Knulp

 

Read this wonderful little book at www.archive.org
(better still, buy a copy and keep it in your backpocket)

 

It's said that it's better to give than to receive, but a gift you buy yourself lets you do both, which is what I did when I picked up this slim copy of Hermann Hesse's novella "Knulp" at Vinnies. They must not have known what treasure they were giving away because its sticker price was one lousy dollar.

Someone recently gave me the ultimate compliment by saying, "I wish I had met you sooner, but I'm glad it happened at all." Back then I was not the person I am now, and that person may not have liked me, just as I may not have appreciated Hermann Hesse's "Knulp" as much as I do now.

The pleasure of 'Knulp' isn't in the plot, which is slight, but in the weight of truth and human understanding that thickens the writing. It makes for a remarkable and deeply affecting reading experience, as it asks the big questions: What should we do with our lives? What is a life well lived? How do we resolve the tension between duty and freedom?

Knulp is always on the road, never quite belonging anywhere. He wanders from town to town, touching people's lives only briefly and then quietly disappears again as if in a puff of air. What he leaves behind is nothing more than a memory; a small recollection, like a melody we once heard years ago and somehow forgot. The novel reaches a final powerful climax when God reveals to Knulp that the purpose of his life was to bring a little nostalgia for freedom into the lives of ordinary men:

 

"Let well enough alone," said God. "What's the good of complaining? Don't you see that whatever happened was good and right, that nothing should have been any different? Would you really want to be a gentleman now, or a master craftsman with a wife and children, reading the paper by the fireside? Wouldn't you run away again this minute to sleep in the woods with the foxes and set traps for birds and catch lizards?" Again Knulp started off, unaware that he was staggering with weariness. He felt much happier now and nodded gratefully to everything God said. "Look," said God, "I wanted you the way you are and no different. You were a wanderer in my name and wherever you went you brought the settled folk a little homesickness for freedom. In my name, you did silly things and people scoffed at you; I myself was scoffed at in you and loved in you. You are my child and my brother and a part of me. There is nothing you have enjoyed and suffered that I have not enjoyed and suffered with you."

By the time you have read this, you're on the second-last page of this 113-page-thin triptych divided into "Early Spring", "My Recollections of Knulp", and "The End", and you wished it wasn't the end, because this lengthy metaphor has so much to teach you. It taught me about myself who was, like Knulp, the eternal drifter, a true drop-out, never quite belonging anywhere, consistently refusing to tie myself down to any job, place or person.

I have often suspected that by bringing 'a little nostalgia for freedom' into the lives of some of the people I met, I may have upset them and not been the kind of person that deserved the aforesaid compliment.

 

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P.S. For my German readers I have this audiobook of "Knulp" in German!

 

The stranger that is you

 

 

It's difficult to read Camus when you are married and your day is filled with trivialities. Today was different because today Padma went to join the 'Stitching Bitches' in the village hall where she learns the latest crochet knots, and I was left alone in the house.

I hadn't read Camus' "The Stranger" for what seemed like ages. I don't even know if I still have all his books in my somewhat messy library, and the only online copy was in Bahasa Indonesia. And so I did the next-best thing and relaxed on the verandah and listened to the audiobook.

 

 

I could've listened to it in French - click here - but this was my day off from domestic challenges, and the English translation was just fine.

 

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Falling asleep to Albert Camus’ philosophy

 

For more of the same, click here

 

When you get to a certain age, trying to stay awake during the day and trying to fall asleep at night become one and the same. Trying to fall asleep to Albert Camus' complete philosophy may make a difference. It works for me! Tomorrow I might surprise you with Camus' "The Stranger".

 

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What is Trump's next cunning plan?

 

 

I have no idea what Trump's next cunning plan is; I just hope he's not doing another Baldrick. After he had extended the Iran ceasefire overnight, all indications were that the stockmarket was going to nosedive. Yes, all the banks took a beating, but the big miners went up, and then down again, and then up again.

(Did you know that Australians now torch - at a minimum - over $31 billion a year on gambling across pokies, betting, lotteries and casinos, which is roughly the annual profits of ALL the four banks combined?)

The market simply doesn't know what to do — well, except for a certain clique in the US who are making billions with their insider trading. Very soon, though, there will come that Gorbachev-moment — remember December 25, 1991? — when the Iranian regime will finally collapse. I just hope it'll happen long before the whole world economy collapses.

I am holding on to my BHP shares, and just now bought a few more Liontown (LTR), after having sold my previous holding for a tidy profit only yesterday. Lithium is all the rage, and will be for a long time to come, now that electric cars are in higher demand than ever before.

Remember when Blackadder told Baldrick, "You wouldn't know a cunning plan if it danced naked on a harpsichord singing 'Cunning Plans are Here Again'"? Let us just hope that Trump doesn't solve the problem of the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz by only cutting off everyone's head.

 

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Laid up with Laytime Calculations

 

I know you're so gripped by this clip that you can't wait to watch Part 2

 

Istill remember being overwhelmed the first time I had to calculate the laytime of one of Mofarrij's six general cargo vessels - be it the "Mofarrij-A", "Mofarrij-B", "Mofarrij-C" "Mofarrij-D", "Mofarrij-F" or "Mofarrij-G" - or of any of the other charter vessels - click here.

 

The year was 1984. I had just purchased two APPLE ///s, each with floppy drives A: and B:, holding 5.25-inch disks with a capacity of 360 KB each. We thought them sheer magic! 😄

 

All those NORs, SOFs, WWDs, SHEX, and SHINC, and the small print in Charter Parties were more confusing than the simple dictum that for every debit there must be a credit. It's done with computers now but back then in my Greek salad days (with my apologies to Shakespeare's Cleopatra) in my office overlooking the busy port of Pireaus it was still done the old-fashioned way with paper, pen and hand-written time-sheets. I was often laid up for days with lengthy laytime calculations!

 

In my office in Piraeus

 

After a desperately placed classified in the ATHENS NEWS, I was lucky to find Bozenna, a former employee of Polfracht, a Polish shipbroking and chartering company in Gdynia (which is part of what my former fellow-countrymen used to call Danzig, but we won't go there now), and with a vastly over-qualified master’s degree in maritime transport economics.

"Nie ma problemu", said Bozenna and set to work, often craftily interpreting Charter Parties to swing the calculations in our favour. It proved to be a fortuitous encounter, just as it had been for Bozenna in 1979 when her Polish employers had sent her on a holiday replacement to their office in Piraeus. Two days after her arrival, another Pole, a marine insurance broker, invited her to dinner - and the rest is history.

 

Bozenna and Tadeusz (Ted) at the SAVOY Hotel

 

I know that history well because by the time I got to Greece in late 1982, Bozenna was already married to Tadeusz, the marine insurance broker, and both became my best friends during my time in Greece.

 

Ted in full flight

 

As it turned out, Bozenna was not only smarter than me in calculating laytime but also smarter than me by staying in Greece. Those years were the best years of my life, SHINC (Sundays and holidays included).

 

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