Recently I was directed to a Tumbler thread called "Your Fave is Problematic." I've looked through it enough to understand that this encapsulates everything I hate about the egotistic, extreme end of liberalism.
Your Fave is Problematic is contains a compilation of the "problematic" things that popular, apparently liberal and open minded celebrities have said on camera. The very idea of it is somewhat McCarthy-istic. The people we think are like us are actually guilty of something. Something that, while may not be a crime, may indicate a secret, subversive attitude.
The entire idea is completely skewered, then. That John Green, a community-focused and uplifting author and charity founder, has written a single objectionable compound noun in An Abundance of Katherines, is meaningless. That Benedict Cumberbatch used autism in an analogy to describe a character he plays tells us no useful information about him, and is certainly less indicative of his personality than when he was polite and encouraging about feminism and activism in one of his interviews. But this list makes these statements disproportionately important, listing every statement that could be interpreted as bad in an entire career.
Do me a favour, think back on your life and tell me honestly that you have never said anything that could be construed as offensive, or that was overtly offensive to any group of people, ever.
We all say dumb shit from time to time, either because we are inarticulate in our point, because we reach for the nearest, most convenient word in the common, social vernacular, because we are deep in our own thoughts and are speculating wildly, because we are angry at the time and we want to hurt a specific individual, perhaps we are trying to be edgy and off-colour for effect. Perhaps we have just been exposed to an idea and we are figuring out our own reactions to it. The bonus most of us have is that people aren't waiting around with cameras and tape recorders when we do it.
Truth is, I have to turn to Harry Potter for my guideline here. In Chamber of Secrets (I think) Harry is racked with fear that he is actually bad because the Sorting Hat seriously thought he was Slytherin material; he only avoided being labeled as a genetically evil wizard by begging the Hat not to put him in the cursed house. And that's what was more vital to Harry's personality and moral integrity, not his unthinking circumstances, that he chose not to be Slytheristic.
Like Harry, I really don't think some unthinking remarks these individuals made are the most informative pointers about the make-up of their personalities, whereas their choices, for example, Jennifer Lawrence's clearly well developed and selected views on body image, are far more important than an unguarded, offhand comment. And yet this list, is the go-to place for someone who has just taken against some of these people for one reason or another. These are people whose primary effect in this world is good, they are a force for making the world visibly better, in whatever small way. And what I'm about to say will sound utterly pathetic, but some of us out there look to people like these as little beacons of light. It's lonely out there, and hostile, everyone tells us we are wrong somehow and these kind-minded people give us a frail, blow-away piece of hope that the world really isn't all that bad, that there are good guys in the mix. I'm speaking from a position of feeble mental health, slowly knitting together better as the world goes on, while my eyes slip backwards and remind myself of how bad it was before, and how modeling my view of an undecipherable world on these people helped drag myself to my feet, stopped my stomach dying just a little bit everytime I went outside.
Picking over these people is at best a waste of time, and at worst, shitting all over the good bits of the fame world, which when you think about its heavy saturation and relevance to real life, is really quite damaging.
Thursday 26 December 2013
My entire Life
I decided a few years ago that being good at something isn’t
for me. I have about average capacity to be good at most things – I did ok at
school even though I was barely there, but not savant level good. Basically, I
could be a good artist or a good scientist or a good storyteller. I just
decided not to be.
Because what is the worth? I enjoy things, yes. I enjoy
learning about ions, electro-magnetism, I enjoy drawing and painting, I enjoy
reading and speculating about things, I love languages and I love inventing
stories (although I normally only invent stories for me to masturbate to.) I
like current events.
But my multiple likes do not create a guideline for my life.
My perfectly able brain has not formed a path I can follow. Nothing really
took, and even when it did seem like I was getting ok at something, it would
lead to further inspection and criticism from the supervising adult –
apparently pushing promising pupils is a common tactic, but I never welcomed
the extra attention. When I was just average, dumb, no tongue in my head, all
the people around me left me alone. Which was greatly preferable.
The people I encountered in fiction were a lot more accommodating.
They didn’t ask me questions that I didn’t invent myself. They were brave, they
were never mean. They didn’t make facial expressions that made me nervous.
Their choice of words and the tone they used never made me confused or behind
in the information. I could mold them
after I had finished the book or the game or the film I saw them in, fitting
them to my mood, my needs. They only said things that were interesting and
meaningful, and they never interrupted me when I was speaking. I could spend as
much time with them as I liked, and because I was mainly watching, I never had to panic over how I would seem. I didn't fit myself into any persona that they could see through.
I never obsess over music in the same way I know some people
do, not except when I am trying to fit in, but music became an important tool
in helping me formulate the rooms inside my head. It helped me create emotionally
elaborate worlds, deepening my connection there. Because I am only interested
in music that makes my worlds more sensory, I ended up having a truly diverse
music collection that I illegally downloaded. Because I had a 360 degree world
which was full of emotional pulls that I had assembled on the very basis of
what affected me and what didn’t, I would cry when listening to something. I
would become enraged, or anticipating, or I would giggle with glee. All alone
in my room, sitting at my desk in front of my itunes, I had a life abundant in
meaning and emotion. Lying motionless in bed each night, I would go through
each gesture that my imaginary friends would make in the pivotal conversations
in their life, their facial expressions. Every night everything became more
sculpted, more precise, the world so sharp it was almost physical.Trying to
figure out the best way to link them all together.
Truthfully, a lot of the time I was coming up with the best
sex scenes. Which scenario’s had the most erotic atmosphere, that would make me
pant. I am not so attractive in real life, so my imaginary friends, who are
almost certainly people I want to be, were all stunning, glamorous at all
times. I am flabby, hairy in the wrong places, I constantly get colds, I have a
big nose and bad skin. Every possible detail of female self-hate can be found
on my body somewhere. So to imagine my skin as smooth and hairless, my hair
voluminous, my teeth even and white. Better than anything.
So there I was. In my world of perfect me and malleable
associates. I still don’t know what the real benefit of leaving it is. I still
go there a lot, at night, when other people aren’t there to distract me. The real world is horrifically unmoveable and unfathomable. I still don't understand what people's criteria are for me pleasing them enough.
My fantasy world was and is a huge part of my psyche, how I know how to act, to connect with real people. I have previously been described as a nerd, because of my preoccupation with characters from different shows. But nerd is too flippant, it indicates that it is the shows or the games themselves that I am interested by. And I do learn as much as I can about these things, because I find them interesting. But the target of my obsession isn't them, but what I can do with them myself.
Monday 23 December 2013
Vulgarity
What is it when someone tells me how bad something is to look at, how brutal, how stomach churning, I have to see it, and then, try to top it?
Why is it?
I try to break through my fear to look, and I look, and the truth of it is that it is never horrible in the way I was expecting.
It doesn't offend me, it's not a matter of an intellectual capacity to withstand trauma. It doesn't break my mind.
It doesn't do anything at all, and I scoff, amused, I say something worse, I can't stand how soft it is. I want something worse, something that will make everything else fall away.
Instead it just lies there, is just one more horrible thing. I try to subsume it into my mass like that monster in Spirited Away. Make me bigger, more monstrous.
This morning I got a call from my sister. My mum is in hospital.
I'm frightened.
Why is it?
I try to break through my fear to look, and I look, and the truth of it is that it is never horrible in the way I was expecting.
It doesn't offend me, it's not a matter of an intellectual capacity to withstand trauma. It doesn't break my mind.
It doesn't do anything at all, and I scoff, amused, I say something worse, I can't stand how soft it is. I want something worse, something that will make everything else fall away.
Instead it just lies there, is just one more horrible thing. I try to subsume it into my mass like that monster in Spirited Away. Make me bigger, more monstrous.
This morning I got a call from my sister. My mum is in hospital.
I'm frightened.
Thursday 5 December 2013
Models
When I find out that someone is a model, my immediate thought is that they must in some way be disabled and unable to work normally. Actually, I think being unemployed is a more useful use of your time, as that way you can be a drain on a government that is corrupt and uncaring anyway, while also being the living embodiment of their failure. If you're a model, you're the background to all this, and what you drain is the confidence of literally hundreds of thousands of people who have never done anything to you. And you do it in the most passive, dumb way possible. There is no skill nor effort associated with it.
Friday 29 November 2013
Patriarchy
Dear Sir,
I am addressing this exclusively to men, and in fact to a special kind of man who I know exists because I've read his comments on various websites, listened to him laugh at women MPs while she takes her turn in speaking, guys who specialise in intimidating their new female colleagues, making sure she never feels that comfortable at work. Men who clearly have done fuck all research on the sexism they are dogmatically, absolutely pontificating on, but have a second hand observation that trumps all other arguments. Yes, even the people who are reporting their experiences in the first-person, where they cite extensive academic studies, surveys, official reports and basic, everyday, right-in-front-of-you facts, even these people can't stand before the almighty authority of this one guy's anecdote. Yes, your "observation" from that one time, made a comprehensive fact in the present simple tense, that is all you have to say on the matter. No listening, no researching, no understanding. Doesn't want to. Self preservation must come first.
