Here it is: a little sign of life. A flickering in the incandescent world of the digital that there might still be someone twitching at the end of this tin can string.
Life is fast and patchy roundabouts this place. Your favourite Gentlewoman has two new gentledogs who are the spring in her step and the chew marks on her shoes. Pictures forthwith.
Watch this space.
Friday, September 28, 2012
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Born to dis-satisfaction?
"There is no passion to be found in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living." -- Nelson Mandela
At the outset, let me set a few parameters: I am a very big fan of Nelson Mandela and all that he has come to stand for in South Africa and the world at large, that the work that he did and the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are inspirations to me and have inspired an awful lot of my academic work. That said, this quote bothers me.
And here's why:
How do we know what kind of life we are capable of living? What ever happened to the societal paradigm where we were born into a community, we did the best with what we had but did not necessarily seek to enlarge our lot, only to improve it through reasonable means, and died snug in a faith we didn't challenge? Now, I'm clearly not for this sort of thing-- I've been hopping international fences and taking classes in existential philosophy for too long now to pretend that I espouse this belief, but whatever happened to it and why do we have to doom ourselves to a lacklustre life if we fail to live a life which fully tests the limits of our capacity?
From birth in the First World we are pumped full of rhetoric regarding our capabilities; we are each destined for greatness, there's nothing we can't do if we set our minds to it, reach for the stars, aim high, genius is in the eye of the beholder and other such platitudes of bullshit. It's not really true. Yes, there are those among us who have the grey matter to make an impact upon the lives of others and maybe the social consciousness of our time, but they have to have the ambition to do so, the funding to procure the education which will enable them to do so, the luck to acquire either good health or the money to buy it, and the sheer roulette of fortune to make the connections and favourable impressions which will open the proper doors and the opportune times. That's more than any one person can control all by their lonesome, and yet we tell our children all these lies and dress them up as encouragement. We're not all capable of finding a cure for cancer. Not all of us are cut out for rocket science. In fact, a fair few of us aren't really college material.
Controversial? I suppose, but we're not all created equal in any way but rights and possibly the eyes of a benign creator if you go in for that sort of thought. If not, this all gets a lot bleaker. If you do, then the hope which is chalk and pinion to existence remains.
We aren't all brain boxes, but we can work steadily and heartily to the best of our ability. Is that what Mr. Mandela meant? That we can only find passion in pushing the boundaries of our lives and intentions wherever we find ourselves rather than offering another quote to the halls of high school graduation platitude? Can we not enjoy the passion of fulfilment at the end of a day of honest labour, of a cold drink on a hot day and the trembling of exercised muscles and a quiet mind? Can't we be happy with a quiet and ordinary life, or must we always be plagued by the creeping, whispering sprite of malcontent that we could have done better, that we might have dressed in silks and ermine and led a life of greater height?
And what precisely is this passion which we're supposed to want in our lives or else be doomed to live in the diminished lack? Google provides the definition of the noun as "1. Strong and barely controllable emotion; 2. A state or outburst of such emotion. Synonyms: rage, ardour, ardor, anger, love." Now, not to play the Gentlewoman card too heavily, but it would seem that our lives would be a little easier if the persons in control of nuclear arsenals and crude oil reserves had a little less passion in their lives. Does that mean I've condemned them to not living up to their capability?
Now, in all honesty, I've never been much of a fan of passion as such. I find it frequently involves too many fluids, but I am for satisfaction. I am pro-joy. Can we have those fulfilments in a quiet life? Might one gentlewoman find happiness and a piece of sky teaching average students to write simply and occasionally take a holiday to a distant place? Maybe that's why the above quote struck such a sour chord with me this morning, but let me put it to you, gentle and unfamiliar readers:
Must it be settling if our lives are not pushed to the brink? Is passion the aim? Can we be happy without it?
At the outset, let me set a few parameters: I am a very big fan of Nelson Mandela and all that he has come to stand for in South Africa and the world at large, that the work that he did and the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are inspirations to me and have inspired an awful lot of my academic work. That said, this quote bothers me.
And here's why:
How do we know what kind of life we are capable of living? What ever happened to the societal paradigm where we were born into a community, we did the best with what we had but did not necessarily seek to enlarge our lot, only to improve it through reasonable means, and died snug in a faith we didn't challenge? Now, I'm clearly not for this sort of thing-- I've been hopping international fences and taking classes in existential philosophy for too long now to pretend that I espouse this belief, but whatever happened to it and why do we have to doom ourselves to a lacklustre life if we fail to live a life which fully tests the limits of our capacity?
From birth in the First World we are pumped full of rhetoric regarding our capabilities; we are each destined for greatness, there's nothing we can't do if we set our minds to it, reach for the stars, aim high, genius is in the eye of the beholder and other such platitudes of bullshit. It's not really true. Yes, there are those among us who have the grey matter to make an impact upon the lives of others and maybe the social consciousness of our time, but they have to have the ambition to do so, the funding to procure the education which will enable them to do so, the luck to acquire either good health or the money to buy it, and the sheer roulette of fortune to make the connections and favourable impressions which will open the proper doors and the opportune times. That's more than any one person can control all by their lonesome, and yet we tell our children all these lies and dress them up as encouragement. We're not all capable of finding a cure for cancer. Not all of us are cut out for rocket science. In fact, a fair few of us aren't really college material.
