Age

The adolescent rebellion of my body continues apace; hostilities were stepped up this morning by the sudden appearance of sensuous, pillow-like lips on a mouth that, as many of you know, tends more to thin-lipped viperishness. It has also taken to wobbling on high heels while walking past men of a certain beauty - obviously seeking that they reach out and steady it – and braking in front of television screens showing what Masonic Boom aptly describes as overpaid prize steers kicking a soccer ball around.

More seriously, dinner with Ms. K last night served as a reminder that most women have a really antagonistic relationship with their bodies. This makes me angry. It makes me especially angry in the case of menopausal or middle-aged women – especially since I think menopausal women are more justified in feeling victimized by society’s expectations than the chorus of women world wide asking «Do I look fat in these jeans?» So I’d like to point out menopause should be the most powerful time of our lives. There are two strong peices of evidence for this:

1. A lot of post-menopausal women’s feelings of invisibility probably come from the fact the advertising chatter aimed at them drops off precipitously. A woman in her late 40’s has been the primary consumer of her household for at least 20 years. A racing scene in a car commercial will not draw her in. because she has probably already had a shit car that looked good. She will not invest in a brand of chocolate promoted by a handsome actor, because she understands there is no relationship between sugar consumption and the quality of the man you fuck. She will not invest in a clothing line publicized by sexy commercials because she understands that slavishly following fashion and getting laid regularly are not linked phenomena. She is too experienced a consumer to fall for any of this nonsense. So marketers, in general, don’t bother; they concentrate thier efforts on making women ashamed of thier age and trying to hawk cosmetics to them. But shouldn’t the women be proud of the discernment that comes with age? Wouldn’t it be a relief to not be bombarded with media images the way statistically less discerning male consumers are from the cradle to the grave?

2. As Jared Diamond points out in Why Is Sex Fun?, humans are the only species wherein menopause is clearly documented, and it is only supposed to exist in a few other species with big brains and the ability to learn. The reproductive organs of most mammalian females fail at the same rate as her other biological systems; a geriatric elephant cow, for example, is still fertile, though less so than she was young, just as her blood circulates, but less efficiently than when she was young. The reproductive system of women, however, shut down long before any of her other biological systems experience a radical drop in efficiency. There’s only one plausible explanation for this; menopause is an evolutionary benefit to humans, who are also unique in the animal world in that they rely more on learnt skills than instinct to survive. An older woman undisrupted by the physical dangers and onerous duties of childbirth makes an ideal teacher. Belonging to a genetic group whose older women are free to provide supplemental education and parenting is an advantage to the degree that menopause was programmed right into us.

My body and I are having some issues this morning.

Spliffe: (moodily stirs coffee in the grips of an obvious sulk. Finally, bursting out) What the hell was that Hugh Jackman dream about?

Body: (looking briefly up from MSN) Don't ask me. You're the one with the unconscious.

Spliffe: Don't give me that fucking tone. I would not have dreamt of Hugh Jackman doing that if you weren't all fucking full of whiney stupid hormones. Honestly, what the fuck.

Body: Oh, well I'm just soooo fucking sorry not all your dreams can be about volcanoes and running around Campania fighting crime. We're not just going through a series of epiphanies, bitch, I need something too!

Spliffe: (sighing) Look, I told you it wasn't going to be easy . . .

Body: And then you fucking did it anyways, didn't you? Nobody cares what I think.

Spliffe: Oh come on. You're fucking crazy about Figaro.

Body: Yeah, well, shut up.

(Loaded silence. We both sip the coffee)

Spliffe: It's only two more months . . . less . . .

Body: TWO FUCKING MONTHS! HOLY SHIT! Look at me, bitch. I'm beautiful and silky and appealing. I will probably never be more beautiful and silky and appealing than this. And you want me to stay under wraps for another two months, after staying under wraps for almost two months before that. When I'm old and wrinkly you'll be sorry.

Spliffe: Or I might not. I might be really glad. So might you. You're so pessimistic.

Body: You've got my head in the clouds.

Spliffe: You know we did it your way for a long time . . .

Body: And we had fun!

Spliffe: Sometimes we had fun. But in retrospect, can't you see we always had fun when we were footloose and fancy free and somewhere foreign, where we didn't have to give a fuck about what anyone thought? Is there anybody here you want?

Body: Hugh Jackman! Football players!

