'WORK' - Wednesday 31st August 2005

Oh for the days when summer holidays were no shorter than two and a half months! Tomorrow is the start of another academic year, which means the Day Job begins in earnest, as does the (often frustrating) attempt to juggle said Day Job with (preferred) Writing Job and the million and one tiny little things which constitute Living A Life In One Of The Most Hectic Countries In The World Job. Still, mustn't complain, there are lots of things to look forward to in the coming months... I wonder if one of them will include getting loads of writing done...

'CONTEXT' - Monday 29th August 2005

Just a thought: I wonder if every single character trait one could possibly possess has the potential to be very harmful or totally harmless according to the context in which it manifests itself.

Allow me to explain. Take single-mindedness, for instance. It doesn't take a great deal of imagination to realise it's a a trait which could be exceedingly commendable in certain contexts but a severe handicap in others. Or being a thoughtful person. Again, in some situations this would be a beneficial characteristic, in others it might be deadly... which is actually what makes Hamlet such a heart-wrenching tragedy, but that's another story. I once spent some time with someone I'd always considered to be enviably laid-back, and although I wasn't persuaded to alter my general assessment of this individual, I began to realise that this 'laid-back-ness' was achieved through a certain type of selfishness: there were certain things this person would not do if they really didn't want to them. Well then, one might say it's very easy to achieve a 'laid-back image' if one never does anything to put oneself out.

So all this brings me to my initial query: I wonder if every single characteristic out there has got a plus side and a minus, an up and a down, a yin and a yang? Or are there any traits which can be purely light or purely dark?

'AISLE' - Saturday 27th August 2005

Starting a Saturday with a trip to Tesco is probably not the best way to put oneself in a tranquil frame of mind for the rest of the weekend, but a quick visit was unavoidable this morning. Yet again, I was astounded by the skill with which the many (and boy, do I mean MANY!) shoppers turned their trolleys into weapons of mass obstruction. More depressing was the even greater skill with which they managed to avoid eye contact with every single person around them.

My mind was instantly drawn back to my holiday in India last year, as it has been many times over the last 12 months. Before I got there, I was worried that one of the aspects of the trip I would have trouble with would be the crowds, because they usually make me go ever so slightly catatonic. However, after spending a few days in Delhi (not exactly the most thinly populated spot on the planet), I was surprised by how easy it was for me to navigate my way around the many different sorts of bodies around me. I haven't quite worked out why this was so. Naturally, part of it must have been that I was on holiday and therefore under no pressure to get anything done by a certain time etc etc. I was also on the receiving end of many friendly smiles, as were the other tourists. The more obviously wealthy members of the crowd were paying absolutely no attention to the hapless beggars and homeless people around them, so it's not as though the whole place was a chummy little paradise where people went around greeting each other with Mary Poppins smiles all the time. But there seemed to be very little aggression in the air. Everyone appeared to be entitled to their bit of space. Sadly, the same couldn't be said of the ambience at Tesco. All the trolleys might as well have had a sticker on the front saying, "Could you f*** off out of my way, please!"

I was only too happy to oblige.

'ORVAL' - Friday 26th August 2005

In the south of Belgium, very near the town of Arlon, is the Abbey of Orval, which has been home to a community of Trappist Cistercian monks for several centuries. One of the rules the monks used to follow - I'm not sure if they follow it still - was that they did not eat meat. Of course, there's nothing remarkable in that, but I do find the reason behind their self-imposed vegetarianism quite interesting. Apologies to any theologians whom I may offend with my simplistic understanding and/or explanation of monastic life, but it seems the Orval monks believed that just because something is edible, that doesn't automatically mean it should be eaten. So, as a self-disciplinary measure, as a way of stating that it is not necessary to indulge in everything the material world has to offer, they decided they would not eat meat.

I suppose what struck me about this is that it seems to be a counterpoint to a mantra one hears fairly often: "I'll try everything at least once." The monks' rule is basically: "There are some things I will never try." Of course, this is hardly a radical theological or philosophical concept. As far as I know, abnegation of one form or another is praised in most religions. But it's not a practice which, in my experience, is widely lauded in what one might call - for the sake of this argument - secular spheres of society. I suppose we saw a bit of it not too long ago in the American campaign which encouraged youngsters to be proud of and advertise their virginity. Although one could question the value and purpose of loudly announcing one's subscription to such a campaign, at least it went against the cultural tide of 'DO, DO, DO!' I find myself drawn to a philosophy that says it is just as important to know when to 'DON'T, DON'T, DON'T', but that doesn't easily fit in with the tenets of the currently-popular cult of the individual, which encourages its 'members' to think: 'It's okay to do anything as long as I want to do it'. I think we tend not to admire people for things which they have refused to do or things which they have managed not to do in spite of great pressure, and I just wonder if sometimes we shouldn't show as much respect for the 'not-doers' as we do for the 'doers'.

'BLACK HOLE' - Wednesday 24th August 2005

A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man, The Remains Of The Day, The Unbearable Lightness Of Being, Beloved, The English Patient, Sons And Lovers, The Name Of The Rose and Damage... only eight of the reasons why I've done nothing all day but stare at a blank page thinking, 'What is the point?'

Just thought I'd share.

'GUESTBOOK' - Tuesday 23rd August 2005

I've received a few requests to add an interactive Comments section to this site. I could have spent hours trying to learn how to make one myself, but it turns out the Net is full of free so-called Guestbooks, so I've taken the easy way out and saved myself buckets of grief by subscribing to just such a service.

