Sister Are Doing It For Themselves

1.

I love the sound of principles cracking from the force of fact.

2.

My dear friend K is a die-hard Do-it-yourself neo-liberal. Sharp elbows are more than a fashion statement in her world, and public libraries the work of the devil – detracting from proletariat morale by providing for free what ought to inspire money-making and the will to possess.

The individual’s choice is her guiding star. Should the individual choose to be born in the gutter, then he or she should not be forced out of said gutter by any mollycoddling meddlers. Should the individual choose to be a motherfucking skanky crack whore – then the decision of the motherfucking skanky crack whore must be respected.

K is adverse to “feminism”. She feels it to be synonymous with “sisterhood”, and alas, as a group activity, despicable – worthy of same derision as pensioners-group-travel-coaches, or that opiate for the people: the Eurovision.

She will, under duress, agree that there might at some point in history have been a point to chaining yourself to something or other, making a point. But now, she argues, we are at a point in time where that point has been made. No more need to jingle-jangle your chains, the shards of the glass-roof are already clattering to ground.

3.

K has made her career arguing ideas such as these. She has made her pennies arguing, in a neat suit and with a flat tummy, against affirmative action, against mandatory paternity-leave, against all the rest of it.

Alas, it was not without a slight (but loving) sneer that I learned that she was pregnant.

3.

Were I a better person, watching her battle the realities of burping with her political ideals would fill me with pity, and induce me to baby-sit. As it is, it fills me with pity, period. As her best friend, my heart aches as she tells me of her sleepless and vomit-covered woes. As her political opponent, I am sort of keeping my fingers crossed for colic.

K loves her son. On good days the father also. But she feels, strongly, that he – the son – doesn’t offer much in the way of conversation. He – still the son – smiles a lot, but doesn’t do well as a sounding board on tax-cuts and big guns. And when he finally gets home from work (the father, this time) he is more concerned with the leaky faucets and flagging paint of their newly bought suburban home, than with sitting down for a glass of wine and a coherent discussion on abolishing unions and hot school lunches. In short: six weeks in, Junior and Senior bore her senseless.

4.

So K has decided to get a hobby. Friday, she poured herself into her pre-pregnancy jeans, stuffed the babe in the basket, and set of for the head-quarters of the city’s leading let-them-eat-cake paper to write them a few columns. 

Sitting down for coffee with the editor-in-chief, K felt for the first time in ages, in her element. Her hair was brushed, she was wearing mascara, and most importantly, she was having a conversation with a fellow Liberal – and one, at that, who did not answer back in drool.

Liberated, she opened up. And told Magazine Editrix about the stifling boredom of trudging around with a stroller. About her burning yearning to get back to some sort of intellectual work. About her dire need to measure some other statistic than a growth-chart, or at the very least, to find some thugs in some hood whose mothers rather than their socio-economic situation were to blame for their thugdom.

And the editor-in-chief? The shining beacon of career-oriented womanhood? Well, she looked from K, to a framed baby-pic on her desk, and as she smoothed, with a beatific smile, her Johnsson & Johnsson smelling print cotton over her still milky breasts, she said that personally, she wouldn’t trade her baby’s patter for anything.

Then she handed K – one wedding-banded-hand-at-liberty to another - the latest issue, fresh from the printer: (insert drum roll)…………

Let Life Begin at Last – a special issue on the joys of motherhood.

But that was her personal choice.

As the Crow Flies

Spending a few hours lazing about on the World Wide Web, just found a post that really struck a cord with me: the fantabulous Apiece has been Struck Down by Truth at http://ourpieceofit.wordpress.com/2009/03/26/at-the-estee-lauder-counter/#comment-585

Which brings the following exchange to mind.

The Man is slowly earning back the monicker Better, by an inspired series of actions. He buys new dishrags without promting. He takes me out for steak. He puts socks in laundry hamper. He sits through In Her Shoes.

And when I comment, of a morning, on the havoc recent lack of sleep has wrought on my face (lines increasingly foldy, texture ever more lax, colour daily paling): he says he prefers older women and kisses my nose.

Then there are the slips. Like looking at an acutal older woman, and saying that jeezus, she must have been something to look at when 23.

I suppose even good intentions cannot bridge the gap between ideal and actual attraction.

Sara-Vide also writes about the impossibility of being posh and productive at same time. Goddam that glass ceiling!

