The joys of motherhood

Erlang and Monkey locked in combat while the Heavenly Armies watch on

Last night, as in the night of Monday, i only got to sleep at 4 am, after tending to a sick Ghin. It is very difficult when your baby is sick because it is so hard to watch them suffer. How can i take away this pain, you ask yourself? And then you try your best to do the right thing. Ghin had slapped cheek and his face was bright red. Also he had a strange fever where his head was not hot but his legs were and he was aching all over. He was not nauseous, thankfully, and was able to keep down food. He slept a bit and then would wake up saying to me, this bit of me hurts. At about three am he had nosebleed. Each child is different and Ghin just wants to be cuddled all the time. The cuddling is lovely but the not being able to do anything about how crap he feels is shite. We had breakfast and a midnight snack in bed although i insisted that he come down for lunch and dinner. I read four chapters of Journey to the West to him because i had said that he could not watch TV as this would only make him feel worse. We enjoyed the book and i suppose things could be worse than reading one of the great classics of Chinese literature.

The boys have been sick all winter. On and off. First there was the tummy vomiting bug. Then there was the mysterious aching all over thing, accompanied by a weird fever which Oisin had before and then just after Christmas. Thankfully i have escaped this but it is very disruptive illness especially when it occurs over and over again. It is exhausting. It is like when you are just getting into your stride a massive mountain comes along and blocks your path and you have to go round it. And this winter there has been a lot of going by the scenic path.

The Journey to the West is incredible. The author, whose authorship is in dispute, is a genius. It is a combination of the picaresque, the epic, the lyrical, the instructive... it is poetry and philosophy. There are some of the best written descriptions of fighting in poetry and some of the best descriptions of landscape. The characters are funny and warm and familiar. There is plot and counterplot. There are stories within stories. The most interesting thing to me is how Ghin loves it.

Today we got as far as Taizong going to hell and back and as i read out the descriptions of the Chinese Hell all my visits to Haw Par Villa came back to me. The statues in Haw Par Villa are exactly the descriptions in the book's versions of Hell. It also reminded my of Dante's Inferno, where he descends into the different levels of hell and meets different kinds of sinners who have very specific punishments met out to them. I was really struck at how this concept of Hell. so orderly was so similar to the Hell in early renaissance Italy. How is that? Are human beings so similar? Or was there borrowing all around?

The other interesting thing about Journey is how Wukong reminds me of Lucifer in Paradise Lost. Here we have this upstart who questions authority and who argues with the accepted structure and order of things, he creates chaos and is rude and disobedient and funny and we love him for it. The Jade Emperor is a boring old fart who can't really do anything about Wukong. The only people who are able to control him are the Bhudda and Guanyin, who do it without resorting to authority or violence. In this way, the Journey is also the ultimate Bhuddist text.

It is almost 4 am - i got up today at 1 am - after going to bed at 8 pm, and then watched Bitter Lake, a film about Afghansitan and the rise of Wahabism - and the role the West played in it. Seen in this context it is seems like string of glorious failures. All these great intentions which just imploded and then exploded. History, it would seem, is a series of blunders. A tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

This made me quite upset. How can man be so magnificently stupid? However, as we read the Journey to the West, we realise there are no new stories. Every condition known of human kind is actually recorded in the nearly 1800 pages. This kind of monumental stupidity is also recorded in the Bible which if filled with human beings doing completely irrational things. In that sense, there is nothing new there. This is why i think it would be useful for everyone to study literature and history. Because it is good to learn from past mistakes. Every person should be forced to read all of Shakespeare's history plays back to back for instance because you cannot come away from them without this realisation that the accumulation of power is an ultimately futile one and the hierarchical structures are ultimately self defeating - which is also what the Journey to the West demonstrates. Play with power and you lose something of yourself. Each step that you climb in a corrupt system, you compromise something of your humanity. Only a true structure endures, which is what is symbolised by the Bhudda - it is not a religion which the Bhudda represents in the Journey, but a deeper truth which is ineffable and cannot be comprehended by thought. It can only be lived, experienced, and through being awakened in the experience, wisdom can occur. In some ways it is the Nature. In other ways it is a Natural Law, one which not even the monkey mind can escape.

The other thing i love about the Journey is how much of India there is in it. I was looking up Nezha with Ghin and we watched the lovely 1979 animation of Nezha, which was not only gorgeous, but also uncompromising. I was thinking about how it could have been a subtle critique of the communist leadership of the time. Anyway, the suicide of little Nezha and then his rebirth, it was unmistakable the Hindu aesthetic. The lotus blossoms, the bracelets. Of course the quest to the West itself speaks of going to India. The concept of kalpas, dharma, dhayana, etc...

Finally, of course, there was the question of suffering. When monkey is subdued under a mountain, he is given iron pellets for food and molten copper to drink. This happens for 500 years before he is given the chance to undergo the quest. If there is a better description of suffering (or indeed depression) i have not heard it yet. After having all these powers, after having cultivated himself in the Way and then squandered all his knowledge and opportunities, he must suffer. If when we suffer, and we do not feel as if we are trapped under the Five Elements Mountain drinking molten copper and eating iron slugs, torn up by regret, then i don't think we are truly suffering. The thing about Monkey though is that there is never any sense of repentance. There is plenty of redemption, but Monkey never feels truly sorry for what he has done. If given half the chance, we would almost certainly go back to being the mischief making idiot which he is. Being forced to look after the weak Tripitaka enables him to discover compassion. To care for someone. To place his enormous power in the service of a greater cause.

Plus there are some mental fights which take place. Holywood, to date, has not come up with anything to match the battle between Monkey and the Heavenly Armies. Ghin and i love the battles they have with magical powers and weapons like you won't believe. No wonder it is one of the great works of world literature.

I suppose there are worse ways to spend one's time, in bed, reading the Journey to the West to your eight year old son. As i read he loom banded, or quietly looked at me with his shining eyes. Every now and then i would check his temperature and offer him food. He would ask me questions like what are the Eight Trigrams, or is one of Nezha's weapons a ring? I would cuddle him in between or look out of the window to check for rain. Time passed very slowly and then before i knew it, it was 3 pm. It is funny how children recover. I was tired from all that looking after and so i lay in bed while he went downstairs, ostensibly to ask Oisin a question about something. Then the next thing i knew he was leaping about and playing kung fu with his brother. He is better, i sighed. How suddenly they take ill and then how suddenly they recover. Thank god. And so another day passes.