Most of what I learned in college was useful. Not practical, often, but socially or existentially helpful. The glaring exception is an idea I picked up God knows where, and clung to for five bleak years: that love meant losing control. True romance, I thought, should feel abject. It should be a descent.
Unsurprisingly, this concept of romance led me away from a very kind boyfriend, and toward a very bad one. It exerted an evil hold over me. I am sure I was not helped by the abundance of movies, books, and television shows in which love appears to be a form of voluntary torture, though, to be fair, I refused the wise counsel of books like Michelle Huneven’s Off Course, which should have served as a warning. I doubt, though, that even I could have denied the force of the poet Elaine Kahn’s audacious second collection Romance or The End, whose speaker starts out believing that romantic “suffering brings women to god” and ends up declaring that she is a god herself. The paired ideas of romance and godliness drive the collection forward. In eight fast-paced sections, Kahn guides her speaker toward a bold new understanding of love not as a loss of control, but as a stepping stone on the way to divine power.
Kahn is not the only contemporary writer to emphasize control and authority as strategies for overcoming restrictive or harmful ideas about romance. Romance or The End falls on a spectrum between sexual-intellectual power stories like Susan Choi’s Trust Exerciseand Lisa Halliday’s Asymmetryand Carmen Maria Machado’s shape-shifting memoir of abuse, In the Dream House. Like Kahn, Machado is interested in redefinition, but where she retells the story of her abusive relationship from a dizzying multitude of angles, Kahn moves through time linearly, reorienting not her story but her definition of romance, which changes over the course of the collection from sex to surrender, surrender to dishonesty, and dishonesty to control. At the book’s start, the speaker can’t imagine anything more romantic than being what her partner likes. At the end, her idea of romance is the ability to tell other people, and herself, the truth.
Romance or The End also bears a very light similarity, or else owes a small debt, to the novelist Akwaeke Emezi’s debut Freshwater, whose protagonist, Ada, is ogbanje—a spirit child who returns repeatedly to Earth in different human incarnations. Emezi, too, is ogbanje, and has written nonfiction about their divinity as a source of power. Where Emezi’s fiction and essays are rooted in Igbo ontology, though, Kahn steers away from religious specificity, almost never invoking any one faith or tradition. She always puts the word “god” in lowercase, and, though her speaker claims repeatedly to be a god by the book’s end, she never seems to get any divine powers. Unlike Emezi’s Ada, she can’t talk to gods or spirits, and Kahn gives no indication that her speaker might be immortal or omniscient. She is, however, in control.
In Romance or The End, divinity lies in autonomy. For Kahn, a god is less a deity than a kind of powerful person, which means that just about anyone can become one. The path to divinity is difficult, but that does not make it special or rare. In fact, the opposite is true: divinity is the closest available solution to the problems of conventional romance. This does not mean that Kahn is espousing some kind of self-help-ish goddess-within-you argument. She seems uninterested in the predictable virtues of inner peace and strength. The path she creates for her speaker—and, perhaps, for her reader—leads not to resilience but to ruthlessness. She’s not advocating for romance, ultimately. She’s advocating for lovers to be unafraid of love’s end.
The path to divinity is difficult, but that does not make it special or rare. In fact, the opposite is true.
This lack of fear is the core, for Kahn, of godliness. It’s also a major departure from the ideas about romance the speaker has at the collection’s start. When she first falls in love, she understands godliness as a mysterious inner quality that serves mostly for attracting a man. In the book’s opener, “Romeo & Juliet & Elaine,” the speaker watches “Love’s Commercial,” which opens with a woman named Maria saying “hello to Paul / hello,” then “turn[ing] on / like a wide band” when he replies. Paul “wants to fuck / the god inside her,” which seems promising for them both, but the commercial ends dismally: “Maria serves Paul’s emotional and sexual needs / in exchange for pizza.”
The ad prefigures the speaker’s own arc. In the first few sections, she engages little with the idea of divinity, barring one poem in which she grumbles, “Tomorrow I will be as tired as a god.” For the most part, though, she seems focused on building and protecting her relationship, striving first toward “the impossible art of touch” and then, once the relationship’s early sexual heat starts cooling, toward an equally impossible state of contentment. The sourest, most bracing poems in Romance or The End come in the third and fourth sections, in which the speaker grows restless and dissatisfied with her partner. In “A Wish to be Poisoned / What I Want to Touch I Click On,” the speaker, watching television with her partner, thinks irritably, “god / your mind is boring.” In “Alarm,” which beautifully alternates spoken dialogue with the speaker’s parenthetical inner monologue, she resists “(the temptation to flee) / (to freedom),” contenting herself with the thought that “(limitation invokes invincibility).”
