Saturday, 19 December 2009

chasing birdies: are we human, or are we golfers.

When I heard of Tiger’s car accident a few weeks ago I was in the gym. I had just stepped off my treadmill—yes, my treadmill—the one in front of the BBC News screen, and was walking away when out of the corner of my eye I saw the words BREAKING NEWS: TIGER WOODS CAR CRASH. I turned around and ran back hastily pushing people out of my way and giving my usual ahem stare to the woman who was about to get on it and I resumed my workout. Everybody knows. Its mine. And everybody knows not to mess with the lady in the little Nike shorts who sings along out loud to her music with her eyes closed and bobs her head so you don’t know whether she’s running or dancing and if or when she just might fall. But this time, instead of my usual are we human or are we dancers! refrain…all I could say as I stared up at the screen was oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.

I don’t come from a very religious family—not religious at all, in fact, but with a professional golfer for a brother, Tiger Woods probably comes closest to something we may call the Lord in our house. Well, our holy love is a little complicated, for it borders on the cardinal sin of our envious hope that “we” will one day replace him…but until the day, if and when it comes, they meet face-to-face in a play-off, we will love him and cherish him as one of our own. (Or, it turns out, until the day he cheats). I don’t think we have ever missed one tournament of his—certainly none of the majors; Tiger is probably single-handedly responsible for the fact that we have a TV in every room in our house, and come to think of it, probably indirectly responsible for my appropriation of the treadmill in front of the news screen. We have sat in the kitchen, night after night, treating ourselves to nine-course dinners of golf. Considering my mother can’t cheer for her own son on the course (and is oh-so-often snootily shown the SILENCE PLEASE board), she lets it all out on Tiger, almost falling out of her chair to “blow” the ball forward when it hesitates on the lip, and then yelping rather orgasmic Yes, Tiger YESes! when it goes in. The rest of us sit there with our mouths full—as if psychosomatically unable to swallow until the ball goes into the hole. (Wow. Golf lingo really lends itself to a par-5-fairway-length list of double—not bogeys—entendres!)

So when I saw those words on the news – just TIGER WOODS CAR CRASH – no details on the where, when, how serious…my heart started beating faster than my 45 minute cardio session could ever get it to. As far as I was concerned, if not the Lord, Tiger was certainly family. So much so, that I defended him to the core when the first “unverified allegations of an affair” were announced as the possible cause of the car crash. “Fucking media!” I ranted—yes, still on the treadmill (see why they stay away?)—of course they’re going to say that, sew a seed with absolutely no reason to, so that you can sell tabloids for months afterwards with “THE TRUE STORY.” Our Tiger would never cheat! But he did. And luckily I wasn’t on the treadmill when this was confirmed for this would certainly have been the moment of that long anticipated fall.

Of all of the men I have known who have cheated—whether on me or someone else—hearing that Tiger did was perhaps one of the most shocking, and has fittingly gained more press coverage than any other tale of infidelity I can think of. Granted, this has something to do with the fact that the media are just rolling in the rhetoric that golf invites (“Tiger in the Woods…deep in the rough…etc”) and the irony his advertising slogans proffer (Accenture: “some opportunities are not to be missed”). But, I’d hasten to add that there is something intrinsically and specifically shocking about Tiger being “in the rough” which has pricked the media’s curiosity for reasons beyond the obvious one that its news that will sell. Bill Clinton cheated and that blew over in a rather dull impeachment, Brad Pitt cheated and it didn’t lose him his suave rep, but Tiger is a whole new ballgame—and that pun is very intended because I think the reason lies in the game, or the ball—as you wish. I mean, the man can keep his eye on a little white ball well enough, and for long enough, to win 14 majors!—one would think he could manage to keep his eye on his boom boom pow wife. But no, clearly even she doesn’t have as many nuances or grooves as a golf ball.

And I don’t buy the whole fame…fortune…fuck-up sequence. Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, Jimi Hendrix, maybe. Tiger no. Not the man who has made billions, a career and a legacy from a totally different “f” word—focus. The game is about getting a little white ball into a little black hole—there ain’t much room in there for anything else, and there is certainly none for forgiveness. No matter how cunning your club or caddy. Currently short of greens to read, Tiger’s caddy has turned to ethics, pulled out his philosophy-wedge and chipped the cheap “Tiger is human, he has made some mistakes” shot. I’d have aimed for a fairer par and just said, “Tiger is a golfer. Its what he does. Chases birdies.”

Tuesday, 10 November 2009

geography and its discontents.

“Can I just tell you I’ve been looking at you all night and I think you’re fascinating?” (Umm, yes, I suppose you can). “I didn’t want to come over there for fear that one of those guys you’re with is your boyfriend, but now that I’ve caught you alone I couldn’t help but tell you…you are just…so…fascinating! (pause)…is one of them your boyfriend?” I shook my head.

 Wow. Good start, I thought. I was convinced the days of the some enchanted evening tune were long gone…I was sure it only happened in Cary Grant and Bogey movies that a man crossed a room to tell a lady he had been watching her all night. And suddenly I was in one. And my Cary wasn’t too shabby either. I couldn’t help but hum the melody in my head…some enchanted evening…you may see a stranger…across a crowded room…and somehow you know…

All was romance and bliss and butterflies for an eternity of two and half seconds, and then he dropped the bomb question, “Where are you from?” and the needle slipped off my la-la-vinyl. Zzzzzzzzip!

Where are you from?! What is this, a job interview? An application form? A university dorm meet-and-greet? Just imagine if the lyrics to Some Enchanted Evening went “you may see a stranger, across a crowded room, and somehow you know, you know even then, you’ll go over and ask her where she’s from!” Exactly.

I must have been silent for a moment as I listened to my previously chirping birds come crashing down, for he then attempted a guess. “Milan?” I shook my head. “You’re not from Milan?” he said, with a tone so shocked one would think I had just told him I ate poached babies for breakfast.

"No," I responded listlessly, thinking, if one more guy uses geography to chat me up, I’m going to start dressing in flags. Maybe a quilt of flags, where the size of the patch would correspond to how long I had lived in each country. Or, conversely, (and I’ve put some time into this decision)…the next guy who doesn’t use geography to chat me up is totally getting the goods. All the goods.

Really? But you even say ‘no’ like an Italian!”

Huh. “Well that’s because I’ve had to say no to a lot of Italians.” Unfazed by this and laughing it off, he proceeded with his trivial pursuit.

“Paris?” Non cheri, and to save you from the très transparent flattery you’re about to commit by naming another fashion capital…

“Serbia,” I interrupted.

“Wow, I never would have guessed!” he enthused. No kidding. “But you dress exactly like a girl from Milan, I mean, the glasses, the pearls, the blazer…those shoes!” What? A Serbian girl can’t have snakeskin Diors? We may not be in the EU honey, but Dior is one of them blissful lands that I can enter sans visa. (Not sans daddy though, wink).

The conversation proceeded down this dull and predictable course, until he came to the conclusion he had started with—that I was fascinating—and that he wanted my number.

Really? That’s it? You give me a where-are-you-from and a nice-shoes and that’s supposed to provide the basis for the coffee, lunch or dinner we might meet for tomorrow? Ok, you find me fascinating, fair enough, but what am I to find you? Geographically curious? Geographically misled? Give me something…anything! other than geography to remember you by, to want more of! Bravado? Humour? Irony? Shyness? Even shy-guy is better than geo-guy. Shy is an attribute, geography a discipline. Get it? Apples and oranges, my friend, apples and oranges.  

