Five days before Christmas…

…and this is the view from where I sit to work on various papers.

Sure, it can be melancholic too, but today, it is sublime and inspiring. For people and things past and present, I am grateful.

Almost there

It is now the 17th of December – ordinarily Day Two of the traditional nine-day Misa de Gallo that precedes Christmas Day. Before coming to the US, I usually spent part of those nine days in church, specifically the Church of the Gesu in my university, in order to eat delicious holiday food, meet with friends and mostly just to lie on the campus green and stare at the stars that often blanketed the evening sky this time of the year.

Today I find myself on year four here in the Land of The Politically Correct where the only reminder of the holiday is a ecumenical Christmas Carol service held in the Memorial Church a few days ago and I cannot even greet anybody a Merry Christmas. It’s not even snowing.

Don’t get me wrong – I love Cambridge a lot and the kind of friends I’ve made here are probably the kind that I will get to keep for an entire lifetime. Never for a moment did I regret coming or staying here. It’s just that during this time of the year – I am always reminded that while it is great that I keep the values and beliefs I hold dear wherever I go, it also matters where you are and what the outside environment is like. In short, while it is true that Christmas is in the heart, sometimes you also want to see it in the air. But – maybe I am just nostalgic for lost times.

As for more mundane stuff, I am counting the days to a real break. The last one I had was almost seven months ago. So I will go to London with no laptop and no books, ok, except maybe one or two for the six-hour flight, and a heart full of anticipation at finally seeing the Tower of London in person, among others. Maybe Thomas More might have something to say about my current predicament.

Supposedly, things will get better next year. For now, I have an article to finish. Until then, I will reserve my more poignant end-of-year reflections just before I leave.

Switching

Do you thrive on the adrenaline rush of restaurant line cooking? Are you looking for an opportunity to step up and be part of a creative, dynamic and engaging environment where you can push yourself on a daily basis?

It must be something scanning through ads for a line cook position while a graduate student at the most prestigious, not to mention, famous university in the world, but I must have lost a screw or two today for doing just that earlier. I also got reminded that I am on a student visa so walking out of law school is not exactly an option so that’s probably on hold for now.

I have nothing against where I am – in fact, I know I want to become an academic in the future. This is the best place indeed to jumpstart such career aspirations. But I am not seeing the end of any tunnels here, and it’s driving me crazy. Crazy enough to contemplate an alternative career. Just clear the desk and walk out of that building. To nowhere. I am in nowhere now. What difference does it make?

In the words of LBJ, what should I do?

Unsettling

Over a cup of burnt caramel ice cream the other day, I was presented a proposition that continue to bedevil me. This is not new to be sure, but it puts the question so starkly. If we like what we do not know, then can we consider such “like” real? To put it concretely, or mundanely even, if I like Brad Pitt but haven’t known him, then I really only like my own image of him. Is that real at all?

Left behind

Life is surprisingly quite banal. The most cherished or heartbreaking moments alike partake of this odd quality. So in the end, what matters is the kind of feeling you put into it.

Today, I experienced something of this sort, a particular feeling of being left behind. The funny thing is that I was in a good mood today, my protective bubble all strong and sturdy. I was dishing out advice left and right, helping a friend get a job, advising a student on a law school application essay, and what-have-you. A day in the life.

But apparently, my large arsenal of motivational cliches (including a huge amount of religious stuff), isn’t enough to sustain the crazy thoughts of an angsty graduate student. I can almost taste the pity that somebody must have felt towards me as she inquired about my usual routine by the coffee machine this morning. Something about saying “I work mostly in my office all day” made it sound all the more pathetic. The funny thing is that, I couldn’t imagine myself anywhere else at this point. Either I am just plain unimaginative or I am just flat out a masochist. Oh, and I forgot that one of the choices is that I must just really like what I do.

Just like that ubiquitous farmer in one of the favorite stories of my former boss, good luck, bad luck, who knows?

Back to the future

 

  I spent three days in DC this week - two of them almost entirely inside the Library of Congress, and one of them just going out and about downtown DC, visiting the National Archives (and finding myself moved upon reflecting on the original Bill of Rights), and also trying to get a leg-up on this symposium essay I have to deliver on the Fifth of November.

I can also say that I am now back to the future, or present. Two days of going through somebody’s stack of 19th century-era papers sometimes leave you also feeling immersed in that era. I did not leave feeling like I want to be a super historian but it made me appreciate more the study of the past, and how the present resembles it in eerie ways sometimes and perhaps this is why we cannot forget history at all times.

Highlights of the trip were:

1. the reading room of the Library of Congress

2. The National Archives and seeing the original “charters of freedom”

3. Eating at Jaleo (one of the signature restaurants of Jose Andres – who, incidentally now teaches The Science of Cooking class here at Harvard)

One of the benefits of being in a different environment is getting new ideas. I did get a new idea for my symposium article, yes the one that I hope to finish in four days so I can show a bunch of people a draft and get what they think on it.

