novels revealed the impact on what are essentially fragile lives and relationships, trying to exist and love under constant surveillance, the fervour of those who did believe in the philosophy, and the difficulty of trying to leave (and the even greater difficulty of trying to return once one had left). Smaller scale, yes, but no less human.

Perhaps the tale of Kundera’s protagonist choosing to report the supposed ‘escape’ in order to protect the woman that he loved rings true because Kundera himself had been there before. Unless he chooses to publicise the truth–unlikely, as he is a private person and this comes through clearly in his own literary criticism–that’s purely speculation. And it’s the kind of speculation that has become rife in today’s society, where the ‘desire’ to know all about others becomes the ‘right’ to know–and perhaps they could stand to read a little more closely than just scanning over the words. Because even if Kundera’s characters end up more lost than they had been when they started, it is due to the choices that they make in self-discovery–or the lack of it.

It took moving overseas to find the world news.

Back in Australia I was introduced to ABC Newsradio by a friend, and enjoyed the ‘world perspective’ that was often sorely lacking–but that was because at night it cut to BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle, Radio Netherlands. As the daughter of migrants from a country that wasn’t economically or politically important to Australia, it meant that the piecemeal bits of news that we could get from ‘home’ either came in the form of major disasters or ‘amusing’ trivia. There is an economy of information in the local and national press, a demand and supply curve that can only fit in so many pages of doom and gloom before they have to call out for more advertisers, most whom probably don’t want to share page space with doom and gloom in the first.

So the internet was a boon for myself as an information seeker, particularly when I started to listen to the foreign radio–Radio France Internationale for a broad world coverage that included Africa and the Middle East (that was not just about the war of the time), Radio Nacional de Espana for Spain and Latin America. And with the study of new languages came a new appreciation of the intricacies of how culture shapes perceptions. And, dare I say it–how perceptions, in a way, shape culture.

My Australian upbringing, in comparison, feels very sunny, isolated–not so much naive, but that separation by kilometres and oceans and history probably has a real bearing on its laidback culture. I miss it–on the other hand I just feel lucky to have been raised in such a place, and the day to day realities I face now remind me not to take these things for granted.

Living in one economy, my old life still in another.

The Czech economy is going great guns. Profit is up, the crown is strong, the sales of luxury goods are shooting up with the entry of stores like Gucci and other upmarket labels into the streets. They even opened up a Starbucks here in recent months–unlike back in Australia, where they’ve slashed three quarters of the stores, about 61 stores and cutting the jobs of a lot of students and travellers that I know.

The one-size-fits-all concept never really moved me, but one thing I always did appreciate about Starbucks as I struggled to get a hold of conversational German in Vienna and Nuremburg–they always hired travellers that could speak German and English, so if I was feeling a little bit rattled after a long day of trying to learn the language directly in the street, I could order my long-winded customised, flavoured macchiato and still be reassured that it was the same drink that I was getting back home.

I grew up a child of the recession, when mortgages were in the double digits and impossible to get, when my parents chased down a stray two dollar bill that slipped out of their wallet and flew along a pier because that was our petrol money home, where for a couple of years I was too young to realise what it was I was demanding of my parents when I wanted a treat and didn’t get one. Then the internet boom came,  and the ease of getting technical jobs as I worked my way around Melbourne; all of that saving and all of that enjoying the present but not in denial of the future. Professional jobs are still relatively easier for me to get with my experience–but I am still a foreigner, still an outsider, still mastering the nuances of the language and the culture. Prague is one of the most expensive cities in the world, and my Australian security holdings have crunched by a remarkable 30% in a year, and being surrounded by this post-communist affluence–it’s tempting to partake, but, then there’s the practicality of making sure that I can handle the inevitable rent rises whilst I’m waiting out the years to finally obtain permanent residency, eventual citizenship, so I can call this place my own home.

The kids I know who work at Starbucks back in Australia are talking about their redundancies. Once the credit crunch hit I knew this was coming, but it’s still frightening–still a sign to keep the bigger picture in mind and not to get too caught up in the beauty and new-found luxury of my new city.

