Yawning away, I am unable to sleep, even though I had not taken any caffeinated drinks the whole day. And as I write this at 3 am Monday 28, strains from Vivaldi's Four Seasons are running through my mind. That slow movement was in turn brought about while reminiscing over my 5 or 6 years with one of the most interesting Englishmen I had ever met.
He was the one who introduced me to Vivaldi, whose musical harmonies I found rather quaint at first, having heard the more robust orchestral pieces by Beethoven, Mozart and Schubert years earlier. But I soon got used to the lighter tones of chamber music.
Maurice Hardstaff turned up in my life sometime in 1968. After an abortive 1st stab at work in KL after college, I returned to Ipoh and found work with a small architectural practice Apparently a major client had plans for an exciting urban renewal project and my employer recommended his London-based professor as consultant.
He was a tall, large man with a light complexion, straw colored hair and blue-grey eyes set closer than is the norm. Those deep-set eyes, with a long narrow nose and large jaw clamped on a pipe, could have been a formidable sight to many locals, even if you ignored his large waistline! But he was cloaked in an almost palpable aura of kindness and gentleness; and that, coupled with a typical English politeness and friendly smiling face, soon made him friends with ease.
But why the reverie, you might ask.
Alex had earlier SMSd, wondering, "For some reasons, I attract people with obsessive tendencies. Why ah?"
I neglected to reply, since I had been inspired for the last 10 days or so to hew even closer to the monk-like lifestyle I sometimes claim to have adopted. But I had already jotted down the following:
Ah so, when you point to someone, please find 3 fingers pointing back at yourself. ~ Ancient Chinese saying.
And when she made the expected phone call, I muttered my excuses and read it out to her.
She asked, "So, am I obsessive?"
In reply I trotted out my stock quote, "You create your own reality... etc," and suggested that her friends might have such saving grace as a sense of humor about themselves.
Her query must have been the trigger that brought memories of Hardstaff, who when I think about it, could be considered obsessive in many ways. Being the callow youth I then was, and eager to learn from a foreign architect, I must have shoved those observations aside. Besides, I'd never been, and remain, non-judgmental about people.
He kept his pencils, fountain pen and ruler at equidistant spaces apart, much like this: !!!|, you get the idea. He would ask for a regular short spray of orchids to be placed on his desk: but only in a cylindrical glass with blooms only in white. Hey wait, there's more.
Before his arrival in Ipoh, he had been sending sketches of his proposal for a church, a project that my Protestant boss had decliined to get involved with, saying that "the final sacrifice had already been made." (He was of course disagreeing with the need for the Catholic altar.) Those drawings made by his London students were the most exquisitely accurate ink drawings I had ever seen: every meeting of 2 or more lines ended 'spot-on', if you know what I mean.
I was quite astounded by their almost poetic quality, all drawn by hand.
Later on, when I was employed by Hardstaff, I rose to the demands of the extremely high standards he set. But it was a no-brainer decision, as they say nowadays. His warm, ever polite manner and ready wit made working under him bearable, and I remember that he once gave an instruction that could not be taken seriously. But since it was the next thing to be done in the course of the day's work, I couldn't possibly refuse!
But getting back to Alex's query, I did suggest that being obsessive could well be one of many ways of getting to one's goals.
"Bill Gates is known to be obsessive," I reminded her. And I recall Steve Jobs' perfectionist tendencies and the 'reality distortion field' he is (in)famous for. Then there are the innumerable inventors who toil on their pet projects for years.
I suppose that being obsessive is one way to take control of one's physical environment and assure oneself a measurable degree of mental stability, especially in these highly competitive times. It's only when this drive for 'perfection' - whatever that means - becomes a compulsive disorder that it creates difficulties for the affected person as well as for friends.
"It's all relative, Alex," I quipped, quoting my lawyer friend and primary school class mate Chew. "Remember always to separate the person from the obsession, and don't let it get to you."
As for my apparently chance encounter with that complex mystic, a major influence on me, I can only offer a quote from one of my fave metaphysical writings:
We were only "... keeping appointments long forgotten."
What do you say?
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