What Really Irritates Me In Men, Women, Poodles, and Other Sartorial Considerations Very Late at Night, Part 9

Greetings, dear rant aficionados.

I know it's been a while, but I won't apologise. I do what I fucking want, don't I. Well, perhaps I am more irritated than I thought. In order to appear a tad less irate, I'll let you be my confidant for the night: collecting material takes time and energy, mainly spent in the form of trying not to flare up. Patience is the mother of all virtues and godmother of madness, as Carlos Ruiz Zafón put it in his novel Marina. It's even more time-consuming to sift through all the material I collected over the past few months because I discovered that nothing can be discarded. One teeny-tiny irritating detail you observed once and not any more after that one occurrence may resurface full blast when you least expect it. I'll give you one instance: pen-clickers.

I recall noticing that bothersome behaviour at a meeting during which someone who was particularly vindictive couldn't stop clicking his pen, much to the annoyance of many a colleague. And for months after that, nothing. Even the pen-clicker had stopped clicking pens, probably because he had curbed his ardour. Yet lo and behold, two came up my way not an hour apart, just today. I didn't chat with the first one because he seemed surlier than me, and this is never a good sign. He not even once unfrowned his brow, kept on jiggling his knee up and down in a frantic manner, and clicking his pen for no other possible reason than to calm his nerves. He also chewed the existence out of a piece of gum. He didn't write, nor had he a piece of paper around him. Not sure why he would have a pen if not for the reason mentioned above. The second one did have a piece of paper, sat next to me on the train, and occasionally wrote on said piece of paper. When I asked that person, after about ten solid minutes of continuous pen-clicking, why he would do so, he said he did because he didn't like the silence around him. I blinked several times before I suggested putting the humongous headphones around his neck on his ears as a potentially more viable and less galling-to-others option.

Let me break the situation down a bit. We're on a packed train and there's kids yelling, mothers yelling at them to shut up, people laughing, people flipping the pages of magazines as if they wanted to rip them off, people having loud conversations over the phone, people watching videos without earphones, and of course the frequent screeching of the train on the rails. Where the hell did that guy find silence, I can't even begin to imagine. Yet the funniest of things happened: he humoured me and did what I suggested. He even thumb-upped me after a couple minutes, with the kind of beaming smile which says: “Dude, that's an awesome idea you got there, thanks!” ONLY TO RESUME HIS PEN-FUCKING-CLICKING FIVE MINUTES LATER. I remembered Zafón's quote and prayed the god of patience above to give me the strength not to strangle that guy. At that very moment, I wished I could click my pen. I'd have ripped his headphones off his ears and clicked him into madness, half an inch away from his face.

Anyhoo, I wasn't at the end of my tether just yet. For I would meet, hours from then...the athleisure fashionista! Yes, that's a word. When the woman I saw decided, for a reason unknown to either fashion, good taste or common decency, to wear a track suit and high heels, I wanted to hug her and ask what on earth had happened in her childhood, tell her that everything would be OK...when she would come back to her senses and choose a style, not pick 'n' mix. But there were other sartorial surprises in store for me.

As John Oliver would say: And now, this. Heelless shoes. If you have no idea what it could look like, take a peek here. I was flipping through a magazine which had been left on a seat when I saw this...thing. I didn't know they were a thing, or even could be a thing. You must have noticed when women realise they're making a heck of a noise when their heels, high or low, ferociously strike the wooden floor or grate it like a pack of rusty nails, and they suddenly walk on their tiptoe (with a gait not unlike that of a flamingo walking). If so, you must also have noticed some women who only walk on their tiptoe when walking inside in heels, which defeats the purpose of dignity...but whichever psycho came up with the idea of removing the heels entirely should be made to wear them exclusively. You find them cool? Let me ask you one simple question: which part of the foot do you put down in order to rest? Mh? No heel, no rest. We came up with the expression “standing on your toes” for a reason. Please, fashioner designers, stop hurting women. The only statement you're making is that you hate them.