Speaking of getting people’s opinions, I have had quite a busy day yesterday collecting historian opinions on my project. I had a very encouraging talk with a faculty member from the History Department (who is not even on my committee) who told me to “forget trying to cover all bases. Some bases are more important than others.” Finally, a historian who is not obnoxious about disciplinary boundaries. Another golden piece of advice he gave which I think I am doomed not to follow is “never follow your own judgment” on these things. I still think my dissertation is self-evident, and whether or not, its due to my self saturation in the literature is a separate story.

And then, several minutes later, I somehow crossed paths with my supervisor while walking on campus, who at this point of my graduate student career, is already nice enough to acknowledge my existence with a friendly nod. And that’s saying a lot about famous law professors.

Paths people take

As one philosopher said, to be mature is to discard alternatives as you walk along your path. You start out with the world as your oyster and you end up just being one out of many. But it's not as bad as it sounds. I grew up lacking real life models so I turned to a lot of imaginary ones. Saints, literary heroes, dead presidents, and fictional spies all occupied my countless daydreams. Unlike many others, I wasn't born with any plan. I was heir to no fortune and no pedigree. I could be anything I wanted to be. Or at the very least, I could dream.

I muse on this now because after having watched The Social Network this afternoon, it brought back the same kinds of feelings after having watched Batman Begins and the Dark Knight. These movies were all about choosing the paths. Most of the time we choose them, but sometimes, it chooses us. There were many points along the way where I could have chosen one over the other, and like any normal human being, I tried, with much tenacity I must add, to preserve as many options as I could. After all, that's the beauty and magic of youth.

In the end, I chose. I started choosing when I was twenty. Like somebody going through a wardrobe overhaul, I kept sifting through and throwing the old clothes out. New options presented themselves, but were shortly discarded later, until everything slowly shaped up to be what it is right now. I still have choices, sure, but they are not as radically different from each other as they were several years ago.

Perhaps it is not an accident that I am here at Harvard now, on the path to one thing, though it never occurred to me at all to be here doing what I am doing, least of all, complaining (at times) that I've been here long enough or even contemplating the possibilities beyond it. But that comes only with the benefit of hindsight. I did not know then and I could never have planned then. But maybe this is the lesson we need to grasp. The power lies in the choices we make, and in the process, discard some in favor of one or few.

In the end, I am not sure which is harder: making a choice, or living with it.

Day 63

Sixty-third day on chapter writing. Seventy-eight pages (of crap) to show for it. My flexible deadlines have passed, and now the real one is looming big and fast. I should be able to have a complete rough draft by the end of the week. There is lots of room for hope.

Day 63 was more social than most. Morning was spent cheering a friend over Skype, afternoon saw me have a goodbye chat over lemonade with my newfound historian friend Paul at Darwin’s, went to the usual weights class right after at five and then after a quick breather at home, a late dinner with a new friend at a neighborhood restaurant.

I got asked a weird question sometime in between these events if it was a lonely summer. And I didn’t know what to answer. That’s a good sign, I suppose. If I am not too ready with a yes, then that is indeed the best I could hope for.

ICJ rules Kosovo independence legal

Still reading the opinion but this will obviously have huge implications for all separatist movements as the New York Times note here.

Potsdam

Sixty-five years ago today, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin met in Potsdam, occupied Germany to decide and design the fate of the post-WWII world. More known as the conference on how to administer a defeated Nazi Germany, the last day of the conference also resulted to the issuance of the Potsdam Declaration which demanded the unconditional surrender of the Japanese Empire. The last line of the declaration was simply chilling. “The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction.”

Two atomic bombs would later devastate the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, prompting even Albert Einstein to regret having taken part in its creation.

waking up as planned

One of the effective ways to wake up early (I discovered very recently) is to use an mp3 alarm clock, as opposed to the traditional one the constant buzzing of which has gradually become ambient noise for my dreams. An mp3 alarm is annoying and will surely get you out of bed, if only to turn the darn music off, most especially if you deliberately chose Justin Bieber (ugh) to be the wakeup call.

The obvious catch is you don’t exactly relish being woken up this way. So what to do? I have no solutions as of yet.

Next step to waking up as planned, writing chunks of my dissertation as planned.

Small things

So maybe being a graduate student isn’t that bad.Suspended somewhere between undergrad/first degree and a real job, people can alternately treat you like somebody whose life is pretty much on track to “grander” things whatever that may mean, or somebody whose life has careened to a halt and sought the safety bubble of a university.

Despite the fluctuating anxiety brought about by this ambivalence, every once in awhile I am reminded of the things I like about being a student. (My list has about twenty but it definitely shrinks as time goes by)  Like going to nice libraries for instance. Really nice ones. For some reason, they amaze me. It makes me feel thankfully small. There is a universe to discover. It makes me feel that I am at the center of the world. Okay, that might sound like a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the picture.

I went to Houghton library today, the rare books and manuscript library here at Harvard. I actually thought nothing at Harvard could amaze me anymore, after all, this is going to be my fourth year of residency here. But thank God, Harvard is not yet done with its treasures. A glass-paneled bookcase surrounds the reading room while portraits of famous (I assume) persons adorns the upper walls. The Edison and Newman Room, located across the reading room, with elegant blue wallpapering and chandeliers, is often a venue of public events. Security is a bit tight – you have to leave your belongings in a locker, for which you have to drop in a quarter to lock, and register at the reference desk with two different photo IDs. But that is only befitting the contents within its walls, e.g. the papers of T.S. Eliot, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Theodore Roosevelt, to name a few.

