The awful truth

So. Today I had one of Those Days. You know, those days where nothing goes that right but nothing goes that cataclysmically wrong, either? It's like you just stub your toe all day long until by 3 pm you’re willing to try the farm-dog style of self-help: you either relocate under the back porch with the intention of either heading up to that great big kennel in the sky, or you lie low until you re-emerge as the beautiful, shiny, non-cranky butterfly of yesteryear. I am generally of a sanguine temperament, so this state of mind was puzzling, and forced me to delve deep into my subconscious to discover what exactly was going on. In the process, however, I stumbled upon a fairly unpleasant realisation. Apparently, I am very vain. It’s true. ‘Oh,’ I hear you cry, ‘but your style of humour is so delightfully self-deprecating, so self-mocking, it simply cannot be!’ Sorry to rain on your parade, kids, but it seems that in the mirror-loving stakes, all that Glitters is not just Mariah Carey.

Technically, my appearance-induced funk of today actually began on the train to Paris yesterday. As I watched the woman next to me strap herself into an industrial-sized girdle in the middle of the train, I was vaguely fascinated by the sight of someone a) putting their underwear on in a public place, and b) wearing a contraption so antiquated that I’m pretty sure was still made in the original whalebone. In the midst of my youth-fuelled, rather self-congratulatory ruminations on this flesh-coloured harness, however, I got the tingle. Now, before you stop reading, never fear: you are not about to see some ridiculously good looking people walk across this blog and suddenly start talking about genital herpes. Rather, this was one of those, 'that's odd, it must be a mozzie bite' forehead-oriented moments of vague concern. But really I should have guessed: chic city, semi-important meeting ... yes God, I admit it; sometimes you can be very funny. By the time I arrived at Gare du Nord, I was sporting one mind-bogglingly enormous pimple smack between the eyes.

Now, I will never write in an impassioned manner about beauty issues, because not only do I find the idea of putting something made out of a dead baby rabbit on my face a little repulsive, I simply am fairly low-maintenance in my morning routines. However, like every girl of the Dolly generation, I know the blemish commandments: don't touch, don't pick, don't squeeze. In this case, whoever said that rules were made to broken was just plain wrong. After one very painful session with a cotton bud, I now appear to be have modeled myself on Fiona Horne and her stick-on attempts to take part in the Hindu caste system. At any rate, with a blaring stop-sign on my forehead, I am definitely feeling untouchable ...

Isn’t this normal (albeit self-interested, neurotic, middle class) behaviour, though? I mean, doesn’t everyone who has a conjoined twin on their face for two days crack the shits? And truly, it's big; I could even feel grown men backing away in the fear that bodily fluids were going to be exchanged before we even got to 'hello'. However, knowing how ridiculously vapid and self-obsessed this was, I decided to do what anyone with a vague desire for self-respect might do: I went for a run, had some beer, and ate lots of chocolate. After this little combo, I’m now feeling so beatific that I could give Pope Ratzinger a run for his money. Whilst I realise that this sweat/alcohol/fat combination is the equivalent wearing a peanut-butter face mask to bed, and that, odds are my second head will have developed a whole new circle of friends by tomorrow morning, I’m willing to take the risk. What can I say?

Life in Belgium. Life on the edge.

An attempt to raise the tone (warning - long post)

That's right, folks. After 5 posts that have oscillated between low-brown musings and general poor taste, for my second post today (and yes, clearly, I need to get out more) I'm going to try and shoot for an elevated, intellectual entry that reflects the kinds of issues that I, on occasion, feel like I should be grappling with here. How I'm going to achieve this aforesaid 'tone-raising' via the issue of child p_rnography (or, let's get it right, currently it's the 'possibility' of child p_rnography) is still not entirely clear.