Because if you dare admit that things aren't fair, if you stop telling us that we are whiny bitches for wanting fair treatment, if you just say "yes, we are not on a level playing field, men have an advantage over women in almost all parts of life and we need to change it," if you were to do any of that, you would condemn yourselves.
Not men in general. No, men have such an ingrained advantage over women, culturally, economically, politically, I actually think true equality may never be possible - our collective ideas are too entrenched, they are too reinforced by the rotation of our daily rituals. Mankind is absolutely fine, strong, ahead of their female partners forever (which is a real shame for men. I will go into the benefits guys get from feminism in a later post.)
You, however, you as an individual man, are utterly fucked.
You're asking why. I think you know why. Allow me to speculate about you.
You make it obvious when you try to flip it. Most of the time, when someone is getting a raw deal, people don't insist blindly that the victim is meant to suffer because "it is the way it is," or that the crime isn't even happening or that they aren't really the victim in the situation: imagine if the white people of the deep south in the 60s tried to insist that it was actually the black people oppressing them. It's not idiocy, it's calculation. These guys explain away inequality as a gut reaction, desperately trying to squash these voices that keep telling their stories.
The more women become equal, the more of us you're running against, the lower you get ranked. Not on a basis of gender, but on a basis of skill. 50 years ago, your male elders only really competed against other men - specifically, other white men. Women and people who weren't white were relegated to offstage roles, unfit and unsuited to the working world of dogged rivalry and triumph over others. When you insulted the others, you feminised them, because to be a woman was to be weak. It must have been really, very easy to win in those days - the scale of talent must have been really, very limited.
But now, we are running exactly the same race as you. And many of us are actually doing better than you, much better than you. Actually talented guys aren't worried, they are happy to have us on their teams, their skills have stood up to the extra competition and they now see past that to the actual, desirable result of having a greater range and standard of skills.
Their confidence is fine.
But you, Mr. Misandry-Online, are horrified - before the 70s, you would have profited from the limited talent pool, your barely-there ability made to look better by an optical illusion. Now, the sheer number of players drives you down from the top to off the radar. The men who were better than you were always going to do better, but may be before you could have become their right hand man, there wasn't a lot of choice after all. Now it is statistically impossible for you to claw your way out of the mediocre middle. Women, before quiet and non-existent in the world of work, have humiliated you by outstripping you with such seemingly natural ease.
So when women say to you, "you know, we've not got a fair deal" it makes you explode.
Give them a fair deal?! You mean they've been doing as well as you or even better with less to work with!? Christ, what would it be like if they fucking WERE equal!
And so you insist it doesn't happen, that it isn't such a big deal, that you too are being victimised by the system.
You want to perpetuate inequality.
Fear forces you to refuse. Humiliation compels you to insist it's the other way around.
And the entire time you make us feel bad about ourselves, you abuse us, tell us our looks are our currency, call us an aggressive bitch if we are too easily sailing past you. It must sting that we keep doing it, despite being hindered by history, that we so effortlessly render your obsolescence.
Night.
I am addressing this exclusively to men, and in fact to a special kind of man who I know exists because I've read his comments on various websites, listened to him laugh at women MPs while she takes her turn in speaking, guys who specialise in intimidating their new female colleagues, making sure she never feels that comfortable at work. Men who clearly have done fuck all research on the sexism they are dogmatically, absolutely pontificating on, but have a second hand observation that trumps all other arguments. Yes, even the people who are reporting their experiences in the first-person, where they cite extensive academic studies, surveys, official reports and basic, everyday, right-in-front-of-you facts, even these people can't stand before the almighty authority of this one guy's anecdote. Yes, your "observation" from that one time, made a comprehensive fact in the present simple tense, that is all you have to say on the matter. No listening, no researching, no understanding. Doesn't want to. Self preservation must come first.
Because if you dare admit that things aren't fair, if you stop telling us that we are whiny bitches for wanting fair treatment, if you just say "yes, we are not on a level playing field, men have an advantage over women in almost all parts of life and we need to change it," if you were to do any of that, you would condemn yourselves.
Not men in general. No, men have such an ingrained advantage over women, culturally, economically, politically, I actually think true equality may never be possible - our collective ideas are too entrenched, they are too reinforced by the rotation of our daily rituals. Mankind is absolutely fine, strong, ahead of their female partners forever (which is a real shame for men. I will go into the benefits guys get from feminism in a later post.)
You, however, you as an individual man, are utterly fucked.
You're asking why. I think you know why. Allow me to speculate about you.
You make it obvious when you try to flip it. Most of the time, when someone is getting a raw deal, people don't insist blindly that the victim is meant to suffer because "it is the way it is," or that the crime isn't even happening or that they aren't really the victim in the situation: imagine if the white people of the deep south in the 60s tried to insist that it was actually the black people oppressing them. It's not idiocy, it's calculation. These guys explain away inequality as a gut reaction, desperately trying to squash these voices that keep telling their stories.
The more women become equal, the more of us you're running against, the lower you get ranked. Not on a basis of gender, but on a basis of skill. 50 years ago, your male elders only really competed against other men - specifically, other white men. Women and people who weren't white were relegated to offstage roles, unfit and unsuited to the working world of dogged rivalry and triumph over others. When you insulted the others, you feminised them, because to be a woman was to be weak. It must have been really, very easy to win in those days - the scale of talent must have been really, very limited.
But now, we are running exactly the same race as you. And many of us are actually doing better than you, much better than you. Actually talented guys aren't worried, they are happy to have us on their teams, their skills have stood up to the extra competition and they now see past that to the actual, desirable result of having a greater range and standard of skills.
Their confidence is fine.
But you, Mr. Misandry-Online, are horrified - before the 70s, you would have profited from the limited talent pool, your barely-there ability made to look better by an optical illusion. Now, the sheer number of players drives you down from the top to off the radar. The men who were better than you were always going to do better, but may be before you could have become their right hand man, there wasn't a lot of choice after all. Now it is statistically impossible for you to claw your way out of the mediocre middle. Women, before quiet and non-existent in the world of work, have humiliated you by outstripping you with such seemingly natural ease.
So when women say to you, "you know, we've not got a fair deal" it makes you explode.
Give them a fair deal?! You mean they've been doing as well as you or even better with less to work with!? Christ, what would it be like if they fucking WERE equal!
And so you insist it doesn't happen, that it isn't such a big deal, that you too are being victimised by the system.
You want to perpetuate inequality.
Fear forces you to refuse. Humiliation compels you to insist it's the other way around.
And the entire time you make us feel bad about ourselves, you abuse us, tell us our looks are our currency, call us an aggressive bitch if we are too easily sailing past you. It must sting that we keep doing it, despite being hindered by history, that we so effortlessly render your obsolescence.
Night.
Sunday 3 November 2013
Racist rant/rant about racism
So, as I mentioned in my last post, which is one of the most depressing things I have ever phlegmed-up, I mentioned that I am now at university. Again.
It's been a while, 3 years, in fact, and like trying on a pair of trousers that used to be your favourites back when you were 22, there is an uncomfortably sad moment of realisation that you've changed shape in some way that stops the trousers fitting you like they used to, a reality-based moment which still can not bleach-clean your initial delight of finding the blessed relics in the first place. In short, although I'm freaking out that I have changed a lot since I was at university, I'm utterly delighted to be back in a place that has such holy connections for me.
Hang on, I'll get on to the main point in a tic, I just want to make an observation. Moments that are special to us often get that holy-like quality, becoming symbols of everything that we wish life were like, all the more giddily-held because of the fact that they ACTUALLY HAPPENED while we were ACTUALLY THERE, the living specimen that proves our theory correct. But because it was so long ago and far away, the details drop out of focus. We stop seeing the pointilist detail and instead think the experience was pure, concentrated fantagasm. We do this collectively, on a historical basis too. My generation is often knocked by the one before it as being the laziest, most feckless there is, even though the shit-poor economic situation started when we were sequestered in schools, universities or low-end jobs. And this sneerful attitude is formed by the fact that certain individuals of that generation cannot reflect with accurate, mirror-like perception on the errors of their own lifetime. I would go into more detail on this, but I want to talk about something else.
I'm living in halls, and living in halls comes with the caveat that you will be co-habiting with a bunch of randomly selected other students. Sure, on the application form you had to specify if you were an early-to-bed or a late-to-bed, but besides everything else, there is no common factor between you and your new halls-buddies. This isn't necessarily a problem, but anyone can appreciate some....issues that may arise.
In my halls, there are 3 English people, including myself, and the rest are Chinese people.
Guess who I have a problem with
Ok, that's enough time.
The two English girls I met I find difficult to like. For the purposes of this account, let's call them Liz and Carys. Because those are their names and no one actually reads this.