When did it get so easy? Though the pearls, shoes and the rest may not suggest it—I’m very easy to please. I don’t need Nobu, I don’t need Dior, (well, not from you I don’t) and I don’t need long weekends at the Four Seasons in Bali. My philosophy is make me laugh, make me cum and you got me. Surprise me occasionally by warming my towels in the tumble drier while I’m in the shower, and you can keep me forever. But you got to start with something better than where are you from…or else, you know what? Turn around and go back to where you are from…and don’t worry pumpkin, I don’t need to know where that is.

 

Tuesday, 29 September 2009

For Gayer or For Worse

Trust me to fag-hag my way through a wedding. While most women who head to a wedding alone do so “wishin’ and hopin’” to meet their prince charming, and dream this dream with such conviction that they spend as long (if not longer) as the bride does to get ready for the big day…I head to weddings wide-eyed only for the free-flow of bubbly and the prospect of dancing queen my way around the floor…without having to worry about looking ridiculous for that title is strictly reserved for the crazy Elvis uncle. And lately I’m coming to learn there is one other species of queen who share my views. Effeminate though they be, gay men aren’t really going to sit around after the church ceremony fawning over how beautiful the bride was and how perfectly in love not only the newlywed couple but the entire world seem to be! They’re going to sneak off to the hotel pool and erect a fagorama around a silver bucket full of bubbly and pop away with snortingly-hilarious Donatella goss! Straight from the horse’s mouth too!—well, from the man behind her mane, which in her case, is close enough. Then they’ll proceed to bitch and moan about the Ryan Air flight that brought them to that stunning location—as one only should!—and of course, inspired by all the festive and bubbly air, proceed to plan the ultimate new year’s party sans budgeting or inhibition. “Ohhhh….uniforms! men in uniforms!” I couldn’t help but add. “Listen to you! You’re like a gay man trapped in a woman’s body!” Perhaps I am. Perhaps the already complex spectrum of sexuality needs one more category—gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, queer and…me. Won’t get too hung up on the implications of this right now…but yes, in short, we get along well. Only they can carry on a conversation about my gold-tipped, multicoloured, Sobranie cigarettes for longer than it takes me to smoke one, only they can appreciate the “fabulousness dahling” of my “fascinator”—apparently, according to them, the official title for the comb of feathers stuck in my hair—only they have the perfect sun lotion, the perfect factor 15, an “invisible” version, and a “glittery” too! But feathers and glitter aside…for this, arguably could be pulled off just as well by a woman trapped in a woman’s body, what they do do better than any other man or woman possibly could…is…oh gosh, no pun intended…ballroom. Not only will a gay man come running across the dance floor to save you from the two-left-footed-moron who has just asked you to dance, but he will then proceed to spin you around, flip you over his shoulder effortlessly, put you back down, pause to say “wow, you’re good…” and then with a gentle tug on the strap of your dress add, “but hang on honey, you’re about to lose a tit.” I love gay men. I do.

