Once again today I find myself in the pleasantly cooler confines of Dongguan's 24 hour library. My trusty laptop, which has been a faithful friend through tens of thousands of miles and has accompanied me on many a meander across this globe, seems to have finally given up the ghost, leaving me relying on a Lumia 640xl phablet. To be fair, and to give Microsoft their due, it is a perfectly fine little performer, easily good enough for the likes of myself and my ongoing mission: to create intelligible and interesting blogs in the flanneurial style.
Given my perennially minimalist mindset, I cannot help but ponder if even the carrying of a netbook has now been rendered surplus to requirements, given the utility of the modern smartphone. This current two month Sino sojourn necessitated around about 15lbs of accompanying baggage, of which three or four pounds were accounted for by the weight of the laptop and its sundry accruetements. Less is very definitely more when one wishes to travel in the flanneurial spirit - the possibility of doing without another three to four pounds is tempting indeed.
Once this device has sufficient charge on its battery, I will probably wander upstairs to the English book section to lock horns once again with the curmudgeonly character who somehow holds down the job of librarian in that section. Being the furthest removed from the entrance, four floors and about 100 metres, and being the least used section in the library (not a great call for English books in a city of ten million Chinese speakers), methinks that this is probably the ideal post for this man.
Up to this point in my life, my contacts with librarians have been of the pleasanter kind. Indeed, it has been my experience that beneath their modest exteriors one often finds an impassioned and intense nature, just awaiting the opportunity to give vent to the deeper, darker and more nebulous needs that lie within.
The loathsome toad upstairs though seems to possess none of the more tempting traits of the species. His mind obsessed with any number of rules that govern social intercourse in his domain, he clamps down hard on those who would seek to stretch the envelope, even a little. I seem to have raised his ire for any number of transgressions in the past week, most of which seemed truly trifling and, at times, pathetically piddling, and which I dare not bore my readers with.
I do need access to the books though, not least because of the fine collection of Henry Miller's opus. If you are not already familiar with this author's output, I would recommend 'The Tropic of Capricorn' or Quiet Days in Clichy', but beware...these are not volumes for the prudish, the over-refined or the squeamish!
My own favourite of the moment is 'The Air Conditioned Nightmare', written on Miller's return to America (circa 1941) after spending a dozen or so years creating some of his best work in Europe.
The following passage, taken from this volume, mirrors my own feelings for many of the unnecessary and destructive excesses of modern life:
"I had the misfortune to be nourished by the dreams and visions of great Americans -- the poets and seers. Some other breed of man has won out. This world which is in the making fills me with dread. I have seen it germinate; I can read it like a blueprint. It is not a world I want to live in. It is a world suited for monomaniacs obsessed with the idea of progress -- but a false progress, a progress which stinks. It is a world cluttered with useless objects which men and women, in order to be exploited and degraded, are taught to regard as useful. The dreamer whose dreams are non-utilitarian has no place in this world. Whatever does not lend itself to being bought and sold, whether in the realm of things, ideas, principles, dreams or hopes, is debarred. In this world the poet is anathema, the thinker a fool, the artist an escapist, the man of vision a criminal."
I quite literally could not have put it better myself. Wandering around the streets of Dongguan or Shanghai, of Hangzhou or Shenzhen, is not significantly different to wandering the streets of London or Manchester, of Boston or New York, of Berlin or Paris. Everywhere the same dispiriting and de-spiriting rush to acquire the useless and the meaningless, possession for possessions sake, greed for greed's sake.
In this 'modern' world, 'progress' has turned us into consumers, or worse - into commodities, our lives bought and sold so the completely vacuous pursuit of glossy baubles can proceed at an ever increasing pace.
At a recent event in Shanghai, the first day's sales of yet another version of an iphone had to be suspended as the would-be consumers came to blows as they clambered over each other in an attempt to get to the front of the queue. Of course, I use the term 'queue' in the loosest possible sense - tis not a concept that has travelled well in China.
Similar scenes of mercenary mayhem were seen across the globe in the last week as the aptly named 'Black Friday' had shoppers frothing at the mouth in a frenetic frenzy of abject gluttony, pushing, pulling, pinching and punching, in order to acquire things that will be soon become yet another abstract acquisition or rendered redundant within but a brief period of time.
Sitting now in the shady portico of the library, I ponder these thoughts over an Americano as I watch the World go by, seemingly at an ever increasing pace. I feel like a tortoise lost in a world of hyperactive hares...
No comments:
Post a Comment