Anyhow I will definitely come back since they have some useful stuff for my project. For now, I take all the sources of inspiration that I can get.

Five weddings and the funeral of pain

Five wedding invites for the year, and counting.

I received the fifth one a few days ago. Unfortunately, for practical and personal reasons, I won’t be able to cross the ocean for it come November and so I sent my thanks and regards anyway. It got me wondering however, if my life had suddenly taken a turn that I wasn’t aware of. And if this course is something I am still in control of. I am not in the habit of making Plan Bs. In that sense, I am a fate-alist. But I’ve always thought fate is what you make of it. As days go by, I wonder if I made the right decision two years ago to stay here for more studying.

The funny thing is that, as I keep wondering about these things, the accompanying feeling of possible regret, likewise recedes into memory. It is not that I am being presentist, but maybe only realistic. Up until maybe a year ago, I was dead certain I haven’t had any regrets in life, but perhaps I shouldn’t really bet a house on that anymore. People are getting a life. I, on the other hand, ponder my days with what Hirohito could have felt while declaring himself human. Or why on earth stupid people invade others for an abstract principle.

It seems however I am drawn to such musings. So maybe this is why the well of emotions inevitably run dry. The miracle of life is that it is finite and therefore the challenge is to make it as meaningful as we can. Only a few can have a grand life in its entirety, but everybody can get those in terms of moments. And that is good. Moments can define a life. The problem is we don’t know what those moments are beforehand. This should be a source of comfort or God forbid, hope even, for mortals like me. The philosopher Gabriel Marcel said it best: to hope is to recognize the limitations in situations, while believing that opportunities also exist. Hope and despair arise out of the same condition. The funny thing is that while it ostensibly gives you a choice – there seems to be unseen forces that drives you to one instead of the other. 

My best friend tells me that I, more than any other person she knows, have been trained the longest for delayed self-gratification. I can get through whatever. She probably meant that my happiest moments came at a time when I least expected them to happen. Kind of like Cleveland landing LeBron back in 2003. But truth be told, I feel like the Cleveland of 2010. For now at least, I ain’t a witness anymore.

Legality

I finally bought my first “legal” software in perhaps, my entire life (so far at least) yesterday. It was “The Ultimate Steal” or so the student promo package for the new Office 2010 Professional says.

Surprisingly, it made me feel good. Does this mean I have finally sold out? Well, my old friends who subscribe to the Open Source movement would probably say I sold out the moment I got my industry certification to be a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (whatever that was), back when it was still rare and prized in the industry. That was twelve years ago. Like my old hero Bill Gates though, I have long since moved on from that kind of life. Nevertheless, Tux the Penguin, a gift from a friend during that era, still sits proudly in my bedroom at home.

Anyway, it is a testament to my new course in life that my recent purchase inspired questions that I wouldn’t have thought about if I wasn’t in this business of writing and exchanging legal ideas. My question is – what is it about legality that induces a certain feeling of satisfaction? A feeling that I am following norms that deep down I probably agree with? To be clear, I was not a hippie with anarchist-leanings during those days, I just believed there was no comparison between Linux and Microsoft. Microsoft was selling convenience in the same way that Apple currently is, even if it can be deemed a given that Open Source products are probably superior in quality. Besides, while compiling one’s own Linux kernel is fun for a seventeen-year old with time on her hands, most people are simply not interested in that.

The point is categorizing something as legal or illegal have broader implications and can certainly influence choices. (I don’t mean to talk about, let’s say, criminalizing rape or cannibalism but things that can be arguably ambivalent about its moral value like maybe, ingesting marijuana). I am not familiar with the literature on sociology of law but I suppose lawmakers take these things into consideration when they want to influence the choices people make, a la Cass Sunstein’s choice architecture. Of course, it also implicates a lot of other things like psychology, economics and things related. Now that I think about it, it probably was a good tactic for IP advocates to pursue the piracy/theft analogy but then again, that hasn’t really stopped a lot of people from buying “illegal” software.

Time lapse living

I am fortunate enough to write my dissertation in an office with a view. The best part is that I never liked to write in rooms which induce claustrophobia. The worst part is observing the outside world, well, as an outsider. It is almost as if I am watching the day unfold a la time-lapse photography style. A day in the life of HLS. I see familiar faces come in at around nine in the morning, and I see the same faces leave at around half past five in the afternoon. Only the sun’s position changes. Everything else stays the same.

Well, I suppose not everything. Four days from California, and a week away from Rome, I have made some progress on my research. Not in terms of pages but in clarity of thought. I should therefore appreciate any gains I make, however little. Maybe it will come faster as the days go by. Surprisingly, I enjoy working in this kind of quiet. These days, I leave my office with the sun still out. And with huge sports events currently ongoing, I have been going out with some friends in the evening to relax while watching them. Tomorrow, I am going out with a friend to watch the much-anticipated US v. England World Cup match, and to have a beer in the middle of the day. But not after finishing a chapter of yet another intellectual history book I am reading, and cataloging a list of archives I might have to consult during the summer.

