What Really Irritates Me In Men, Women and Poodles, and Other Sartorial Considerations Very Late at Night, Part 10

 

Disclaimer – this was written in the aftermath of the pandemic, a month or so after the restrictions, and rediscovered today as I wanted to revive the series. I thought I had published it but apparently failed to do so, until today. Be ready to be teleported back...and perhaps get a new perspective on current events.

Dear grumblers and ranters,

I know the episodes have been erratically posted, subject as they were to the whims of my hatred, yet I thought that I should celebrate this tenth edition with a special number. I mean, it's not like I will run out of material anytime soon, right? So I'll approach today's rant from a slightly different angle.

Why yes, of course, this global pandemic has offered us facepalms galore, and in my opinion has accentuated the gap between facepalmers on both sides of the spectrum. Like this one douchebag on Reddit saying that AIDS didn't exist, that nobody had ever died from it, and that it was a giant hoax from the radical leftists to demean and destroy Christianity (as if this religion needed any outside help to shoot itself in the foot). And another bag of cheetos to comment that duh AIDS did exist (called the other guy a moron) but that it was a specifically homosexual disease because you could only get it from performing anal sex and doing drugs. For the sake of humanity I wish I had made this up, but not only do we see that us educators have failed worldwide – thereby implying that perhaps it’s not education that failed directly, but that moronism is too strong an antagonist – we also probably (#sarcasm) can't let people “educate” themselves via social media. Reading this alone is enough to make you contract a glaucoma, and if it doesn't, it brings you one step closer to drinking this world away. But this is not how I want to spill my bile.

I will not touch on subjects such as the US elections and its aftermath, nor will I raise issues such as the French government's response to the Covid situation. I mean, I could put it into perspective with the battle raging between the heathen people who say “LE Covid” and the heretics who say “LA Covid”, or with the astounding number of anti-vaxxers because science is wrong, but I won't. 

Instead, I will focus on more mundane, yet certainly more irritating things (because they affect us in our day-to-day life) which we have been spared because of the pandemic.

It's a world-renowned, Murphian tendency that people with halitosis must want to talk closer to you the further you move away from them. My hunch is that it might be caused by an anaesthetised nose. But thanks to masks, we no longer have to smell halitosis...and instead the perpetrators do indeed have to subject themselves to it. Now, could this be an explanation why some people wear their mask right under their nose? You could legitimately approach this differently, and ask why these people do not have better buccal hygiene, or eat a chewing-gum, or treat whatever affliction causes said halitosis. Yes, you could ask this.

The school in which I currently teach has seen some parents who refuse to wear masks when picking up their obnoxious brats (who only wear masks because they wouldn't be allowed in school otherwise). What has happened, you ask? Have the authorities stepped in to educate them on the science behind mask-wearing? Indeed not. Instead, these sombre idiots have contracted the virus which they claimed didn't exist, and along with their harebrained progeny were forced to quarantine. O, the joy of not having to see these cretinous crowds for ten days. And yes, I couldn't care less about the health of these people. They don't care about yours, why should the reverse not be true too?

Have you ever heard that some people are not sick until their doctor has told them that they are? Think reversed malade imaginaire, think hyperchondriac. Admittedly, we’re just one doctor away from this becoming the norm, and the madding crowds out there might grow to sufficient numbers that we might spot them in the wild. For the moment our GPs hold the fort and tell them for the umpteenth time that no they don't have the Covid-19 because a black guy looked at them, that no they don't have the flu either because they feel their toes are fusing, that no their backache isn't due to the local G5 tower emissions or their Wi-Fi. They probably should turn to a seamstress who can turn Faraday fabric into hats, I heard it’s the new black.