Spliffe: Think about what you just said.

Body: (thinks) Uhmmmm . . . oh. (lapses into silence) Look, promise me something.

Spliffe: What?

Body: If this doesn't work, can we move somewhere the men play fewer video games?

Spliffe: YES. We'll do a market study and we won't be shy of rolling blackouts. I PROMISE.

Body: Okay. Can we go to the gym now?

Spliffe: Yes, honey. We can go to the gym now.

Body: And then have some cookies?

Spliffe: Sure.

Body: And an iced coffee float?

Spliffe: Either cookies or an iced coffee float. Not both.

Body: (sulks again) Well, can we at least belch in the crowded elevator on our way up to the office?

Spliffe: We'll see.

Dribble on my chin

I was in a foul mood - physically frustrated as all fuck, wondering "welllllll, I haven't promised I would remain a chaste young Penelope - surely one little wee innocent rocks-off with a discreet young man couldn't hurt much," and then hating on myself, since I hung up my slut-cape long before now. Now, when it could hurt - alot - because the promises you make with your mouth aren't the most important kind. Hating the world, wondering why my ex-advisor hadn't got back to me yet when I wrote him a whole two hours ago, and such.

Then I found this. I defy you to maintain a grump after spending five minutes with it, and if you can, I'll hit you. How about that? Then we'll all be happy.

Not really a grump, more of a high-pitched whine

So here's hoping my misanthropy and suddenly vast belly are from warily approaching the rag, and not from being actually misanthropic and fat by nature; or worse, parthenogenetically pregnant with own cloned offspring.

Worse. . . hmm? Another little Spliffe? I could raise her outside of the Catholic church, outside of the strictures of a conventional Aspromontese family, outside of everything that's ever made me feel as if it's much more useful to prepare for failure than to fight for success. I could see what she could do if I did all that. And while I bet she could take over everything and have the neck of the world under her foot by my present age, I also understand there's a strong possibility she might not be able to breathe anymore by the time she turned 27 because her lungs would be lined with crank.

So instead, my own lungs being relatively clean, I'll just stop feeling stupid and failure prone - a judgement which, outside of certain minor aspects of my RIDICULOUS emotional life, doesn't bear scrutiny yet, and there's no sense in beating myself up now for the stupid things I might not even do tomorrow. This particular bit of navel-gazing was brought on by this dream:

The people in a city close to a volcano knew it was going to erupt, but they didn’t leave. Instead, they watched and waited, hoping it would be okay but not being sure it would. Indeed, it wasn’t. I could hear the rumbling, and I knew it would be a huge explosion of hot gas and debris, and that the town where they were would be obliterated by a pyroclastic avalanche. The people knew this was at risk. Right before the explosion, the day went as dark as night. On the main street of the city an older man approached a young woman and apologized to her; she understood, and they were content, and then the volcano blew.

I approached the city; I was a native who'd been away on a matter of business or politics. I looked like a character from an Italian soap opera. When I approached the place where my city had been, I couldn’t believe it when there was nothing there. Although I knew there was a chance it had been flattened by a volcano eruption, I thought maybe I'd got lost on my way back, or even that the whole city had moved. The issue was further confused by the area where the city had been not being desolate, but covered in terraces and young grapevines.

"Well," I said, "upwards and onwards." Then I ran off to carry on with my business or politics.

Not quite a rant, more of a grump

Had dinner chez Luke Duke last night – bone tired before I got there, tireder by the time I left. I nearly gave the Wild Child, who I’m generally growing to love, the malocchio for no worse crime than being a six year old. Luke was looking transparent himself, with far more reason than I, what with his brood and being a teacher. Why in heaven’s name J*Fish wants to be a teacher is beyond me. Why I want to get a doctorate isn’t beyond me at all – my brain has totally jumped the reality gun to a fantastical day where I can make TA’s do my shit work while I ponder imponderables and have scandals with my sexually liberated boho colleagues in a remote holiday home à la Declin de l’empire américain. But I don’t understand what sort of reality gun your brain jumps to make high school teaching seem like a good idea.

This morning I’m breaking what seems to have been a marathon hair-unwashing; you could wring this shit on my head out and the price of petrol would plummet. The funny thing is that in France it probably wouldn’t even register in my consciousness that I was looking kinda slick. In terms of that phenomenon we’re not talking holdovers from war shortage years or the Depression or whaever either; my hairdressers there would get upset if I washed my hair more than once every four or five days. Of course, my hairdressers there were fucking cockbrains who did obscene things to me. This thing one beeyotch did once – ugh – when I think about it I still want to fucking blow up France.