Still, it is hard not to miss Rome. But maybe after I finish this chapter I will feel deserving enough to go on another vacation, provided there is not much financial burdens involved. As a friend reminded me a few weeks ago, I, of all people, have been trained long enough for delayed self-gratification. This shouldn’t be too hard. But it’s always easier said than done.

The Colosseum

The Colosseum
Originally uploaded by riceysu

We have a housing angel, so it seems. The Colosseum and other magnificent parts of ancient Rome was within walking distance from our hotel. My first full day in Rome couldn't get any better. How does one top a view like this? I had to remind myself this actually existed several thousand years ago and they are still here. My Italian friends, Freddy and Andrea, reminded me over a dinner of pasta Grecia and red wine, that this is not Disneyland, and that the ancient Romans walked the same streets that I did. If the cobblestone steps could speak, indeed, what fascinating stories they could tell.

The lines going inside the triumvirate of the Colosseum, the Roman Forum and Palatine hill, was manageable but our Roma pass made it very easy to enter and to have more time scouring the area inside rather than staying in line to buy an admission ticket. Due to our eagerness to cover as much of historic Rome that we can, my feet were crying out in pain by early afternoon. It did not help that I wore boots in walking around Amsterdam the day earlier. But that's another story.

A room with a view

DSC_0382
Originally uploaded by riceysu

Our b&b in Florence, reserved with much haste, turned out to be a godsend in terms of location. Here is a view from our terrace. We were met by Alessandro, a warm and friendly Italian, at around 9pm two days ago. We came by train from Assisi, where we had our fill of winding steps, hilly walks, and churches....lots of them - the two most important of course being that of St. Francis and St. Clare. To satisfy our morbid curiosity, we went to the tombs of both saints.

Florence so far is more than what I expected. Artwork galore and lots of pleasant sights to behold. Awestruck would be a pretty accurate word. Tomorrow we are off to San Gimignano, a 13th century Manhattan according to the guidebooks. And I will have to figure out a better way of posting my updates.

Basilica de Santa Maria Fiore a.k.a. The Duomo

Basilica de Santa Maria Fiore a.k.a. The Duomo
Originally uploaded by riceysu

A view of the Duomo, a few steps away from our b&b.

Flying off to Rome

(image copyright: www.voneurope.com)

I fly to the second city off my bucket list, the Eternal City, Rome, later this afternoon. As always, I manage to come up with a distraction. An eight-hour layover at Amsterdam to have lunch with my Israeli friend, Itamar. He promised to tour me around and have a beer (!) with me before bringing me back to the airport by three in the afternoon. For the next twelve days, I shall blog on my European adventures, hence the title change.

It is not without sadness that I leave Cambridge for a bit. But this vacation will be over before I realize it. At the moment, I have this Oscar Wilde poem, 'Rome Unvisited' to depict my anxiety and anticipation of setting foot in this historic place.

The corn has turned from grey to red,
Since first my spirit wandered forth
From the drear cities of the north,
And to Italia's mountains fled.

And here I set my face towards home,
For all my pilgrimage is done,
Although, methinks, yon blood-red sun
Marshals the way to Holy Rome.

O Blessed Lady, who dost hold
Upon the seven hills thy reign!
O Mother without blot or stain,
Crowned with bright crowns of triple gold!

O Roma, Roma, at thy feet
I lay this barren gift of song!
For, ah! the way is steep and long
That leads unto thy sacred street.

Irony

While we aim for the moon, we keep gazing at the stars.

The Moments Between

Moments in between are the moments we live for. It is not always obvious. But its very subtleness make it all the more precious.

Inches away from that hot cup of the coffee in the morning, just before the warm aromatic liquid glides down your throat. The interval is sublime, the moment the tip of the cup touches your lips priceless. It welcomes the day, creates expectations and tells you things can be okay, if you want them to. When things don’t go our way, we seek sanctuary in these moments too. We preserve them for as long as we can.

An expatriate seconds away from landing on his native soil, carries a heart heavy with a feeling that alternates between dread and promise. He wonders if he will find a warm welcome and if he can fathom the many changes that have taken place since he left. He stares out the small window, looking at the miniature houses that dot the landscape, and fiddles nervously with a pen. 

Moments in between are always full of hope.

My life right now is one such moment. After childhood but before marriage and family, after one degree but before another, before a dissertation – all potentialities. I wait with bated breath. But I continue playing anyways. Every inch of my being shivers with anticipation. Maybe, just maybe, that one page would turn out to be decent. Maybe, just maybe, today would be great. Maybe, just maybe, he would turn out to be the one.

When the moment happens, we are not always prepared for the answer we get. Sometimes it will crush us, more times than we can imagine. But if it does not break one’s heart, then it is not worth waiting for in the first place.