I don't think there ever was a starker reminder than what Rita Mae Brown wrote in Venus Envy, back in ‘93: “Normal is the average of deviance.” In hindsight, we may discover that the loons with phones trying to prove Earth is flat and ending up proving that it is – I’d advise to sit down because it’s chyron-worthy news – that it is fecking round. It sadly is not a sign that some then-silent minority now has access to global channels so they can now be heard. We’re discovering that though of course some tinfoiled clowns do centralise the full package of conspiracy theories, many hold some form of pet conspiracy theory, and when I write ‘many’, I should write “for their name is legion”. We’re vastly outnumbered, and their number is growing by the day, one pandemic, one earthquake or one storm at a time (bleach your eyes looking up the HAARP conspiracy).

In hindsight, some of us will have loved this part of our social history when we had a global excuse for not having to go out and behold the best of humanity. Yet even if one can remain outside of the social media echo chamber, one cannot be immune to it entirely, and the juiciest bits trickle down to us through channels imperceptible. Humanity always finds a way to make you feel it, something to remember it by. Gotta love it. or leave it, but since it’s a tad drastic a move, perhaps it’s better to suffer in silence, or rant on a blog that’s never going to be read. Akin to whether or not a falling tree makes any sound if nobody is there to listen, does the rant not count as silence if nobody reads it?

But before leaving you, hypothetical quibblers and reprovers, full of fresh vitriol and a renewed hatred for mankind (myself included), I’d like to share something I found out about poodles which isn’t as excoriating as you’d hope. I was researching the evolution of skull morphology consecutive to selective breeding (don’t ask me, it was 4am and I couldn’t sleep). I found this article which is super interesting, but then I fell into yet another rabbit hole and discovered that poodles no longer are in the top 20 worst, and top 10 dumbest, dog breeds of all time. Quite the feat, really. Perhaps people realised that poodles are like us in the sense that they put on pandemic pounds, and were the most affected by the lack of exercise and socialisation (still surprised the term “poodlepression” hasn’t come up yet for poodle depression). Not that it made me entirely sympathetic towards poodles, but I no longer see them as opportunistic pleasers, as perhaps we also engineered, or shaped rather, their bleak outlook on life. If dogs could speak.

on the wind

// on the wind // I heard your name // on the grass // a long time ago // had to be a thousand years, at least // in the night // the thought-memory of you // like a seed // like a tree // in the soil under the fingernails // your name was there too // for such a long time // the sky too overcast to notice // cacophonies of feelings and yellings // no longer drowned therein // only whispers // this unsilence for such a long time // though not the right time // the hawk ascending on the wind // on man-made moonlit mythical wings // finding time slowing down in the shade // wanting to be near // holding hands // with all those years of gestures, silences, thoughts, questions and learnings // gowpens of tragedies, love, carry-ons and acquired smiles // that was the right time // on the cairn I made on the knoll // meant the wait had been the rainbow // how I learnt to make everything I do and say // a long time ago you had been there and stayed // carefully telling everything your name to be remembered // and found // to never end // on the tip of the ear and tongue always // there // gut-feeling me through the ground // never quite lost // like a bonding of molecules with no definite centre // here but also there // now but also then // the most negligible of forces // like the faintest of rustles // on the wind //

Homemory

 

I’ll mark you in my book of memories

between sunfires at dawn and dusk

and meteor waves jolting the spheres

the memory of you will be a home to me

as the sunshafts after the rain are home to me

as the goosebumps from music are home to me

as feeling the last page of a book is home to me

you will be a home to me

in my book of memories

though the shades have darkened 

and the pages will have faded

as the storm of the century raged

home to me, home to me

Circumstances

 
Where have you been? Missed you so.
You haven’t changed, I’ve moved on.

Both are scary, what’s come over us?
Perhaps because no one’s letting go.

All them big words and no brawn,
but we’ve never been ones to fuss.

Had nothing to do, so I moved mountains
and a third of the sky off my way:

never be a hostage from geography –
always prefer wild seas to fountains.