The speaker, it seems, believes in this part of the collection that limitation is romantic, or is inherent to romance. She seeks value in the “sacrament of being / held without affection,” which positions her as a worshipper, not a god. She bristles when thinking about marriage, and yet, at the end of “A Wish to be Poisoned / What I Want to Touch I Click On,” declares to her partner, “I decided / I decide / You can do pretty much anything to me.” In the next poem, her partner rapes her—and in the poem after that, she reveals that it “happened / So many times.”
The section of Romance and The End that addresses sexual assault directly is brief and stark. Its first poem, “All I Have Ever Wanted Was to Be Sweet,” is both the collection’s most moving and its most formally thrilling. Kahn splits the poem into two parts, perhaps mirroring the speaker’s dissociation from her body or from her fear. In the first half, the speaker repeats herself over and over, rearranging the same sequence of words until it becomes clear that she is describing nonconsensual sex. Then she shifts into precise, measured couplets, announcing coolly, “to you who say my fall was justly wrought / know this: I paid for more than what I bought.”
Arguably, this line starts the speaker’s transformation into a god. Kahn seems to figure her as either Eve fallen from Eden or a Milton-style Satan fallen from heaven. The former would render her more human, the latter more divine—which, of course, is Kahn’s pick. By the section’s last poem, “Romance,” which reads in full, “Love has turned on me / and now I am its liar,” it seems clear that the speaker intends to become a silver-tongued fallen angel, not a victim of snakes or men. By the next section, which ends with the speaker declaring, “Love turned me into a liar / Lies turned me into a god,” it seems clear that she will succeed.
She may be a god now, but, like Satan in Paradise Lost, her proximity to divinity doesn’t mean she gets to be happy.
In Romance and The End’s last three sections, the speaker sets out to free herself from expectations, both social and personal. She shakes away the idea that suffering is good for women, and that invincibility should come with limitation. She accepts her ongoing search for sex and love, but points out that “I can’t transcend a thing / if I’m unable to desire it.” Her goal, then is, to transcend romance, but she remains fallible. She may be a god now, but, like Satan in Paradise Lost, her proximity to divinity doesn’t mean she gets to be happy, or that she gets what she wants. It means, mostly, that she has taken control of her own narrative arc. She gets to determine her own truths, to no longer “consent to destiny,” and to assert, “When I tell myself a story / I decide the end.”
Kahn’s speaker’s new fearlessness in the face of endings indicates that she has shaken off her earlier desire for permanence, which is the ultimate myth of romance. Any marriage, or marriage plot, contains the promise or threat of till death do us part. For a real, immortal god, this would be irrelevant. For Kahn’s speaker, in her minor and earthly divinity, rejecting her old aspiration to a relationship that lasts forever brings her fully into her own power. It teaches her to be truthful with herself, and to “want to be more / than anything I want.”
The double meaning in this line, which comes in the collection’s epilogue, is key to understanding the ways in which the speaker has changed. She could mean simply that she wants to be, meaning to survive, more than she wants anything else. She could also mean that she wants to be more—to exceed expectations, to keep accruing power, to be as godly as a human woman can. Likely, of course, she means both. Romance and The End is a portrait of survival through grandiosity. All its bold claims of divinity coalesce around a very simple idea: no one should have to rely on fate or “providence / who is unqualified.” True power, romantic and otherwise, lies in relying, like a god, on oneself.
Author spotlights (like this one with Bill Higgs, author of Culture Code Champions: 7 Steps to Scale & Succeed in Your Business) are a great way to learn how other authors find success.
Bill Higgs
Bill Higgs, an authority on corporate culture, is the author of Culture Code Champions: 7 Steps to Scale & Succeed in Your Business. He recently launched the Culture Code Champions podcast (learn more at www.culturecodechampionspodcast.com).
Higgs is also Co-Founder and retired CEO of Mustang Engineering Inc., which he and two partners started in Houston, Texas in 1987 to design and build offshore oil platforms. Over the next 20 years, they grew the company from their initial $15,000 investment and three people to a billion-dollar company with 6,500 people worldwide. Since then, it has grown to a $2 billion company with more than 12,000 people.
Higgs is a distinguished 1974 graduate (top 5 percent academically) of the United States Military Academy at West Point and runner up for a Rhodes scholarship.
In this post, Higgs shares his experience writing and publishing Culture Code Champions: 7 Steps to Scale & Succeed in Your Business.
Dive into the world of writing and learn all 12 steps needed to complete a first draft. In this writing workshop you will tackle the steps to writing a book, learn effective writing techniques along the way, and of course, begin writing your first draft. In the workshop, you will be able to finish either a decently developed half draft (of half of your novel) or a rough “in-progress” full draft. However, you’ll learn all the tools needed to complete the full first draft. At the end of this workshop, you will have accomplished every writer’s goal—an “in-progress” working first draft.