Things happen

It’s funny how things turn out. One meets a priest, gets absolution and encouragement, yet meets another, and is dismayed. One sees a car disappear forever within half an hour. One endures questioning about life and family from inquisitive strangers in a dinner fit for a TV movie. One replays the most innocent and cheerful memories of past years for several days. One gets a lecture about the blessedness of poverty. One witnesses the circus-like atmosphere of an elections gone crazy. One’s scholarship is finally used in real life, but in true comic fashion, one couldn’t even remember what one wrote.

Tomorrow is another dinner that promises to top the earlier one. The more elders, the more exciting, apparently. Things happen. One cannot do anything about it.

Once in awhile…

I saw two previous classmates who were also my good friends yesterday in a conference here at the law school. They were now the speakers, of course. I, on the other hand, remained as part of the audience. Not that I want to be speaker, after all it wasn’t a matter within my area of research. But I mention this anyway to illustrate my point that once in awhile I think this whole notion of delayed gratification as a graduate student gets old. They looked so accomplished (it helped that they were tall and wore suits) and grown-up. I, on the other hand, with my backpack (I came from the library), jeans and all, just looked stuck.

It’s either I bury myself into work with the idea that the sooner I finish the sooner I get to join the “accomplished” (what does this mean anyway?) club. Or I take my sweet time and embrace this state of mine wholeheartedly. I’m not even sure if I can get a job at the end of it, but that’s the least of my worries at this point. Anyway, that is just something I thought about yesterday. At least some things rarely change – the three of us were all eating free dinner, just like old times.

On dissertation doldrums

A little over two weeks and I am going for a brief break in Manila. I still have not written anything – I am at the very least reading materials connected to my incipient first chapter but one cannot write a dissertation other than by writing. If it’s any indication of my mental state, I just had a dream involving two of my supervisors, and how they finally saw me as a fluke.

Four months into a supposedly “stress-free” semester with no teaching obligations, 0 words written. That must set some kind of record.

A friend of mine doing a similar degree program over at the “other” school advised that I should set (and by implication – follow it) a schedule of some sort. She personally writes from 530am-7pm with various breaks in between, and only during weekdays. She now has 250 pages written and is expecting to graduate by June of next year. And I started earlier than her. I’m such a doltz.

Anyhow, no sense crying over spilt milk. I decided to take her advice (well, as of last Friday), and have not been doing much this weekend related to the dissertation. But I finished all my readings for the History graduate seminar I attend for the first time. Bottomline is that the dissertation will not write itself. I should do that at some point.

An Easter Reflection

The tomb was open, even before morning broke.

To be certain, it was not to let Jesus out. A resurrected body can supposedly walk through closed doors. So why move the stone? The answer of course is to let people in. Halfway across the globe, a Jesuit friend entitled the Lenten retreat he’s giving this year  “God in the Dungeons.” It could not be more apt today on different levels. The Church is an institution besieged with public outrage for justice and accountability in the wake of newly discovered child abuse cases involving priests. The Pope is being told to resign. The world is still chaotic. Wars and disasters threaten us all, some more than others. In my own insignificant personal bubble, I have broken all the “things” I said I would give up for Lent. A friend left the church in exasperation over the current incarnation of the scandals plaguing the church and I couldn’t even articulate any adequate attempt to persuade her otherwise. Worse, I have indulged the self-regarding part of myself in more ways than one. By any logical measure, my Lenten season was a disaster.

Nevertheless, there is a reason why Easter is the most important holiday in Christendom. It recounts the story of salvation, from the story of creation all the way to the death and resurrection of Christ, and not only tells a story of hope. It promises hope. That is what is inside the tomb. God got us this far already, do we really think he will let us go at this point? The rational part of my brain of course tells me this is complete hogwash. But whatever part about religion is completely rational anyway?

On the lighter side of things, I spent Easter weekend going around Cape Cod with some friends. I attended the Easter vigil mass, weirdly enough there was no sermon during the service, and we had a lobster and clambake feast afterwards. It was mostly a weekend of eating and taking pictures – and in this regard, the Brazilian grill in Hyannis deserves special mention.

I also managed to spend some time to reflect on the few things that have been bugging me as of late, including some unexpected things that happened over the weekend. I decided in the end, as with everything else, to take the plunge again. So hopefully with that break behind me, I will be more productive with regard to my dissertation starting tomorrow.

Most importantly, the sun is back. Spring has arrived.

On law and faith

Since it is Passover/Holy Week starting tomorrow, I thought I might digress from traditional legal topics for a bit and offer an unconventional reflection for this week. Another motivation for writing this reflection is today’s brief complaint  about displays of religiosity in the baseball field.

Law and Faith (I limit my reflection to the three Abrahamic faiths as they are the ones I know best) have two things in common: authority and interpretation. 1) They are constituted by authority, and 2) they rely on human agency to interpret those authorities.