Anyway, my problems with them so far;
1.) When I first moved in, they had both been here for just under a week, and they were BFFs already. I am very awkward around people, and I always have been, but as I get older the awkwardness is materialising more as wariness. I'm not so much anti-social, as I was 10 years ago and a teenager terrified of the concept of human interaction. Instead, now I know how to get friends, I'm very very selective regarding who I leave my books, my computer and myself for. And I can't help but feel a sort of suspicion for people who can form a sorority/fraternity-like bond with people they don't really know.
2.) The first day I moved in, they showed me the cupboards (which I'd already figured out, thanks. I know how cupboards work,) and then followed it up with a synchronised whinge about how the Chinese don't occupy the maximum amount of space. For what felt like 10 minutes of me nodding, and saying "yes, that's annoying." A few hours later, after buying some plates and things, I found about 2 whole cupboards, full of nothing. These cunts took up my time, bored me solid, made me feel all nervous about a possible confrontation divided along race lines, because they can't fucking open a cupboard.
3.) I'm not entirely sure if I'm being overly PC, but I think they're racist.
First warning sign, they kept emphasizing how EVERYONE in our flat was Chinese. Ok, it may be a bit surprising, but after the 40th mention, I get it. Ok, I understand. It's a surprise how there does seem to have been a bit of racial grouping by the university, but it happens. Then Carys said (all together now)
"We're not racist, buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut.........................
all the non-Asian people have been looking for each other to connect with."
I can't help but feel that this is a racially charged sentiment, and naive to the point of idiocy.
"All the non-Asian people have been looking for each other."
Well, in an English city, in England, in Britain... Shouldn't be too hard, but what makes you think you'll like the non-Asian people? I fucking detest the ones I've just spent time with.
The concept that I will bond with you because I share a nationality with you would make sense in what universe?
The only example I can think of is when I was in France, the anglo-phones DID associate with the
other anglo-phones, because yes, I admit that there is an element of "oh fucking good, you're an English speaker.." But those circumstances were totally different, in being national aliens in a country whose language we don't share! There is a real sense of relief from this experience, which you can only experience from actually spending a significant amount of time alone in a foreign country. Because even if the Information Guy at Gare de Nord does speak English, if you're panicking about your health insurance, it's so much more comforting to here what you need to do in a thick London accent, given by a wearied veteran traveller with a sense of "I know where you're from, I understand how it's different where you're from, and here is how you need to adjust."
That is a position where hearing your own language, spoken in your own accent, is a fucking godsend.
We are categorically not in that position. The Chinese flatmates ARE in that position. Which would explain why they would have been stand offish and shy. Which they totally haven't been, btw, they have been fucking lovely, polite and generous at every opportunity.
Oh, and at a pub quizz, about 7 of these English people cheerfully named themselves the "committee of non-Asian residents." When called up on this, one of them actually said something along the lines of:
"we had this segregation forced on us."
Except they really haven't: they have been placed in a flat which is (at a guess) 60% Chinese, probably less, and you have been placed in here in these dormitories, at a ratio of 5 to 3, maybe more, maybe less. You really, really have not been segregated.
Quite the opposite.
In your native country, in your English-speaking city, where most people are white natives, you are living in the most racially diverse bit. You have been integrated, and you are rejecting said integration.
.....
Is this racist? Should people be entitled to live in buildings where they are not outnumbered by other nationalities? Is the anger I feel these people have, when talking about the encroaching Chinese property in their cupboards, when haughtily disregarding our uncomfortable observation, is this justified? Should I talk to someone official about this?
It's been a while, 3 years, in fact, and like trying on a pair of trousers that used to be your favourites back when you were 22, there is an uncomfortably sad moment of realisation that you've changed shape in some way that stops the trousers fitting you like they used to, a reality-based moment which still can not bleach-clean your initial delight of finding the blessed relics in the first place. In short, although I'm freaking out that I have changed a lot since I was at university, I'm utterly delighted to be back in a place that has such holy connections for me.
Hang on, I'll get on to the main point in a tic, I just want to make an observation. Moments that are special to us often get that holy-like quality, becoming symbols of everything that we wish life were like, all the more giddily-held because of the fact that they ACTUALLY HAPPENED while we were ACTUALLY THERE, the living specimen that proves our theory correct. But because it was so long ago and far away, the details drop out of focus. We stop seeing the pointilist detail and instead think the experience was pure, concentrated fantagasm. We do this collectively, on a historical basis too. My generation is often knocked by the one before it as being the laziest, most feckless there is, even though the shit-poor economic situation started when we were sequestered in schools, universities or low-end jobs. And this sneerful attitude is formed by the fact that certain individuals of that generation cannot reflect with accurate, mirror-like perception on the errors of their own lifetime. I would go into more detail on this, but I want to talk about something else.
I'm living in halls, and living in halls comes with the caveat that you will be co-habiting with a bunch of randomly selected other students. Sure, on the application form you had to specify if you were an early-to-bed or a late-to-bed, but besides everything else, there is no common factor between you and your new halls-buddies. This isn't necessarily a problem, but anyone can appreciate some....issues that may arise.
In my halls, there are 3 English people, including myself, and the rest are Chinese people.
Guess who I have a problem with
Ok, that's enough time.
The two English girls I met I find difficult to like. For the purposes of this account, let's call them Liz and Carys. Because those are their names and no one actually reads this.
Anyway, my problems with them so far;
1.) When I first moved in, they had both been here for just under a week, and they were BFFs already. I am very awkward around people, and I always have been, but as I get older the awkwardness is materialising more as wariness. I'm not so much anti-social, as I was 10 years ago and a teenager terrified of the concept of human interaction. Instead, now I know how to get friends, I'm very very selective regarding who I leave my books, my computer and myself for. And I can't help but feel a sort of suspicion for people who can form a sorority/fraternity-like bond with people they don't really know.
2.) The first day I moved in, they showed me the cupboards (which I'd already figured out, thanks. I know how cupboards work,) and then followed it up with a synchronised whinge about how the Chinese don't occupy the maximum amount of space. For what felt like 10 minutes of me nodding, and saying "yes, that's annoying." A few hours later, after buying some plates and things, I found about 2 whole cupboards, full of nothing. These cunts took up my time, bored me solid, made me feel all nervous about a possible confrontation divided along race lines, because they can't fucking open a cupboard.
3.) I'm not entirely sure if I'm being overly PC, but I think they're racist.
First warning sign, they kept emphasizing how EVERYONE in our flat was Chinese. Ok, it may be a bit surprising, but after the 40th mention, I get it. Ok, I understand. It's a surprise how there does seem to have been a bit of racial grouping by the university, but it happens. Then Carys said (all together now)
"We're not racist, buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut.........................
all the non-Asian people have been looking for each other to connect with."
I can't help but feel that this is a racially charged sentiment, and naive to the point of idiocy.
"All the non-Asian people have been looking for each other."
Well, in an English city, in England, in Britain... Shouldn't be too hard, but what makes you think you'll like the non-Asian people? I fucking detest the ones I've just spent time with.
The concept that I will bond with you because I share a nationality with you would make sense in what universe?
The only example I can think of is when I was in France, the anglo-phones DID associate with the
other anglo-phones, because yes, I admit that there is an element of "oh fucking good, you're an English speaker.." But those circumstances were totally different, in being national aliens in a country whose language we don't share! There is a real sense of relief from this experience, which you can only experience from actually spending a significant amount of time alone in a foreign country. Because even if the Information Guy at Gare de Nord does speak English, if you're panicking about your health insurance, it's so much more comforting to here what you need to do in a thick London accent, given by a wearied veteran traveller with a sense of "I know where you're from, I understand how it's different where you're from, and here is how you need to adjust."
That is a position where hearing your own language, spoken in your own accent, is a fucking godsend.
We are categorically not in that position. The Chinese flatmates ARE in that position. Which would explain why they would have been stand offish and shy. Which they totally haven't been, btw, they have been fucking lovely, polite and generous at every opportunity.
Oh, and at a pub quizz, about 7 of these English people cheerfully named themselves the "committee of non-Asian residents." When called up on this, one of them actually said something along the lines of:
"we had this segregation forced on us."
Except they really haven't: they have been placed in a flat which is (at a guess) 60% Chinese, probably less, and you have been placed in here in these dormitories, at a ratio of 5 to 3, maybe more, maybe less. You really, really have not been segregated.
Quite the opposite.
In your native country, in your English-speaking city, where most people are white natives, you are living in the most racially diverse bit. You have been integrated, and you are rejecting said integration.
.....
Is this racist? Should people be entitled to live in buildings where they are not outnumbered by other nationalities? Is the anger I feel these people have, when talking about the encroaching Chinese property in their cupboards, when haughtily disregarding our uncomfortable observation, is this justified? Should I talk to someone official about this?
Monday 7 October 2013
Oh deary me...