Name: Bill Higgs Book title: Culture Code Champions: 7 Steps to Scale & Succeed in Your Business Publisher: Forbes Books Release Date: January 7, 2020 Genre: Business/Leadership
Elevator pitch for the book: Teaches leaders how to intentionally create a people-first culture. This will reduce turnover, increase efficiency, and increase the bottom line. Pushes to include suppliers and clients in your culture to dominate your industry in good times and bad.
What prompted you to write this book?
We went from zero to one billion dollars in annual revenues based on a people-first culture that included our clients and suppliers. The culture positively changed lives in the company, the families and the communities where we worked worldwide. Ten years after the founders left, the culture is still strong and they are now doing eight billion per year. We want to teach other companies how to craft a culture that differentiates them in the industry. They will attract better people, better clients, and better suppliers as they spiral attitudes upward. And…they will have more fun doing it!
How long did it take to go from idea to publication?
I taught Vistage classes for two years in order to perfect my message on how to change a culture to improve lives and improve the bottom line. I submitted my book outline to turn the Vistage classes into a book, and Forbes Books selected me as an author. Outline to publication took 18 months. One change was improving the marketability by asking what people’s culture is costing them.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
The end process after the manuscript was approved took 12 weeks when I thought it would take four.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
We did not get much editing help and had to rely on friends to get a good final product.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
I want them to believe they can change and improve the culture wherever they are by using the “how-to” steps provided.
If you could share one piece of advice with other authors, what would it be?
Write something you are passionate about. Your passion will carry you through the ups and downs of the process.
If you’re an author who would like to be featured in a future post, send an email to Robert Lee Brewer with the subject line “Author Spotlight” at rbrewer@aimmedia.com.
With the success of Netflix’s adaptation of The Witcher, viewers are scrambling to read Andrzej Sapkowski’s series of Witcher books and play CD Projekt Red’s series of Witcher games. As an avid reader, avid gamer, practicing witch, and huge nerd, this is all very relevant to my interests.
In an article on how “The Witcher proves games should adapt books more often,” Malindy Hetfeld points out many reasons literature can make for successful game adaptations—not least of which is that when adapting a book, “developers get to create a visual identity” without firmly preconceived notions about characters’ appearances. As a reader, I certainly have lots of ideas about what my most beloved characters look like—but I’m also open to different interpretations.
I’ve inhabited so many stories as text that would translate beautifully into an interactive digital platform, and while reading Hetfeld’s article, I couldn’t help thinking about the many books I want to play as videogames. There are too many to list comprehensively, but here are 9 books I would like to play as games right now. If you’re an indie game company looking for a Witcher-sized success, you could do worse than adapting one of these books.
At an airport Hudson News, I saw the blurb “lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space” and immediately pulled out my wallet. A swordswoman bound to serve her necromancer childhood nemesis, Gideon is a character I want to play games as, write articles about, and be best friends with. In this universe, necromancers can manipulate bones, turning even tiny bone particles into full skeletal constructs, and control them. It is a cool-ass set of powers. Gideon and her necromancer, Harrowhark, fight murderous skeletal constructs, unravel mysteries, and solve puzzles. My Gideon the Ninth gameplay fantasy involves alternating player perspectives—fighting as Gideon and necromancing as Harrowhark—while exploring said haunted space castle, creating bone monsters, and seducing other necromancers. Honestly, what other game would I ever want to play? I am actually furious that I can’t play this right now.
In Orïsha, everyone is either a divîner—someone with the capacity to work magic—or a non-magical kosidán. Magic has been banished from the land, many of its divîners killed and its surviving divîners oppressed. Heroine Zélie Adebola unwittingly assists a princess, and finds herself on an epic journey to restore magic to Orïsha and defeat the monarchy. Many elements of this book would lend themselves brilliantly to a game—the vibrant magical powers, artifact collection quests, aquatic arena games, and even fantasy cats—yes, fantasy cats. When asked about her world-building approach in an interview, Adeyemi said (among other things), “If I want my character to ride a lion, then it would make sense to have other fantasy jungle cats—which means there’s probably a fantasy cheetah, a fantasy panther…Then you think about our real world, how you have methods of transportation but then you also have nicer methods of transportation—so which of these cats is like having a Ferrari, which part of society has that?” Even in a game whose primary questline would be something world-changing like “restore magic,” what could be a better side quest than “ride every cat”?
In a world where women mysteriously develop the power to channel electricity, the tables of power and patriarchy turn pretty quickly. This could be a pretty cool first-person shooter (like, electricity shooter), the player a woman developing her powers. With generous helpings of moral ambiguity, this story could be a strong contender for a game where choices matter. Choosing whether or not to kill an NPC, what to say in a dialogue tree, or how to level up your powers could critically affect the game’s outcome.