Speaking of people hating people, those who let their trolley run wild on the parking lot of supermarkets make the exact same statement, albeit more generally. “We couldn't give less of a crap about you, person giving us the mean look and taking our trolley back to the trolley bay, because once the last item we bought is out of that trolley, it no longer belongs to us, even if we put a plastic coin to unlock it. The next time we'll be at the gas station we'll ask for another one, simple. Suck it up, buttercup!” I hope there's a special place in hell for them, where they have to put trolleys back into the bay or their limbs are hacked off them, but imps keep on dumping trolleys left and right.

One last thing before I move on to our favourite bit of my vitriol. Dating apps are a treasure trove of gems of all sorts, so much so that it's difficult to choose one item in the list. I don't want to devote one post entirely to this as it quickly becomes boring, so I sprinkle every now and again what I deem to be fit in such and such entry. Today I want to talk about pictures, and the supposed powers vested in them. A common saying stipulates that a picture is worth a thousand words. I am of the opinion that some of them are, indeed, yet if you spend any amount of time on dating apps, you'll find yourself confronted to head-scratchers. Case in point: the portrait with a duck face. How in the name of all things goaty is this worth a thousand words? Perhaps as a diatribe against duck faces, sure, but in itself? Meh. Add to that a Snapchat filter, any of them. (No, you can't possibly believe, in your heart of hearts, that even a few of them are okay. Fathom thy soul, heathen.) Add to that the V sign with your fingers, in a swanky car, showing your abs, legs, or other unseemly part of your anatomy. Add, finally, the emojied faces of your kids sitting at the back of the car and you'll get, let me check quickly, exactly 237 words total. Quite far from a thousand words, and even if this picture was worth this much, you'd still look pretty fucking moronic. You're welcome. Moving on.

Now I suggest you read the next bit carefully, and remember it for a long time, for I'm going to side with poodles. Yes, I'm right about doing that: to honour a breed of dog I resent with (almost, now) every fibre in my body. Today I learnt that in 1988, some daft, idiotic, nincompoopy son of a motherless goat ran the Iditarod race with a pack of poodles. For those who don't know anything about this race: it's a 938-mile (1,510 km) sled dog race from Anchorage to Nome, in Alaska, run at the beginning of March. Participants, called mushers, usually complete it between eight to fifteen days, with a team of 14 dogs. So this nutter, called John Suter, and his team didn't complete this insane race just once, but four times, placing in the lower middle of the pack. The which is, all things considered and it doesn't even pain me to write so, a freaking admirable position. He raised the poodles alongside huskies to develop the “urge to pull”, which is smart, but he should have factored in the fact that poodles aren't dogs initially bred to resist whiteout conditions, blasting blizzard and -70°C wind chill. I have to give it to them though: this is highly commendable. Only the Yukon quest is longer at 1,000 miles (the Hope race covered 1,200 miles but it's no longer run), yet it is a crazy thing to do, putting oneself and dogs through such terrible meteorological conditions. Inasmuch as I hate poodles, these ones were brave, or John Suter as thick as a regular, not-bred-with-huskies poodle (which I don't think was beneath him). The story can be read here. 

Incidentally, the Iditarod race was created to commemorate the 674-mile race against time by 20 mushers and 150 sled dogs, run in five and a half days in 1925, to save the town of Nome from diphtheria as they transported the antitoxin which eventually saved the town from an epidemic. Since the page recounting the story doesn't exist any more on the Iditarod website, here's the Wikipedia entry.

This has been fun, as per usual, but we need to part. I can't be raving and ranting until the start of day, because my doctor says it's bad for my health. I asked her if it's as bad as the doctors' handwriting for the eyes, and she said yes, so I knew she wasn't kidding. The which reminded me of a quote I was told ages ago, the one with which I'll leave you, which applies to everyone, even to the best of us. That quote was given me by my gastroenterologist who said I should never forget it:

“I feel fairly certain that my hatred harms me more than the people whom I hate.”

Max Frisch, Swiss architect, playwright, and novelist (1911-1991), in Sketchbook 1966-1977.

That's why God created antacid medication, so we could keep on berating people. True story.