“I have tried to lift France out of the mud. But she will return to her errors and vomitings. I cannot prevent the French from being French." Five bucks worth of respect to anyone who can tell me who that’s attributed to without Googling. Ten bucks if anyone can confirm the source.

On the positive side of the Parisian esthetic arts, I got the two best wax jobs of my life there and no matter where I go here, I seem to get pain, ingrowth, and regrowth so rapid I might as well have hoiked it off with a garden scythe. And on a more general positive note, I'm really enjoying The Economy of Cities, by Jane Jacobs. It's written with graceful clarity; her ideas are well-explained. She's arguing for the rise of the city pre-dating the rise of agriculture and rural life, which she does convincingly; the over-arching argument comes out sound. I'm not 100% in agreement with her and think there are aspects of her argument that are as inflexible and unlikely as the accepted wisdom before her, that agriculture came first - why it couldn't have been a little of column A and a little of column B in different places in the world with different geographical imperatives is beyond me. But when her books first came out her ideas were so confrontational, so fresh; maybe she didn't feel like there was room for equivocation at the time.

Sloppiness

So last night was the reason I just don’t watch sports. Whenever I get an actual emotional attachment to one of the participating teams, either for nationalist, sexual or drunken reasons, and they suck – like the Oilers sucked last night, sucked like I sucked when I played soccer as a nine year old – it really fucking annoys me. J*Fish looked actually physically upset at the end, though. And wow, it made me remember the last game of the 1994 World Cup, the tie-breaking shots at the end of the final when Roberto Baggio punked out and Italy lost to Brazil – my heart in my mouth and then my world in pieces for a few moments, having to watch and yell what was happening to my mum, who doesn’t like soccer at all but who was just too on edge to either watch or ignore the game, and my dad, my poor dad . . . but then I also remember watching Reggina qualify for the A Series in a bar in Aspromonte, where people were cuddling, kissing, and hugging complete strangers (well, me – I think they all knew each other), crying with happiness. And I cried with them.

And my question is, what the fuck? Why can’t we bring that level of passion and engagement to more parts of our lives? Is it the strange combination of possibilities, probabilities, emotions and idolatry that televised sport serves us up in a sterile and safe way? Is it because yelling “you’re fucking killing me!” or “I fucking love that motherfucker!” at a television causes fewer problems than yelling it at a spouse, even if they are or you do? Ah, who the fuck cares anyways. I just think it’s funny that a huge group of men who act like soulless goons 85% of the time can emotionally jizz all over themselves when it comes to sports, especially in Canada; I mean, Italian men get excited about at least five other things I can think of right off the cuff, besides soccer. I’m not saying Canadian men should be more like Italian men, hells hells hells no. I guess what I’m saying is that I understand sports is an important way to blow off steam and express emotions that might not be office-appropriate, but I don’t think we’re hitting a happy medium right now.

Not much else happening in my brain this morning. My proposal is clarifying like granulated honey in a warm bath. Otherwise, my head is full of annoyance. I think people are getting shittier at thinking. I had a conversation with a music critic yesterday at lunchtime that left me wanting to – beat him? Nah, not him specifically. It’s just that when I read critical articles, what I want to know is pretty simple – is this album good or bad, melodic or dissonant, et cetera . . . is this show quiet or loud, engaging or boring . . . in short, I don’t really want criticism, I want information from an educated source. I don’t want, say, a critique of a live show with King Khan & the Shrines reading “well, this is good, but I don’t think this energy would carry over into an album because of the reediness of the lead singer’s voice . . .”, which may be true but is a profoundly unhelpful statement when I’m making a decision about whether or not to see one of their shows. I guess I’m just afraid of the quality music scene getting rarefied and perverted by snots who think studio and stage skills are both pre-requisites to greatness, and who let their mood influence their judgement. The fine art industry has already been buggered; I don't want them buggering music.

Ah, onwards and upwards.

Nausea

I wonder if it's so important for people to be seeing someone for the "well, to hell with everything!" attitude it gives them, as much as the loving or lovin'. The confidence that comes from someone you like that much thinking you're great, damn; speaking personally, it changes everything. Makes me feel devastatingly capable, and feeling capable is not generally a feature of my personality.