This shared universe urban fantasy series takes place in a dystopian city between the Elflands and the modern human world. In the liminal metropolis of Bordertown, neither magic nor technology functions as expected. Runaways (human and otherwise) flock to the city; artists and cool outfits abound. The series comprises anthologies and novels by SF&F heavyweights and cult favorites alike, including Neil Gaiman, Jane Yolen, Charles de Lint, Nalo Hopkinson, and Holly Black. Bordertown has already spawned a text-based role-playing game, but no videogames—yet. I’m imagining an MMORPG with elaborate character customization, a first-wave goth soundtrack (the original anthology was published in 1986), and a lot of gritty NPCs selling mystical herbage. Please, give me this game.
I’m a lifelong sucker for stories about changelings, and Victor LaValle’s 2017 novel is one of the best. Protagonist Apollo Kagwa’s wife vanishes after seemingly committing a horrifically violent act, and Apollo searches for her through the enchanted landscapes of New York City. The novel is both fairy tale and horror, occupying spaces both familiar and surreal. As a story-driven adventure game, players could explore the city as Apollo, examining their surroundings for leads (starting with a mysterious box of memorabilia from Apollo’s missing father), talking to other characters for information, using that information to solve puzzles, and determining where to travel. The Changeling is full of breathtaking, eerie settings—including bookstores, rivers, forests, subways, and cemeteries—that could balance its haunting story with a rich interactive environment.
Do you like technologically mystical books-within-books (or in this case, books-within-games) that give you life advice? Do you also love oligarchal Neo-Victorian societies and the possibility of having a gun embedded in your skull? Okay, maybe you don’t love those, but you have to admit they are all potentially solid components of a game. Stephenson’s Diamond Age envisions a world revolutionized by molecular nanotechnology, where society is divided into “phyles” (social tribes) rather than nations. The story follows Nell, a girl so low-born that she doesn’t even have a phyle, who comes into possession of a stolen, interactive nanotech book—the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer—designed by and for the wealthy Neo-Victorians. For a novel (The Diamond Age) that’s already based around interactive technology (the Primer), videogame adaptation feels as natural as a story about nanotech could feel. With questlines driven by an in-game guide (and perhaps unlocked by solving in-Primer programming puzzles), a protagonist maneuvering between phyles, and threats both physical and psychological, I’d love to inhabit this postcyberpunk universe interactively—as long as I had the safety of a screen between myself and the horrors of aristocratic oligarchy.
A review described this novel as reading “like a dispatch from a world lodged somewhere between science fiction, myth, and a video game”—so clearly, I’m not the only one who can see Borne in the interactive digital realm. The story of a scavenger, a giant flying bear, genetically engineered creatures, and the ravages of a sinister entity called “the Company,” I would play any game set in this world. The Company is so creepy, so mysterious, it’s the perfect villainous megalith (in the context of game aesthetics, it might look something like the Institute in Fallout 4). With nature bubbling up over technological ruins and an abundance of mutated creatures, I can’t imagine a better dystopia in which to run around and scavenge biotech.
A rabies-like virus affecting only blonde women sweeps the world. I can imagine game adaptation of this novel being something like Left 4 Dead, with the option to play either as non-blonde survivors, or as rabid blondes intent on killing people. I could also imagine a tower defense game where protagonist Hazel Hayes and the wife of the man with whom she had an affair protect their cabin from rampaging blonde women. I could also see The Blondes as a plague simulator, where you’re some kind of megalomaniacal god trying to spread Blonde rabies throughout the world. Maybe a minigame within the plague simulator where you can design your own blonde? So many options! The Blondes: Left 4 Blonde. The Blondes: Rural Cabin Defense. The Blondes: Plague Simulator. Better yet, let me play them all.
Once I saw a newsreel of Queen Elizabeth II making a speech when I was still living in Beijing in the 1990s. I was puzzled by the way she spoke English, even though I could not understand half of what she said. I noticed that her lips barely moved when she spoke. She seemed to have the quality of a ventriloquist, but there was no little painted doll sitting on her shoulder flapping its lips. Her whole manner was strange and impenetrable. I never got to the bottom of my puzzlement. A few years later, however, after managing to get a scholarship, I came to Britain, and started to live in London. Then began a journey of discovering English and Englishness.
For the first few years in London, I struggled to understand the language of the BBC and newspaper articles. This language was very different from the everyday language I had got to know in the street and on buses. It was full of political vocabulary and journalistic conventions that I found opaque and remote. Watching the Queen’s speech now regularly on television gave me no encouragement either. So I went back to my usual habit: studying words from English menus in eateries. One day, as I was having breakfast in my local cafe, I heard a tune from the radio, which blasted from speakers on the ceiling. The middle-aged lady who served tea shouted to a chef near the counter: ‘The Archers! Can you turn it up, Jim?!’ ‘Sure, Dot!’ was the reply.