Sunday, 20 September 2009

Mind the Gap: 100 Lessons Learned in London

When I headed to Portobello market yesterday, as I do almost every Saturday morning, there was something oddly familiar about the air. It was one of those perfect mornings that tells you you're exactly on the cusp of summer and autumn...one of those perfect mornings when you realise just a few moments too late that its not yet the season for UGG boots...one of those perfect mornings that turns into a boiling, sheepy, steamy afternoon. And I thought, I remember the last time I came to Portobello Market in my UGGs and boiled! It was exactly one year ago! The day I moved to London. So...in one year, I obviously haven't learned not to wear UGGs before October...but in hopes of comforting myself I came up with a list of 100 things I have learnt. Here goes:
  1. A snow day is not just another day. It isn’t. It really isn’t.
  2. Make sure Selfridges is not “on your way” to anywhere that you’re walking. Ever.
  3. When you’re trying on a dress for an event and looking in the mirror thinking “I’m going to be the most beautiful woman in the room,” what you really should be thinking is “I’m going to be the most broke woman in the room.”
  4. Sunnier does not necessarily mean warmer.
  5. Don’t take your Sunday times to the park. You’ll spend more time running after it than reading it.
  6. The best things in life are not free. It costs £1.50 to sit on a lawn-chair in the park.
  7. If it hasn’t rained all week…it will…soon.
  8. Always read the fine print. Special offers are not really that special, and “complimentary” is never really complimentary.
  9. Stay away from Oxford Street at all times. Except for Sunday mornings at 7. Then its great. Just you and the street cleaners. Bliss.
  10. Kissing the bartender on the cheek can be a ticket to three free glasses of white wine.
  11. “Members only” is bullshit. Three beautiful girls in heels and red lipstick works too.
  12. If someone recommends a great place called Crazy Larry’s don’t listen to them. Its called “crazy” for a reason.
  13. Exclusive sample sales are really not that exclusive. You and every other girl in London will need to stand in line for hours to get in.
  14. Throw your empty Starbucks coffee cup away before you get into the tube. There are no trashcans in the underworld.
  15. Throw your empty Starbucks coffee cup away before you get to Mayfair. There are no trashcans in the upperworld either.
  16. Sometimes changing tube lines can take you longer than it would have if you had just gone up to street level and walked to your destination. Damn you Waterloo.
  17. Don’t buy 1kg bags of flour and 1-litre bottles of olive oil in the supermarket. There’s no Landcruiser waiting in the parking lot to drive all that shit home.
  18. Don’t drop off more than 3 items of clothing for dry cleaning at any one time. The price will be so shocking you’ll drop your coffee cup and dirty all those shirts all over again.
  19. When you’re having a bad day…head to La Durée…one vanilla and one pistachio…can send all your troubles away….!
  20. “A drink” never means “a drink.” Ever.
  21. Spend long hours on Cheyne Walk. You never know when Mr. Jagger will appear. No, no, it hasn’t happened yet. But it will. Stay tuned.
  22. Every once in a while you have to leave London and visit this tiny little place called Bicester Village. It holds treasures galore.
  23. Food shopping at Borough Market does not fall under the category “needs.” Don’t lie to yourself. That prosciutto could only be a want.
  24. Don’t trust GoogleMaps on your iPhone blindly. 376 Fulham Road is not where your iPhone thinks 376 Fulham Road is. Nor is the Western Eye Hospital. “Uh, honey, you’re in Camden right now. The Western Eye Hospital is near Baker Street. Clearly, you really need to go there.”
  25. Go to Portobello market before 11am. Actually, before 10am. Otherwise you’ll feel exactly like you felt when you were leaving that concert last night.
  26. The Hummingbird Bakery opens at 10 and closes at 6. Its not your classic bakery.
  27. The London eye really isn’t all its cracked up to be. But London is trés greeeen!
  28. Stand on the right. Walk on the left. We all need a reminder every once in a while.
  29. And…just when you think you’ve heard it enough times…you’ll forget to…mind the gap!
  30. “Don’t try to get on or off the tube when the doors are beeping.” There’s a really good reason why that’s written all over the tube. Ouch!
  31. You have to wave at the bus if you want it to stop. Looking at the driver, getting your oyster card out, throwing your just-lit cigarette on the floor and stepping on it isn’t enough of a sign.
  32. Don’t step on your cigarette at the bus stop. That way if he doesn’t stop you can pick it up and carry on smoking again. Yes I am totally a believer in the 5-second rule.
  33. Go to the movies alone. Having your own large popcorn is one of life’s simple pleasures.
  34. I’m sorry ma’am, we don’t do cash back. I’m sorry ma’am, we don’t do cash back. I’m sorry ma’am, we don’t do cash back. Tesco doesn’t do cash back.
  35. If you’re trying to save money, take the tube. This is more difficult than it sounds. It means knowing when the last tube is. And wait, here comes the really hard part. It means leaving to make it onto the last tube in time. Yes, leaving. No really, leaving. Like right now. Oh whatever lets just get another drink I’ll take a cab.
  36. Every once in a while, buy the Big Issue. You’ll be surprised how relieving it feels to say yes, having said no 364 times.
  37. When Vogue advertises 30 great coats for every budget what that really means is 30 great coats over 100 pounds. And they aren’t even all that great. Of course, the ones that are…yep, you guessed it…four figures.
  38. You have to know where to get your freshly squeezed orange juice. In some places it tastes like freshly squeezed ass.
  39. If somebody stops you on the street and says, “Excuse me, can I ask you where you get your hair done? Say no. And walk away. Fast.”
  40. Whoever said that hair-o’-the-dog is the solution lied. The hair-o’-the-dog is the problem.
  41. If you’re wondering why you cant get to sleep on a Sunday night its because your body is wondering why you haven’t had a drink.
  42. Top up your oyster.
  43. Top up your oyster.
  44. Top up your oyster.
  45. Some things you never learn.
  46. When you go to visit Virgin Active because you may join it, do not leave your phone number. I repeat. Do not leave your phone number. Virgins are needy.
  47. If you see an ad for a fantastic flat in Knightsbridge for a fantastic price, it doesn’t exist. Some things are literally and simply…to good to be true.
  48. Smile and chat with the cabby. If it turns out you’re 3 pounds short, he’ll let you off the hook. S’aight love!
  49. Addison Lee is not necessarily cheaper than a black cab.
  50. Watch your head when getting in or out of cabs. Some roofs are lower than others.
  51. Think carefully where you’re going before putting a real (whole, head and eyes included) fox around your neck. There are some angry people out there.
  52. Always go outside a pub with someone you know for a cigarette. Drunken smokers always feel compelled to have an idiotic conversation with you.
  53. If you don’t have someone to smoke with, make sure you have a fake name to give someone you don’t want to give your real one to. Mary just wont cut it.
  54. Mary?! (I totally am from Berkshire! Bahkshire!)
  55. Oh. That reminds me. Berkshire is Bahkshire. Tottenham is tott’n’am. Marylebone is marleybone. Won’t even get into Leicester, Gloucester and the rest. I just don’t get it.
  56. Don’t smile at men you don’t want to talk to. No matter what else you’re doing or saying to make it clear that you don’t want to talk to them, the smile means boundless encouragement.
  57. When you leave lunch at midnight don’t expect to feel anything but awful tomorrow.
  58. Save all your receipts. You never know when you will be short for cash and more than willing to return that item you thought you couldn’t live without last week.
  59. Don’t talk to strangers in the street. They may try to kiss you.
  60. Walking somewhere might get you there quicker than taking the bus.
  61. Always ask for a double-bag at Tesco.
  62. Don’t go to Primark unless you have at least three hours of time on your hands and a burning desire to stand in a lot of queues. Time is money too, you know.
  63. Don’t try to argue with someone who says, “I’m sorry ma’am, that’s store policy.” They only have one response. “I’m sorry ma’am, that’s store policy.”
  64. Asking to speak to the manager doesn’t always help. He’ll only add a “terribly” in there. “I’m terribly sorry ma’am, that’s store policy.”
  65. Make sure you’re watching when you get something gift-wrapped. Those interns sure know how to mix things up.
  66. Friends aren’t terribly overjoyed when they get a teacup for their birthday. A single teacup. With pink roses on it.
  67. To the question “would you like to open a tab” always say no. You never know how many more thirsty fellows will join.
  68. Do not think that Ralph Lauren is a good place to go to “get out of the rain.”
  69. And don’t forget your umbrella on your way out an hour later. You’ll need it to keep all your purchases dry!
  70. Don’t tell people you went fox hunting. They’ll ask you a hell of a lot of questions about fox hunting you don’t have the answer to. Foxes? Who said anything about foxes? I went for the ride of my life, and hung on for dear life. That’s all I know.
  71. Don’t drink Costa Coffee. Ick.
  72. If you’re in need of a pick-me-up, go walk around Chelsea Football Club during a match. You hear people cheering all the time and as you’re the only one on the street you can reasonably lead yourself to believe they’re cheering for you.
  73. 5pm on a Friday is a really good time to get things done. Everyone else is at the pub.
  74. The Electric is so not the best place for Sunday brunch. You can’t smoke there even if you are lucky enough to get a table outside. “Oops! Terribly sorry! Somehow didn’t see all those big red signs that say no smoking!”
  75. Think twice before you go to anything for which you got free tickets. There’s usually a damn good, and very simple, reason why they’re free.
  76. You can’t change the fact that people talk about the weather. Just join in. Or leave.
  77. Crossing the street is a martial art form. Read the instructions painted on the street. Press the button. Look left. Look right. Walk. Go around the barriers. Read the instructions painted on the street. Press the button. Look left. Look right. Walk. Oh. And watch out for bicycles.
  78. Bicycles are traffic too.
  79. Avoid walking by construction sites behind an ugly woman. It’s not really flattering to have the workers whistle at you when you realize they whistle at just about anything female that walks by.
  80. Don’t read the paper over someone’s shoulder on the tube. They always get off before you’re done.
  81. Don’t do Sudoku on the tube. You’ll miss your stop. 1, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9…….
  82. When using a self-check-out, always BAG the item after scanning it. Having a machine repeat PLEASE WAIT FOR ASSISTANCE seven times in front of a whole queue of people can only make a bad day worse.
  83. Don’t take the bus home after a really good night out. Total buzzkill. Busskill!
  84. Last call for alcohol is really the last call. Doesn’t matter how many times you beg. Or how pretty you are. Just drink up and leave.
  85. The Hilton Hotel in Paddington has a bar that’s open all night.
  86. Do nice things for people. Karma seems to take the Circle Line in London and comes back around rather soon.
  87. No matter how tired or drunk you may be, always take your make-up and jewelry off before you get into bed. Pearls are not friendly bedfellows.
  88. When you sign your bill for champers at Claridge’s, take the pen and coasters home with you. That’ll make you feel like it was that bit more worth it.
  89. Don’t get first class train tickets. You’ll just be stuck in a carriage of angry snobs who are also wondering what on earth they paid for.
  90. Don’t trust BBC weather.
  91. Actually, take whatever BBC weather says to mean its opposite.
  92. Buy your cigarettes in duty-free. Lots and lots of cigarettes.
  93. When you get invited to the countryside for the weekend, go. There’s a good reason why London’s empty in the summer.
  94. You’re not going to meet your yacht-owning, polo-playing, prince charming at a Charity event. Charity events are for old people.
  95. Don’t talk to people in the jacuzzi at the gym. Its just not the place for small talk.
  96. Don’t walk down Edgware road alone. Whether provocatively dressed or not. Just don’t do it. Something about shisha or hummus makes men glare and whistle more intensely than usual.
  97. Don’t bother blow-drying your hair. London knows when you do. And its not long before the clouds gather…and the curls reappear.
  98. Don’t talk to bus drivers. Besides the fact that there’s a sign next to them telling you not to do so…they’re really not a very friendly bunch of people.
  99. When in doubt…PIMMS.
  100. Learn it. Live it. Love it. 