I have really neglected this blog.
When I first opened it, I was encouraged by the wonderful blogs of people like Jenny Trout, or my friends Eliott and Mouse, who write screamingly funny and photocopier-paper warm entries about all the utterly lovely things they are doing and all the utterly lovely people they are meeting . That was about 6, 8 months ago. A few embarrassingly pitiful posts on a film I saw, something I wrote into the dead cells of my computer when I was mildly pissed and pissed off, and really contrived pieces where I try to force my personality out of the screen like Samira from The Ring, but more uncomfortable gawkiness than terrifying greasy hair. I guess I gave up because whenever I try to write I leave the building embarrassed that I even tried.
The reason why I feel so inadequate, oh stranger-who-is-probably-up-at-2am, is that my writing always comes across as so much more dull. I love reading the blogs I've mentioned because they have a real zestyness about them. Put simply, these people are doing things, and then reporting the done things. They are having the time of their lives, talking, meeting, they take photos of their intrepid fun-having, and they post it online. Their unbelievably good looking expressions make a trip to the supermarket seem like the most hilarious thing us ugly fat kids could never get in on. And if you think I sound bitter, well, fucking of course I'm bitter!! Looking at their photos makes me suspect that all that enjoyment and socialising was natural for them. They didn't fake their smiles, not once. They didn't have to wait to see how the other people spoke to know which words to use. They never came away from social gatherings shamefaced for reasons they couldn't explain, but which boil down to the thick sludge of revulsion they have for the world, their peers, and themselves.
And yes, this is the blog of someone with recurrent mental health issues. I won't specify what's wrong, or not right with me, because tbh it doesn't really matter and if you've had any experience with that unrightness in your brain or anybody else's brain, you'll understand.
It's getting better as I get older, but I am in my mid-twenties now, and I have hit the granite block of reality, and that is I never will fully get over it. I will never be 100% ok with who I am. There will never be a time when I will forget to be nervous around the happy, light-hearted people, the sort of people who fill their blogs with photos of waving children and unusual food. I have had so many social engagements where I try to reorganise my mind to be fun, to forcibly, consciously pump in happy hormones from my pertuity gland, just so I can relax and stop my brain, the treacherous little shit, convincing me I am a soul sucking black hole of stupid remarks then awkward silence. The cold blue area on the infrared camera. No wonder really, why my blogs seem so down, when I'm so internally focussed. While the others look out at the world, at each other, I am looking desperately inward, scrambling to push these shitty feelings inside, keeping an eye on the others' behaviours so I can mimic them and pass as a real person.
And from time to time, there is a mathematical certainty that I will want to kill myself. Not from the tragedy of it. No Opheliac scene with a willow and river. Just a moment of clarity and the sudden understanding that it probably would be better to die. I don't know if anyone who's also experienced these feelings before also felt it like this, but whenever I've wanted to die, it comes to me so rationally. Like a business someone deciding to withdraw shares from one company and invest in another, because it makes sense long-term, because the time is right, because your gut tells you that of your dwindling choices, this one's best. Like I said before, it's not the poignant tragedy of "I shall break like a bough," and it's not an emotional frenzy (although in the past the calm decision of suicide has followed a breakdown or two.) It's a decision I'm making with a plus and a minus column, with no particular feelings on either side.
When I first opened it, I was encouraged by the wonderful blogs of people like Jenny Trout, or my friends Eliott and Mouse, who write screamingly funny and photocopier-paper warm entries about all the utterly lovely things they are doing and all the utterly lovely people they are meeting . That was about 6, 8 months ago. A few embarrassingly pitiful posts on a film I saw, something I wrote into the dead cells of my computer when I was mildly pissed and pissed off, and really contrived pieces where I try to force my personality out of the screen like Samira from The Ring, but more uncomfortable gawkiness than terrifying greasy hair. I guess I gave up because whenever I try to write I leave the building embarrassed that I even tried.
The reason why I feel so inadequate, oh stranger-who-is-probably-up-at-2am, is that my writing always comes across as so much more dull. I love reading the blogs I've mentioned because they have a real zestyness about them. Put simply, these people are doing things, and then reporting the done things. They are having the time of their lives, talking, meeting, they take photos of their intrepid fun-having, and they post it online. Their unbelievably good looking expressions make a trip to the supermarket seem like the most hilarious thing us ugly fat kids could never get in on. And if you think I sound bitter, well, fucking of course I'm bitter!! Looking at their photos makes me suspect that all that enjoyment and socialising was natural for them. They didn't fake their smiles, not once. They didn't have to wait to see how the other people spoke to know which words to use. They never came away from social gatherings shamefaced for reasons they couldn't explain, but which boil down to the thick sludge of revulsion they have for the world, their peers, and themselves.
And yes, this is the blog of someone with recurrent mental health issues. I won't specify what's wrong, or not right with me, because tbh it doesn't really matter and if you've had any experience with that unrightness in your brain or anybody else's brain, you'll understand.
It's getting better as I get older, but I am in my mid-twenties now, and I have hit the granite block of reality, and that is I never will fully get over it. I will never be 100% ok with who I am. There will never be a time when I will forget to be nervous around the happy, light-hearted people, the sort of people who fill their blogs with photos of waving children and unusual food. I have had so many social engagements where I try to reorganise my mind to be fun, to forcibly, consciously pump in happy hormones from my pertuity gland, just so I can relax and stop my brain, the treacherous little shit, convincing me I am a soul sucking black hole of stupid remarks then awkward silence. The cold blue area on the infrared camera. No wonder really, why my blogs seem so down, when I'm so internally focussed. While the others look out at the world, at each other, I am looking desperately inward, scrambling to push these shitty feelings inside, keeping an eye on the others' behaviours so I can mimic them and pass as a real person.
And from time to time, there is a mathematical certainty that I will want to kill myself. Not from the tragedy of it. No Opheliac scene with a willow and river. Just a moment of clarity and the sudden understanding that it probably would be better to die. I don't know if anyone who's also experienced these feelings before also felt it like this, but whenever I've wanted to die, it comes to me so rationally. Like a business someone deciding to withdraw shares from one company and invest in another, because it makes sense long-term, because the time is right, because your gut tells you that of your dwindling choices, this one's best. Like I said before, it's not the poignant tragedy of "I shall break like a bough," and it's not an emotional frenzy (although in the past the calm decision of suicide has followed a breakdown or two.) It's a decision I'm making with a plus and a minus column, with no particular feelings on either side.
Sunday 12 May 2013
Stoker, and the evolution of Nicole Kidman
Anyway, now I've that off my chest, Stoker was a better film than I was expecting. Its got Mia Polishname in the lead, Ozymandias from Watchmen as a creepy uncle, and Nicole Kidman as the simpering mother.
The main problems the film has isn't the script, the story or the dialogue. It's the cast.
The first is that Mia Wasikowska (is that right? Wikipedia....Awesome, first attempt!) is playing 18 year old high school student India, and to me looks her real age, which is mid-twenties. It's a minor thing, and films do it all the time, but normally the actor makes up for the gap by acting like a teenager. The main point of India's character is that she is sombre, withdrawn and quiet, with a sepulchral outlook on things. She reminds me a bit of Winona Ryder's character in Beetlejuice, except without the blatant goth posing and pontificating, which results in her just appearing mature. She does a damn good job in the lead, though, and by the end I didn't mind that I could have just as easily believed she was 30.
The other problem was not so easily forgotten, and affected the entire tone of the film for me.
Matthew Goode (Ozymandias from Watchmen) plays the sinister, mysterious Uncle Charlie. The way the music goes when he's on screen suggests that he's meant to be foreboding, handsome but dangerous, sexy and fatal all at once.
This is Matthew Goode.
Not bad, right? Handsome, but still murdery. A man who looks best either chatting up a girl with a martini, or with a chloroform-soaked rag. And he's an actually pretty good actor too.
It's not his fault, that to my mind at least, he strikes an uncanny resemblance to this man:
This is Jake Shears, of the Scissor Sisters, in the only headshot photo that does their resemblance any justice. Jake normally looks like this:
It might just be me, but this really interrupted what was meant to be a heightening tension in the film, as the audience became privy to the unsavoury intentions of evil Uncle Charlie. Whenever he was on the screen, instead of feeling the mounting danger, I just kept thinking "Christ, he really does look like Jake Shears."
It just made it sort of funny for me.
So when we have a suspenseful scene full of implied feelings of barely restrained incest, like this one:
I think:
Despite this, I don't think it damaged my enjoyment of the film in the slightest. In fact, it made it better, because it reminded me of the Scissor Sisters, and I love the Scissor Sisters. And like I said, both Mia Wasikowska and Matthew Goode do a pretty fantastic job throughout.
The last problem I had was with the last main cast member, so we've sort of got problem per actor.
This problem is Nicole Kidman.
There was once a time when Nicole Kidman was my favourite actor. Right around the Moulin Rouge time, in fact.