Then suddenly the cafe reverberated with a jingle-jangly jaunty theme tune. When that died away, some English voices started to resound. I listened with anticipation trying to discern the point of it. It deduced that it was a soap drama, composed by interminable dialogues between elderly English characters in a rural country setting. There was the occasional moo of a cow, baa of a sheep and the sound of machinery. The characters spoke English English, definitely not foreigners’ English. The lady in the cafe, Dot, leaning by the counter listened with mild concentration while folding napkins with a beatific smile. I thought this program must be of some national importance, since no one in the cafe complained about the noise. I listened attentively till it finished, by then I had deposited the baked beans and white toast in my oriental stomach. Then the news started. Dot, looking a little flushed, turned the sound down. She didn’t seem to care about news or world affairs. An atmosphere of relative peace and quietness returned to the cafe, which gave me a chance to ask Dot some questions when she came to clear my table.
‘The programme you just listened to, is it very important?’ I asked with my broken English.
‘You mean The Archers, love? You ain’t never heard of it?!’ She looked unbelievingly at me, as if I had only recently emerged from the jungle, a total ignoramus about worldly things. ‘Don’t you know five million people in this country listen to it every day?!’ Dot wiped my table with vigor and pride.
‘Oh, really!’ I was impressed. ‘What is it about? I come from China . . .’ I inserted my question apologetically.
‘You come from China! You’re new then?’ The lady re-arranged the mustard jar on the table and wiped the ketchup bottle with a rag. ‘It’s about family life on a farm in the Midlands. You know, we English like these sorts of settings – sheep, cows, dairy farming, family dramas, chit-chat fun things.’
I nodded attentively. Yes, I thought to myself, that explains the cow and kettle-boiling sounds, the barn door creaking, along with the umm-ing and ah-ing of the aged voices. Just as some people eat so-called comfort food – like rice pudding – this must be comfort radio, a rice-pudding of narrative.
Later on, I returned my flat and commenced a brief online study of The Archers. An informed immigrant is a good immigrant. Then I found out that the programme was not only the longest running radio soap in Britain, but the longest in the world. It started in 1950. Originally it aimed to educate farmers and thus increase food production after World War II. But rapidly it became a major source of entertainment for urban as well as rural audiences. Just as we Chinese have ‘Peasant Education Channel’ public service at home, I guessed? That was how we learned to weave bamboo baskets or cure a sick pig. So should I listen to it too, just to enhance my English as well as my new life in the UK? Perhaps I should not worry about learning the Queen’s perfect English, and should start from here, the not so high-brow English in The Archers?
Over the next few days, after having submitted myself to the programme several times during my noodle lunches, I lost any appetite I might have had to join the great listening family of The Archers. To describe the programme as a living-death might be a slight exaggeration. After three or four listenings, the theme music induced a strange torpor in my body – an interesting sort of claustrophobia. Then there were the conversations about the minutiae of children’s marriages and health. Their conversations seemed to be too indirect, touching on topics like climate change or organic farming, but never ever truly entering. To the din of sirens piercing through my walls, I grew restless. There were no immigrant characters in the story, no serious social debate, no racial problems, no economical crises, no real politics. It was an oasis of rural England outside the currents of history. That was its purpose. What else should I have expected? But it was still strange for me. In China we have similar soaps too, the popular ones were always to do with grand love and revolution, but not about domestic ladies living inside a little house and chatting about weather. Only some months later, I learned that the most popular newspapers in Britain were the Daily Mail and the Sun. Were the readers of these tabloids and the followers of The Archers one and the same, I wondered?
Then my thoughts crystalized into a clearer idea. This was an idea about ideology. The most powerful kinds of ideology work by concealment. The apolitical world of The Archers was the surface that instilled in its listeners a supremely political position. This was the position of acceptance of the status quo. The Archers’ farm was the British state, the animal hierarchy, from chickens up to horses, the mildly entrepreneurial farmers and the middle classes, ever aspirational, fearful of the lower orders, they trudged through the mud and dreamt of the harvest and the sunny uplands. People often don’t think the English have ideology. They may think the Chinese are infused by ideology – our revolutionary peasant visions and the Communist system. But not the British! How bizarre. It just goes to show how powerful the ideology in this land is and how effectively people’s lives have been shaped and subjugated by it.