Thursday, 20 August 2009

facadebook, or, how casablanca taught me to read between the lines of facebook.

“I have an embarrassing admission to make,” a friend tells me over the phone. “I have never seen Casablanca.” “Neither have I!” I exclaim in ecstatic testimony of our similitude. Finally, I think, someone I can go and watch it with. But before my excitement can even begin to ferment, before the butterflies in my stomach set to fluttering at the thought of seeing a film I have been meaning to see for-seemingly-ever, he stops me, with a stinging, shocking phrase belied only by its brevity—“It’s in your favourites!” It is to the list of favourite films on my Facebook profile that he refers. Turns out I am the one with the embarrassing admission. His was nothing but an honest one. But the embarrassment one may imagine I would feel in that moment is completely dampened or replaced by sentiments of absolute shock and stupefaction. Why on earth would I put a film I have not seen amongst my favourites? Though, to be fair, I had sung the theme song As Time Goes By at a high school music recital once, and my untarnished memory of the lyrics once won me a piece of pie in a game of Trivial Pursuit. And along with these lyrics I knew enough other details and quotes from the movie to get me through a dinner party during which someone may have assumed I had seen it. But, there is no amount of Googleable information, no plethora of memorized lyrics or quotes that could erase or substitute for the simple truth that I had (and have!) not seen the film. And no excuse remotely acceptable to account for having put it in my favourites. What I know of Casablanca is little more than a blurb that might grace its sleeve. Turns out, face-, like any other book, shouldn’t be judged by its cover. Having criticized countless of Facebook profiles for their colourful embellishing and rigging, there was only one thing I could say to myself—“Here’s looking at you, kid.”

The Casablanca “incident” has remained an inside joke between my friend and I. I know now that every time I say I haven’t seen a film, he will facetiously suggest that I put it in my favourites. It never gets old; his sarcasm never loses its sting, and my stupefaction is always opulently renewed. However, the embarrassment of “getting caught” that day will never be as insufferable as the excruciatingly discombobulating realization that I had become one of “them”—one of the masses of people intoxicated by the 21st century opiate that has become Facebook—the masses I had so mordantly criticized and never considered myself a possible member of. I resisted joining it for three years when I was in college, thinking it an utterly superfluous and superficial mode of communication, not to mention, a downright waste of time. Students would run through the university halls of residence to knock on my door and ask my roommate if she had seen the comment they had posted on her Facebook wall. I would think to myself, you can walk down the corridor and talk to her, you can call her on her room phone for free and talk to her, its after 9pm so you can even call her on her cellphone and talk to her for free, you can send an email to her university, Hotmail or Gmail address that will arrive before you can even make it down the corridor, but instead, you choose to write on her Facebook wall and then proceed to come over and ask her if she read it. I mean, really?

Of course, there were simple means behind this madness.  Writing on someone’s Facebook wall afforded you a luxury that no other mode of communication save for shouting it from a mountaintop allowed—everyone would see it; Facebooking is exhibitionism par excellence. Anyone who chooses to virtually graffiti somebody’s Facebook wall over dozens of other private modes of communication, can only have one motive—that everyone who walks, or rather, surfs, past that wall, will see it. And sure enough, two minutes later, there would be another knock on the door, for Person B wanted to ask my roommate if she had seen what Person A had written on her wall, and in addition what Person B had written back! I would roll my eyes in secret and continue writing my fifteen-page essay on the Kantian sublime, thinking myself much too high-minded for such petty nonsense.

­­Of course, back then, Facebook was restricted to college students in America. Having attained great success at Harvard where it was originally launched in February 2004 with the noble intention of bringing students together and fostering a university-wide online community, by autumn of the same year it had gone nationwide, opening up to almost all other American universities. For young students who had just left their homes and friends for the first time and moved away to college, it proffered the perfect mechanism for not only making new friends, but keeping in touch with old ones, as well as keeping tabs on their new ones. The courses students were taking were listed on their profiles and even though one may never have spoken to their fellow class nerd in person, no one was above sending them a Facebook message to ask what the homework was, or getting in touch with someone who had taken the course the previous semester to ask for a textbook or study notes. Facebook created the illusion that they were all friends, or could be, with the click of a button on a tab that says, “Request Friend.”

The popularity contest university students thoughts they had left behind when they graduated from high school was renewed, with burning virtual vigour. The titles of “Student Council President” or “Prom Queen,” were no longer what was sought after or recognized. Campaigns, elections and votes were hardly necessary. The new polling mechanism was very simple. The “coolest” person at university was the one with the most Facebook friends. I remember him well, and even more clearly remember the day his friend count rose to three figures. The news travelled faster than high school gossip ever had. Overnight, the guy who was commonly known as “Vegan Stephen” was re-christened as (pardon my, or their, French), “Stephen Motherfuckin’ Taylor.” The last time I remember checking after that day, he had six hundred friends, six “motherfuckin’” hundred. But Stephen Taylor was popular on Facebook for other reasons. He had a way with words; his status box, or list of activities, or section “about me,” was always filled with pure poetry. It wasn’t the usual, “I like swimming, reading and listening to music.” And so, as in high school, people copied the “cool kid,” and Facebook became not only a quest for popularity, but for originality, turning everyone into a self-proclaimed poet, philosopher or comedian.

When the photo-sharing tool was introduced in September of 2005, the popularity and originality contests grew to a new dimension. Who had been to the coolest new year’s party, who had spent Spring Break in Puerto Rico, who had met and taken photos with somebody famous—this became the intrigue du jour. But it didn’t even have to be that grand, cool, or far away. They could have been photos of an ordinary get-together in a dingy, old dorm room. What was important was that you looked like you were having the time of your life. I had never seen such big smiles, such displays of ecstasy, drug-induced or otherwise, as I began to see posted on Facebook. It wasn’t enough to have a lot of friends. You had to have a lot of fun too. Leaving college parties, you would almost always hear the words, “put those photos up on Facebook!” being shouted in between goodbyes. And sure enough, they would be up before dawn. Students who were previously knocking to inquire about wall-posts were now busily uploading photos onto Facebook, some going to the lengths of actually taking photos for Facebook, others going even further to edit them, need I say it, for Facebook. Of course, following the posting of photos came captioning, tagging and commenting. As if that huge smile wasn’t enough to prove that you are one big ball of fun, you had to add a funny caption, or comment, to which your friend would then reply, and so on and so forth. And all the better if it was some cryptic inside joke in a coded language that no one else could understand. So not only did the photos say, “Look at me! I am having fun,” they said, “I’m laughing and I won’t tell you why.”