Just look at that expression. You don't need to know anything about that film to have a guess as to what is happening in that scene. Satine (Nicole) has just heard something that is quite alarming but she can't express said alarm outright. But Ms. Kidman's beautifully groomed eyebrows tells us just what Satine is thinking (which I imagine to be along the lines of "you're kidding!", "the fuck?!", "I'm going to talk to Zidler about paying extra for this sort of shit," whatever you want).
If you have not seen Moulin Rouge, please do and watch how much fun Nicole is throughout the entire film.
Play a game with the next group of pictures, and see if you can see what sort of emotion Nicole is portraying.
First:
I'll play too, although I have seen this film before, so I will always win, which is how I like to play.
First answer: Fuuuun!
.
Just going through the Google Image search results for "Nicole Kidman Moulin Rouge" has reminded me of the mad love I had for that film, and Nicole, when it first came out (I refuse to google the actual date, lest it make me feel old.)
Since Moulin Rouge, Nicole Kidman has had less opportunity to show off her range. Look at these screenshots from her films since Moulin Rouge, and play the same game.
Cold Mountain:
She's angry, and serious.
She's serious. And maybe angry.
Australia:
Happy?
Seriously, I had no idea what she was meant to be feeling throughout the duration of that entire film.
You get the idea, she hasn't been quite as expressive as she previously has been, and her characters have seemed weaker for it.
In Stoker, her character is meant to be flighty and unstable, and so I guess it's a sign of Nicole's ability when she irritated the sh*t out of me.
But even when she had more emotional scenes, like the one below:
I just felt a bit bored, and nostalgic. She has played so many bland characters, it's starting to imprint on my brain now.
"Oh look, Nicole Kidman, being bland," is basically my reaction when I see her.
She's joined a growing group of other actors who are talented, but keep picking naff films, or turning in naff performances (cough cough, Milla Jovovich.) This is particularly weird for Nicole, because she tends to do more arty films than other actors, which normally is a "oooh, interesting" thing. But even in those films, she has basically the same reactions and emotions, and keeps talking in that soft, little girly voice to everyone.
Please Nicole, please go back to being awesome. We all know you can.
So, erm, is Stoker any good? The short answer is yes, it's probably the most thought-provoking and well done thriller this year.
The main problems the film has isn't the script, the story or the dialogue. It's the cast.
The first is that Mia Wasikowska (is that right? Wikipedia....Awesome, first attempt!) is playing 18 year old high school student India, and to me looks her real age, which is mid-twenties. It's a minor thing, and films do it all the time, but normally the actor makes up for the gap by acting like a teenager. The main point of India's character is that she is sombre, withdrawn and quiet, with a sepulchral outlook on things. She reminds me a bit of Winona Ryder's character in Beetlejuice, except without the blatant goth posing and pontificating, which results in her just appearing mature. She does a damn good job in the lead, though, and by the end I didn't mind that I could have just as easily believed she was 30.
The other problem was not so easily forgotten, and affected the entire tone of the film for me.
Matthew Goode (Ozymandias from Watchmen) plays the sinister, mysterious Uncle Charlie. The way the music goes when he's on screen suggests that he's meant to be foreboding, handsome but dangerous, sexy and fatal all at once.
This is Matthew Goode.
Not bad, right? Handsome, but still murdery. A man who looks best either chatting up a girl with a martini, or with a chloroform-soaked rag. And he's an actually pretty good actor too.
It's not his fault, that to my mind at least, he strikes an uncanny resemblance to this man:
This is Jake Shears, of the Scissor Sisters, in the only headshot photo that does their resemblance any justice. Jake normally looks like this:
It might just be me, but this really interrupted what was meant to be a heightening tension in the film, as the audience became privy to the unsavoury intentions of evil Uncle Charlie. Whenever he was on the screen, instead of feeling the mounting danger, I just kept thinking "Christ, he really does look like Jake Shears."
It just made it sort of funny for me.
So when we have a suspenseful scene full of implied feelings of barely restrained incest, like this one:
 |
| "Nothing wrong with a bit of piano foreplay with your niece.." |
 |
| Nothing is more dangerous than a sailor. An incestuous sailor. |
The last problem I had was with the last main cast member, so we've sort of got problem per actor.
This problem is Nicole Kidman.
 |
 |
| My expression whenever I see my landlord's girlfriend. |
Just look at that expression. You don't need to know anything about that film to have a guess as to what is happening in that scene. Satine (Nicole) has just heard something that is quite alarming but she can't express said alarm outright. But Ms. Kidman's beautifully groomed eyebrows tells us just what Satine is thinking (which I imagine to be along the lines of "you're kidding!", "the fuck?!", "I'm going to talk to Zidler about paying extra for this sort of shit," whatever you want).
If you have not seen Moulin Rouge, please do and watch how much fun Nicole is throughout the entire film.
Play a game with the next group of pictures, and see if you can see what sort of emotion Nicole is portraying.
First:
 |
| There she is, the Sparkling Diamond! |
First answer: Fuuuun!
 |
| I like nice little poet, right after supper! |
.
The emotion: secret lust.
 |
| Poetic enough for you? |
Feigned, OTT lust.
 |
| "DON'T LEAVE ME THIS WAY!" |
Sheer desperation and pleading.
Just going through the Google Image search results for "Nicole Kidman Moulin Rouge" has reminded me of the mad love I had for that film, and Nicole, when it first came out (I refuse to google the actual date, lest it make me feel old.)
Since Moulin Rouge, Nicole Kidman has had less opportunity to show off her range. Look at these screenshots from her films since Moulin Rouge, and play the same game.
Cold Mountain:
She's angry, and serious.
Australia:
Happy?
Seriously, I had no idea what she was meant to be feeling throughout the duration of that entire film.
You get the idea, she hasn't been quite as expressive as she previously has been, and her characters have seemed weaker for it.
In Stoker, her character is meant to be flighty and unstable, and so I guess it's a sign of Nicole's ability when she irritated the sh*t out of me.
But even when she had more emotional scenes, like the one below:
 |
| Angry, sad, murderous? It has gotten more basic with ol' Nicky |
I just felt a bit bored, and nostalgic. She has played so many bland characters, it's starting to imprint on my brain now.
"Oh look, Nicole Kidman, being bland," is basically my reaction when I see her.
She's joined a growing group of other actors who are talented, but keep picking naff films, or turning in naff performances (cough cough, Milla Jovovich.) This is particularly weird for Nicole, because she tends to do more arty films than other actors, which normally is a "oooh, interesting" thing. But even in those films, she has basically the same reactions and emotions, and keeps talking in that soft, little girly voice to everyone.
Please Nicole, please go back to being awesome. We all know you can.
So, erm, is Stoker any good? The short answer is yes, it's probably the most thought-provoking and well done thriller this year.
I hate cleaners
I saw Stoker the other day. I'm going to post my review of it in a bit, but first I want to talk about what led me to see it.
I only saw it because my landlord's girlfriend is one of those women who wasn't told that "house elf" is no longer a requirement for being a good partner, and was feverishly cleaning the flat, on her first ever visit. As in, she has never been here before, and her first reaction was to clean a perfect stranger's flat, and then leave.
Unable to cope with somebody cleaning the other side of my bedroom door and making the handle shake like a serial killer with slippery blood-hands, I sloped off out, cursing the invasion of Dobby under my breath.
I genuinely hate people who clean like that, for a number of reasons that I will probably blog about at a later time. But in particular, I hate the fact that it is always women who have this desperation to cleancleancleanCLEANCLEAN!!!
Like I said above, there is something pathetically old world about it, as though they are try desperately to conform to the traditional role of a woman. And I can't help but feel this lady is looking at me as competition, as someone who needs to be out-femaled, somehow. Luckily for her, I am very easily over-womaned, by my lifelong aversion to cleaning, cooking and children (the three C's).
More than once, I have heard women refer to themselves as "obsessive compulsive", as though it is a good thing, or refer to something needing "a woman's eye," as though women's eyes have some sort of infra-red for dirt. It's a kind of self-stereotyping that supports the position that the gendered subtext of everyday life leaves a much bigger imprint on individuals than is readily apparent. I never hear men talk about cleaning like it's some sort of achievement or raison d'etre, because to them it isn't. Cleaning is in no way connected to the way society judges them , or how they value themselves. Cleaning is just something you have to do from time to time, to keep certain nasties at bay, to make the place look basically presentable to humans, and to make it just pleasant to live in.
There is a genuinely sad thing about this, as in it makes me sad for the human race. I am not the stereotypical woman, and that's not a surprise, because we take up literally half of the human race, how is it possible to generalise about such a huge, intrinsically diverse section of humanity. Which makes me wonder why we have a stereotype of "woman" in the first place? And why do some women feel desperate to upkeep these clichés? Is there a stereotype of "man"? If I say, "I saw a man the other day," what is the picture you have? What do you picture if I say "I saw a woman?"