I thought this invisibility of ideology was part of the reason why the British, but the English in particular, had this knack for deflecting all direct engagements. Beneath their social surfaces were deeper surfaces, through which they deflected their own thoughts about themselves. They sought insulation from any idea of change. This explained a number of things about the country: people’s ability to withstand awful public transport and privatisation of nearly all public utilities and a constant ability to vote against their own interests. Yet there was rebellion, though of a superficial kind. Angry working class teenagers would periodically riot against society in general and loot high street stores. From the 1970s onward there was ‘revolution’ in the world of pop, which amounted to punk musicians being bad mannered on stage. This was perhaps the existential cry, raw and inebriated, of a jagged reaction to the kettle-boiling and cake-baking families who dwelt eternally in the village of Ambridge, the home of The Archers, the spirit of the English that would never die.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not suggesting that the English are anymore ideologically infused than other nations. My essential thought was this. In finding out how ideology works in a country, you find out about a significant aspect of ‘national character’ in that land.
2
My next lesson in ideology came several years later. I was sitting in a ‘Life in the UK’ exam, during an afternoon somewhere in north London. We were in a dim and shabby looking multi-functional community space with two examining officers monitoring us. Next door, a Turkish kebab shop blasted out a loud cacophony from a televised football match. Before I had entered the exam room, I had been waiting in this restaurant, eating a very burnt lamb skewer with a plate of salad. Now the meat was giving me a stomach ache, or was it just the anxiety I was feeling about the exam? Would I fail? I probably would. People say it takes three generation of immigrants to become native, or feel native. In this case, I had to hope that my grandchildren would feel less alien here, assuming they would be willing to stay in this country when they grew up. Maybe they too would be wanderers.
Three weeks before this ‘Life in the UK’ examination, I had been trying to memorise historical facts about Britain – its monarchical system, the Commonwealth and its countries, as well as legal and social aspects of the UK. Since I was not from a former British colony, I was not familiar with the Parliamentary and Constitutional Monarchy system. Although there was a lot to learn, my efforts to concentrate were not always effective. Moreover, I thought I did not really have to learn things by rote because I thought I had exam technique. Back in China as a school kid, I prided myself on the idea that I had learnt to make the right answer for any question. And in most cases there was only one answer anyway. When, however, I found myself in the exam room, I realized, staring at the paper, that was a multiple choice exam:
Please tick the right answer: King Henry VIII’s daughter Mary was a devout Catholic and persecuted Protestant, which is why she became known as:
A: Catholic Mary B: Contentious Mary
C: Bloody Mary D: Killer Mary
I cursed myself. What an ignorant immigrant! I should have learnt the difference between Catholic and Protestant, as well as the nicknames of Henry VIII’s heir. During my preparation for this test, I was aware that being someone who grew up in a Chinese communist household was a defect for this exam, and I had studied facts such as that women had gained the vote in 1928 in Britain, and that abortion became legal in 1967, and so on and so forth. But I hadn’t paid attention to the royal family’s nicknames! I regret that I spent most of my days reading twentieth-century French novels and German politics in my London flat. Now I realized that twentieth-century European history was not important at all for this exam.
Sitting before my question paper, I randomly ticked the answer B or C, though sometimes with a faint intuition about which was correct. Perhaps an A for a change? As I circled ‘Catholic Mary’ with my pen, I suddenly had the feeling that I was at risk of losing my British Citizenship. Well, I didn’t have British Citizenship yet. I was risking not gaining the qualification I needed for application of my Naturalisation.
As the sub-continental-looking examination officer paced up and down, I thought: why were there no questions about the East India Company or Partition? I exhaled with a long and unsure breath, and moved onto the next question:
What kind of bird do people usually eat on Christmas Day?
A: Duck B: Chicken C: Turkey D: Ostrich
An easy question at last! Even though previously I only had one Christmas lunch experience in London with an Italian family eating a huge ostrich. Yes, a stuffed ostrich with heavy gravy all over its rubbery flesh. But, on second thoughts, maybe I should not take this question to be as simple as it had seemed to be. When it asked ‘people’, did it mean ‘any people’ or ‘English people’? As an oriental living in Britain, I always ate a bowl of noodle alone in a rented flat during the Christmas. Santa Claus never visited my chimney, neither friends nor families. Come back to the question: ‘What kind of bird . . .’, I disliked eating any kind of bird. I dread the idea of alien hormones from caged chicken farms infesting my stomach. And what about the vegetarians in this country? Was the Christmas spirit incompatible with the consumption of tofu or any sort of bean curd? Or stir fried bok choy in ginger sauce?
Now as I refocused on the exam sheets, letting the flood of dead bird-imagery fade, I quickly ticked the ‘C: Turkey’ and move on to the next. The next question would be a more serious one, I presumed.
The House of Lords is normally more __ in the government than the House of Commons.