Towards the end of my third year however, Facebook, like any other American product that had seen success, had gone worldwide. Succumbing to the umpteenth urge from one of my friends to join it “in case I might find friends I had lost touch with,” I sat down one night to give it a try. And suddenly, as I confirmed my registration on Facebook, there they all were, or a lot of them, the click of a button away. The ones I had often thought of, or wondered about, the ones I had completely forgotten, and the ones I cared not one bit for. My American friends had been excited by the notion of finding friends online they hadn’t seen since last year’s high school prom. I found friends I hadn’t seen since we sat in our knickers in a sandbox. It was one big virtual yearbook, and before I knew it, I was back in high school. Or rather, at one big virtual reunion. As is the case with most reunions, on the surface lies a spattering of grown-up catch-up—where are you now, what have you been up to, congratulations on your baby girl, sympathies for the loss of your father, and so on. Below the surface however, we are all still high school students at just another recess, wanting to know who’s who and who’s with who, who has come out of the closet, and who should.

I may have been too high-minded for the ecstasy of communication that was played out in the dormitory corridors, but I couldn’t say that I was above the basic human instinct of curiosity, that I didn’t revel in some flattery, and that I didn’t have a little high school student deep inside me desperate to make her ex-boyfriend jealous, or sorry that he had lost her, regardless of how much time had gone by or to what smithereens any previous sentiments had shrivelled. And dare I say, I don’t know many people who are. Anyone who has and perhaps even hasn’t attended high school, retains some of that soap-operatic sensibility. We are all yearning to hear, or do, something that inspires that two-word reaction that is so definitively “high school” – “no way!” And what’s more, even if we recognize this, we will revert to a high-school justification—“everyone’s doing it!” Almost literally, everyone. Facebook recently reported over 200 million active users. “Everyone and their mother,” as they say. Even mine.

In the beginning, she kept saying “I’m too old for this.” Now she calls me from another continent and spends ten minutes reading her newsfeed to me. I used to complain because she’d call to ask me if I was eating enough or if I had brushed my teeth. Now she calls to tell me who else is brushing their teeth. Great. Young or old, it seems we all retain the subconscious desire to stay in school, not so much for the classes, as for the news-feeding recesses in between. And fortunately, for the typical, modern-day office worker, Facebook paved the ideal yellow-brick road back to high school, for most, if not all, employees find themselves in front of a computer screen (if they are lucky, with no one behind them). And the real world work they have—putting data into spreadsheets, compiling contracts, cold-calling, whatever it may be—could hardly be as interesting as the Facebook profile of someone who is listed as “no longer in a relationship,” or fantastic photographs from some barely known “friend’s” recent trip to Acapulco. The back of the computer screen is the ultimate sham façade; the intensity of the user’s gaze would appear to suggest he is “hard at work,” while behind the ruse, the only work he is doing is editing his Facebook status to say that he is “hard at work.” There are few things more oxymoronic, or moronic, than a Facebook status that reads “busy at work.” “Bored,” “distracted”…perhaps, but not busy.

It is no wonder then, that it has been banned from many offices worldwide. Facebook presents the perfect antidote to work, in the perfectly deceptive “seems like work” form. But that people can be, or are, bored and distracted at work is an age-old concept. Desk jobs have always been and will always be, in many cases, less than captivating. And that people choose not to do them, or do other things to keep themselves engaged, is not a product of Facebook; Melville’s Bartleby chose the much more simplistic route of stubbornly repeating his infamous “I’d prefer not to”. The difference however, between Bartleby and the modern day office-Facebooker, is that Bartleby didn’t feel the need to shout his idleness (or industriousness, for that matter) from the mountaintops, to publicize and advertise it, and make it known to hundreds of  “friends.” Lord knows, had Facebook existed in Bartleby’s time, he’d have had one and only one response to the notion of changing his status or commenting on somebody else’s—“I’d prefer not to.”

And lately, I have come to share Bartleby’s sentiments. To put it in high-school terms, Facebook is so five minutes ago…dot com! I found it interesting in the beginning. It made me, for a moment, believe that I was still in the sandbox, and all the friends I had ever had were sitting around me. We were building castles and throwing sand at each other. Of course this was the way my subconscious painted it. The reality was that we were building virtual relationships based on nothing but façades, and the sand we were throwing at each other was faux-happiness—airbrushed, poeticized, nit-picked, deep-fried and sugar-coated nuggets of our lives and selves—with the intention of feeding each other’s green-eyed monsters and our own insatiable ego, not the noble one of “reconnecting.” The truth is, of the three hundred odd friends I reconnected with through Facebook, I daresay that any of them grew any closer to me, or any more important, than they had been fifteen years ago before we had Facebook or even email. In fact, the notion that we were only one click away from contact with each other and yet neither of us clicked that button, exposed to me the triviality, if not utter falsity, of our so-called “friendship.”

The people I consider friends are the ones who know what is going on in my life regardless of whether or not it appears in the status box on my profile page. They are the ones who call, or come to see me, the ones I go and have a drink with, not the ones who send me a virtual martini. If only those virtual drinks had been a little more intoxicating, perhaps I never would have had the clarity of sight to see through this shallow screen. Though, I don’t deny – virtual intoxication too, clearly has its merits, for few of us realize exactly how affected, addicted, or shallow we may have become. “My grandmother had a stroke” hardly makes for such interesting dinner conversation as “My grandmother is on Facebook” nowadays. Needless to say, I threaten to leave dinner parties when people start talking about Facebook. Surely we can find other things to talk about, no? Anyone seen Casablanca?

I still have not. But I do still remember the lyrics of the theme song. And until I can say that I have seen the movie, I will relegate to calling the song a favourite, for the message “As Time Goes By” conveys, is truly timeless:

You must remember this/ A kiss is still a kiss/ A sigh is just a sigh/ The fundamental things apply/ As time goes by/ And when two lovers woo/ They still say I love you/ On this you can rely/ No matter what the future brings/ As time goes by/ Moonlight and love songs never out of date/ Hearts full of passion, jealousy and hate/ Woman needs man/ And man must have his mate/ That no one can deny/ Its still the same old story/ A fight for love and glory/ A case of do or die/ The world will always welcome lovers/ As time goes by.

As time goes by, technology will continue to make things faster and easier. I do not deny the utility and convenience of the internet; I now do and buy many things online that will avoid me any unnecessary travelling or queuing. But forming or fostering a friendship or relationship was never something that was inconvenient or difficult, never something you had to queue up for, never something that needed to be made any easier. “Its still the same old story, a fight for love and glory.” And I shall always prefer to fight for my love and glory in real life. If hundreds of friends are the glory I yearn for, then I can and shall make them without ever having to send them a “Friend Request.” “No matter what the future brings,” no matter what Facebook comes up with, how much closer or more real it can make that virtual connection appear, it will never bring two people close enough for a kiss, and no amount of shared photos will ever stand for, or replace, true happiness or love. Facebook, unlike moonlight and love songs, has become “out of date” for me, and perhaps will, for others. I have graduated from high school yet again, and do not feel the need to return. Of course, should I ever feel the need for a dose of artifice, pretense, or make-believe…there will always be film. Thankfully, there are many “favourites” I have not yet seen. à

Monday, 17 August 2009

good times with the sunday times; some o/bit/e-size musings on newspapers…

 

In the last year I’ve had the opportunity to house-sit for many a friend when they went away on holiday. Some have sent me long emails enumerating detailed dos and donts with the asceticism of PhD scholars, some have put a concise few on a post-it on the fridge…and some have simply left me a voicemail saying, “you’ll be fine, call me if you have any problems.” But at the end of all of these…no matter how short or long, verbose or reticent, trusting or not, there is one instruction that never fails to appear…(besides, of course, open-the-windows-and-light-a-candle-when-you-smoke-in-the-house-because-even-though-you’re-not-supposed-to-I-know-you-will)…and that is—don’t forget to get the Sunday Times.

