Wednesday 17 December 2008

Not on my watch

Today I woke up and forgot that I was not on holiday yet. Then I panicked and made ready. But I got lost and arrived as half a worker at the computer. I tried to organise. My stomach was queasy. I lay down. I stared at the pc. I sent a few emails. I lay down. I brushed my teeth. I realised it had been months and I hadn't picked up my cheque book. I walked to the mall. I waited for a long time in a line, sweating while I drowned out other people with my iPod. I got angry at the bank teller. I felt bad. I had an illicit felafel. I felt ill. I walked home. I wanted to vomit. I lay down and passed out. Later I woke up and took painkillers. I called a friend and apologised as I would not be able to go to his housewarming. I was nauseous, my body was queasy and there was blood coming out my bum. Now I am back at the pc and have nothing to say.

Pick me!

When I was young and thought about what it would like to be older, I never thought I would be someone who was nicely turned out. But I am. Chipped nail polish makes me cringe. I actually feel a little ill if I am not wearing make up. Someone recently tagged me as 'elegant' in a Facebook photo. If you threw the dictionary at me, I wouldn't have chosen that word. I have always been the dishevelled rebel but somehow mutated without realising it.

So I placed a photo of myself on my cellphone as wallpaper. It's my link to the external visual presentation. I don't think I could pick me out in a police line up. Now I am training myself to recognise myself. Not an easy journey.

Tuesday 1 July 2008

you-wreck-her

I have been trying to work out what makes women want to be with a man so badly that she will change who she is. Perhaps it is validation. Ok, I am sure there are many women who only truly feel real when they are reflected in the eyes of men.

But I am not talking about them specifically. What about other women? The ones who are happy on their own. The ones who don't specifically seek a man to make them complete. What about them?

Then I realised I had the question wrong. I was focusing in too closely on the gender roles. It was about a broader social connection. Women desire to be part of a larger sense of being. We want to be connected. We want to feel as if someone 'gets us', someone cares and that there is a connection. We want to be believe that we can make a difference through our connection.

We can be solitary, crusading, homebodies, businesswomen, cavewomen but women react to how they are defined in another's eyes. Genetic or socially engineered? Does it make us better mothers? Does it ensure that we fulfil the role of society's carer? Is that what gives us that mythical sense of empathy?

What it does do, in my view, is leave us in a vulnerable position. When any object positions itself in direct relation to something else, there is no missing the impact that can have. Your position is defined with regards to something else which leaves you with little control. And without just a bit of control, women become the children of the universe - just that bit innocent and weaker.

I understand that it may make us tune into the world and that there are many positives. But I think women should acknowledge this vulnerability. Why do we, women, always want to find that which will make us more whole? Because we believe the connection will complete us. For some it is the connection with a lover, for others with a friend or children or a cause, but it is about finding ourselves within that connection.

I cannot decide if that makes us closer to God or just incredibly vulnerable. But we need to see ourselves for what we are. It will take power away from the relative positioning. Perhaps then we will start to climb out of our emotional spirals.

Monday 23 June 2008

so here I sit

I am drinking tea and sitting at the keyboard. Today was one of those insane days where I accomplished the impossible yet remained in my pyjamas. I organised a cover photo shoot. That's 15 non-models and 50 dissenting views on what they should wear. The theme of the shoot is innovation. The sub-theme is 'kill the irritatingly little shit who went against his boss' orders and changed the dress code'. So that involved emails that never arrived plus over 30 phone calls. Fun fun fun.

Then I tackled my intern journalist's article. I am really glad he is in Cape Town at the moment because my irritation gave me enough energy to get dressed to go hunt him down. But I am in Johannesburg. At the other end of the country. Lets just call it his lucky day that I am still in said pyjamas.

I did call him. We had words. He is very considered and generally a lovely human being. This did not stop me from wanting to stick toothpicks into his fingertips. The rewrite of the article took me around four hours. That's four fucking hours I desperately needed to write my own articles.

Its 7pm now. I am sitting, like a zombie, in front of the pc. I am drinking tea. I will not watch the news. (Any reportage on Zimbabwe causes immediate high blood pressure.) I will not eat any more of the illicit pizza I had delivered because I couldn't face editing the intern's next article without carbohydrates. I will crochet my stress away and put the alarm on for some ungodly hour when my first worry is a bath and how to extricate myself without disturbing the cat pile.