If you’re a lawyer, the authorities are not limited only to the national constitution or statutes or even administrative rules. Even customs and mores of the place are taken into consideration, operating as foreground or background levers depending on what the circumstances warrant. (There is substantial legal literature for example on the formal/informal ordering of various normative systems, mainly attributable to structuralist legal theorists like Duncan Kennedy.) Law has a formal and informal interpretive community too. The formal one would be those clothed with state authority to interpret these rules. You have the Supreme Court at the top of course (in the US, at least, as per Marbury), and then you have all the lower courts down to the community ones. But even politicians interpret the law though political scientists like Keith Whittington does not characterize it as interpretation but rather as construction. Nevertheless, they still form part of the formal interpretive community as official state agents. At the same time, citizens interpret the law too in their everyday dealings with the state and with one another. They either interpret it with a purpose to applying it squarely on their transactions or interpret it with the purpose of “bargaining in its shadow.” Everybody who is within the coverage of a law’s normative universe, in the words of Robert Cover, interprets and performs it.

But faith too has all those things. We have the Bible, the Quran, and the Torah and the secondary sources that comment and interpret these authorities. You have the papal encyclicals, the official doctrine of the Catholic church, the teachings of the Prophet, and many rabbinical commentaries. While the Catholic church has a hierarchical structure in terms of official doctrine, there is big leeway in terms of autonomy given to local clergy in interpreting that doctrine. Hence, you see different kinds of Catholicism-in-action depending on the place and region. For the rest of Christendom, the individual is a member of the priesthood of believers, and that means they seek the meaning of the words they find in the Bible in their own way. In both Islam and Judaism, imams and rabbis offer guidance and their own interpretations of religious rules, and there is obviously no central authority. In all these religions, believers interpret and perform these rules accordingly. More often than not, we pick and choose the ones we like, and pat ourselves for being liberal about the whole “religion thing.”

But that’s about where the similarities stop. Faith is underlined by sublime outrageousness while law embodies rationality. That is not to say faith does not have reason. It does, but that is not the core, and at some point, human interpreters will just have to concede to the “mystery” of it. Imagine the Passover story. Who in his right mind will listen and go with a guy named Moses to a never-heard of promised land? And who picks a guy like Moses to be leader anyway? The guy is a stutterer and even seems noncommittal at times. Faith promises things that are too good to be true, and in the process, lays down sometimes nonsensical rules. We interpret them and perform them nonetheless, in compliance with or in defiance of formal interpreters - even picking and choosing along the way.

Why this difference then and what is the significance for us today? It is trite to just simply leave it as one is man-made law and the other made by God.  Law embodies rationality because it orders things. It can only make demands to its subjects for this purpose. Faith does not simply intend to order but to give meaning. Nevertheless, we need both because we are simultaneously embodied and spiritual beings. What faith does, I think, is that it inserts a profundity to the banality of law of our human society. We are made to search for reasons as well as meaning. There is something akin to interlegality going on here. We both try to order our existence on these two levels at the same time, in both our private and public lives. At best they overlap, at worst, they conflict. Or sometimes we interpret it in a way that they conflict so much so that we assert that we should just privilege one and ditch the other. We, both believers and non-believers alike, forget to struggle and understand. And there lies the problem.

(for my next post I will follow up about the law and the current troubles brewing in the Vatican)

Back to the basics

Today is the same old story. 0 words written.

But I did figure out something which might help me get started. I am going to do it from the bottom up and hopefully something emerges from there.

So tomorrow I will re-enforce my 300 words a day rule. I hope I will be successful.

Tocqueville walks into a bar…

Literally. Who brings Democracy in America into a sports bar?!? (I did and I tried my best to hide it). It was a good thing I never got to pick it up amidst wings, ribs and nachos. That would have been terrible.

Anyway, I am somehow stuck in my writing process. My supervisors will probably think I am just goofing off. =(

Going Offline

Five days, four nights without technology felt a bit strange, I must admit. As with all trips I’ve taken, the best part was going home. But before I skip to that part, the Grand Canyon indeed was a sight to behold. It made me feel so small, both in a good way and bad. There are a lot of things to be said about being small (and I should know this best) but the good part about it is that being small, figuratively speaking, makes you feel that there are larger forces at work and that thank God, there are things beyond your control. Natural miracles like the Grand Canyon, or in my own view, the sublime elegance of the Sea of Galilee/Lake Kinneret, are impossible to behold without an appreciation of the unseen hands of nature, of God or something much larger than ourselves.

Here is a picture of the Canyon. They say you can have 10,000 views of it. I thought I’d stick with just a few.

And then we had free breakfast at the lodge.

 

On the other hand, things are in fact out of your own control. And there lies the problem. Recent events have forced me to reflect on this truism more than the usual, thanks to the lack of technological distractions around me. It seemed more akin to being tossed around helplessly by huge waves in the midst of a gale. So if you’re not the type to embrace that kind of challenge, well, suffice it to say, it will be a bit of a bummer. So I had a few of those “thinking” shots.

On the lighter side of things, countless hours on the bus and plane combined, made me come up with some ideas about my project. No eureka moment of any sort, but just enough to keep me going. I just finished John Fabian Witt’s fascinating book Cosmopolitans and Patriots: The Hidden Histories of American Law, which led me to read the current one, Thomas Bender’s A Nation Among Nations: America’s Place in World History. I am still trying to learn the art of skillfully skimming, instead of reading the entire darn thing. The next few days will be quite packed, to say the least, mostly because of stuff that’s not related to my project. Spring break is halfway done, and I am just starting. Things are beyond my control, indeed.

