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, 10 April 2008
Thursday, 13 March 2008
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.
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.
Friday, 2 November 2007
Wedding tackle
My sister got married. My younger sister got married. My older married brother came up for the wedding, with his wife. I said a speech. They each brought their partner and I brought a speech. (Ok so it was my sister's wedding so I guess she had to bring her partner.) But is anyone seeing the gap here?
Usually, I feel like a benevolent observer at weddings. "How twee," I think. "Look at the fabulous couple embarking on their journey to divorce." (Ok I usually only think that if I read a newspaper that day, which only reminds me that humans are a physical embodiment of grossness, mayhem and violence.)
I almost always contemplate the nature of community celebrations; what it is to publicly declare your union; that a wedding is a torturous process that allows the different families to finally realise who they are letting into their gene pool. I also think back on all the weddings I have attended, or not attended. How weddings seem to be watershed moments in friendships. I ruminate on the cost - how a day can tally up to the same amount as a deposit on a house or a fabulous overseas trip. But this wedding was different.
I had been part of weddings where I was intricately involved in the ceremony. However I had never been part of a family where everyone was or had been married at some point except for yours truly. If you asked me six months ago if it mattered, I would have glibly said no. But when the moment arrived, it did matter. A lot.
Suddenly I was having my own little watershed moment. I was facing a truth. To be married, to have kids (the really big picture started descending at this point), to represent what I had always viewed, and in some way opposed, as the traditional face of western society was actually part of a growth process. I came to the realisation that I would never properly grow up and become a fully actualised person without committing to responsibility - be it a long-term relationship or children or something else - and these rites of passage represented those commitments.
So there I stood, amidst the festivities, facing a future of continuing post-adolescence. I saw myself, at eighty, and it worried me. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Run forward and embrace the social notion of partnership that I have always struggled with, or remain in stasis, without growth. So I did what any logical minded person would do. I drank.
Drink can blur the edges but it cannot stop the tradition of the bouquet being thrown. Although at this wedding there were two bouquets as there were two brides. One tradition stared stony faced at the other tradition. It was a show down. Would I, the stalwart non-participant, engage in what I had previously viewed as a symbol of women's acquiescence and submission to a larger patriarchal tyranny?
Yes I would.
I put down my glass. Shoved people aside. Shouted at my sister and my new sister-in-law that they must aim their bouquets at me. Missed the first one. Complained loudly to the crowd. Went for the rugby tackle approach for the second bouquet. Which I caught. And somewhere I hoped the Molecule of Destiny was listening, because the feminist had landed and she wanted commitment.
Usually, I feel like a benevolent observer at weddings. "How twee," I think. "Look at the fabulous couple embarking on their journey to divorce." (Ok I usually only think that if I read a newspaper that day, which only reminds me that humans are a physical embodiment of grossness, mayhem and violence.)
I almost always contemplate the nature of community celebrations; what it is to publicly declare your union; that a wedding is a torturous process that allows the different families to finally realise who they are letting into their gene pool. I also think back on all the weddings I have attended, or not attended. How weddings seem to be watershed moments in friendships. I ruminate on the cost - how a day can tally up to the same amount as a deposit on a house or a fabulous overseas trip. But this wedding was different.
I had been part of weddings where I was intricately involved in the ceremony. However I had never been part of a family where everyone was or had been married at some point except for yours truly. If you asked me six months ago if it mattered, I would have glibly said no. But when the moment arrived, it did matter. A lot.
Suddenly I was having my own little watershed moment. I was facing a truth. To be married, to have kids (the really big picture started descending at this point), to represent what I had always viewed, and in some way opposed, as the traditional face of western society was actually part of a growth process. I came to the realisation that I would never properly grow up and become a fully actualised person without committing to responsibility - be it a long-term relationship or children or something else - and these rites of passage represented those commitments.
So there I stood, amidst the festivities, facing a future of continuing post-adolescence. I saw myself, at eighty, and it worried me. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Run forward and embrace the social notion of partnership that I have always struggled with, or remain in stasis, without growth. So I did what any logical minded person would do. I drank.
Drink can blur the edges but it cannot stop the tradition of the bouquet being thrown. Although at this wedding there were two bouquets as there were two brides. One tradition stared stony faced at the other tradition. It was a show down. Would I, the stalwart non-participant, engage in what I had previously viewed as a symbol of women's acquiescence and submission to a larger patriarchal tyranny?
Yes I would.
I put down my glass. Shoved people aside. Shouted at my sister and my new sister-in-law that they must aim their bouquets at me. Missed the first one. Complained loudly to the crowd. Went for the rugby tackle approach for the second bouquet. Which I caught. And somewhere I hoped the Molecule of Destiny was listening, because the feminist had landed and she wanted commitment.
knock knock
Don't mind me. Just tiptoe-ing back to my blog. Cough. No time has passed at all. Nope. I don't have commitment issues. I mean what is err... six months in the bigger picture? It is a mere blip on this wonderful place we call the universe. (Dodging through use of optimism - excellent tool discovered by watching politicians.) I am back. I am also front, up and down. I have been taking a really expensive treatment for my Crohn's and have been a superduperbusinesswhirlpool oh-my-god-where-does-she-get-the-energy person. So I have my excuses. That and the fact a blog means commitment and I am not sure I know how to commit. Although I could probably commit myself to an insane asylum. Or I could commit hara kiri. (Leave me while I wander down the lanes of language nuance.)
I was asked if I had read 'The Satanic Verses'. (It was a relative - around eighty, wild and a Marxist. At some point I should introduce you to my family.) I told her that I don't read newspapers anymore. In my world, newspapers are the Satanic Verses. Local news? Makes you want to emigrate. International news? Makes you want to change species. I don't know if it is because communication has opened up so much that all is revealed, or because our world is galloping along to a biblical conclusion. I do know it's giving me an ulcer and I have enough of those.
I was asked if I had read 'The Satanic Verses'. (It was a relative - around eighty, wild and a Marxist. At some point I should introduce you to my family.) I told her that I don't read newspapers anymore. In my world, newspapers are the Satanic Verses. Local news? Makes you want to emigrate. International news? Makes you want to change species. I don't know if it is because communication has opened up so much that all is revealed, or because our world is galloping along to a biblical conclusion. I do know it's giving me an ulcer and I have enough of those.
Tuesday, 8 May 2007
Thursday, 3 May 2007
Thursday and counting
So I woke up at 5.30am with thr intention of getting straight to work. But by the time I had done bowels and cats, it was 6am. Time may wait for no man but it fucking flies for woman. I then hit the computer with a vengeance and tried to be creative with a newsletter. I spent ages "being creative". It ended up looking really similar to the not creative version. So I ate and ate and ate. Then I bathed. I fell asleep in the bath. When I woke up, all cold and disorientated, I sloshed out the bath and ate. Then I phoned a take away place to order more food. Now I am going to work on my next project, while I contemplate the nature of my food obsession and my desire not to go out to a singles evening. Ugh.
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