New outlooks in dealing with gifted children

My sister and I were considered ‘gifted children’ when we were at school; both accelerated up a grade. Whilst we both experienced the usual challenges that one faces in their formative school years–being younger than everyone else posed even more interesting challenges in high school. The outcomes were vastly different for myself and my sister: she has continued to be precociously successful, and meshing well in society; I changed courses several times, ran off overseas, finally found my niche after first seeking ‘independence’ (whatever that truly is).

Now it is suggested that gifted children remain with their age group, and given enhancement and enrichment activities. Agreed, but another though having discussed these current programs with parents who have gifted children: having a supportive schooling environment and available teachers to act as mentors and idea champions for these kids is also crucial.

Because of tightly stretched budgets, pressures on time, and a lack of really good teachers (or any teachers at all–note that primary and secondary education tends to be a pull factor in overseas recruitment), it can be very easy to let gifted children slip through the educational net because they’re already doing well. Children who have learned along the way to be self-motivating and have an environment in which they can seek out their own challenges find their own way to thrive. Those who struggle, or choose not to excel out of rebellion or wanting to fit in with the crowd–and there are a lot of them–find it difficult to reach their potential or to find the niche where they will enjoy it the most–which may not be the conventional academic successes that is usually predicted of gifted students.

For several years I counselled gifted students who made similar choices that I had in high school–to allow the emotional pressure of trying to be a ‘normal’ teenager get in the way of appreciating and valuing their uniqueness. The outcasts, the pariahs, the ‘loners’. If emotional stress does indeed affect decision making, in a turbulent age it can be even more difficult for one to find their way on a path that is right for them, and to understand that there are choices that they can make to learn to appreciate their gifts. Sometimes one just has to grow up an experience the real world to understand the past in its context; sometimes these kids don’t allow themselves that chance.

Creativity and Science

How to Unleash Your Creativity – an article in Scientific American.

I’m more of an academic-journal fan, however Scientific American makes discussing and reading questions and answers on the mind, language, consciousness … even theoretical physics … really accessible and easy to understand.

Why Czech archaeology never ceases to amaze me …

Archaeologists find grave of suspected vampire

By ČTK / Published 14 July 2008

Pardubice, East Bohemia, July 11 (CTK) – Archaeologists have uncovered a 4000-year-old grave in Mikulovice, east Bohemia, with remains of what might have been considered a vampire at the time, Nova TV has reported.The experts made the terrifying find within their research of a burial site from the Early Bronze Age.

One of the graves was situated somewhat aside. The skeleton in it bears traces of unusual treatment.

When buried, the dead man was weighed down with two big stones, one on his chest and the other on his head.

“Remains treated in this way are now considered as vampiric. The dead man’s contemporaries were afraid that he might leave his grave and return to the world,” Radko Sedlacek from the East Bohemia Museum said.

This is for the first time Czech archaeologists have uncovered a “vampire’s” grave, Nova said.

In ancient times, people believed vampires are the dead who occasionally return among the living to harm their health or property.

http://www.praguemonitor.com/en/377/czech_national_news/25427/

It’s drive, but on a different planet.

It’s six on a Monday morning and I’m back in the laboratory with a couple of techs, everyone focused, concentrating on their tasks at hand (except for me, I guess–I’m blogging, aren’t I?). And I wonder what drives us–what drives them. I think we all have different motivations, some because this–being here, slogging away at their investigative task. Someone once told me that it takes a certain kind of mind to want to do this, a certain kind of personality–which is true of all vocations, I think, even those that I can’t understand or don’t particularly like are perfectly fitted to the people who exemplify what is the very best of their professions.

More on this later, when I get home–something’s pushing at me to try and write this out, to try and speak what it is that I’m feeling, but things are finally clicking along now with the work thing and I need to catch that wave.

Никого нет дома.