Anyways, enough of that. Miss P is slowing down on her research project, I'm sort of ahead of her in the workload and I was too broke to get wasted at NXNE, so over the weekend I could take a lot of time on my proposal. I've been doing background things so I don't sound like an idiot, and yesterday that led into the black market of 1940’s Germany. Imagine that mishmash of people milling around, waiting to be processed, repatriated or recompensed, staying in camp upon camp upon camp, and always hungry. In Canada we're educated about the Marshall Plan and post-war reconstruction, about how great and magnanimous it all was and how clever the United States was to get Germany back on its economic feet so fast. Fast is relative. Anyways, histories of post-war reconstruction, and how fucking boring, confusing, hungry and infuriating it must have been, always seem to be more effective then stories of mind-boggling atrocities at making me think about the sheer disrespect for the human spirit military aggression represents. It’s easier to wrap one’s head around.

For some reason that's made official comments about Guantanamo suicides more difficult to read. The divorce from psychological reality, deadly paranoia and naiveté of the notion that somebody who the state has kept in prison since he was a teen hanging himself with bed sheets is making a PR move or asymmetrical warfare provokes a very emotional response in me, so how it would make someone feel who was more engaged in the situation is hard to imagine. And it isn’t the suicides themselves; one does operate with the assumption suicide is likelier in prison and until reading those comments it was unlikely the suicides would have provoked an emotional response in me greater than that already provoked by the existence of the prison.

Fuck. If recent events are indicating the decline of the American empire, we’re going to have to not only put up with the massive social upheavals and instability but the prospect of the United States stupiding itself to death. That gives me no joy.

I'll never change (always change) my mind

I can tell that was a good NXNE, because "When the Saints Go Marching In" and "Mr. Supernatural" are fighting for possession of my brainwaves. "Put the South in Your Mouth" and "Speak Japanese or Die" keep sneaking up on both of them. In sum I fell in love with four new bands, saw the Golden Dogs again and didn’t positively hate anything, so lovely.

The first act of the last night was Kinnie Starr, whose voice was a touch nasal for me when it wasn’t electronically altered. And her song-speech bits reminded me unpleasantly of Ani DiFranco. Also, her nervous tittery ‘banter’ resulted in an audience equivalent of disbelief unsuspension. I wish musicians would shut up between songs if they don't have anything to say. But, you know, it was purdy, especially "Sun Again".

Next was Jully Black, who J*Fish’s-roommate-who-looks-like-my-insane-ex tells me is filthy hot right now because of a song out now with Nas. She deserves to be filthy hot because her voice is powerful and beautiful – I think the most beautiful voice I heard at NXNE. And she snuck in some reggae, which was adorable of her. She also brought along phenomenal back-up singers. The slow song she did about her mum, "Travel" or something, I didn’t like, maybe because of the maudlin tinkling twee keyboard through it that made me think of that song Kanye West wrote about his mum on Late Registration, which I also didn’t like. In fact I can’t think of a single song for someone’s mum that I do like, except maybe "Bohemian Rhapsody". Otherwise, she was fucking cherce.

Then Old Soul. I didn’t like them – bopped around, felt vaguely uncomfortable, realized ‘this sounds like Ben Folds Five but better’, then thought maybe Ben Folds Five sounded better live than on the albums, and then suddenly I just couldn’t take Old Soul anymore. Just kept on hearing ‘give me my money back, give me my money back you bitch’ and wishing I wasn’t.

Last, the Golden Dogs, the alpha and the omega of my NXNE 2006 experience, in the sense they were the last band I saw there – after they were through last night, I was limp and spent. And in that when J*Fish told me a week ago they were playing and that the three day pass was a paltry $28 there was absolutely no question of me not going for it, although I’d never heard of any of the other bands, as I would pay far more than that for the Golden Dogs alone. I love them. They make me scream, dance, stomp, clap and forget myself. And there you are. They have a new album coming in August, thank god, because that means they’ll be doing more shows, and that means I get more Golden Dogs soon.

So much to do, so much laundry, so much reading, grocery shopping, bike repair, and I've just discovered the yummy books of Jane Jacobs, because the Economist wrote an obituary about her. And I must try to enjoy the sunshine in the midst of it all. Ahhhhh. Well, onwards and upwards.