Thursday 10 April 2008

The mirror shatters our perfect life

We truly believe in the ideal. All of our actions show this. People are amazed when a family doesn't contain two parents of opposite gender and two kids. If they held up a mirror, they would quickly see that their lives don't even come close to the ideal that has been created in the collective unconscious and with media's assistance. Yet there are so few people prepared to take that journey of discovery. Is my life authentic? Am I yearning for an ideal that doesn't exist? Where does the ideal come from? Why was it created?

More and more we are presented with the antithesis of the uniform world that dominates our ideal images. Yes, there are people of every colour. Yes, there are gay people. Yes, disabled people exist. Yes, people are single. Yes, many people choose other options over marriage. Yes Yes Yes. This is not a world that contains a single image. We are everything and everyone. The human race has so many facets, sociologists and psychologists spend their lives trying to note them down.

Yet still we persist in our dream world. There are people that so strongly want to believe in that ideal picket fence world, they cover their eyes and minds to any reality that shows them different. The preacher that dictates commitment, love and a higher learning. The same one that is arrested for paedophilia. Or the husband that tells the world how he painted his white fence and then goes home and beats his wife.

The world of fifty years ago is not the world today. White America is not the only existence. But people feel safe when they have clarity.
"Oh this is how it should be."
"This is what I should work towards because it is what is right."

We are fed these images as a means of control. If you want people to be sheep, you show them the ideal sheep and the imagined rewards for that ideal sheep. You teach them to make sheep noises and you point them in the right direction. You explain how being anything but white sheep is wrong. You come up with expressions like "black sheep".

People can be surrounded by a multitude of images and experiences that negate the ideal sheep
image but still they choose to believe in the imaginary. Why? Will looking at their own lives and understanding that difference is the norm destroy everything? Or does it mean they may have to think for themselves, create a reality that is individual rather than force fed?

Thursday 13 March 2008

I am still not smoking.

I have become a rabid knitter and all cool credentials are out the window but I am still not smoking.

Anti-anti-routine blues

We are all held by delicate threads that call themselves routine but are in fact the reason we are able to climb into our beds at night without anarchy destroying the fabric of our lives. This may all sound a little bit like hypochondria for the existentialist but, after living for some years on this planet, I know this to be true.

I often think about routine. And the conclusions I reach reflect my age. My resistance to routine used to be the badge of youth. I would stand up against the need to fulfill the basic step step of life because it meant buying into mediocrity. If I followed routine I would become the epitome of suburbia. I would have bought into the life that I actively disagreed with. Why would I want to be a replica of a million other subjugated women? Rebellion against routine was part of my cry for an individual voice.

But I did not know the truth. Human beings follow the basics of scientific law. Without a bit of moulding, a squidgeon of direction, we move towards lethargy. We could probably sit all day on our well-rounded little bottoms if sustenance was all sorted. To be fair, we would probably need some entertainment. A thousand books and a world of escapist visuals leave us occupied for hours... for a lifetime. But then the internal cuckoo clock juts out his head. (Maybe her head?) And we look at all we have not achieved and we sigh.

While there is drama in using the plural, I should stand up for what I am. I can waste away hours and days in a world without routine. When I am faced with no structure, I drift. If I'm lucky I am thrown into interesting situations but that means leaving it up to chance. And chance isnt always kind. Routine brings a form of much-needed structure into my life. However I only learnt this in my late thirties.

Youth was about carrying the beacon for anti-establishment. It was a small light but it belonged to me. That I could decide what time I brushed my teeth felt like a victory. While heroes were destroying injustices I was fighting my own battles in suburbia. They felt as big.

There is a cliché: sometimes you need to lose the battle to win the war. I think maybe this is a bit like that. I fought desperately against routine and truly believed I was part of the last outpost. But routine is part of commitment. Commitment is part of defining a life that transcends description. So once my pithy little brain had got round that concept I am now in the process of trying to create a routine that is part of my individuality and that allows me to move onto larger feats.

it isn't easy.

I have to retrain myself and my need to rebel. But I have learnt that without routine it is not that easy to achieve my goals, to balance my life, to steady my unquiet mind. Routine is in its own way a western meditation device.

I want to be more than I am.