Okay, this is a completely bizarre addition for my ‘learn at least the basics of every UN language for International Year of Languages’ goal: learning to touch-type in Cyrillic has actually improved my grasp on the language ten-fold. Which isn’t saying much as my Russian was only really associative by way of Czech–but having tapped my way through a couple of basic case work and sentences, I can actually understand having to put words in different cases and genders much faster than when I was trying to learn the same for Czech. I think this is partially due to having to have learned the words the ‘hard way’, through a related language that was placed in the Latin alphabet, but also because I am very much a kinaesthetic learner. This is a really bizarre, but interesting, personal finding!

The internet is not accustomed to Cyrillic yet, though–I see that WordPress’s admirable attempt to convert the title of this post into ‘net readable code put it into a bunch of symbols. It’s a really nifty part of this interface that allows one to change what the post’s file name is, however.

How much of the Internet is written in Russian? In Chinese? In Spanish? The statistics hunter needs to go on the prowl.

The stars are ancient, long dead, unanswerable.

The paradox of The House With Tiles is that it’s actually warmer outside during a Melbourne winter than it is inside. Then again, it is surprisingly sunny, sunny in a way that I haven’t recalled for a while, though I see that there are low-lying clouds moving rather swiftly across the sky to cover up the sun for  brief moment.

A Prague winter has taught me to take a Melbourne winter in stride (and for that matter, the Russians have taught me never to even say that a Prague winter is cold). Nonetheless, if you’d told me two weeks ago that I would be sitting on the terrace in a sleeveless top because it was warmer than inside the house I would have said you were nuts.

It’s been an emotionally trying two weeks, not in the least because of the nature of the tasks I have had to complete. It’s a form of closure that came so unexpectedly, but is a necessary part of life, as is change; I guess I had to play the role I did because, if nothing else, the last two years has reinforced my ability to survive on my own and rely on myself. It may also be a sign of personal growth (or something) that I can actually admit that it’s been a bit of an emotional blender out here. Two years ago, I had waited until the relative isolation and safety of my new home before even attempting to sort through the emotional mess; right now I’m tired of denial and complications, and even the hardest of rationalists has a point where they question everything.

When my father migrated out to Australia he had just himself to rely on; his coming out here was an adventure in itself, ducking parental disapproval, working on fishing boats in torrential storms, being helped out by samaritans along the way. His was a legal migration, and yet the roadblocks and obstacles in his way meant that he almost missed his change; even now he has never seen his best friend again, nor his godson. It shouldn’t be surprised that I am more attuned to the bits and pieces I hear of my father’s journey than I am of my mother’s; she already had someone waiting for her on the other side.

Teaching others about the dialects and languages of my heritage, and having to study and learn them all as a consequence, has been my own little way of becoming much more attuned to picking out the different dialects and being able to interpret them. Yesterday evening’s gathering was a mixture of languages, from the north to the south, as well as the ‘main’ national language as a lingua franca; my parent’s ancient Spanish was the easiest for me to decipher, but I was finding I wasn’t having too much trouble with the more northern dialects, either. A. had once said that it was easier to learn about paternal heritage than maternal heritage, perhaps because Irish literature had a much stronger studied tradition, but I’m finding that our common maternal heritage isn’t that hard to follow either, once you find that you have the fascination, that willingness to learn and connect the dots and follow the patterns.

How different is exploring questions of history and heritage from that of unanswered questions of biology and chemistry and physics, anyway? All extended, endless labyrinths, all fascinating and light and dark in themselves. Somewhere along the line I stopped worrying whether or not that saving thread would break.

I feel it’s part of human nature to want to unravel mysteries and ask questions, just as it is also part of human nature to cling to what is safe and secure and not look beyond the comfort zone to the abyss beyond. I’ve found in the past ten years or so that, just as much as that dark area is full of danger, it is also rich with possibility; it’s hard to convey that to people who aren’t already open and willing to understand. Maybe it is just because I’m still young, despite my admirable play at being hardened and cynical and over it these past few weeks; maybe I really do have a lot to learn in the way of still being yet to find what it is that I would give everything up for, including possibility.