Right, rant over. Night night.
Tuesday 7 May 2013
What I wrote last night while really quite drunk.
It’S very late tonight. Being awake as you sober up is the
worst thing. Lying in the dark naked, masturbating intermittently, I am not in
the most focused of moods. I have been in a state of feline-heat for about a
week, and my mind flits from one fantasy to the next, trying to find the
scenario to help the itch be scratched. You know what I’m talking about.
Oddly, as I change my fantasies in my head like changing
channels, adjusting the progression of one for another, something swims into my
idle brain. Not arousing, at least not anymore. A memory of a boy I had sex
with when I was.. what was it, 18 or 19? I genuinely can’t remember. I remember
his name and face. I remember being annoyed after, as he totally cut off contact
after. I wasn’t offended, I figured that he believed some erroneous thing about
girls wanting commitment immediately following sex. I had wanted to keep up
contact, not because I saw the sex as an important step forward, the very idea
was laughable – I had no relationship of any meaning with this boy. I had only
wanted to have sex again with him as I had enjoyed the first time.
Odd. I do not find this memory satisfying in anyway. It does
nothing for my heat. It was a rather unwelcome memory that really only
irritates me. I am wondering at the minute what happened to the boy. By the
morning I’ll probably have forgotten him for another 2 or 3 years.
Thursday 2 May 2013
My day today
The brain, it exists, attached to the rest of the body through strings of nerves. It is directly connected to our eyes, and vision is our most important sense. If there is a me, I would think it's my brain, and my eyes. How I know the world.
Today was strange, it started and it carried on but I stayed where I was. The day cycled around me, but I stayed a dry rock in a river.
And if I do not voice words to the others, I feel guilty. I should be like them, chatty and normal, their lives in a steady and straight ascent.
But my brain stayed at the back of my skull, not just shy but disconnected from my eyes and ears. Not pre-occupied, just not playing. I close my eyes and nothing is different.
And the day ran like a black and white film on a never-ending projector. It will run and run and run, and participation is expected, but difficult. How are we meant to break through the veil that separates the film from us?
Not quite human, really.
Not quite human, really.
Sunday 21 April 2013
guilty delights
One of my guilty delights is to listen to people I disagree with explain their points.
I don't mean people who think that Harry Potter wasn't a milestone in modern English literature, or who think that Nutella isn't the food of the gods. People on both sides of those sorts of arguments, and the people in between, tend to have picked their sides with a high awareness of subjectivity. Plus, these are the points that aren't exactly life and death.
I like listening to people whose points of view are utterly unfathomable, and which they believe is something of cosmological importance. In Paris today, there is a huge anti-gay marriage protest, a social issue that some people interpret as an attack on traditional values. These people are so angry about this issue, that they have caused huge disruption to the city's public transport, prioritising the exciting,sexy social issues above the mundane but vital to-ing and fro-ing of everyday life. I think it's a wonderful micro-example of the problem with the anti-gay marriage argument on the whole; the protesters are so angry, so caught up with a subject that is ultimately so inconsequential to their individual lives, that they forget the basic, vital stuff of life. No matter what your political views, I think we can all agree we need to think about the simple business of food and travel, before we think about the complicated matter of segregating and dehumanising other people over some arbitrary fear you have. In fact, I think we can all say that preserving a communal sense of respect and compassion, is more important than your personal opinion.
There is something so fascinating about people who are so dead set for or against something, who have a level of certainty about something when I have Cartesian crises every other week.
To some extent I understand, I have some of the map that led them to decide, rather than discover, their conclusions. Take, for example, the pyramid UFO believers. I understand the desire to believe in magic. At the grand old age of 25, I occasionally wish my heart out that there were mysteries like I thought there were when I was a child. As great as this time period is, with the high life expectancy, no smallpox etc, I can't deny I sometimes feel the wind goes out of my sails when I remember none of the worlds I constructed in my head will ever be real.
So I get it, when people say there is life on other planets, benign and wise, or brutal and imperialistic. I understand why some people whisper softly about crystals and energy and chakras. Because when the hard reality is hit, we don't want to admit it. We want to tunnel a way out of the cruelty and monotony. We don't want chemotherapy to be the only possible cure for cancer. We want to hope, to believe there is something someone else knows that will fix it. If you are all alone on earth, a loser, a joke, you hope that there will be something from another place, another world that will distract you, that will convince there's more to this awful place.
An extract by one of my favourite contemporary writers.
So this is where all that anger started — the anger that confused so many, on the announcement of Baroness Thatcher’s death. All those people childishly downloading Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead or throwing parties, “celebrating” her passing. Among many commentators, there was bewilderment over the fireworks that were set off and the champagne — put away in cupboards for so many years for this day — being drunk. Why would you celebrate a death? The death of someone hard-working, old and confused? It is, surely, unnecessarily crude. It is just not classy.
But for all those who were left behind, to mourn their own towns, the sadness and the fear had turned to anger, as it always does — all anger is just fear, brought to the boil. And that is when so many impotent but determined entries were made in diaries. Entries made when a factory closed, or Section 28 brought in, or a relative came back from a protest, bleeding. Entries made when politics seemed to get very, very personal. Entries when politics became dangerous and destructive.
And they will all have been written differently, on different days, in different pens in a thousand different ways, but what they all boiled down to was this: “I can’t do anything else, now, but outlive this. Outlive you. All I can do is outrun you.
But for all those who were left behind, to mourn their own towns, the sadness and the fear had turned to anger, as it always does — all anger is just fear, brought to the boil. And that is when so many impotent but determined entries were made in diaries. Entries made when a factory closed, or Section 28 brought in, or a relative came back from a protest, bleeding. Entries made when politics seemed to get very, very personal. Entries when politics became dangerous and destructive.
And they will all have been written differently, on different days, in different pens in a thousand different ways, but what they all boiled down to was this: “I can’t do anything else, now, but outlive this. Outlive you. All I can do is outrun you.
By Caitlin Moran, beautifully put.
Wednesday 17 April 2013
"Why you don't return to Britain?"
In response to my joyless, reticent and downright cuntish student, because Britain does this:
to honour someone who actively made the world a much, MUCH worse place than she found it.
Brilliant Mark Steel article about the matter:
In other news, it's not hotter than Vulcan's cock, but it's getting there.
Monday 15 April 2013
May be on the verge of death, may need new glasses.
I'm a fan and purveyor of sad, introspective drama, and I take further pleasure in the fact my hand-jazzing pathos is rarely actually seen, allowing the pretentious side of my brain to pose sadly in ink-stained white shirt, quill in hand while the cynical side of my brain snorts in hysterical contempt.
I feel these two contrasting parts of myself need names. Pretentious brain shall from henceforth be called Gretchen, and the cynical side, Martha. Gretchen, because that's what I changed my name to for 4 weeks when I was a 15 year old living under the unprecedented tyranny of period pain, and Martha because I can't think of that name without thinking of a rolling pin. And to me, rolling pins are a symbol of "get your fucking arse out your head."
You can just imagine a burly "worked me whole life" woman giving you a "the hell?" look with that in hand, right? That's who is sneering at Gretchen in my head.
Aaaaanyway, back to the original point of this post.
About 2 months ago, I was shaving my legs in the bath tub, when I noticed a small freckle I hadn't noticed before. A little bit "oh", and considered the implications a little, before deciding to mention it to a doctor friend.
I then promptly got out of the bath, and forgot all about it. Until about 2 weeks ago, when I almost fainted in class, and generally felt like I was going to vomit at any given moment. I am still having the headachey, world-turning, nearly fainty feeling, but not nearly so badly, and at the time, I was really very worried about the prospect of something being seriously wrong with me.
I should mention, at this point, that although I am related to doctor people in England, I don't have health insurance in France, which is where I am confined. Also, it was around this time that I found another freckle on my stomach.
I'm still debating with myself if the stomach-freckle was there all along or not, but either way, this is the first time in my life that I've been scared for my physical health (my mental health has always been nothing much but a geographical concept.)
In my paper diary, I wrote a rather forlorn plea to fate to spare me. In retrospect, it's a little embarrassing to read, especially as I am now almost convinced that the problem is my eyesight. All the same, I am grateful when I gain deeper perspective of things, and most of all for the accompanying empathy to others really in the situation, even when what gave me that deeper perspective is utterly false.
I feel these two contrasting parts of myself need names. Pretentious brain shall from henceforth be called Gretchen, and the cynical side, Martha. Gretchen, because that's what I changed my name to for 4 weeks when I was a 15 year old living under the unprecedented tyranny of period pain, and Martha because I can't think of that name without thinking of a rolling pin. And to me, rolling pins are a symbol of "get your fucking arse out your head."
You can just imagine a burly "worked me whole life" woman giving you a "the hell?" look with that in hand, right? That's who is sneering at Gretchen in my head.