Patience Rewarded

Have been weeks and weeks and weeks in the threnches: in jeans, knee-deep in microwave food, bombarded by constantly buzzing phones, erratic mid-night post-it writing, second and third guessing, strategizing, coffee, more coffee, and printers on the fritz.

And then. Glanced over Huffington Post and the New York Times. Noted they had picked up press-release. Closed computer down, slung bag over shoulder, and buggered off.

Went straight to NK, the oldest and stuffiest of Stockholm departement stores. Picked my way through their eclectic mix of wrinkled ladies eating shrimp, narrow jeaned girls ogling Choos, and haphazardly displayed McQueens to their shoe department.

Sinking onto a pink silk couch, was brought selection of their highest heeled and most uncomfortable shoes. Out of these, chose a small black blunt nosed pair, looking rather like startled Pug dogs on stilts. Completed these with the narrowest of pencil skirts, with dull brass buttons, and a nice edition Fanny Hill. 

Shopping complete, marched over to the old mink infested bar in the cavernous depths of the Opera House. Had myself a nice big glass of nice wine, in solitude. Closed eyes, sniffing ever so often – discreetly - at the million dollar perfumes of leather and pearls about the necks of the florid patrons.

For dinner, I walked across the park to the Stockholm Grand Hotel and the Mattias Dahlgren Matbaren. Crisp bread excellent. Squid sublime. Chocolate dessert: crisp, cold, creamy, hot and slightly bitter.

The view of the quay was a deepening blue, the hulls of the white steamers coming out in relief, and when I wrapped my old faithful black wool coat around me it was with a feeling of certainty – winter won’t go on for ever.

These Boots Were Made For Loving

They say you can judge a man’s…worth…by his shoes. It is quite an easy measure to take. The lower the heel, the higher the self esteem. The less time spent buffing, the less time, most likely, spent buffing. As for inopportune coloration and sneaker softness – it is not what I want in the extremities of man. And a total lack of knowhow in the spit-and-rub department might not bode too well either.

Walking in a woman’s shoes, is all about the heels. No excuse is better than a vertiginous red suede pump, for sliding onto the soft leather seats of a cab. But that is not the only reason we wear them, the spikes. Impracticality and extravagance in female footwear serve as the crutches of aesthetics: the ten inch stacked elongates and deceives.

Do they hurt? Yes. But so does dying alone because you have the legs of a particularily disproportionate and tubby Dachshound.

There may be women whose legs and bottom could stand the remorseless truth of the flat. I am not them. I need platforms in order to reach the coffee-cup shelf, not to mention get lucky.

Which is why I took last night’s gift of shoes as the greatest compliment to date. On arriving home from the office, I was presented with the gift of acceptance – stumps and all. Waiting for me, along with a glass of wine for good behaviour, were a pair of beautiful brown leather sturdy walking shoes. 

They have no heels to speak of, and they are soft, and roomy, and they have no straps, or any preposterous peep-toes. How do I look? Half-pint of stout springs to mind. But a very cheerful-looking half-pint of stout that is.

Surely, a man who presents the gift of boots made for walking loves the inner woman.

And her blisters.

Teabags

There is no such thing as a free lunch (yes, I did just make that up right now).

“I adore you” he says
“What now?” I says
“I just don’t understand the teabag in the sink thing” he says

“Honey” I says
“Eh?” he says
“TURN ON YOUR F-ING SIDE AND STOP SNORING” I says

Three days in, and it is still glorious.

Breeze

There are two things to do with Gone With the Wind.

1. You may submerge yourself in it:

The night of my tenth birthday was spent in a Kazakstan airport. This was back in 1991, and things weren’t so pretty in Kazakstan. The airport was half built, or half crumbled, some walls seemingly plastered together with Alpine-landscape fag-ads. The lavatories smelled suspiciously like the airplane breakfasts served by Aeroflot and we huddled on black leather couches.

Sometime later we touched down in Singapore. At the Raffles, we had Singapore Slings and the waiter asked if we wanted refills, and I knew the word for yes and said it quickly, and my mother laughed. We heard the story of the tiger shot in the bar, and stroked our hands along the ridiculously sumptios dark-green painted wood and the creamy white walls, and then we went back to our hotel, where a chinese man bleeding from the head slumped outside our door. No lock.