 

A blue day

Click to enlarge

 

Today was a blue day. Of this hue which sends you driving across the country, from coast to coast. The picture you have here is one I took mid-morning, on my first step on the beach in more than six months. On that account this is an actual picture of the sky, not some random one siphoned off the Internet. There was not a wisp of cloud to be seen, not one.

I was eagerly looking forward to contemplating this sky, and I was lucky enough to get it on day one. With this, feeling blue acquired a new dimension, put a spring in your step. It didn't efface all the loneliness I have been feeling lately, but it laved some of it off, and appeased the restlessness. Even more so than the sound of the surfs breaking on the skerries.

I could almost feel the colour. And after months of waiting which felt like centuries I could finally say that I was home, home in that blue.

 

I do not fear fear

"As a child I was taught that to tell the truth was often painful. As an adult I have learned that not to tell the truth is more painful, and that the fear of telling the truth — whatever the truth may be — that fear is the most painful sensation of a moral life."

June Millicent Jordan, political activist, writer, poet, essayist, and teacher (1936-2002), in Life After Lebanon (1984) (also in Some of Us Did Not Die: New and Selected Essays of June Jordan (2002))

Golems in the closet

For some time now I have been preoccupied by and writing on the ordeals and atrocities women face, ranging from the banal which should never have become banal, to the downright inhuman. I wrote several pieces on marital rape, on the various trauma men inflict women, consciously or not, throughout their life. With this new series, Golems, I deliberately chose to always open each poem with the same line, and to always narrate the story from a male point of view not to highlight the fact that each issues tackled is the same or of the same importance, but that's it's a generic, standard masculine reaction.

Above all, I wanted to show how these behaviours, and most people's reaction to them, are normalised. Frequently people don't bat an eye when a women is raped by her husband. I've heard some men say that “a wife raped by her husband” is antinomic. Notice the 'some men'. Of course it's a minority which tends to exert its need to be vocal, but many men won't know the difference, and think consent once given is thereby always granted. I'm not saying a husband should ask his wife's permission to have sex every time he feels horny, but I'm saying that if his wife says 'no' then that 'no' shouldn't be debated, debatable. Same goes for unmarried couples, sex buddies, one night stands, whatever.

In my previous pieces women weren't the only focus though, as their fate is almost always entwined with that of their children. In these new instances I have tried to focus on women to shine a single light on their plight so we realise that their basic rights are regularly denied, that they always have to fight against something. We men have it easy, as we made the laws long ago, when our grip on women was even stronger than it is now.

We need more accurate, more targetted, more up-to-date, fairer laws addressing these issues, but in order to root out the problem we also need a different type of education. We perpetuate the stereotypes we are inculcated and it seeps through everything, it even infects our language, especially in French and languages which differentiate gender by using the male pronoun and nouns most of the time. We condition boys and girls alike, and funnel them into a frame of reference and a format which go against the notions of equality and of justice. We take it for granted that as our parents were this and that, we necessarily have to be this and that. Lots of balderdash to me.

I'm a man who was raised with these precepts. I do not remember any specific occasion, but I must have been guilty, early in my twenties, of importuning a girl when drunk, of making her feel uncomfortable, therefore abusing the position of power I didn't know I had. I am clean out of it, been so for more than a decade and a half. As a teacher, I participate in and witness slow but steady changes in mentalities, a slight shift of the paradigm, but it's much too slow to be effective. We need to address this frontally, we need to go nationwide, without taboo, and believe me: there won't be any nut-kicking (for most of us).

To wrap up this already-too-long post, I'll just say that the title to the series stands for all the various monsters we can encounter in mythologies and legends, and is very meaningful to me. I'm not going to break down each poem, or give an overarching analysis of the series, but of course they each do have a particular signification, as have many elements within the poems, their structure, their patterns. I do hope you “enjoyed” reading them, that you found them engaging enough, that they gave you food for thought.

For more comfort, you can access the series right here (start at the bottom).

Take care,

Rodolphe

 

Jörmungandr

He didn't know what on earth to tell her –

one of those times she couldn't but lose face.