Peace, one rap, err draft, at a time

One of my unpublicized pleasures in life is listening to rap music. Aside from Eminem and Jay-Z, I have no particular favorite. If it sounds cool, then I listen to it. Today, I just finished amending the constitution as part of a peace package. Or at least I proposed amendments to it, while going through Eminem’s entire Relapse album. Let us see if there’s any foreseeable effect to this.

In an unrelated but totally expected development, I am still quite apprehensive at writing the dissertation or any part of it. Clock is ticking though.

How hard is it to write?

Quite hard in fact, as I am slowly finding out. Well, I resolve to say something regularly here in this blog about my general musings on law, history, politics and food in order to stimulate the writing part of my brain. Hopefully, this will translate to a thousand words or so every day for the dissertation. I have identified some primary sources I need to dig deeper into. Ergo, a trip to the pertinent library will probably be squeezed in somewhere somehow this coming March. Maybe sometime after my Grand Canyon trip.

If you build it, they will come. Or so says the movie Field of Dreams. Well, this isn’t a movie. Far from it. But one can always dream. My first chapter is going to be about Imposed Constitutions and the Paradox of Religious Liberty. There will be four (or maybe actually just three) constitutions I will look at – Philippines, Japan, Iraq and Afghanistan – each of them correspond to a certain period of American thought and see how those interwoven ideas about religion, law, politics and economics contributed to the emergence of the religious liberty ideal entrenched in these constitutions.

Book(s) I am reading now: This time for a History graduate seminar: Revolutionary Backlash, Women and Politics in Colonial America; the (eternal) Federalist No. 10 and (the magisterial) Gordon Wood, Creation of the American Republic

(Sometimes I wonder why I even wonder how come I never get anything related to the dissertation done).

Morning at the Window (T.S. Eliot)

They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens, 
And along the trampled edges of the street 
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids 
Sprouting despondently at area gates. 
The brown waves of fog toss up to me 
Twisted faces from the bottom of the street, 
And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts 
An aimless smile that hovers in the air 
And vanishes along the level of the roofs.

***

The predominant themes in this poem are isolation and sadness about a society that once was, the loss of meaningful connections. You can say that about many things really, and I suppose that’s also applicable to my state of being at this point. There is a personal and social dimension, indeed but the personal side is put under the glare in a more heightened sense. There was never a time in my young adulthood when I was sure of where I was going. It was a back-and-forth between what I thought I wanted and what I could get at that specific moment. Most of the time, I just drifted, damned mighty lucky, some might say, if one were to look it from the future looking backward. But what is that life anyway and was I right to leave that behind? Have I not become Don Quixote, being reminded now almost every second by my internal Pancho that “if you build your life on dreams, you who have the moonlight in your hands, has nothing there at all”?

Snap back to reality. I am pondering a measly dissertation that could or could not finally usher me in into a new kind of life. It is essentially a piece of paper that supposedly mines mankind’s treasure trove of knowledge with the object of leaving it enriched than when I found it. I don’t really know about that part, the enrichment or enhancement part. But this is the life I chose for now. And so with all the kettlecorn popcorn, instant coffee mixes, savory stir-fries and pasta that can keep my brain running until the day I majestically hand it in for school approval, I will try my darnedest to roam this campus and leave a mark on it (or maybe inside the library) to make it as different as I can than when I first arrived in it. Maybe that’s not such a bad goal for now. Sooner or later, I will finish - “and half a prayer, half a song – thou has always been with me, though we have been always apart.” And then everything is illuminated.

Book I’m reading: Halfway through Walter LaFeber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860-1898 (1998 reprint)

Weekend musings

What would life be without deadlines? For the moment, I have several of them. Nothing earth-shattering really: two fellowship applications, i.e. I have to come up with a proposal to show my recommenders and a memo on some government consulting work that I am involved in, both of which are due this week, by Wednesday to be exact. On top of that, Spring term starts this Monday which means my Arabic classes start again, and I am likewise attending a graduate seminar on 20th century American thought. Good thing I no longer have any teaching responsibilities this term. The thing is, I have to  stop reading and start writing very soon too.

Book of the moment: Billias, American Constitutionalism Heard Round the World (2009)

Walking Along by Pablo Neruda

It happens that I am tired of being a man.
It happens that I go into the tailor's shops and the movies
all shrivelled up, impenetrable, like a felt swan
navigating on a water of origin and ash.

The smell of barber shops makes me sob out loud.
I want nothing but the repose either of stone or of wool.
I want to see no more establishments, no more gardens,
nor merchandise, nor glasses, nor elevators.

It happens that I am tired of my feet and my nails
and my hair and my shadow.
It happens that I am tired of being a man.

Just the same it would be delicious
to scare a notary with a cut lily
or knock a nun stone dead with one blow of an ear.

It would be beautiful
to go through the streets with a green knife
shouting until I died of cold.