And then we were on the high-octane blue seas, visting small islands were the police travelled by canoe, and platforms out in the middle of the ocean where everything was crusted with salt, and we sat in the shade and showered in the rain and we ate rice and chicken, or chicken and rice, till all of the chickens on the island were dead and then we had pancakes.

We travelled down rivers, in the jungle, and ate tiny fish in hot sauce for breakfast at the Muslim mayor’s house. The cat there lived in the kitchen on a sewing-machine and we all slept and bathed with our clothes on, and the days were hot and dusty and the nights were hot and dusty, too.

In the big cities we bought fresh clothes and orange-juice, I had silver braclets and sat on dusty steps waiting. This I remember from the photos taken: we all look a pale green in the strong light and the mosquito-bites show and my ponytail is very severe and not at all flattering, and in the mirrors my mother shows up a star or an explosion right between my short,  little 8-year old brother and my pre-pubescent self.  

And in all the pictures my eyes are fixed, not at the beautiful if slightly off-focus scenery, nor at the elephant dipping his tusks, nor at the big yellow fruits piled high, but on the pages of Gone With the Wind.

I was Scarlet and Melly, and fell down stairs, and felt a twinge, and wore the green velvet curtains. I hated Ashley and I loved Rhett and I didn’t know it and the baby sure was ugly, and I wondered, like the old shrew, what the inside of a whorehouse would be and would there be chandeliers?

I had never heard of race and I had no idea what corn-bread would taste like but I was dying to try, and I wondered what a 17-inch waist would look like and I skimmed my on the surface of the placid djungle river and pretended it was taffetta. I had never seen – nor have I still seen – taffeta.

I touched the dusty ground of Asia and pretended I grew cotton, and a hat from Paris, and I was raging mad at Scarlet for building an ugly house, for if Rhett said it was ugly then of course he was right, and if his moustaches tickled then I wouldn’t settle till I found someone with a moustache with which to tickle, and I decided then and there to be careful about puckering up for a kiss because Rhett said it was silly and would kiss me for real instead. 

And when I got to the end I started again.

2) You may write a book about it from a feminist perspective, like this: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/books/review/White-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Manly Men

I really haven’t the time to write this but I must.

(Oh, and incidentally, am hoping to be back on blogging horse after March 24, (a day that will echo in infinity as the deadline for particualarily gruelling work project.) Until then I am beset on all sides by idiot co-workers, idiot technology, idiot suppliers, idiot printers, idiot media, idiot transportation, idiot anxiety and peanuts for my troubles. Until then I am up early and wake three times a night worrying about details, until then I dine on cheese sandwiches, until then I do no laundry and am reduced to wearing jeans at work, until then I am ruthlessly screening phonecalls. Oh, and also, come March 25th I am planning on getting hammered, so blogging will probably resume more like March 27).

Were was I? Oh yes. I really haven’t time to write this but I must.

1. Two thirteen year old boys, on tube, this morning.

- You know Rebecka?
- Rebecka?
- The one with the Rockets…
- Rockets?
- Tits!
- But rockets are rectangular and pointy?
- They are still called Rockets. Because they can spin.

2. Best friend on phone this morning:

-I hate my life. I have a one month year old baby. And my husband insists on painting the living-room pink.

Kishmet

The term Clash of Civilizations is usually reserved for the my beard – your burger conflict of East and West. I do not know why – an equally portentous rift runs between the techy and the not.

 

My bet is, on the day of judgement, the knocking together of programmer and non-programmer skull will be seen to have given rise to as much strife as the knocking together of the texan and the turbaned.

 

Me – I am unapologetically analogue. The noughts and crosses system of programming makes no sense to me. I can only stare in abject terror as screens fill with HTML. Most importantly: I am convinced that anyone who can put their faith in explicitly non-humanist systems is borderline totalitarian. Code does not compromise.

 

This morning, I had the pleasure of having all my prejudiced confirmed. I was taken hostage by a band of technocrats, brought to their headquarters – replete with LED-lights and slick furniture – and subjected to gruelling torture; the point of which was to make me re-formulate my communicative goals in the reductive language of the web-site builder.