Yepyep, I know. I may forget to water the flowers. I may leave a teaspoon or two unwashed in the sink, and I may eat all your smoked salmon and goat cheese, but I will not forget to get you the Sunday Times. I do it anyway…so it just means getting two instead of one—an act, that for some reason, gives me unspeakable pleasure. Two Sunday Times please! Yes, you heard me, TWO! Ch-ching! It’s the only tongue-twister I can do inebriated. Twosundaytimestwosundaytimestwosundaytimestwosundaytimestwosundaytimes! The Sunday Times are special. Some consider them so special that it’s the only newspaper they buy. Instead of reading Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday…they catch-up on the week-in-short in the Sunday Times….and! they get the entire TV-schedule for the following week too! Not to mention the CULTURE and the Sunday Times Magazines…oh! I get by with a little help from [these] friends…

***

I heart newspapers. I do. There’s something so blissfully paradoxical about them, no? As I dig through my bag each morning for my wallet to buy one…rummaging past gizmos-and-gadgets-galore from the new world, including an iPod(nano), an iPhone, an iBook—(they all seem to begin with an i, nowadays, don’t they?) I can’t help but smile when I suddenly have in my hand a giant, freshly minted, printed and folded newspaper which reminds me that the small print of the old world still lingers…and is still written pervasively into the spaces underneath our arms. They are, in a way that nothing else I can think of is, (other than the metal coins I use to pay for them), so definitively old school. To the tune of the Beach Boys song, “wouldn’t it be nice if we were older…?” I hum…wouldn’t it be nice if we called them oldpapers?

***

In yesterday’s Sunday Times Magazine there was an article about Steve Jobs—the infamous Apple-technocrat who came up with all the iHooHa. Apparently he’s working on something called a tablet – a laptop not much bigger than the iPhone. Erm, iWHY? Why are we so obsessed with making technology bite-size when we’re not going to eat it? (Just a thought). But as I read through this article that reeked of an age obsessed with the electronic, the digital, the nano, the new…I couldn’t help but notice I was reading it from a form of “technology” that hasn’t changed in decades….centuries…eons! Well, ok, its gotten a little bit more pictorial and colourful…much to my dismay, the once sublimely monotonous columns of black-and-white teeny-type have been replaced and interrupted with colourful half- or whole-page images, but beyond this, its more or less the same archaic, stapled, fragile pile of tissue they once read in the days of yore…

***

Newspapers are still tooting along the course of their unbending revolution…the ultimate anti-revolution, the revolution of unchange. I think we should build a temple to the newspaper. From newspapers of course. Duh. They don’t seem get any smaller…the print doesn’t get any bigger...the big news still only comes in the form of a three-to-eight-word headline…and the rest of it is still…rather small. Even I sometimes need glasses to read it. Eek!

***

[A few years ago, when the late Zambian president Levy Mwanawasa was likened to a “cabbage”—the ultimate unthinking vegetable, because he had “allegedly”—I love that newspaper word that you never seem to come across anywhere but in a newspaper—suffered severe brain damage in a near-death car accident, the following day’s headline was composed of his priceless seven-word defense: I AM NOT CABBAGE, I AM STEAK! To this day, this is my favourite newspaper headline ever. Ever.]

…I wonder if those words appeared in his obituary a few years later…may his steaky-soul rest in peace…

When I graduated from Bard College, the President, Leon Botstein began his address to the graduating class with what he called one “pithy” word of advice: “When you read the newspapers,” he said, “always start with the obituaries. That way, everything that follows, whether in the newspaper or in your day, won’t seem so bad.” I had always thought the obit pages were reserved for the likes of my grandparents, who religiously read them, with unwavering certainty that they would recognize a face or name, coloured only by the chilling truth that they too, would no doubt, soon appear amongst them…

One obituary in yesterday’s paper bore a subtitle composed of these four words…writer, lover, sailor and spy! Ahhhh! Can I say it again? Writer, lover, sailor and spy! Why, oh why, did such a man have to die! [When is the funeral and will his sons be in attendance? – Chanel suit, and chanELLO, I’m there! With all due respect, and sympathy, of course.

***

When I was little…little, as in not much taller than a newspaper…I spent many a morning sitting at the feet of my grandfather staring at the back of the elephantine newspaper he held and so intently read…waiting patiently for his huge-beer-bottle-glass-magnified-eyes to peer through the middle as his giant hairy hands brought the two corners together to turn the page…I gaped in boundless awe at how he managed to maneuver the giant contraption...to sustain it so elegantly in all its fragility and capriciousness…I thought it a rather exquisite and graceful, and yet somehow, bestial performance. It was a rustling battle each time, one that both he and I knew, he would win every time, with only the utmost effortlessness. I imagined there must have been some school grown-ups went to…where they learned how to hold a newspaper, how to turn the pages, how to fold it so as to keep them all in order…such knowledge could only come from the most rigorous training…a training so rigorous it made their hands bigger too…

I would then have dreams in which my hands swelled to Gulliver-dimensions…dreams in which I too, sat behind two thick, seemingly impenetrable frames of glass, and with my bug-like eyes read through the newspaper…which in my colossal hands seemed hardly bigger than a piddly-pamphlet…

***

And when mind wasn’t lost in these metamorphological meanderings, I couldn’t help but wonder what it was that he was reading about. Did he know all those people? All those places? All that news? Why did he squander so many hours of each morning reading a paper that tomorrow’s would render old? As the Rolling Stones famously sang, “Who wants yesterday’s papers? Who wants yesterday’s girls? Nobody in the woooorrrrllllldddd…..!”

Though I would perhaps agree with them about yesterday’s girls (but even this is not my territory)…I must disagree about yesterday’s papers. Who wants them? I do! I have a real problem throwing away newspapers. They have so many uses! Wrapping…packing…stuffing…painting….separating photographs…indoor gardening…ironing (seriously, my mom sometimes uses them for ironing!—put a newspaper over a tablecloth with melted candlewax on it and iron—the wax comes off!) And you thought that dinner party would stain your memories forever. Ctrl-Z! Zip-eh-dee-doo-ta-da!

And then…there’s stuffing your rained-on suede pumps with newspaper to soak up the water…or brand new ones to keep their shape…sitting on one when the grass is too wet or a bench too cold…covering your blow-dried hair when you get caught sans umbrella yet again! in yet another! spurt of London rain…they are the perfect accessory. As essential as Stephen Jones beret or gold chain belt…I do, I do…I love it when the front page of the newspaper matches my outfit…only it can do so in that perfect nonchalant, seemingly unplanned, effortless and priceless (well, 90p) way. Ch-chic! If that isn’t more dash than cash I don’t know what is.