Aaaaanyway, back to the original point of this post.
About 2 months ago, I was shaving my legs in the bath tub, when I noticed a small freckle I hadn't noticed before. A little bit "oh", and considered the implications a little, before deciding to mention it to a doctor friend.
I then promptly got out of the bath, and forgot all about it. Until about 2 weeks ago, when I almost fainted in class, and generally felt like I was going to vomit at any given moment. I am still having the headachey, world-turning, nearly fainty feeling, but not nearly so badly, and at the time, I was really very worried about the prospect of something being seriously wrong with me.
I should mention, at this point, that although I am related to doctor people in England, I don't have health insurance in France, which is where I am confined. Also, it was around this time that I found another freckle on my stomach.
I'm still debating with myself if the stomach-freckle was there all along or not, but either way, this is the first time in my life that I've been scared for my physical health (my mental health has always been nothing much but a geographical concept.)
In my paper diary, I wrote a rather forlorn plea to fate to spare me. In retrospect, it's a little embarrassing to read, especially as I am now almost convinced that the problem is my eyesight. All the same, I am grateful when I gain deeper perspective of things, and most of all for the accompanying empathy to others really in the situation, even when what gave me that deeper perspective is utterly false.
Sunday 14 April 2013
This post ain’t gonna make much sense. I’m particularly scatty-minded, and my writing makes a wonderful, Turin-Shroud like copy of my brain, so enjoy.
I am female, and as a female, once a month I have a period.
This, if you are living in the same society I am, is for some reason a topic which is treated with a great deal of “bleugh”, or “hohoho, you talked about your period, you’re so wacky.”
This has come up in conversation the past few days because I tend to get very, very miserable when i’m on my period. The women in my family nickname this feeling the “Can’t-Help-Its”, because you want to be cheerful, but every small thing is upsetting you, and you are feeling snappy and generally miserable.
I don’t like to admit I occasionally go through this, because people like to abuse it as short-hand for “her opinion doesn’t matter”.
And so before I say anything else, I will just like to point out three important points.
1) This does not happen every month, and even when it does, I, like everyone else who gets it, am not controlled by it.
2) Acknowledging the existence PMT and menstruation-related moods does not give anyone, anywhere an excuse to undermine or dismiss what a woman says.
3)While I will happily admit that my periods make me a little more battle ready than usual, I have never been angry about something while on my period that I haven’t been passively tolerating for the rest of the month.
For me, the occasional spike in irritability is just what I need to summon up the balls to tell someone that they’re mysterious and misdirected rudeness has to stop, or to ask my obviously stressed boss for a holiday.
By no means am I a wilting flower without the extra progesterone, but I tend to overthink things. As such, I have two pieces of criteria for resolving possibly difficult situations directly. These are:
For me, the occasional spike in irritability is just what I need to summon up the balls to tell someone that they’re mysterious and misdirected rudeness has to stop, or to ask my obviously stressed boss for a holiday.
By no means am I a wilting flower without the extra progesterone, but I tend to overthink things. As such, I have two pieces of criteria for resolving possibly difficult situations directly. These are:
1) Is it actually worth the trouble? For example, if I don’t like the way my supervisor throws his weight around, is telling him to stop worth the possible fallout when I might not work with him that often?
2) Would it be unkind/inconsiderate of me to do this? For example, is asking my boss for a holiday going to cause her yet another headache as she has to figure out how to cover me?
My monthly battle-dress makes me more impulsive than usual, and in both the cases above, I took action that led to a less cuntish supervisor (around me, anyway), and getting my time off when I wanted it.
Unrealistic Ambitions
Introduction.
Despite wanting to do all sorts of things, I'm not particularly active, and I have crippling social anxiety.
Strangely, I have a job that involves a lot of presenting, smiling, and general chatter. A good percentage of the time, I am the one talking, and when other people are talking, it is me who is the general conductor of the conversation (I'm an English teacher to Frenchies.)
Talking and engaging during a lesson isn't at all like to chatting to a colleague, or to a stranger at the bus stop.
Most lessons are free of the social awkwardness that hangs around during every other human interaction I have. The reasons for this are obvious; I've prepared beforehand what we're going to talk about, and everyone has to do as I say. I'm not always terrified of the conversation breaking, because I always have something else to move on to.
While it's not devoid of a social side (it makes things a lot easier if the students like you), it's primarily a professional situation, not pleasurable one. Unless you have a group of underfed zombies to teach (it happens), it's generally easy to keep proceedings going by until the finish line.
And then the lesson finishes. And the change in atmosphere as soon as every closes their books and stands up is clear. I wasn't a popular girl at school, and I'm not exactly Miss Popularity now. But I can lead a fun lesson, I can explain grammar, and I can get people can use it.
The puzzle is why I can't talk to people outside of that.
Unrealistic ambitions are just a fact of life for me, and some are ridiculous, others aren't that unlikely. Some days I wish I could sing, so I can act like I'm in a music video. Some days I really want to write something half-decent. But the most infuriating thing for me is my inability to do something my students do with each other as soon as they stand up, and that is to turn to each other, and talk normally, easily, without the steady tracks of a prepared lesson to guide them.
Saturday 13 April 2013
Some thoughts
I'm eating pizza right now. Isn't it weird that you now know that? I'm surrounded by a mess, which is surrounded by a wall, which is in a house in a town, city or even country separate from yours, and just from that first sentence you know that a) I exist or have existed at some point, b) I have access to a computer, c) I'm literate, d) I have a pizza that I am eating, and e) I have enough time to eat pizza, and misuse my education and time on meaningless little posts like this. Just by encoding a few words into writing in a little electronic box, a collection of electronic magnetic waves magically changes them into a section of ones and zeroes, takes them over to your computer, and changes them back into words before your very eyes. So much information.
From the language that I am using, it is enough to identify me from what must be more than 99% of human life. Even at a), I'm in the minority of all the humans that have ever lived. To be known from afar to have lived.
It was important you know. For the dead to be remembered. Still is I suppose, but not so centrally. I'm talking core religious belief. The Egyptian monarchs dedicated mindblowing resources to ensure people would remember their dead kings, diverting rock and sweat and lives to construct towering monuments, commemorating the life and death of the pharoah and his lot. So much is difficult to grasp for us, but think about being an Egyptian man or woman, confronted with this building, far bigger than your limited imagination would have ever allowed. An immense building built for your dead leader, 20 times bigger than your own current dwelling, which not only holds you, but your spouse, 4 children, your parents and sometimes your livestock. We see big constructions all the time, walking down the street, crawling inside them like crabs feeding on a whale carcass. Very rarely do we ever stand back and look at them. See how truly magnificent they are. Appreciate the planning, the sawing, the chiselling, the broken bones, the burnt skin, the strained muscles and neurons it cost to erect them. I stand on the pavement and gawk upwards. Try it sometime. It feels like the bottom of your heart just opened, and the world peers in.
So think about the poor Egyptian felt as he stared at the dead kings pyramid, or mortuary temple, or barque shrine. Nothing that size ever really existed that was man made til then, for him anyway. If he was lucky he may have glimpsed the treasures of the sort that may have been inside, at some point in his life. Sacred things from places you don't know exist. Colours on a gemstone on a necklace are even more brilliant when all you're used to is sky and sand and rock. And the shine! Nothing ever looks that clear here. My word, reflections like on the water but not, brighter and cleaner and clearer and more entrancing and frightening, like God flashing a grin at you!! And a slow understanding, entering your mind drip by drip, that you are tiny; a speck on a speck of sand that you think is the whole jostling, moving, unwieldly world. The brief insight that it is a speck and the whole world is elsewhere, pressing down and surrounding you like earth upon a buried person, the excrutiating horror and excitement about the size and number and sheer enormity of life outside. The realisation only lasts the briefest of seconds, before the mind instinctively pushes it away to the back of the brain. Dwelling on that sort of thing can drive a person doolally. Best just get on with things as best you can.
Can you appreciate why they worshipped their leaders? Can you understand why they believed the king when he told them he was god and was to be obeyed? I didn't get it at first, but I think I do now.
From the language that I am using, it is enough to identify me from what must be more than 99% of human life. Even at a), I'm in the minority of all the humans that have ever lived. To be known from afar to have lived.
It was important you know. For the dead to be remembered. Still is I suppose, but not so centrally. I'm talking core religious belief. The Egyptian monarchs dedicated mindblowing resources to ensure people would remember their dead kings, diverting rock and sweat and lives to construct towering monuments, commemorating the life and death of the pharoah and his lot. So much is difficult to grasp for us, but think about being an Egyptian man or woman, confronted with this building, far bigger than your limited imagination would have ever allowed. An immense building built for your dead leader, 20 times bigger than your own current dwelling, which not only holds you, but your spouse, 4 children, your parents and sometimes your livestock. We see big constructions all the time, walking down the street, crawling inside them like crabs feeding on a whale carcass. Very rarely do we ever stand back and look at them. See how truly magnificent they are. Appreciate the planning, the sawing, the chiselling, the broken bones, the burnt skin, the strained muscles and neurons it cost to erect them. I stand on the pavement and gawk upwards. Try it sometime. It feels like the bottom of your heart just opened, and the world peers in.