The verdict out, the judge would soon adjourn

and she'd be trapped in her own emptiness:

hysterical, a custody transfer

would be granted to that sozzled disgrace

of a husband; joblessness a concern

she'd have endless periods to address.

Like her black hole of a heart that would spur

cycles of anger after which she'd space;

with her children silent, distant, and stern,

the jury ruled her unfit to progress.

Sure, he'd cited her rape by a teacher,

and her mom gone missing without a trace.

His job's done, no reason his guts will churn,

tonight he's home with a wife to caress.

For her all this will happen in a blur –

orbiting nightmares she'd better efface,

and shed the memories that give heartburn –

with no choice but to mull over the mess.

Amarok

 

He didn't know what on earth to tell her –

birthing in a hut reeking of resin?

How could they live in a place caked in crud?

Plainly not the first time she was pregnant –

even more plainly she needed succour.

Clutching on the crucifix to lessen

the pain – also biting on that bark spud –

the outgush of humours was incessant.

After a moment he had to demur –

she had to hush for he had to listen:

only the carmine dripping on the mud

could be heard: the babe had fallen silent.

'Course death in this hovel had to occur,

with food not even fit for a raven!

The last straw was this unending red flood –

the master'd tarried helping his tenant.

He grimaced sullenly at how things were –

there was no way on earth and in heaven

his wooden clogs weren't spoilt by black blood –

God his witness he hated this peasant.

 

Kraken

He didn't know what on earth to tell her –

something along the lines of c'est la vie,

that there is prestige in being a bride,

that she need not the fate of boys envy.

Some girls are born without any favour,

some women are sold into slavery,

she should feel lucky, not feel mortified:

tonight at last she'll be worth each penny

her folk saved for her, for land is silver.

She should see too the fate of the slutty,

she should ask her folk: there's nowhere to hide,

and less favoured than her have no dowry.

He'd seen men swap coins like a connoisseur

for whores for no one likes an amputee –

no woman was by nature dignified –

she ought therefore to take marriage gently,

she ought to see it as a life-saver,

life here for eight-year-olds can be shitty.

Besides, it wasn't for her to decide.

Tonight, she'd no choice but to be ready.

 

A poet's job

"Voilà bien la seule création permise à la créature. Car, s’il est vrai que la multitude des regards patine les statues, les lieux communs, chefs-d’œuvre éternels, sont recouverts d’une crasse qui les rend invisibles et cache leur beauté. Mettez un lieu commun en place, nettoyez-le, frottez-le, éclairez-le de telle sorte qu’il frappe, avec sa jeunesse et avec la même fraîcheur, le même jet qu’il avait à sa source, vous ferez œuvre de poète. Tout le reste est littérature."

Jean Cocteau, French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist and critic (1889-1963), in Le Secret professionel (1922) p. 509.


"Here is the only true creation allowed to the creature. As it is true that statues are worn out by the multitude of gazes, the commonplace, though eternal masterpieces, are rendered invisible by a covering grime which masks their beauty. Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature."


Precisely my point developed here.

Colossus

He didn't know what on earth to tell her –

except he felt like he had been cheated:

of his wife, life, and masculinity.

No law said he should be thus castrated.

Women's flesh was weak, the great saboteur –

she sure had rights, but these were conceited,

erecting women to divinity,

leaving men in the dirt, amputated.

Only final truths remained to proffer:

no equal law would stand undefeated,

no law would strip him of his dignity –

he'd have his woman's body till sated,

yes, till he was content, oh yes mister,

and the full extent of his rights seated –

consent was his droit to stability –

her body his as oft demonstrated –

for all men a tacit droit du seigneur –

peace of mind finally re-created –

no fault innate in men's virility,

his banal missteps thus vindicated.

 

Organised Chaos

"Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still."

T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) in Four Quartets, Burnt Norton, V (first published 1936).

One needs not wrestle with words. One needs to be patient, and release the tension, shine a different light, clear the dust, the mud, the mortar, perhaps give them a polish, a wash so chaos can be understood as it reforms. One needs not order with words. One needs at keen eye to see where the threads form, bond within, and attach without. Words evolve, mutate, adapt to their environment. One needs to figure out the organisation to see the point.