A: powerful B: successful C: independent
Hmm, House of Commons. House of Lords. I always found these expressions odd. It made me think of the Ming Dynasty’s East Court and West Court, whose role was to serve the Emperor. That was 500 years ago. For all these years living in London, I had never passed a building with either of these names, Lords or Commons, on it. Perhaps I had only lived in the poor part of the town? I had a ludicrous image of miniature houses stuck inside the Palace of Westminster and the Queen watering her tulips next to them. Gazing back at the sheets in front of me, I murmured again: The House of Lords is normally more powerful, or successful, or independent in the government than the House of Commons. I rescanned the three adjectives. The more I stared at the word ‘Lords’ and ‘Commons’, the heavier my eyelids weighed upon me. I needed coffee. Then I thought harder. Independent felt like a more neutral word than the pompous vocabulary of powerful or successful. It suggested democracy, which was the image that the UK liked to project. I marked C. The clock was ticking and I faced the last question with no time to spare.
Which of the following is a country of the UK?
A: Channel Islands B: Scotland C: Republic of Ireland D: Isle of Man
A country in the UK? What a provocative question for someone from People’s Republic of China. I knew Scotland was a country, though without a border with England or using a different passport. I did study aspects of British constitution, and repeatedly read about Britain comprising a number of countries. But still, for me, I could never get used to this idea that this archipelago in the Atlantic should comprise so many different countries rather than provinces. I still remembered reading George Orwell about Englishness: ‘We call our islands by no fewer than six different names, England, Britain, Great Britain, the British Isles, the United Kingdom and, in very exalted moments, Albion.’ While in my experience, London really seemed to be a different country than the rest of the UK. I sighed, and ticked B.
As I exited the exam room, I had little hope that I would pass. Deep down I think my lack of preparation was not just laziness, or merely the product of preoccupation with other things, but also resistance. There was something about the implicit pride in a supposed thousand years of monarchy, and the parliamentary system – which few I suspected understood – that made me feel ill at ease. It was the same syndrome as The Archers. I was just being introduced to the cultural symbols and motifs of the United Kingdom. People learn the history of kings and queens just like we learn fairy tales or consume the latest soap operas. And what for? It’s all about instilling the collective wisdom of the ruling classes, yet done in the most bland and innocuous way.
3
A month later, I received the test result which told me I had passed the exam. So I began to proceed with my naturalisation. Four weeks later, I received a formal letter from the Home Office, congratulating me that I was in the final stage of this long process and I needed to participate in a naturalisation ceremony.
On the day of the ceremony, I put on a newly washed but plain looking coat. My immigrant’s experiences made me think in this way: to be normal and to look normal are probably the most appropriate gesture in these circumstances. The last thing you want is to stick out from the crowd. It’s not like attending Glastonbury music festival. So I got off the bus near Bow in East London, I stepped into a town hall building, and met with some non-native looking families. They were all well dressed – women in colourful outfit and men in suits. I presumed they were Bengalis or Indians, and a few members of African family. Then there were several white Europeans. The Europeans sat alone with their Iphones in hands, away from us, without any family companions.
In front of a massive portrait of the current Queen, I was given two different coloured sheets. Each one was a printed version of the oath I could read aloud with others. But I had to choose which text I would follow.
The red coloured oath went like this:
I, [name], swear by Almighty God that, on becoming a British citizen, I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Her Heirs and Successors according to law.
Then the green coloured oath read like this:
I, [name], will give my loyalty to the United Kingdom and respect its rights and freedoms. I will uphold its democratic values. I will observe its laws faithfully and fulfil my duties and obligations as a British citizen.
I now knew which oath I would read, and felt relieved that I don’t have to read something totally against my beliefs. As if this is not enough, immediately, we were also given a blue piece of paper, on which was written:
Under the Oaths Act 1978, any person who objects to swearing an oath may instead make a solemn affirmation. This also applies when it is not practicable to administer the oath in accordance with a person’s religious belief (e.g. if the sacred book of the person’s religion is not available). The relevant provisions of the Oaths Act (sections 5 and 6) are applied to citizenship oaths by section 42 (7) of the British Nationality Act 1981.
I was totally lost with the gabbled legalese of the blue paper. Then I found a white sheet underneath it. It read:
An oral affirmation should be made as follows:
I, [full name], do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that on becoming a British Citizen, I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Her Heirs and Successors, according to law.
Words on the paper became a rap song, looping in my ears. And I began to shake my head left and right with rhythm. But the Queen’s stern looking poster caught my eyes. I could have sworn for a moment that her eyes were following me. I recomposed myself and began to look around. Everyone seemed to be a little lost, especially an elderly lady in her multi-layered golden sari. Disoriented, I decided to join my European neighbours and stood beside them. I would just read any coloured paper that they would be reading. I could see that they were all holding green paper.
Under the instructions of a respectable looking gentleman before the Queen, the gathered mass of new citizens read aloud their oaths in a muffled voice. Male and female, young and old, Asian and Africans, Europeans and Latinos, we all trundled along with various level of ease or uneasiness.
I will give my loyalty to the United Kingdom and respect its rights and freedoms. I will uphold its democratic values . . .