So think about the poor Egyptian felt as he stared at the dead kings pyramid, or mortuary temple, or barque shrine. Nothing that size ever really existed that was man made til then, for him anyway. If he was lucky he may have glimpsed the treasures of the sort that may have been inside, at some point in his life. Sacred things from places you don't know exist. Colours on a gemstone on a necklace are even more brilliant when all you're used to is sky and sand and rock. And the shine! Nothing ever looks that clear here. My word, reflections like on the water but not, brighter and cleaner and clearer and more entrancing and frightening, like God flashing a grin at you!! And a slow understanding, entering your mind drip by drip, that you are tiny; a speck on a speck of sand that you think is the whole jostling, moving, unwieldly world. The brief insight that it is a speck and the whole world is elsewhere, pressing down and surrounding you like earth upon a buried person, the excrutiating horror and excitement about the size and number and sheer enormity of life outside. The realisation only lasts the briefest of seconds, before the mind instinctively pushes it away to the back of the brain. Dwelling on that sort of thing can drive a person doolally. Best just get on with things as best you can.
Can you appreciate why they worshipped their leaders? Can you understand why they believed the king when he told them he was god and was to be obeyed? I didn't get it at first, but I think I do now.
Another Poem (rhyming is hard and too boring.)
I left you at the airport at 5 to 8. Your gate closed at 15 past 8, and your flight departed at 15 to 9. It was on time, even though I prayed it would be late so we’d get more minutes together.
I left not crying, because I never do, but with a heaviness in my chest and a wateriness around my eyeballs. I regret everything, then nothing, then everything again. I flash angry-happy-desperate.
I travelled back to Saint Denis. It’s quite close to Charles de Gaulle, and I often hear the planes flying over the Seine. At 10 to 9, while walking on the bridge near my apartment, I see the flashing lights in the sky that signal a plane flying overhead. My profile is elevated to the heavens as I watch it, listen to it, suffering my lungs. I breathe your name. “I don’t know if that’s you. I love you.” I stare up a little too long and become disorientated as I try to walk across the bridge while gazing upwards. It must look comical.
Your plane or not, I am struck by the paradox of having nothing but a well of sky between us. Gravity’s apple stops me swimming up. I stand at the bottom of this well and I watch the sky-boat take you away. I whisper my love in bubbles that I hope the wind takes to you. All of this is impossible. Just wishing it with gasps.
And I think of what I told you. If the billions of anonymous people in this world were featureless sand, I would set them in an ashtray. Films, the television, and teachers tried to tell me every human in the world was special and different and mattered, but I get on and off the Metro everyday, and I see different, undistinguished faces of the crowd, bored, staring, dull eyes, inane gabber.
To me, they are grains of sand. The world is an ashtray, and we are all grains of sand swept up there, not sure and not feeling. I set the ashtray aside. I don’t hate them but I don’t care about them. Upturn it if you like, I do not care.
Except you. You I hold, I keep. You I find in the sand, and are more than a grain. My fellow vulture.
Fleh
Banging through my head when I sit in the bath are the things I wish to say. I have speeches and dialogues rehearsed til I know them by heart, I have been brought to tears through the things I want to say, to write, to make other people understand. But rarely does it become matter. I say the words, but words don’t rest, they are there and then they are gone, and unless someone else hears them, they mightn’t have existed at all. I hold the pen, but it feels unpleasantly clunky and tangled in my hands, and I can’t quite get the flow from my head to my hand. Imagine blood flowing from the brain, down the arm and through the pen in words, scratched in narrow lines on the page. That’s what I like to picture.
The truth is, as my lecturer put it, is that poets and writers are not struck with impassioned and spontaneous brilliance, viscerally entrenching their work with the very physical and emotional core of their being. There is a process involved, a systematic and quite mathematical one. Examination, analysis and reduction of the material, a written page analysed and thought about, and then a re-examination, analysis and reduction of the material on the page. Followed by yet another picking over and deducting and adding up and taking away of lines, thoughts and so on. The poems, stories, songs, whatever are still most likely inspired by the writer’s own experiences, or at least something they’ve seen that has bred thought, otherwise they wouldn’t have such complicated views and feelings on the matter, or an interest to represent them. But the persistant criticising of the material, the selecting of emotions to portray, or the decision to leave out this thought because it doesn’t fit the metre in this form, but to include it in a different way which actually casts a very different light on the true tone, all this adds up to a sensation of an accountant getting the numbers to add up.
Quite cold hearted really, yes?
Poem
Words – long and short, stilted and fluent. Building blocks, communication, vocalisat-
fuckers everyone of them
Mouth teeth lips, alveolial trills, stomach talki-
Eat me you traitors, mouth lips teeth, eat me, chew your words chew your filthy food, eat and ignore, smoke inhale and abandon, cut off from the raw, the
Tongue of an amputee my tongue is an amputee my tongue a stump my tongue the stump my tongue is an amputee
But then
words
the sapling stump, a poking yellow tendril is there and it grows and there is sunlight and rain and it grows again and
the sapling stump, a poking yellow tendril is there and it grows and there is sunlight and rain and it grows again and
the words!
the words grow too, bubbling, branching away, blooming, blossoming, from one to another, until a canopy of hope and eloquence is there, floating and
in my mind
it is penetrative, sweet, cutting sheer like crystal.
And then it’s
empty
a dream I think, because again my stump bangs against
raw
my inside teeth, pathetic, short, chompy, thick, useless.
dead?
It won’t grow just by thinking, I think and I think and force it.
I don’t know what happened, I only had it for the minute but I want the trees again.
I don’t know what happened, I only had it for the minute but I want the trees again.
But my tongue
brain
shrivels in my throat and it was a dream a dream it was all just a dream, and my tongue is an amputee.
brain
shrivels in my throat and it was a dream a dream it was all just a dream, and my tongue is an amputee.
Brain is mean
So this will be my new projection for my brain. Trying to sift through the brain isn’t that easy, because there are so many different subjects in my brain at any one time.
Sometimes they follow each other to the foreground like a dancing chorus line, all in the spotlight for a few seconds before dancing along and letting another subject flirt with me, making me interested, spurring on my imagination.
Above: The inside of my brain, with relative morality swiftly followed by cannibalism, agriculture and New Guinea hunter-gatherers!
For example, this morning, as I was turning on my computer, I was thinking about masturbation, particularly nocturnal masturbation (yes, it isn’t a coincidence that it was what I was thinking about when I woke up.) Then I saw an article on Facebook that made me think about feminism. Then I was thinking about education and the current British government, then about the role of religion in schools, then about the general belief in supernatural things, then the rise of militant atheism, and then about whether I could do my classes today and clean my room, and what I should have for breakfast (answer: crisps, and bread.)
As you can tell, it get’s pretty confusing. Within the space of 20 minutes, my brain has flitted between possibly hundreds of diffuse subjects.
Maybe I’m overstimulating myself. Just while writing this short blog post, I am also listening to a Ted talk, on Facebook, and doing a bill for work. Hopefully, over time I’ll get better. Unfortunately, it also makes me a pretty confusing person to talk to, as within the space of a sentence, my focus may have shifted from the topic of discussion to something completely different, which means that by the time I’m saying something about, for example, public transport, my brain has already cycled on head, passed all tangent topics, and has settled temporarily on creepy Victorian era surgery. This is an actual conversation that I had not long ago, and the map my brain took is like this:
Problems on the Metro –> that article I read about dangerous stray dogs on the Moscow subway –> that article also mentioned the dogs were evolving to be really, really smart –> Smart Moscow dogs was the focus of the Michail Bulgakov novel “The Dog’s Heart” –> They did weird animal-human organ transplants in that book –> That real life guy who sewed chimp testicles into human testicles as a cure to infertility –> he might have been in Paris, let’s go find his house!
Pretty circuitous route, huh? But you can see how I got there. Unfortunately, this fascinating and colourful trip is represented in the conversation as:
“Yeah, it took me 3 hours to get home the other day, there’s been loads of weird delays recently. I hope it doesn’t stop me tomorrow, I want to see if that weird French surgeon who sewed chimp parts into his patient’s testicles lived around here and find his house.”
Cue explosive laughter, or disturbed silence.
I’m not trying to paint myself as a weird yet unique individual, as plenty of people are also interested in the stuff I’m interested in, and crazy 19th century scientists are very, very interesting. I just recognise that when it comes out, a propos of nothing, it is particularly surprising for my fellow conversationist.
Anyways, better get on and clean the flat (by which I mean eat bread in bed while reading The Guardian and considering what bad TV I can watch on a Sunday.)
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