 

Oh, and did they ever have Methods of Making Me Talk – a process called SCREACH, SCRUNCH, SCREW, or SCUM. I will not go into sordid details, but it involved a lot of explaining the obvious while being left completely in the dark on questions of importance, all of which were answered by a verbal cannonade of abbreviations and Jolted jargon.

 

Worst of all, the pissing on the flag and drawing out of fingernails, was the way in which they insulted a symbol of great importance to an IRL like myself. They made me use paper. And pens. And “formulate in your own words” my needs for different functions on the site. Like if I said I wanted a printer friendly page, they’d make me write it down, and then they would sneer and say scribble something like [-] + ((-/) [dhl]. Or if I said I wanted a nice blue colour consistent with our logo – they would make me write that down too, and then jot down {djdj} // [ftp]: [ptf].

 

In the end, after two hours of watching human language being chewed out and spit out, the likes of which I hope to never see again this side of Ramadan, I was let loose. Broken of spirit, coffeed of blood, and probably having agreed to God only knows what.

 

And yes, I will pay through the nose.

 

Insha’Allah.

A Vision in Sequins

In Paris, early spring is mimosa. In Cotswolds, early spring is daffodils. In Stockholm, early spring has all the zing of a bag of old sprouty potatoes.

People aren’t so pretty, this time of year. Legs are a motley grey, cheeks a whiter shade of pale – lumps and humps cold and covered in goose bumps. Whatever is there in grace of form is covered in multiple layers of wool and gore-tex, pockets padded well with crusty Kleenex.

But when nature closes a door, she opens a window. At a time when we all look like crikey, we get to sit in front of the telly and watch others look worse. And this, children, is probably how the Eurovision Song Contest came to suck out such a major chunk of our collective souls. 

What is, in the rest of Europe, a once-off night of drama, bad lighting and purple skintights with feathers is here a whole series of bad dramas, bad lighting and purple skintights with feathers. The Swedish run-ups to the Eurovision: a severely limited number of variations on a perversely prolonged theme.

In order to squeeze the maximum entertainment out of this one-ring infinity circus, someone decided to take this lights-winds-and-fire-heavy show on the road. The whole shebang, complete with grande pianos and comic reliefs, is currently touring a number of sad, sad Swedish towns. The kind where the stadium is bigger than the entire city-center, built in the top-heavy seventies, and flanked by obese super-markets selling equally large bags of potato-chips (paprika flavour).

At each stop, the glossy haired and glassy eyed presenter whips out a number of eternally crayzee outfits and a number of deja-vu bland scripted/inappropriately ad-libbed jokes, and then proceeds to smile manically at a parade of be-blonded, be-tanned, and be-abbed “singers”.

These in turn do one of three things: a whacky performance, in yellow jump-suits. A heartfelt performance, in midnight spangles. Or a kicky performance, with spats. Oh, and also, in each town, there is one person designated to wear leather, and not much of it.  

Come the end of each performance, the cameraman scans the screaming, chip-fed, massive mall-bred audience – zooming in on the inevitable third-grade standard banner spelling out the name of whatever artist in increasingly tiny letters, red-felted on yellow paper, and frizzy haired fans holding them. Me, I am positive that this is always the same fan – in different duster wigs, and that she is packed up along with the disco-balls and snow-machines at the end of the show.  

You had enough yet? Did not think so.

When all the artists have had their moment, each of their moments are re-capped ad nauseam, until such a point as an extremely complex process of voting – rigged to assure maximum “voting-scandal-press-coverage” – has slotted all but one or two of the performers into one of the multiple next stages of competition.

And so it goes on, at an increasingly frenzied tempo, from town to town, until one happy day in March, when all of the second-chances, round-up heats, people’s choices, international jury nominees, safe-zones and old-faithfulls are penned into the Stockholm Globe Arena, for the national finals: when twenty or so top-hats, twenty or so gauzy floaty decolletages, and twenty or so fun-sized base-ball caps from different but equally bleak necks of the wood will fight to the bloody end to represent Sweden in Zagreb, or Vilnius, or whatever else eastern hell-hole the international finals are held.

Then it is midsummer and we all get drunk in the sauna.

Sound the trumpets of glory. Or at least the synthesizers of glory. I have an invite to attend this mayhem live. Come March 14 I will be shouting my head off with the populace, as one out of three possible numbers take the win…

Which will mean getting both dressed and out of bed, but which adds the possibilities of luke-warm beer and pizza snacks.