10 days before qingming and i went today to sweep the graves of my great-great-grandparents -- yes my family's been around for quite some time in singapore i think -- and something about the cemetery just struck me.
we are unequal in death, it seems, and even the graves have social distinctions. the sad and straggly little brick graves at the edge of the hill of the poor, the somewhat larger and more respectable middle class ones, and then the magnificent headstones of the rich, covered with gold lettering. one of the graves had two statues of burly sikh sentries, turbans and mustaches at all, standing guard.
and as i stood there and heard my grandfather and granduncle talking to each other about how odd it was that a teochew could have managed to get a place on a hill owned by the hokkiens and i realized how much this was part of a dying world. and around me were the crumbling headstones of rich and poor, ornate and humble, the spreading branches of a dessicating banyan, and the remnants of previous offerings left on the graves, where the ants and flies were already crawling in to begin their feast.
and i realize that in time all around me the lettering of the headstones will all be painted red as people stop coming to visit, leaving only the sikh statues to stand a lonely vigil over a vanished world and fading photographs.
***
just a thought about causation in history.
when we observe in minute detail events we realize that right at the most fundamental level causation is nothing more than the interaction between people and circumstances, one inducing (sometimes minute) changes in each other until in sum they become observable. this phenomenon has no more meaning than that of a pretty snake biting its own tail and going in circles.
but as this snake moves in repeated circles over time, over and over again, its scale markings begin to merge into some pattern from afar until we distill order from chaos and meaning from meaninglessness.
and that's history.
***
if you thought that was profound, no it wasn't. i was just playing a joke.
***
sometimes people are more complex than you give them credit for.
we are unequal in death, it seems, and even the graves have social distinctions. the sad and straggly little brick graves at the edge of the hill of the poor, the somewhat larger and more respectable middle class ones, and then the magnificent headstones of the rich, covered with gold lettering. one of the graves had two statues of burly sikh sentries, turbans and mustaches at all, standing guard.
and as i stood there and heard my grandfather and granduncle talking to each other about how odd it was that a teochew could have managed to get a place on a hill owned by the hokkiens and i realized how much this was part of a dying world. and around me were the crumbling headstones of rich and poor, ornate and humble, the spreading branches of a dessicating banyan, and the remnants of previous offerings left on the graves, where the ants and flies were already crawling in to begin their feast.
and i realize that in time all around me the lettering of the headstones will all be painted red as people stop coming to visit, leaving only the sikh statues to stand a lonely vigil over a vanished world and fading photographs.
***
just a thought about causation in history.
when we observe in minute detail events we realize that right at the most fundamental level causation is nothing more than the interaction between people and circumstances, one inducing (sometimes minute) changes in each other until in sum they become observable. this phenomenon has no more meaning than that of a pretty snake biting its own tail and going in circles.
but as this snake moves in repeated circles over time, over and over again, its scale markings begin to merge into some pattern from afar until we distill order from chaos and meaning from meaninglessness.
and that's history.
***
if you thought that was profound, no it wasn't. i was just playing a joke.
***
sometimes people are more complex than you give them credit for.
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