I do not want to go on being a root in the dark,
hesitating, stretched out, shivering with dreams,
downwards, in the wet tripe of the earth,
soaking it up and thinking, eating every day.

I do not want to be the inheritor of so many misfortunes.
I do not want to continue as a root and as a tomb,
as a solitary tunnel, as a cellar full of corpses,
stiff with cold, dying with pain.

For this reason Monday burns like oil
at the sight of me arriving with my jail-face,
and it howls in passing like a wounded wheel,
and its footsteps towards nightfall are filled with hot blood.

And it shoves me along to certain corners, to certain damp houses,
to hospitals where the bones come out of the windows,
to certain cobbler's shops smelling of vinegar,
to streets horrendous as crevices.

There are birds the colour of sulphur, and horrible intestines
hanging from the doors of the houses which I hate,
there are forgotten sets of teeth in a coffee-pot,
there are mirrors
which should have wept with shame and horror,
there are umbrellas all over the place, and poisons, and navels.

I stride along with calm, with eyes, with shoes,
with fury, with forgetfuless,
I pass, I cross offices and stores full of orthopaedic appliances,
and courtyards hung with clothes on wires,
underpants, towels and shirts which weep
slow dirty tears.

Pondering on a snowy day

It was one of those rare days that I allowed myself a few more hours of sleep without feeling guilty. My computer rang at around half past nine in the morning – it was my best friend Skyping from Manila. We ended up chatting for more than an hour or so. There were no big news. Just catching up on the latest philosophical musings of ours. Robert Frost was the big topic of the conversation, or rather, his famous poem was. In order to remind myself, that the universe is unfolding as it should, I am reproducing it here for the nth time. I sure hope, she’s right. Maybe it is indeed time for a new day.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveller, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference

Daily Dose of Poetry

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

(Excerpt from Dover Beach, Matthew Arnold, 1867)

Panic attack.

Maybe I should quit while I still haven’t lost much, time that is. I have no project. That’s it.

Between a cough and a cold

Instant noodles for brunch – 20 cents

Tall caramel macchiato – 3 dollars and 17 cents

First human contact at 4pm – priceless. 

***

The past few days I’ve been plagued with a bad cold and recurring coughs. In between book requests to the good folks at the HLS library and recurrent coughing, I miraculously managed to finish two books and an article about the American Jesuit John Courtney Murray. As a side note, Murray used to teach at my university around fifty years ago before he became an ordained Jesuit priest. Anyway, I still have quite a few deadlines coming up for fellowship applications in particular and I am quite at a loss how to make sense of the overwhelming task before me. Slowly but surely, I am settling down on the topic of one particular chapter, my second case study about American influence on the formation of international norms about church and state. For the time being, I am focusing on Vatican II’s Declaration on Religious Liberty or Dignitatis Humanae, i.e. it means John Courtney Murray or JCM from hereon will be my best friend for the long haul ahead. And I do mean long.

And I am also mulling over writing a post or submit an op-ed to the university newspaper about the vicissitudes of grad student life. I think the GSAS PhDs have it a bit better because they have all the institutional support that they can get. We, doctoral students in the professional schools on the other hand, being not under GSAS supervision, have only our schools to resort to. But HLS in particular isn’t so strong for this one. Though I suppose the grad student experience feature universal characteristics, chief of which is that it is a long and lonely marathon, I could use a bit more support from my institution. I feel like my social skills regress the longer I stay here. Is this what an academic future looks like?

Still recharging

I can’t seem to focus reading any one article, or any single material at all. And I still don’t know where to start. How do I begin?

Moving on?

It was good to finally have a real break for once. No books, no computers, nothing related to my Harvard life. For a little more than two weeks, it was as if I was in some alternate universe. Time stood still – I reconnected with old friends, and we went to our favorite places, did our favorite things to do every weekend and ate our favorite food. We remembered the good old days - back when we were broke but carefree nonetheless, when we smoked with our Jesuit friend just before mass, drank cheap coffee and ate cheap combo lunches and when the biggest worry of our simple lives was making sure we do well during the almost-daily Socratic torture, err, recitation routine in law school.

To be certain, there were questions to remind me of my current state. People asked them whenever they saw me this time. I reflected on these questions and turned to my old mentors for answers. But for once, even Fr. Bernas did not have any words of wisdom this time around. He made only one request, and even that, I couldn’t promise him. I left the Jesuit residence without any optimism for the first time in several years. I thought that place always had answers.

I was happy to stay home much longer but I knew that if I did I would be doing so as a matter of denial. It seems that everybody is moving or have moved on. Several friends are married, and a good number of them are now in jobs that they would actually like to retire in. I am still a student and I don’t even know if I can get a job at the end of it, and I’m not even remotely close to settling down anytime soon (but not that I want to just yet).

There were two things that I keep telling myself as I boarded the plane back to the United States. First, that this law professor job I am aspiring for better be worth it, that is, if I can even get one, and second, that I need to start living more. I don’t know, maybe this grad student bubble isn’t all what it’s hyped up to be. But in any case, I am now back in Cambridge and I will start working with a hopeful heart. For some unknown reason, I know the universe is unfolding as it should.