Twenty-one grams lighter we weigh
now on our sure sway to apathy

had nothing to do so you froze right there
deer-in-the-headlights of a human being

tried with all your might to stay real
blinded and scorched by the glare

– no cure for that sort of pain –
– you don’t have it in you, sweet girl –
– no cure needed as you’ll do it again –
– chaos in immobility you are –

looking for something which stopped becoming
when you silenced your symmetry

bending space on opposite sides
won’t make it come full circle
we couldn’t even if we tried

or we might have and

we might be, different

 

Scattering of flower

 
Strewn about the vase
the petals a vestige
of a gone beauty
randomly, perhaps

Gathering the withered
soft and dead dryness
the mind but wanders
in the palm of the hand

Left alone in the field or
left to wane in the house
plucked or unplucked
the flower’s sum and parts
ordered by a deeper chirality
disperse long before they were a seed
arrange long after the end of time
yet mathematically arranged
yet unordered, perhaps

By plucking its petals
one both gathers and disperses
the beauty of the flower
contained elsewhere
randomly, perhaps

 

Fragment #23

Shot down like a deer in the dark

lying dead, the wound soon a door

for dirt dwellers, bugs, birds and boars,

to feed on my dull, rancid carcass

my soul delves deep in the core.

Fragment #122

 
She is one of quick ends and violent means 
– the long game but a string of skirmishes –
– blood and brood the only option for women –
– there’s hope in honour till it vanishes –
– daggers and poisons and sharper wits
make for faster peace through perfect blitz.

 

Corps memory

 

She turns towards me while opening the door

— The two cavities under her collarbones,

dark under the scorching lightbulb —

— Her shirt now three sizes too small —

Never have I seen her so frail, so hesitant

— Her angular silhouette penciled on the floor,

unnerving now, even more so later when —

Her lips parting, her voice hoarse and spent

— Her spindly fingers crooked on the handle —

She fades, featherly light, as grief wanes

 

Handshook

 

All it took was a handshake

to unsettle the masculined gaze

All it took was a kind look

– the warmth of a handshake –

for him to avert his teary eyes

All it took was a “Hello, Jack”

– the second-too-long handshake –

to expose the chink in the armour

to make him chin-on-chest humble

All it took was the simple kindness

– a handshake like an embrace –

of one who fought unseen battles

recognising one fighting another

telling them without stoic prattle:

“Feel no shame, and be brave, brother.”

Every cycle worse

 

“No greater mistake can be made than to think that our institutions are fixed or may not be changed for the worse. […] Increasing prosperity tends to breed indifference and to corrupt moral soundness. Glaring inequalities in condition create discontent and strain the democratic relation. The vicious are the willing, and the ignorant are unconscious instruments of political artifice. Selfishness and demagoguery take advantage of liberty. The selfish hand constantly seeks to control government, and every increase of governmental power, even to meet just needs, furnishes opportunity for abuse and stimulates the effort to bend it to improper uses... The peril of this Nation is not in any foreign foe! We, the people, are its power, its peril, and its hope!” 

Conditions of Progress in Democratic Government (1909), by Charles Evans Hughes (1862–1948) American politician and academic, Governor of New York, Judge of the Permanent Court of International Justice, Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court, and US Secretary of State.

 

8 stades de notification

 
Insignifiant

Indésirable

Informatif

Intéressant

Important

Impérieux

Improbable

Impossible

 

In between dreams

Sometimes it’s hard for me

to fit in this world

sometimes I feel that I

could stop a rushing train

right there in its tracks

seconds before speeding off a cliff

absorbing its full momentum

saving hundreds at a time

that my roar could cause an avalanche 

which in one embrace I would stop

that I would devise an equation

quantising particles

manifolding them

thereby unlimiting food and fuel

that I could fly out in space

grab and chew a whole black hole

and spit out a new universe

in my mind’s eye I can

and have done all these things

of course in the real world I couldn’t

but my daydreams and nightdreams

are full of daily scenarios

because I am weak-bodied

and strong-willed

and because I know

what it takes to love

what it takes to be unloved

to seek refuge in dreams

when everything else

falls apart

for my inner world is larger

than the entire universe

Freedom in the shadow

 

"All one's life as a young woman one is on show, a focus of attention, people notice you. You set yourself up to be noticed and admired. And then, not expecting it, you become middle-aged and anonymous. No one notices you. You achieve a wonderful freedom. It's a positive thing. You can move about unnoticed and invisible."

