"'Who's that tickling my back?' said the wall.
'Me,' said the caterpillar, 'I'm learning to crawl.'"
Bryn, my beloved1 ex-boyfriend, used to say that every now and again, and the amazing level of inanity in it would infuriate me. Today, for some reason, it keeps going round and round in my head! Argh!
Not that I'm trying to make him look bad. Oh no! Well, ok, in truth, it's all a bit of an Alanis Morissette cliche. If he were to find a new girlfriend, I'd wish nothing but the best for them both, but he's the best listener I've ever had, he's my best friend, best friend with- well, I'm trying to do without the benefits, for various reasons, but potentially that too. We haven't seen each other very much since we broke up nearly two years ago, so I no longer actively miss the far-too-in-depth conversations about the death of musical movements, the Dragonball marathons, and all the weird ill-thought-out things we often ended up doing. (Zed: I've never been to a Socialist Worker party meeting before! Can we go? Bryn: Ok.) (Bryn: Are there any decent theme parks near your parental home? Zed: Well, Camelot's about a hundred miles away. Bryn: That'll do. Please will you take me there? Zed: Ok.) But when I do get them, they bring an untold level of joy, and the thought of them never occurring again is a sombering one, and indeed, that would most likely be the case, were he to find a new girlfriend. Of course, it's within the realms of possibility that I'll find someone else to have them with, but I still dread the pain of:
Bryn: Yay! I'm finally going to Fordwich! [There's very little in Fordwich, but Bryn re-enacts, and his character came into possession of it just before we broke up, and we've both been curious to go there.]
Zed: w00t! Can I come?
Bryn: No! I'm going with my new girlfriend! It could have been you, but you spurned me, wench! Now be gone from my phoneline, for it is her voice I would rather be hearing.
So why don't we just get back together, you may well wonder? Because I prefer to just be friends with him.
Heneway. I didn't mean to write about that. It's all entirely academic, and I have enough of academia during the day, thank you very much. He doesn't appear to be in any danger of finding a new girlfriend, and I'm sure I can cope. I've survived worse.
So, stuff What's Happened lately.
On Friday 8th, I went into Melbourne to buy myself some CDeez, because:
1. Today's my twenty third birthday, and as I wasn't expecting much in the way of actual presents before September, buying myself some seemed a fine plan.
2. I only had about 45 CDs with me, which isn't a lot by my standards, as I get fed up with albums fast.
3. Argh, I hate my life as it is at the moment (on which more later, maybe), I needed a treat.
So I went to Metal Mayhem and bought rather more CDs than I intended. For the record - or, for the CD, ha ha, how funny am I! - they were:
Stratovarius - "Elements Pt 1"
Amon Amarth - "The Crusher"
Arch Enemy - "Stigmata"
Norther - "Dreams Of Endless War"
Norther - "Mirror Of Madness"
Sinergy - "Beware The Heavens"
Sinergy - "To Hell And Back"
This made for a bit of a day for 80s cover versions as one of the Sinergy albums has a (pretty bad) cover of "Hanging On The Telephone" on it and one of the Norther albums has an ok cover of "The Final Countdown" on it. The man in the shop complimented me on my eclectic tastes and I asked him about Death Angel (who I heard on a Metal Hammer compilation recently) and he was most informative. Love the lovely man in the shop (in an entirely platonic way), especially as he knocked $1.50 off the price of each CD.
I also went in search of black nail polish. (I know I shouldn't admit to that, because until now, that goth-type-people actually discuss black nail polish was just a stereotype, and now it's a reality! But, you know, everyone runs out sometimes, and my nails just don't feel right without it.) As it can be amazingly difficult to find black nail polish in England, and I didn't want to burden my poor foot, I'd asked on melbournegoths where I could buy it. I was told, "Most chemists and $2 stores". So off I went into a chemist.
Ha! Five chemists and two $2 stores later, I finally found a bottle! On my way, however, I did find 24 black jelly bracelets (yes, I know how clichéd those are too, but how dearly I love cheap plastic jewellery!) for $1, which is ten times cheaper than they generally are in England, so it wasn't an entirely wasted mission. More to the point, en route:
1. A bloke complimented on my boots.
2. A girl complimented me on my coat and invited me to a party.
3. A woman asked where I got my crutches from, how much they cost, and whether they were second hand or new. What the beep? If you need crutches, you have them, regardless of the price. If you don't need them, they really don't make much of a fashion accessory.
Sadly, the nail polish (brand: Blush-amour) turned out to be rubbish! It's all runny and drippy and second-coat-requiring, and as far as I'm concerned, life is simply too short for that sort of thing. Alas!
The subsequent weekend proceeded to be not terribly exciting. I did a lot of work, as is necessary, and then got fed up with working and read "Plays" by Chehkov, as I [hart] Russian writers and found a copy on my bedroom shelf. And predictably, I found them most enjoyable.
On Monday, my landlady, who works at the theatre, gave me a ticket to see "Twelfth Night". It was weird. While in Shakespearianish, it certainly wasn't exactly the original text. It was supposed to be funny, but I can't say I got much out of it - some of it probably went over my head, and some went directly under. Ah well. It was a good excuse to abandon work for the evening anyway.
Today, my birthday, was pretty mint. Firstly, I noticed that the nasty sign at the tram stop had been replaced with a much less offensive one.
The nasty sign bore a picture of some Dove chocolate, which I haven't eaten since I was in America four years ago. It tasted slightly odd, but was highly addictive nonetheless, and the sign made it look incredibly mouthwatering, so the sight of it always prompted me to head for the rip-off 7-11 for a couple of chocolate bars.
Needless to say, I was very resentful of advertising influencing me, as I've always believed it ineffectual and am theoretically against consumerism. (Practically, though: CDeeeez! Yay!) Normally, I'm wholly immune to adverts: I don't, for example, see a billboard promoting a brand of deodorant and think, "Ooh, yes, I could do with a squirt of that, I'll go and buy some right away." Even most adverts for chocolate have no power over me, because they just say: you too could bounce around in a technicoloured cartoon land, be a goddess in a tropical paradise, work hard and play hard, or run into someone you're talking to on a mobile phone, if only you'll eat our product. But I don't care about any of those things: just show me the brown stuff, sez I. The message on the billboard was slightly questionable, as it said, "Chocolate should never be boring", and I don't really think interesting is a particularly desirable trait in chocolate. But that was quite unimportant, as a large, partially unwrapped, squared bar of chocolate drew my eyes, and promptly I was sold.
The new sign, though, advertises coffee, and I don't drink coffee. I like the smell of it, sufficiently so that when I was at school, whenever they had visitors, I'd look for excuses to prowl up and down the corridor, for the hit the whiff of a hundred cups of it provided. But the sign, depicting a presumably naked woman bathing in what I suppose is meant to be coffee, with spoons sticking out of her head and a cup earring, for me does nothing to induce nasal nostalgia and compel me to go and buy a jar of coffee to snort. (Not that I've ever actually snorted it. Definitely not! The very thought makes my temples cringe in horror.)
Anyway, in other good news, my landlady made me a jelly, and gave me more of the other sort of jelly bracelets, some decent black nail polish (brand: Constance Carroll) and a copy of Australian Garden History magazine. (Not because I have any interest in Australian Garden History, but because I'm currently working at the Burnley campus of the Univeristy of Melbourne; she's a big cheese in the Friends of (the included) Burnley Gardens; and there's a big feature on said gardens in the current issue.)
My supervisor's daughter made me a cake, which my department shared, while discussing Christmas. (Gack! Not already!) Former housemate Jo sent me a card and £10 (which looks well weird - it's so drab and empty compared to Australian money, not that I'm complaining!) My parents sent me a card written in upsidedown and containing a shiny stretchy purple ring and bracelet, and my aunt sent a card bearing the message, "When it comes to birthdays some people will stop at nothing - so that's exactly what I did". Noj sent me an MP3 of his band - Sunderland's answer to Spinal Tap's song, "Knights Of Pleasure", which is Maidenesque and undoubtedly the Best Song Ever. Alex sent me an long and entertaining e-mail in honour of the occasion (well, it was entertaining apart from the fact that he mentioned he'd written 17 pages of his report, and intended to get 25 done by the weekend, when I'd written all of 1 of mine). I also had a most welcome phonecall from Bryn, for the first time since I've been here, and various e-cards and birthday wishes from online folk. Love the lovely people (in an entirely platonic way). Although this is subject to change to hate the hateful Bryn if my mobile phone company decides to bill me for the privilege, which I suspect it might.
[And it did! £27! Luckily, he agreed to reimburse me, because he didn't get charged at all, as it fell into his monthly free minutes!]
Int evening I went to the cinema. On my own. Not the most exciting of celebrations, I know, but I couldn't be bothered organising anything else.
The first film I saw was "Dirty Pretty Things", which is about illegal immigrants and the lengths they go to to stay int west. I wouldn't say it was amazing, but it was a nifty story, pleasingly quirky at times, and probably true too.
In any case, I've been finding it interesting watching films and reading books set in my country while I've been out of it. People often talk about coming back to England from abroad and finding it small and grey, but I've always found it deeply reassuring to see the lushness of the fields and the narrowness of the roads and the neatness of their markings; to smell the distinctive eau de service station; and to hear the presenters of a local radio station whiling the afternoon away with phonecalls from bored people. But I've never been away for more than a month before and it's always been for a holiday. This time, since I've been here, my homeland has seemed increasingly alien. No one seems to be able to shut up about the apocolyptic weather, and that's not the only thing that seems to have changed for the weirder and worse. Normally, when I'm abroad, nothing seems unappealing about returning; this time, I've been slightly bothered by the prospect. Point being, none of the books and films set in England I've seen or read since I've been here have been set in England as I know it - not in terms of the settings, I don't expect that, but the atmosphere. And this was no exception, though it's a feeling I've never had while I've been in England. It's not a good feeling, but it's interesting. To me anyway. Probably not so to you, mind, so I'll shut up about it now.
Then I saw "Anatomy Of Hell". I have yet to see an uberdisturbing French film I've actually liked, but I watch them for curiosity's sake. This one was a very very graphic piece about a woman who asks a gay bloke to observe and comment on her at her most intimate, a film designed solely to make various points about misogyny.
For part of it, I thought, "Yes! This is so true! And hurrah for the director for daring to acknowledge this truth!" Which is to say the woman's appearance was natural, and presented in such a way that the viewer gained an understanding of the man's revulsion. (And I'm not being anti-women in saying this, as men's bodies can be quite just as revolting, if not moreso. But, as far as I'm concerned, pongo2 to the "bodies are beautiful" belief - beauty is subjective, and so much so that something beautiful one moment can be ugly the next.) Also, for fleeting moments, I've believed that men that claimed to love me actually hated me, wanted to ruin me, albeit not consciously.
Most of the time, though, I alternated between thinking, "Could this dialogue be any less realistic?" and "What a load of utter yarbles3!" In its favour, it got me thinking, but only about a single VERY questionable scene, rather than the message.
Spoiler time!
Said scene involved the anatomy of the woman as a little girl. Looking back on it, I don't particularly think it was wrong, per se, to depict it: it was in the context of three small boys looking at it, which isn't unnatural - it's a sight a lot of males have probably seen in such a situation. The desired effect, though, was revulsion; but at that instant, the only revulsion I felt was for the filmmaker. Because things like that just Aren't Shown, and there is no reason the audience should either be or become immune to that type of image.
Spoiler time is now over.
In short: it could have been beautiful, but the dialogue and over-generalisations let it down too much. I personally think it would have made more sense if the bloke was straight, as he was strongly anti-women and it strikes me that gay men are more commonly simply unaffected by them: they're like oil and water, they get on well enough but don't get under each other's skin. Which isn't to say all straight men hate women; it just seems a lot more likely that they might reach the point of doing so, to some extent.
1. In a platonic way.
2. Made-up swearword from the children's book "The Wind Singer".
3. Made-up-ish swearword from "A Clockwork Orange".
Thursday 12 August 2004
This evening, I went to the cinema to see "The Return", which is about two boys living in Russia, whose father returns after twelve years and takes them on a trip for no discernible reason. Russophile that I am, I adored the settings - so bleak! so empty! so run down! - and was fascinated by the speech patterns. I couldn't say whether they're realistic (someone at IMDB said those in "Lilya 4-Ever" weren't), but someone said "blockhead!" Just like in my fifties translations of Doestoyevsky and Chekhov! Plot-wise, though, I thought it left much to be desired; character traits were simply reinforced over and over again, and all the questions I ended up with about what lay behind their attitudes went unanswered.