Oh. And there is one absolutely priceless and efficient use I once heard of (and I apologize in advance for naming it, but I just can’t resist): save it for that moment when you have no other choice but to use it as toilet paper…you may just hit two birds with one stone, if you get to smear your s….over some s…’s face! Mmmm, what pleasure that must be. A pleasure big enough to forget that you may have little black and white print tattooing your tush for the rest of the day!) Again, sorry. So…all in all…their uses, like the arrangement of miniature letters and words and columns that line them…seem endless… yesterday’s girls: take that!

***

And then…to capitalize on a rather crude segue…there’s the smell. I heart the smell of newspapers. I doubt I would heart newspapers so much if it weren’t for their smell….that oily, inky, epic scent of journalistic heaven, or hell…as you wish. If history had a smell, that would be it…

Herstory had a similar scent, for when she was daddy’s little girl and he would stroke her cheek, his hands always smelt of three things: cigarettes…money…newspapers. Perhaps this is why I toy with these three things all day long…yearning for my own “days of yore…” and if and when the smell should fail me…there’s always the taste…yes, that sooty, industrious, bitter-sweet taste that somehow rubs off onto the piece of gum you put in your mouth…when you suddenly remember you licked your finger to turn the page…yes, you shouldn’t have…but you did…you had to…oh! That taste…! Perhaps someone should bottle the newspaper “spice.” That would put a nice spin on things…

***

Dear Steve Jobs, please don’t invent an iNewspaper…for without my newspaper, this “I” would be not I…

Sunday, 9 August 2009

Religious Encounters Part I: To Each His Own

 “To each, his own,” I often say when people ask me if I believe in God. As in, to each, his own god—god with a small “g,” not a capital one. My emphasis on the lowercase here in many ways mimics my intentions when I give that response—to trivialize, or secularize the notion of “god” and steer clear of a Conversation with a capital “C,” about Religion with a capital “R.” This is partly because this question is often posed to me on, say, a Friday night, in a bar or restaurant—times and places I hardly consider adequate or inviting for such a Conversation. “In vino veritas” may hold some truth, but let’s be honest; your vision of God after your third glass of wine is something neither I, nor He (bless him), want to hear about. The other reason behind my constant attempts to pull the conversation back down from the Heavens is that, truth be told, I don’t know much about Religion.

In my curious years when I would come home from school and ask my mother who this He was that I kept hearing more and more about, she always had (and has) the same response: “Darling, we grew up in a Communist country—religion was forbidden, the churches were locked up, I’m the wrong person to ask, I know nothing.” I have lately come to consider it “blasphemous” (in the secular sense), that churches were ever locked up, as my art history education has inspired in me a passionate aesthetic affinity for them. Nonetheless, I can’t help but imagine I will one day have a similar answer for my children: “Darling I was raised by parents who grew up in a Communist country and didn’t have any religious education to pass on to me, I’m the wrong person to ask, I know nothing.”

I may then proceed to tell them about the saints, the holy trinity, the sacrifice of Abraham, and other such snippets which I learned of from masters such as Velázquez, Bernini and Kierkegaard, but I would most likely then return to the safety of my parents’ black-and-white, no-religion, know-nothing upbringing, for mine would take slightly longer to divulge. While they grew up in a Communist nation, I spent the majority of my childhood in a Christian one— not only were the churches not locked up, they often made their way into your home. To this day, I remember vividly the moment in which I learned my “don’t talk to strangers lesson” for good—who could forget the caustic punishment I received the day I let two strangers into our home because they smiled at me when I opened the gate and asked if they could see my mom. Yes, they were Jehova’s witnesses, and needless to say, they all-too-soon witnessed the way out of our home the minute my mother laid eyes on them.

I assume the severity of the punishment was intended to dissuade me from ever letting any stranger in again, for strangers come in moulds much worse than messengers of God, I now know. And lord knows I learned my lesson; in fact I think I once forbade a friend of my mother’s entry because I didn’t know her—a stunt that got me in a whole new sort of trouble—what’s a child to do! But as much as those “messengers” were mere samples of strangers to be wholly mistrusted, there was also something specifically and inherently scary about them, about Jehova’s witnesses themselves. I still get goosebumps when I see them in the street now, in their readily recognizable two-boys-in-white-shirts-with-red-ties-on-bicycles format. I imagine these goosebumps are some sort of Freudian repercussion inspired by the vague childhood memory of the persistence they exercised in entering our home that day, the trouble my mother had in getting them to leave, and the slaying tags they pinned on her upon their reluctant departure, calling her blasphemous, profane, and everything else short of Satan. Poor woman could have gone up in flames! Not to mention, and this is the really disturbing part, the sick manipulation of an innocent six-year-old girl hardly critical enough for the rigorous role of gatekeeper—a stunt just as perfectly befitting a rapist, murderer, thief, or other criminal. So, while my parents were in their early years forced to look through the Marxist lens and consider religion an “opiate,” I was momentarily fashioned to consider it a crime.

Some twenty years later, similar “messengers” who hang around Hyde Park on Sundays still make me shudder—who knew leaflets could be so terrifying…or Sundays in the park, for that matter.  But the terror is of a purely subconscious, associative sort—I’ve grown out of my six-year-old understanding of Religion as crime. Quite the contrary in fact, I’ve come to harbor a great admiration for it, and I have another fanatical “happy-clapper” type to thank for it. Some years ago when I graduated from university and took some time off to figure out what to do next, I spent some time traveling and along the way visited a childhood friend of mine. Sure enough, as had my own, her breasts had grown, her sense of style had changed, her naivete had turned to mild cynicism. Far from the silly girls who used to traipse around nightclubs in their mid-teens wearing skimpy-strapless-backless-loincloth nothings, coughing their way through their first cigarette, throwing up blue from too many try-it!-tastings of Sambuca, and kissing every boy that paid us a smidgen of attention, we had grown into mature, discerning, fully-clothed, Chablis-sipping, women. Our interaction was no less exciting than it once had been as we shared experiences and traced our transformations in front of the mirrors we had always been for each other. But there was one marked difference—while I had become “just” a woman, she had also become a woman of God.

All the uncertainties I had about my future, the signs I longed to find for the yellow-brick road I wanted paved before me, the gems I was trying to unearth that would adorn me into the woman I wanted to become—she had one brief and simple answer to: “God will show me the way.” I made lists and lists of pros and cons for different options and spent many a sleepless night rummaging through them in my mind, while she had a quiet candle-lit bubble bath, said her prayers, and fell soundly asleep upon the comforting pillow that tomorrow was in His hands. This! Coming from the girl whose footsteps you always unavoidably followed when you tried your first drink, drug or boy, the girl who had always been there and done that (or him), before you had. I hardly doubt God showed her that way. Who are you and what did you do to my friend?! In an attempt to find an answer to this question I convinced her to go out with me and relive one of our crazy Friday nights for old times’ sake. When we woke up the next day at noon, having gone to sleep blindingly drunk some six hours before, she was hardly the fun-loving, up-for-anything gal she had been a few hours, or years before—she was morbidly depressed, scornfully angry, wholly unrecognizable. “When I do that,” she began to explain, “when I get drunk, and act like an idiot, and go to sleep at dawn, I feel I have sinned in the eyes of God.” This time I had the brief and simple response, and lord knows it was hardly well received: “Honey, what you’re feeling is not a sin, its called a hangover.