Yesterday evening at a family gathering I found myself speaking with a long-time family friend who always was rather fond of playing the devil’s advocate; I am rather used to being offended by his comments, but I ended up feeling more riled than usual. Along the way I have met scientists and intellectuals and exiles who have had their beliefs suppressed, their work taken away from them, their families vanished, and they still have a certain kind of light in their eyes, a fervour that the lessons of history need to be passed on to the young, that one can’t, and should not, close their eyes to the harsh truths of the world. After experiencing so many teachers like this, can it then be understood, somehow, that I would be feeling a bit resistant to the comments of those who insist that I should stop treading down the path of the unknown, just because it would make me unhappy? I searched and I searched, but I couldn’t see that light in their eyes anymore, that genuine curiosity about the world; only a seeming certainty that they had seen it and it threatened them, therefore they would reject it forever.

It’s like having to choose between artificial light and the light of the stars. Certainly, the world of technology has meant we are far more capable of looking within and seeing everything for what it is right in front of us, unmuted by shadows. There are many unanswered questions as well about what right in front of us, what is seemingly so obvious, yet equally unfathomable.

Yet the stars are ancient, long dead, unanswerable. And if the lights flickered out and died here on earth, if we were left in darkness, those stars would still shine unbound by human machinations. It’s mysterious and seemingly eternal and yes, idealistic, but I think I would rather traverse the darkness guided by the light of the stars than lulled into shortsightedness by electric globes.

Melbourne and Prague, Modern and Modernising.

So far the trip to Melbourne has been low-key and enjoyable; just the way that I like it. I have only accidentally run into a couple of people so far, but they were people that I was glad to meet again.

I had lunch with a former mentor who advised me through the difficult process of choosing between fields–I seem to have defied him a bit by choosing interdisciplinary fields, but I have still made a promise to him and to our former work that I will finish what I have started in this new life in Prague. Although my direction is not quite in the area of molecular neuroscience anymore, I still want to go back and finish the work that we had started–it’s unanswered questions that still haunt me, still keep me up at night. And despite my best attempts to explain my ventures into science policy to a friend just recently, I am still puzzling this one out for myself–I think perhaps I have gone into an outreach and policy direction because I am not objective enough about the science that I perform in labs, because I am still yet to learn not to fight for access and education and distribution to those who need it the most. As much as I want to stay rational and objective, at the same time this little, stubborn voice of ‘justice’ (whatever that is, whichever philosopher I follow, whatever tradition notions of justice may lie within) that says: ‘reason’ got us so far, but to get further in a humane way, considerations of consequences and effects need to accompany our work. It depends on who is advising me at the time; according to some this will always hold me back, some others say it could mean I venture further.

I don’t yet know, but what I do know is that I enjoy following in the footsteps of my mentors and learning from their wisdom and their experience. Sometimes I think I am happier just being their oral historian, writing their stories of how politics and society suppressed their work, and to connect others whose joint work could result in new and exciting fields of study. Maybe I’m just not confident in my own abilities, definitely I’m not a genius, perhaps I am best working as a conduit.

The Czech Republic is still an emerging economy; aside from the BRICs economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China), countries such as Czech are still establishing themselves, still working things out. I find it motivating to work in emerging economies; what’s that quote about the shoulders of giants? “If I have seen further, it is only because I have stood on the shoulders of giants”. In recent days I have made some arguments for non-conventional, cutting edge science, and why I chose this mixed field over the more stable, established areas, and it’s not out of disrespect. It’s because in combinations and collaborations, so many more possibilities unravel.

Meanwhile, I have commented in recent days that Melbourne has changed a little bit, but only superficially. The stalwart of a cafe that was with me in my University of Melbourne days has been remodelled, and indeed, renamed.

Had coffee with a former colleague at a place in Melbourne called ‘World’ the other day; apparently you get discounts if you’re a ‘local’ and say a certain phrase to identify you as one. I have this sneaking suspicion it is probably going to be a sentence like ‘I am a world citizen’. Because why else would a coffeehouse want to call itself World in the first place, and ask if you’re a local?