Sunday, January 09, 2005
Why fiction?
Philip Pullman: We're looking for an enlargement of imaginative sympathy, aren't we?
Archbishop of Canterbury: That's right. We're looking for a sense that our present definitions of what it is to be human - what it is to live in the world - are not necessarily the last word or the exhaustive version of reality, and that the truth is out there in another sense. It's out there in a bigger universe.
Pullman: Well the truth is in the library, perhaps.
Exactly what I have always liked to believe, thank you so much. The rest of the transcript is
here.
Pullman, an atheist, has a civilised debate with the Archbishop. An intriguing read.
My usual, irrational antipathy towards the phone has intensified. I tell myself that it's a Really Silly Idea, rather like shooting the messenger, and an inanimate, completely blameless one at that. It used to be that I could cheerfully, with clear conscience, keep my mobile on permanent silent mode. Not now, of course. So every time I leave my home, it feels as though I have a live bomb in my bag. I so do not enjoy drawing attention in public, and handphones tend to go off (obnoxiously) at the most inopportune moments.
I have also found that impressive grades can backfire when you are trying to angle for the safe, financially pragmatic admin job instead of the risk-fraught, weekends-only teaching position at the same tuition centre. Ah well, I'll just have to deal with that when the call comes (if it ever will). Maybe they will be sufficiently unsettled by my very frank and very eccentric replies on their personality questionnaire. They may decide that I'd be a bad, corrupting influence on the kiddies and give me the admin job. Or more likely, it'd turn out to be yet another fruitless round of job hunting.
My mum suggested part-time Pizza Hut. At this point in time I no longer consider myself overqualified for
anything. I can't stop myself from thinking in terms of the depersonalised labour market, and I see a steadily depreciating market value.
words were spilled on Sunday, January 09, 2005