And that was when I coined my “to each, his own” response. I too, had a small measure of regret that “morning,” a feeling that I had “sinned,” but not in the eyes of God. I felt, as many of us do after a drunken night, that I had somehow betrayed my own moral, ethical, behavioral code, my own notions of right and wrong, my very own gospel. Not to mention that we had hardly done anything “sinful,” certainly compared to what we used to do—we had simply gone out and had a few drinks, gotten happy and lively, and gone home late—together, not with any boys. There hadn’t been any coughing, blue vomit, or liquids exchanged with any strangers. We had simply played exaggerated, roudy, drunken versions of ourselves—something I occasionally consider fun, and something I always recall fondly the following day. Yes, I may have spoken my mind or danced my dance with more vigor than I would have post-afternoon tea, but to say that last night’s persona was any less me, or that my behavior was in anyway sinful, is a blatant and unwarranted exaggeration.

We all have standards, codes, “things”—for lack of a better word—that we believe in and allow to guide us, to show us the way. To someone it might be fashion, Vogue is their bible, and wearing something that is last-season is “sinful.” To another it might be elitism—having a glass of headache-inducing-box-wine instead of a mature, oaky Bordeaux is not drinking, its straying. And to me, it is my upbringing—the values my parents painstakingly taught me to uphold, together with the standards I then added on my own. Like my friend who woke up that day believing she had sinned in the eyes of God, I often find myself morbidly disappointed that I have sinned in the eyes of my parents, and in the eyes of the me They Created. We can all have our “bibles,” our rights, our wrongs and our sins, without having God—we can all, and do all, have our own “gods.” I don’t mean to say that one shouldn’t believe in God or be religious, bless you if you do, I am subject to your eternal envy, but I must emphasize again, “to each, his own.”

[To be continued…]

Friday, 24 July 2009

Be Prepared! Some Reflections on Girl Guiding...

As I walked out of my building today, handbag in one hand, umbrella in the other, the caretaker, who held the door open for me, said “you must have been a girl guide.” “Sorry?” Pointing to my umbrella, he said again, “you must have been a girl guide – be prepared.” I smiled at him, frowned at the rain and headed on out. And just as the coldness of reason began to creep upwards from the wet soles of my shoes, I clicked. Oh! Girl Guide! Be prepared! I get it! Yes! Actually, I was! Wow. And for some reason, before today, I had completely blocked out that memory. How could I ever forget the priceless afternoons I spent clad in awful shapeless dresses and sashes doing silly things like shoveling earth all for the sake of a little badge with a sickle embroidered on it! Erm, call the gardener. Get him to shovel. And then give me a badge for management, damnit.

One would think, in a private school for relatively privileged kids, they could have offered a more constructive extracurricular activity. In a developing country where there are countless numbers of people starving and suffering and dying daily, surely we could have done something slightly more beneficial or humanitarian than dig up the lawns that lined the neatly manicured playgrounds of our private school (only for the gardeners to have to fix them later)…no? We were rather like Marie Antoinette—who built entire dairies for herself and her friends to play at “milking” in. Of course they were built from only the finest ceramics and porcelain, and I’ll go out on a limb here and guess that the girls spent more time admiring the interior than actually getting anywhere near a teat.

According to their website, the mission statement of the Girl Guides Association is to enable girls to make a difference to the world, and I’m certain that someone, somewhere along the way to my girl guide experience rather misinterpreted the word “difference.” But then again, the website also boasts Kate Moss as a celebrity former girl guide, so perhaps they are misguided all the way to the core. Be prepared, snort coke. What would the badge for that look like, I wonder. Maybe you wouldn’t get a badge for that—you’d just get a gram. Or a mirror. Or a rolled up hundred dollar bill—so that you’re always prepared! Snifff!

The caretaker was right though. I was prepared. Call me a genius, I knew it would rain. It rained yesterday, it rained the day before, and the day before that. But I think I used something along the lines of mathematics (probability?), or uhh, common sense to figure that out. No, wait! i just remembered. I looked out the window! (Give me a badge with a window on it. Or an umbrella. Ooh! That would be quite cute, actually). I hardly doubt girl-guiding did anything towards teaching me to be prepared, or teaching me anything really, other than how to be ridiculously bored and stylistically indistinguishable. What mathematics didn’t teach me, my mother did—to carry (besides the umbrella), a plastic bag for the wet umbrella afterwards, tissues, wet wipes, hand sanitizer, hand cream, tampons, headache pills, a pen, mints, gum, sunglasses, sunglass case, lip-ice, lip balm, lipstick, hair band, hair clip, hair pins, and then there's all the gadgets...And I do, I carry this all. Plus a toothbrush complete with mini toothpaste, in case of, you know, an unplanned “sleepover” (but mommy doesn’t know that). Hell I even found a button in my wallet today. A button! In a teeny-tiny Ziploc bag! So I am even half-prepared (sans sewing kit) to sew a button onto something, somewhere, sometime. If that’s not making a difference I don’t know what is.

Tuesday, 21 July 2009

IN THE VERMEER, NOT THE PORNOGRAPHIC SENSE!

This blog has moved to: http://girlwithapearlnecklace.com

It has recently come to my attention, three times this week, (by three men, incidentally), that "girl with a pearl necklace" bears some connotations i was not aware of...

me: so, i have a blog.
him: yeah? would love to read it. what's the address?
me: http://girlwithapearlnecklace.blogspot.com
him: woooaaahhh! (silence). (nervous laugh).
me: ?
him: i mean, um...er....do you mean, um, pearl necklace of the " " sort?
me: ummm, i mean it of this sort (pointing to pearl necklace lacing neck).
him: you are aware that pearl necklace can mean something else too...like...
me: (fear...panic...worry)
him:...like something, umm, pornographic.?

[bless him for letting it out gently].

phew. thank god i haven't sent the link to any professors or respectable persons yet. (mom - sorry). to spare myself from the arduous task of attempting to euphemise the pornographic meaning of "pearl necklace," and to avoid "spraying" my blog with such profanity, if you, like me, weren't aware of this connotation, and would like to be, please refer to:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pearl%20necklace

ick. i trust everyone who's reading knows me well enough to be sure i did not mean it in this way.

and to enlighten those of you who may only be familiar with the "urban dictionary" definition and not its other references...a few of many explanations for the title.

1. i happen to love pearls.
2. on most occasions, i am sporting one, if not many, pearl necklaces around my neck (refer to images below).
3. johannes vermeer, a famous dutch artist, painted a famous painting called "girl with a pearl earring." he also painted a slightly less well known one entitled "woman with a pearl necklace." (again, refer to images below). so besides the fact that i am a "girl with a pearl necklace," the title was also meant to bear reference to this iconic artwork...and sound echoes of my appreciation and love for art...and all things beautiful...
4. the pearl, i once read somewhere, is the stone of sincerity - something i try to express at least in my writing if not with my entire being...
5. also...pearls are rare...

so. lots of things to think about. pick one. any one. just not the pornographic one.

















girl with a pearl earring, johannes vermeer.















woman with a peal necklace, johannes vermeer.
















my pearl necklace, courtesy of photobooth.










monochrome pop-art of my pearl necklace (just for fun), also courtesy of photobooth.