When I was reading those lines, I was almost touched, especially with the phrase about upholding the democratic values even though I didn’t have any clear vision where Britain would be heading to in the future. Anything could happen. In fact, anything did happen, with the strange escapade of Brexit that later gripped the neck of the country. Though that was the future. But right at this moment we had to do what we were told, in this town hall, in front of the grand looking Elizabeth II held up by plastic poles against the rain drenched window. Just as the characters in The Archers must submit themselves to the boggy heaths, water-logged fields submerged in manure and the still extant medieval system of land ownership, we, citizens of the UK must live in our eternal village of Ambridge – assuming the borders are still safely guarded. I could feel the weight of my submission bearing down on me. I would mouth the empty words ordained by the state, and I would bend, genuflect and submit to the dull mantras that trickled down from the heights of power.
As my thoughts were propelled upwards through the tuneless humming of the collective mass, the national anthem resonated in my ears and took on the guise of an epiphany. Had I seen the light? I feared there was no light to be seen. I sang, zombie-like:
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle discusses a little-known medieval poem Here’s a question for you. Which single English text provides the Oxford English Dictionary with the most new words? By ‘new’ words I mean words which were unknown before they appeared in that particular […]
I began this in a driving snowstorm so I couldn’t see the reality of things.
Or was the white-foggy danger in front of this poem actually the reality of things. The idea of
making elegies for unwritten poems— I attribute to the 8 inches already fallen and being faced with sodden home-time.
Effaced means just that. Who knew what she looked like. Who knew her thoughts, ending?
I couldn’t see out, since both outside and in had shadows and crystals of lumped up shapes.
I couldn’t see in me, either. ‘What’ is a pronoun, like he, she it, they, we and ‘I’,
each with tracks of all of them inside each, pocketed and stamped on various organs
and arteries, some kind of blood type living off the viral air of each and brought to each via
pipelines, nets and statements of hope, exchanges and extrusions, splaying thru a merry metamorphic map.
Really? Does ‘what’ count to substitute for a noun? For all nouns, for all unknowns?
2.
So now begin today, to date, total,
will this be the day, May 14, 2018,
of the beginning of the end of the world?
or even of the current world?
Generally, it’s two decades into any century
when the character of the whole begins to be defined
or freezes or gets wrapped like death or sweats
some strait-jacket mummy shroud that the rest of the decades
spend all their collective energy
untying the tabs, chains, bindings and unreachable buckles of.
Is May 14, 2018 going to be this day?
Circa give or take
a few days? Or, you know, years.
I am haunted by these further future days.
How could I make a book of future days,
of days within more days and of their silences?
What have I come to this door
to tell you?
3.
And here, both days are now the past.
And now, another day.
What is ‘today’s thought’?
In transit
flat packed sand-mud airports
are better for takeoff and landing
but flood easily.
Another:
‘lah’ in Singapore being
situational, emphatic, not my idiom,
cozy and ironic at once.
Try it, lah.
Nothing like this is enough.
4.
I see storms coming
through this misted heat
through the foggy cold
and other alls I see, not to be told.
The press, a diagnosis
1.
I am a fleck, a stat, a barely-thought, a ‘So?’
trying to account for content a content meant from text. Icon.
A space between
the strata’d self, the wink of skin and found these veins doubly dubious
with vines and wires. A blotch
had gotten woven in my angled strain, a living shape of wax and wane.
Scribbled writing, scrabbled reading.
It was some over-inky inner pen made dunks and blots. Its tide too thick
whose swell impressed these stains up
through my arm, a force incarnadine (the thing itself in- karma—line)
that inked me from the inside out.
Beginning with a blood slide— spills of spools, my dabbled spoils of time.
These cellular portals? Each
became a leaky little door or dictionary with its syllables
colored by flood-words
underneath the skin their local beat beet-red,
a swell of purple stuff imprinted
just inside itself (in ‘me’).
2.
Of course, it seemed that I was bleeding
but I’m not. I am simply done,
finished with holding it /in /
pressing it down inside / under skin.
It looked as if I deliberately
exuded blotched bruises.
They were in truth unreadable words
to state: every sentence ever writ
had under-sentences
sucked back, unsaid. Yet unexpectedly,
they chose to write itself themselves,
inside. A purple oeuvre shaped as mine.
3.
It could be regarded as a piece of signage or a banner carried on me
waving myself. My under side. For the writing sets alphabet-ing self beyond one self. My body published it. The statements bleed
their carmine veiny-ness in capillary letters.
It could be seen as clusters of bruised blood
published on me, headlines
changing daily
on my beige-white skin.
A vast wall of contemporary marks—
traces that we’re walking past—
that are also mine.
I became the wall.
I show the bleeding
wells up through our time.
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