Like every other arts aficiondo, over this weekend I've not only spent some quality time with the trashtactular extravanganza that is Eurovision, I've also been scouring the Australian media for reportage of the recent Bill Henson furore. Now, I'm not going to let the fact that a) I haven't seen the image/s in question, nor b) the fact that I'm currently not in the country (isn't that what Australian expats are supposed to do, anyway? Loudly bemoan the caveman tendencies of the mother country whilst equally loudly demanding that their 'neanderthal' compadres give them as much of their attention as they can spare from their attempts to make Magical Hot Flame Stick? And yes, Germaine, I'm talking to you ...) dissuade me from having an opinion on this one.

I'm familiar with a reasonable proportion of Henson's oeuvre, having studied/seen a considerable amount over the years in exhibitions. His work is many things: hauntingly beautfiful, luminous, provocative, challenging, and yes, on occassion, disturbing, but I cannot understand how someone would jump from this to labelling it 'p_rn'. In my (admittedly fairly limited) exposure to 'normal' (i.e. adult/adult) hetero p_rn, from what I've seen, it is mean, angry, and degrading in it's mechanical repetitions of the act, and if it weren't so boring, it would simply demean everyone concerned, including the viewer. That said, whatever floats your boat. If you're an avid fan of the flat-screen Big O and get a job as a pool boy in the belief that it's going to land you a whole lotta lady lovin', more power to you. However, when you end up on minimum wage and your frustration results in a nasty case of chlorine-induced dermatitis on your nether regions, you know who not to ask to pass the tube of aloe vera.

The Henson images I know, however, don't elicit this response. Rather, they are about asking questions, interrogating the image and our relationship to it, and forcing the viewer to enter a nebulous, liminal realm in which subject and object relationships are continually negotiated. Yes, this is the realm of fantasy, but not, I stress, 's_xual' fantasy. Instead, they seem to be more about trying to return to and reexperience what was, for me, anyway, a period in time which was defined by the same adjectives used earlier to describe the works: challenging, sometimes beautiful, often disturbing and disquieting. Remember, everyone? Adolescence is *fun*. By contrast, however, the very nature of p_rn seems to be that it provides a full-frontal, no-questions-asked, no-holds-barred, easy answer to the issue of human relationships and s_xual complexity.

I agree, that the issue of consent is a tricky one, but I think what is probably the greater issue at stake right now in regards to the current case is how the image itself has been referred to by both press and politicians, and how this will, in turn, affect the child/ren pictured. "Revolting", Kevin? Well, gee, I guess there's no better way of making someone feel dirty and used than by describing their decision to pose for one of our most well-regarded international artists like that.

My prevalent feeling over all of this is one of sadness: why do we live in an age where it's impossible to view kids (whether clothed or not) as something that has the potential to be 'dirty'. Why do some parents dress their seven-year old daughters in clothes that wouldn't look out of place in Pretty Woman? (Kid you not, in a homewares department recently I saw little-girls' bedlinen from the Playboy line that came equipped with an enormous, pink vinyl bunny-logo soft toy ... if nothing else, that's a crime against good taste.)

It's all very troubling, hence my double post, as I myself need to try and work out what I think here, too. One other case that's been in the news and was also ringing in my ears, of course, was that of the downgrading of public transport advocate and university lecturer Paul Mees' contract at the University of Melbourne. Supposedly demoted for his criticism of the State government, Dr Mees has since resigned from Melbourne University and is now working, hopefully in a more happy capacity, at RMIT. I just can't help wondering, if we stymie the voices of our artists and academics (and journalists, writers, poets, politicians, and anyone else trying to think slightly outside our 21st century, hyper-consumerist society), what will be left? Youtube?

Hmm. Difficult days.


P.S. My use of the underscore is not intended to be prudish - I'd just rather this blog didn't turn up when those of the Sticky Keyboard Society log onto google and type in the magic words.

Sometimes I'm glad I'm single ...

So, nostalgic for car fumes and in need of a piercing shop, I spent yesterday in my closest friendly metropolis, Antwerp. For those of you who don't know it, it's a very cool small city (about 500,000, I think) that has great cafes, shops, and shock! horror! young people who don't spend the weekends at DIY conventions. Anyhoo, grimy and sated with my dose of the urban jungle, I took the bus back home in the evening and witnessed one of the more disturbing evidences of dating delusion that I have ever seen. It's one of those states in coupledom that you only realise you inhabited once it's gone. This generally occurs at the moment you turn around realise that the person who recently pushed your 'make baby' button is not only a filthy, sweaty, snivelling grotmeister (no, it's not bohemian, it's gross), but that EVERYONE AROUND YOU KNEW, EXCEPT YOU. Immediately, the haze of love-chemicals clears and you're left with three unused bottles of men's deodorant you bought in the vague hope that he might one day get out of bed and use them...

Anyway, a couple of about my age were on the bus, facing me in one of the backwards-facing seats a few metres away. The first thing I noticed about them was their apparent 'role reversal'. While the girl was very affectionate, the guy just seemed totally besotted. Not in an icky, 'get a room' kind of way, but just cute - 'oh you're tired? I'll rub your neck. Listen to this song on my ipod with me. I love your skin. I'm going to kiss your hand,' etc etc. I'm all for gender equality, and perhaps I move in the wrong circles, but for me it was refreshing to see a man who just seemed so unashamedly in love with his partner. I have to admit, watching this little performance, I felt a small stab in my shrew-spot which once punctured, started off the usual list of self-recriminations: 'why am I single? Why, when I'm not single, do I turn men into crazy people? Why can I not point to any positive relationship with a member of the opposite sex who doesn't share my surname? Why? Why? Why???!!'

I'll tell you why, and why, if this is the price of connubial bliss, I'd rather have my cats choke on my Miss Havisham dress while they eat me at age 89:

So, girl (who we shall now dub, She Who Shall Be Launched Into Singledom In a Moment of Sublime Horror) is very tired, so proceeds to bunch up Caring Boyfriend's jumper and have a little doze on his lap. He continues to pet her a little, twiddles her hair, plays with her ear etc, oh, it's cute, cute, cute. However, within 2 minutes, my self-flagellation and viscerally-charged envy ends. For ever.

Once She Who Shall Be is safely asleep and blissfully unaware, Caring Boyfriend does the unthinkable.

He begins to pick his nose.

And eat it.

Not just once, ok. For15-20 minutes this guy works at mining a three-course meal from his nasal passages while his lovely girlfriend is lying right there on his lap, smile-on-face and dreaming about the beautiful wedding and perfect children which their glorious, magazine-happy future has in store.

AAARRGGHHH!

It was the train-wreck thing, I didn't want to look but I couldn't look away, which resulted in a very sore neck and some serious nausea. What was almost more amazing, however, was that, of that packed bus, I seemed to be the only one making half-gagging, half-giggling noises at this filth-fest. Why?! On return, I thought, 'perhaps it's a European thing?', and there was I, the ocker uncultured Aussie who didn't understand that a good meal of cranial matter is the essential prelude to any Belgian Saturday night. Thus, I told a Belgian friend the story. Her immediate response of, "this is disgusting!" made me feel SO vindicated. Finally, some validation: I fit in here! I'm one of you! I'm totally down with this country - pop the champagne! And then she said, "to pick, yes, is ok. But to eat? Urgh. Disgusting".

Um ...

Nothing. I've got nothing.

A little jaunt to the wall

Hello darlings (and yes, I have just referred to myself by a pet name and in the plural. Revelatory of the incestuous relationship between the sole reader and the sole writer of this blog? Or perhaps just a conjuring trick intended to people this site with the fahbulous little hipster androgynes I've been rubbing pointy shoulders with this week. You be the judge.
Schnookums likes it when you get all stern and uncompromising-like ...)

Ahem. Sorry. As I was saying, the hiatus in posting on this barely-conceived blog is not due to a lack of commitment or dedication on my behalf. No, good people. Rather, this interruption to our scheduled programme was because, for 5 whole days, I saw the light. It was warm, it was golden; my astygmatic eyes squinted lovingly into it, I even bathed in it, until someone politely suggested that what I was doing might be considered illegal.

As you've probably guessed, I haven't returned from a hallucinogenic journey through the looking glass (although I do have some rather dubious-looking cuts on my knees), nor have I been in discussions with Our Lord of Thetan Enterprises, Inc. Rather, the truth is even better: I have just returned from 5 days in Berlin. That's right. I spent 5 days in the city of rapid and radical reinvention, and I'll let you in on a little secret:

I'm. In. Love.

Not with my rather delightful Gallic companion, Battiste, whose proposal that we enjoy the forbidden fruits of hostel-dormitory romance was rejected because,

a) I possess one small shred of dignity; I keep this last bastion of self-respect in a locket around my neck and I'm saving it for a special occasion, and

b) I'm too old to get a nasty case of crabs in a room that is not only inhabited by other people, but by 18-year-old people who have just vomited into the sink.

Instead, with ovaries exploding like the face of a fifteen-year old boy, I've decided to save myself for someone special.

I'm in love with a city, and only the human incarnation of it will do.

Not to get all Gattaca about things (and I'm aware that, with this particular city's history of ah, devastating racial and religious vilification, this may not be the most ideal metaphor to play with, but bear with me), but before this, I was quite certain I was going to have (if any) children of your garden variety, cave-dweller genus. They would be vaguely myopic, allergic to nuts, and possess not only a consistent problem with pronouncing the letter 's', but a kindly, dorkus father of much the same qualities.

After Berlin, however, (or my life AB, as it shall now be known), I long to earn my baby bonus with someone from the East side of the Wall. Together, we will produce insouciant little avant-garders who, even in utero, will reject the nourishment of a nice homecooked placenta in favour of a world-weary glance and a handrolled cigarette. I can see it now: in a perfect model of good parenting and generational social adjustment, my little ubertrendbots will take over the world. Fly, my pretties, fly!


Yikes! Clearly I ingested more than the German cooking. I have to say that, upon return, Villageville has never seemed so green or so wholesome. My initial desire to call for revolution and round up all the SUVs, golden retrievers, and their perfectly-clad owners in this dear little country was quickly quashed when I realised that not only do we need to learn from the mistakes of history, but that, judging by historical trends, revolutions generally come back to bite you pretty damn fast. I work in an academic publishing house that is located in a convent, so, odds are, if anyone's going to be taken to headquarters and charged with crimes against coolness, I'll be the first to go.

Thus, with bubble-a-bursting and Icarus wings a-melting, I say goodnight, and trudge down the hallway to my tiny monastic cell. With my French compadre long-disappeared into mindless hedonism, it’s so quiet here. I wouldn't mind some company, I don't suppose ... I mean, before I go... I was just wondering if you'd seen that guy who was here earlier? You know, slightly balding, in the cardigan? Yeah, little bit of dandruff, didn’t smell so hot. No? Oh well. It doesn't matter. I thought, well ... you know... he jutht theemed really nithe.

Oh, how the mighty are fallen ... or at least left a little damp

Has the sheer, saccharine cuteness of this country totally annihilated my sense of humour? Or does the mere sight of this:



more cat pictures


make everyone regret that they can't fit a pair of TENA Lady Pants (Plus) under their skinny jeans?

A slight change of plans

Today's post was going to be so great. Really. You would have loved it. It was going to be all about writing and blogging - the psychology behind it, why I started to write this (my first, by the way) blog, and why blogging seems to me the ideal way to get over a weird phobia I have about committing myself to any sort of opinion in print. It's not that I'm a particularly private person - get me face to face and without any form of brainal consultation I will spout whatever gem of social faux-pascity that day provides - but the process of writing for me possesses a different valence, one inextricably connected with competition, anxiety, and the need to 'prove' oneself. I suspect that this is detritus of having spent far too much time in Prestigious Tusk Tower, a highly competitive, slightly terrifying, university environment. However, details of my life in TuskTower will have to wait for another post, for the next time I'm feeling philosophical and ponderific.

This is because after the events of today, well, I feel the need for a slight U-turn. Or a Z-turn. Whatever it is, it has to get from the psychology of writing in (relative) anonymity to the psychology of masturbating in public. Yes. You heard it. Masturbating. In. Public. I hasten to add - this is not my leisure activity of choice. Rather, this post is dedicated to the lank-haired young gentleman who followed me in daylight hours, on a relatively public walk by the canals in Villageville, and then proceded to show me how much he 'liked me for my mind'. After I made a hasty exit off the path, phone in hand (which made me realise that I don't even know the Belgian emergency number ... the only number I could come up with to call was my dad, in Australia) he then followed me part of the way home, or at least I hope it was only part of the way...

Now, coming from an academic background I am no stranger to the mental version of "I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours", and my last trip to the continent provided no less than four opportunities to witness men who decided that they would prove their masculinity to me in the same way that my new friend did today. None of them, however, have distressed me as much as did today's experience. I had 'felt' him walking behind me for a long time (I'm not sure if this is a primarily female sensory experience - to me it is a totally different form of awareness), but of course it wasn't until he overtook me that he pulled out (no pun intended) the big guns... or whatever size they may be.

What if he hadn't done this just as there was an exit from the path? What if, after I had hightailed into a more residential area, I hadn't turned around and caught him coming down the path behind me? I know that he had to double back to do this, I couldn't have just been 'mistaken' and he couldn't have just been going on his way... As I said, I have had a lot of experiences of this kind whilst travelling, but none of them have ever made me start hyperventilating in a public place before. As I tried to go over this later, I began to realise I'd never had such a visceral reaction before as it has never before occurred at 'home'. It's always been in a place I can leave at any time, whereas this time it was in 'my' town, on 'my' walk. Villageville is a small place - do I now have to watch wherever I go, or wherever I walk, for this cretinous version of human existence, as odds are he lives somewhere close by? Should I avoid the canals for the rest of my time here, despite that it is my favourite and most peaceful place to be? Every time I've had this happen, I simply don't understand why they do it - is it power? But how can it be powerful to put yourself in what can only be the lamest of 'masculine' positions ...? I really don't understand, but I wish that today hadn't happened.

I don't understand why someone is allowed to make my life feel dirty.

Say 'hello' to the nice people

Thanks once again ... it's so nice of you all for coming, I really wasn't expecting such a crowd. I suppose I should introduce myself (shuffles papers awkwardly, small bead of sweat dangles on the end of nose). My name is, er, you know (awkward whisper off stage - 'didn't you tell them? You mean, you haven't told them anything?!' Extended pause. Notes start to blur as nose-sweat becomes indistinguishable from now-general facial geyser) ... Right ... (Another pause, even longer than the first. In fact, this pause could be the pause to end all pauses, if that weren't in itself some form of physcial and logical impossibility - a pause, by its very nature is ... oh, you got it? Ah, sorry.)

For those of you who don't know me, my name is ... look! Over there! (A brief scuffle ensues. Lecture continues 'under duress'.) What I meant to say is, well... Oh look, you know what Will said, 'rose by any other name', etc, etc? Basically, if I really need to explain this, I'm just like that other girl, you know, that one you were talking to earlier? At the coffee, you remember. Black dress, brown boots? She was kind of nice, easy going, had a bit of broccoli in her teeth but didn't appear to skin small animals and attach them to her underpants...

You know, that one, her over there.


As Her Over There, I'm hoping this blog will enable me to record some of the interesting and challenging aspects of my life and times in a small, country town in rural Belgium. So French it aint (not only because, for the perceptive among you, I live in Belgium and that was set in France); but what I am hoping it might do is to provide a platform in which the lacuna that is currently my life might be diced, sliced, and blended, so that it can one day be served with a nice cocktail umbrella.

Just charge it to my room, thanks.