I'll bet no-one leaves any comments now...

'AUDIENCE' - Sunday 21st August 2005

Oh my goodness! Somebody actually visited this site without my having asked them to! And here I was thinking I had plenty of time to get my feeble little allotment in cyberspace totally weed-free and thriving. This person (thanks again, O) asked if a 'Comments' section will be appearing any time soon... and of course the answer is that I would love to have a Comments section... but I'm not entirely sure how I go about setting one up. There are still lots of things about the look of this site that bug me: I don't like the way the navigation buttons (on the left) are arranged on the page; I don't like how excessively white everything looks; I don't like the absence of graphical elements. But I'm trying to pace myself re: learning DreamWeaver, so I guess it may be a while before anything here begins to look even vaguely professional.

Having said all that, I do have some news relating to this site's raison d'etre: I HAVE AN IDEA FOR A NOVEL! And of course that takes priority over trying to beautify the site, so I guess anybody conscientiously checking out this site every now and then (yes, all three of you) is going to have to put up with the current site structure for a while longer. Sorry. But thank you for reading.

Oh, and one more thing. If you really would like to send a site-related comment, then you can always drop an email to dariush@dariushalavi.com.

'SERIF' - FRIDAY 19th AUGUST 2005

You stay away from your local Waitrose for a fortnight and what do they go and do? Get rid of all the serifs!

Now, for those of you who may not know exactly what a serif is, please allow me to indulge in some exposition. You are in safe hands: I am a pedagogue. According to The Oxford English Reference Dictionary, a serif is "a slight projection finishing off a stroke of a letter." If you compare a capital T typed in a serif font (such as Times New Roman, on the right) with a T typed in a sans-serif font (such as Arial, on the left) you will see that the former features tiny, tooth-like protrusions whereas the latter does not. Each protrusion is known as a serif. End of lesson.

Of course, the demure little serif has been disappearing for a long time, so this lament doesn't exactly place me at the cutting edge of developments in popular culture. (Far from it! Yet again, I find myself with the shavings at the bottom of a black bag being taken away by loud men early on a Tuesday morning.) However, I had hoped that Waitrose - the only supermarket where you can buy fresh baklava from sales assistants able to tell you exactly what baklava is; the only supermarket which isn't lit like an Eastern European Lada factory circa 1977; the only supermarket where the words 'fewer' and 'less' are used properly - would dare to stick out, as it were, and remain faithful to the serif. But no. First it was the logo on the bags, then the logo on the shop fronts and now even the internal signs (you know the ones: 'FRUIT', 'DAIRY' etc.) have lost their dentures.

What does all this amount to? Well, I'm not entirely sure, (which isn't a problem, because this site contains mere ramblings, after all), although it does make me wonder if I shouldn't have gone into a career in design so that I could make 20K by telling people to remove little notches from their logos. But I would've been a conscientious design consultant, because I would've told all my clients to store their serifs in a safe place for the inevitable day when they become fashionable again. Or maybe Waitrose could have scored major brownie points with their olive-and-bruschetta-eating clients by proclaiming that instead of fiddlings with fonts, they'd spent 20K on building luxury coops for the producers of their free-range eggs... or something...

I don't know quite why this has affected me as much as it has. I almost feel moved to write an Ode To Serifs Lost. Maybe I take it as yet another worrying sign that our culture places excessive importance on all things new. I guess youth has always been something of an envied commodity. After all, hasn't the term 'old-fashioned' carried derogatory connotations for a long time? But what happened to its more respectable counterpart: 'classical'? When was the last time something was described using that particular word? Is its disappearance indicative of our culture's complete disregard for anything post-pubescent? Surely it wasn't so long ago that the elderly were considered to be as crucial to the richness of a society as anyone else... or am I just thinking of wishful old stories in which confused youngsters sought the advice of ancient sages?

I suspect I'm reading far too much into something quite insignificant, but it does scare me... sort of. Although what worries me more is that when I told myself I ought to put my money where my mouth is and use only serif fonts on this site, I immediately started to look for reasons for why that wouldn't be such a good idea. I mean, the last thing I want is for it to look old-fashioned, right?

'UPDATE' - SUNDAY 31st JULY 2005

The 'About' section has now been updated. Please have a look at it... and marvel at the fact that Madonna hasn't been mentioned a single time in it!

'MORE LIKE NIGHTMAREKNITTER' - FRIDAY 29th JULY 2005.

As a product name, Dreamweaver is rather good, I think. I'm not sure website building is its most immediate connotation - some underwear company bod somewhere must've been kicking himself/herself when he/she first heard it - but it does create serene images of sitting at one's PC for an hour - two at the most - and then calmly floating away, having a created a 'web presence' (now there's another nifty term) worthy of any soon-to-be-myopic teen cyber boffin.

Surprise, surprise, the reality is quite different. But after hours of searching I found a very helpfully written guide which told me enough I needed to know to create this slightly-better-than-the-last effort.

Now all I need to do is learn my way around PhotoShop...

'NOT REALLY GETTING THERE' - TUESDAY 26th JULY 2005.

Okay, this isn't going at all well. As I write this, I can't even remember exactly why I wanted a website in the first place. I think I must've spent the entire day trying to figure out how to make a little box on Dreamweaver which will NOT stretch to fit the size of the text it contains. So far, no success whatsoever.

However, the big news of the day is that it looks as though I am to be a published author. The September issue of Vancouver University's PRISM magazine will feature a story penned by yours truly entitled The Edge Of Happiness.