On My Bedside Table – No 5
It has been a while since I last reflected on the books stacked beside my bed—the ones I am reading now. They form part of my literary treasure cove, each well worth the time spent with it. I confess that there are chapters and passages I return to more than once, some writing demands rereading.
“Ma, to speak in our mother tongue is to speak partially in Vietnamese, but entirely in war.”
Ocean Vuong writes a raw, lyrical, and deeply personal letter to his mother—who cannot read. There is immense power in telling one’s own story, and like the macaque monkeys he describes, Vuong uses memory as a means of survival. Like them, he is capable of self-doubt (aren’t we all?) and introspection—traits once thought to belong exclusively to humans.
He writes about sexuality—its discovery rather than its declaration—and about mental illness, which afflicted both his mother and his grandmother. His grandmother lovingly called him Little Dog. He writes about class, labour, addiction, abuse, and distils trauma directly onto the page. How many of us think about these things, and how many of us commit them to paper? When we write, our thoughts linger longer; sooner or later, light finds its way in. We begin to confront our own complexities. This is a demanding book—sad, yet beautiful. The prose is exquisite and daring.
Vuong is a thinker—deeply sagacious. He describes the human eye as God’s loneliest creation, noting that it does not even know there is another one an inch away. He wonders why buffalo on the Discovery Channel stampede blindly, running off cliffs. So do I. One would think at least one would stop and turn around. He reasons that this, too, is the law of nature: “Like a family, a fucked family!”
Who thinks like this? Who notices that laughter is trapped inside slaughter? Precious.
Ocean grew up in war. By the age of nine, he had already mastered the dialect of a damaged father. The young are coached in casual hatred by the old—still true today. Is it not? His prose invites the reader to notice their surroundings, to question observation itself, to contemplate, and to grow comfortable with silence. [On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.]
In previous blog posts, there has always been a book about drawing—How to Draw, and the like. I completed Charles Bargue’s drawing course, which proved deeply influential. Beyond improving my draftsman ship, it taught me discipline in other areas of my life.
Now I have moved on to something even more substantial: Drawing Projects – An Exploration of the Language of Drawing by Mick Maslen and Jack Southern. It is a formidable book—one that will likely occupy me for a long time.
This blog post seems to circle a central theme: observation—a quality attributed to a relatively small group of people. To write well, one must observe. To draw well, the same applies. This is true across many disciplines, but here I focus on this book, which revives drawing terminology largely abandoned in art schools and studios since the 1950s. It is refreshing to see a shift away from hyperbole and glamour toward truth and honesty. This movement has contributed to a renewed interest in both the practice and appreciation of drawing.
Good songwriting, too, depends on observation—music giving shape to thought. John Prine sings, “Old trees just grow stronger, and old rivers grow wider every day.” Both are true. Trees, to me, are symbolic in more ways than one.
Consider four women—two Tutsi, one Hutu, and one American—confined to a tiny underground space for 81 days to escape the atrocities of war. No room to stretch, no proper ablutions, and irregular, scant food supplies—yet they survive. Trees of Peace. They grow stronger; they grow taller. The will to survive prevails. They form an unbreakable bond and emerge as a source of inspiration.
The film Trees of Peace, though fictionalised, is inspired by true events during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.
Think about it: films are largely made by people in touch with reality; scripts are written by those who observe. Box-office success is no reliable measure of quality. Many commercially successful films lack a true core. Audiences are drawn to action—blood, guts, and gore—but spectacle is not substance.
Viktor Frankl was a world-renowned psychiatrist and a survivor of Auschwitz. He had sewn his writings into the hems of his clothing, but they were discovered and destroyed. What he understood was this: everything could be taken from him—his freedom, his dignity—but not his mind. He memorised his findings. After his release, he wrote them down and published them. Over 16 million copies were sold. Man’s Search for Meaning.
One question continues to trouble me: if millions of Jews were murdered and the SS guards were vastly outnumbered, why was there so little resistance? Why did so many walk meekly into the chambers? Why was it allowed by the people? Ignorance? Not an excuse—perhaps a reason.
Often, people do not know because they choose not to. The underlying motive is to avoid responsibility. If more witnesses to wrongdoing spoke up in protest, evil would become harder to carry out. There is immense power in this idea.
Why and how did Viktor E. Frankl survive?
According to Frankl, people can endure starvation if starvation has meaning.
Why do people commit suicide? He argues it may stem not primarily from mental illness but from physical or existential exhaustion. Sometimes the motivation is bound up in the perceived impact on others—revenge. Some are simply tired of life: a feeling, not a reason. Others can no longer believe in meaning itself.
Frankl asserts that love cannot exist purely for pleasure; pleasure is transient.
Rabindranath Tagore wrote:
that life was joy
I awoke and saw
that life was duty
I worked—and behold,
duty was joy
Joy cannot be pursued or willed into being, it must arise spontaneously, as an outcome. Happiness can never be the goal—only the result.
I find Frankl’s writings deeply intriguing because they make sense. Perhaps some of us require a Copernican revolution in how we view life and our expectations. Or perhaps we are simply asking the wrong questions.
From this mental standpoint, nothing can truly frighten us. What matters is how we occupy our circle of life—how we fill our place within it. The tasks life sets are meant for one person alone, and that person is required to fulfil them.
Both books are highly recommended for anyone questioning life and its meaning:
- Man’s Search for Meaning
- Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything