Sunday, August 31, 2008

On being 'at one'

I love Bali. Until I came here, I never thought it would be quite my scene. I’d imagined a country resplendent with Bintang singlets and which boasted a 1000 Corbeys for every Corey. But I was absolutely and unequivocally wrong. Aside from the shit-scary feral dogs everywhere, Bali is a beautiful place, and, after fairly regular massages, great food, and some quality time with my mastercard, I’m about as zen as I’ll ever be this side of a lobotomy.


You know what I don’t love though? Hippies. I’m sorry; I know it’s wrong of me, but it’s true. Furthermore, not only do I not love them, I think I might hate them. Or perhaps it’s just the one. The one who sat next to me at dinner and insisted on ‘conversing’ in a language made up almost entirely of vacant glances into the middle distance. If you’ve never experienced hippie-speak in full flight, it can be a distracting and confusing linguistic mode to both the uninitiated and the uninterested. With its stream of dangling referents and nonsensical clauses and sub-clauses, hippie-speak has the power to dupe its recipient into thinking that a sentence has been completed, a meal can be consumed, and a conversation closed. Suffice to say, these will never occur. Ever.


It’s probably my fault, though. I should never have ordered dessert because as soon as he sat down, I knew I was in trouble. With Madonna-style arms, lustful glances at my tofu, and the slightly bugged-out eyes of someone who’s spent too much time contemplating the relation of their navel to the macrocosm, I knew a devotee of Guru Bullshit had entered my dharmic field.


Now, I think I’ve already discussed my particular gift for attracting strange, miserable men before, and tonight was a reassuring reminder that my madness mojo remains intact. And clearly, it’s a give and take relationship, as every time I encounter these people I seem to get one more stamp in my passport to Crazy Town. They stress me out with their need for me to deal with problems I know nothing about that involve people I have no connection with. And yet, despite the fact that they’re clearly a little bit on the strangeo-side, I’m always mystified by their continual and total inability to take a polite hint.


Why do some men think that a girl on her own automatically signals that she wants to talk to them? And why do attractive men who missed the headcase gene never possess this assumption? Furthermore, why do the crazy ones assume that, when they talk to me about their guru who channels Jesus (in Aramaic, no less), I have actually choked on my goreng, rather than being, as some more astute conversationalists may realise, on the verge of releasing both my inner child and my bladder?


I’m sorry, I do try to be a good person, but it’s not my fault: he told me to be “in trance with the dance”. The only reason I didn’t snort was because I had started to die on the inside.


But it never just stops there. In order to excuse the fact that they are sucking the life-juice from a total stranger, they must, in a token attempt to play by the rules of engagement, make a show of being interested in what I’m into. This is, of course, despite the evidence before them that what I’m clearly into IS MY BOOK. Furthermore, when it gets around to the fact that I worked in medieval literature, specifically on a rewriting of the Trojan War epic, rather than, say, accountancy, the explanations, plot outlines, and general defence of my existence become both excruciating and predictable.


‘Medieval literature, you say? Medeeyevaal … heh heh … like Harry Potter?’ For future reference, forty is never the appropriate age to try the ‘ignorance is cute’ hat on for size. Trust me, it will never, ever, fit, and will make you look like one of those bogans at the tennis who makes his headwear out of a VB carton. But it gets worse. Because after eliciting my ‘secret past’, they feel they have to make connections, show me how much they understand me, because we’re different, you know? And then, a hippie-style lightbulb moment occurs and they realise that they know of something similar that totally fits into their world-view, and if they’re lucky, might just fit into mine. Or my pants.

The horror.


Or, more precisely, The Ramayana. For your next dining experience, may I suggest an epic poem retold, explained, punctuated, and verbally footnoted by someone who


speaks


like


this.



After one hour, I wanted to vacuum my eyeballs out.


Lucky I’m having a full day-spa tomorrow; otherwise, I might just have to kill someone.

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