Doris Lessing (1919-2013), novelist and Nobel laureate, as quoted in An Uncommon Scold (1989) by Abby Adams, p. 18.

Corps mourant

 
watching the cormorant
alert, scan the river
plucking torn feathers off –
bitter taste in the mouth
of the weary, backstabbed,
morose office worker

Three, or two, or one

"A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others."

William Faulkner (1897-1962), interview in The Paris Review of 1956.

Enough

 
Not everything was stolen, of course, but enough was robbed. Enough that I cannot love anymore. It was not just the one robbery, of course, it happened over many years. One kiss, one tryst, one relationship at a time. “I’ll take this,” they said, “who cares if it leaves a hole.” “He won’t mind,” they thought, “he has a lot of love left anyway.” “He’ll pull through,” they reasoned, “heartaches never killed anyone.”

Like this one day on a hike when I saw a procession of mountain rams circling around the dead body of a black fox. At the time obscure explanations seemed the most obvious. Now that I am the fox, I know enough.

Leave me alone so that I don’t have to harness my breath, so that I can freely cycle to and from work, simply, Monday to Friday.

Leave me alone so that I can do my work without interruptions, so that I don’t have to overthink about past and present miseries. I want to be able to enjoy my evening walks, my weekend cooking and nightly reading, alone, unperturbed – undoubtedly sad but assured that the certainty of hurt has gone, or has at least abated enough that I can move about untroubled, assured that I can pour over my books uninterrupted, with the obsession of those yearning for answers who yet doubt everything.

Leave me alone so that I can enjoy my episodic sleep, my epic and magnificent dreams and nightmares. Let me enjoy the carefully-nurtured illusion that I could ever have been and done enough.

And no, you cannot ask me to learn to love again. I am too old and tired for that balancing act. I have seen enough. You’ve robbed me of enough. My heart is like those petrified skeletons in the natural history museum: chipped, glued back together with dirt, with bits missing and instead bits of wood and rocks in the crevices, hanging by invisible threads from the ceiling, weightless, gathering dust, projecting ghostly shadows when the moon shines through the windows.

Yes, leave me alone. Now, and for good. Enough is enough.

Had you by chance any fear, may they rest comforted in the assurance I shan’t need any help, for I have gone beyond that. Leave me alone in the tundra of solitude, when the body tenses and melts when touched, eager and desperate, weary and numb.

The body will rebel, of course, but the mind is resolute.

I’ve had enough.

 

Aar

 

The desperate and the mad

Folk say to look for the light within

and for the light above

beacons in a world of obscurity

but when every light goes out

it’s all dark, isn’t it

all dark

and in a world of fugitives

the person lighting the candle

will appear as either

the saviour or the traitor

the brave or the fool

the desperate and the mad

no light is eternal but darkness

only darkness can remain

 

Middles

 
Someone once wrote
that all beginnings
and all endings of
the things we do
are untidy

Vast understatement
if you ask me
as all the middles
are nothing short of
chaotic

Often one thinks
– so…this is how it ends
– how can life go on
– this storm can’t be weathered
– what is the fecking point

One thinks those things
when one feels gutted out
and all one can taste is ash
life a pile of smoggy ruins
and breathing feels sticky
like molasses, lumpy
when one feels
the heaviness in the lungs
the gurgling within the chest
the very air mud, like
bubbles slowly surfacing
as if wading through silt
murdering your lungs
when one has to run
for one’s life
gasping for more air
as the sludge gargles in

This, this isn’t the beginning
this, is far from being the end
this is the middle we all know
tougher than last week’s bread
gnarlier than a knot in a plank

Middles are hurricanes
to be embraced

This, is chaos.
This, is life.