Controversial? I suppose, but we're not all created equal in any way but rights and possibly the eyes of a benign creator if you go in for that sort of thought. If not, this all gets a lot bleaker. If you do, then the hope which is chalk and pinion to existence remains.
We aren't all brain boxes, but we can work steadily and heartily to the best of our ability. Is that what Mr. Mandela meant? That we can only find passion in pushing the boundaries of our lives and intentions wherever we find ourselves rather than offering another quote to the halls of high school graduation platitude? Can we not enjoy the passion of fulfilment at the end of a day of honest labour, of a cold drink on a hot day and the trembling of exercised muscles and a quiet mind? Can't we be happy with a quiet and ordinary life, or must we always be plagued by the creeping, whispering sprite of malcontent that we could have done better, that we might have dressed in silks and ermine and led a life of greater height?
And what precisely is this passion which we're supposed to want in our lives or else be doomed to live in the diminished lack? Google provides the definition of the noun as "1. Strong and barely controllable emotion; 2. A state or outburst of such emotion. Synonyms: rage, ardour, ardor, anger, love." Now, not to play the Gentlewoman card too heavily, but it would seem that our lives would be a little easier if the persons in control of nuclear arsenals and crude oil reserves had a little less passion in their lives. Does that mean I've condemned them to not living up to their capability?
Now, in all honesty, I've never been much of a fan of passion as such. I find it frequently involves too many fluids, but I am for satisfaction. I am pro-joy. Can we have those fulfilments in a quiet life? Might one gentlewoman find happiness and a piece of sky teaching average students to write simply and occasionally take a holiday to a distant place? Maybe that's why the above quote struck such a sour chord with me this morning, but let me put it to you, gentle and unfamiliar readers:
Must it be settling if our lives are not pushed to the brink? Is passion the aim? Can we be happy without it?
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
A small smile
Having very recently lugged myself through the application process for several prospective places of employment and faced with the looming tax deadline, the following quote resonated with astounding clarity.
"We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming." --Werner von Braun
... And thus we say, amen.
"We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming." --Werner von Braun
... And thus we say, amen.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
What to think
... a Gentlewoman might wonder. What to think about a great many things.
As previously discussed, the Gentlewoman has recently found a new home. Well, almost. They're in the process of drawing up the paperwork, and then there's a fair bit of construction which will need to be done to renovate the attic space and convert it into a bedroom, bathroom and a sitting room (which she has no doubts will be colonised by childrens' toys and media equipment as soon as the flooring is down). Until then, the hobo life is all the rage these days.
No, really, there is the coworker of the Gentlewoman's Gentleman-Friend who happens to have two completely unfurnished bedrooms in his nearly unfurnished house where they can sleep on air mattresses and she can continue to wage her war on cobwebs and that particular species of thin-legged and beige-bodied spider that seems to live in all ranch-style house bathrooms. She hates them.
Living in such forced minimalist zen surroundings has given our Good Lady a bit of time to think. And what has she thought about? That living in a town where nobody locks their doors if they can see the door to their neighbours, in a town where a car can be left running while the driver runs in to the dry cleaners, where the library has a cat who wanders indiscriminately in and out of the front door and nobody worries, where all these comfortable safeties continue to exist everyday, how mean and hard-scrabble has life been previously and elsewhere?
Is this really a place where people get along? Can it be?
As previously discussed, the Gentlewoman has recently found a new home. Well, almost. They're in the process of drawing up the paperwork, and then there's a fair bit of construction which will need to be done to renovate the attic space and convert it into a bedroom, bathroom and a sitting room (which she has no doubts will be colonised by childrens' toys and media equipment as soon as the flooring is down). Until then, the hobo life is all the rage these days.
No, really, there is the coworker of the Gentlewoman's Gentleman-Friend who happens to have two completely unfurnished bedrooms in his nearly unfurnished house where they can sleep on air mattresses and she can continue to wage her war on cobwebs and that particular species of thin-legged and beige-bodied spider that seems to live in all ranch-style house bathrooms. She hates them.
Living in such forced minimalist zen surroundings has given our Good Lady a bit of time to think. And what has she thought about? That living in a town where nobody locks their doors if they can see the door to their neighbours, in a town where a car can be left running while the driver runs in to the dry cleaners, where the library has a cat who wanders indiscriminately in and out of the front door and nobody worries, where all these comfortable safeties continue to exist everyday, how mean and hard-scrabble has life been previously and elsewhere?
Is this really a place where people get along? Can it be?
Thursday, January 12, 2012
2012
So, a few things have changed:
Failing to go into detail regarding my current progress with my doctoral dissertation, my familial situation and my current hemisphere of habitation, let it suffice to say that the concluding quarter of the Year of our Lord 2011 was a tumultuous one.
Let it also go unquestioned that anyone gives even one-sixteenth of an airbourn rump of rodentia what I'm getting up to these days.
So, what to talk about?
Well, let me set forth, unknown readers, a hypothetical small town in which one Gentlewoman may have just arrived. It's going to be her home, though the town is, as of yet, unaware of this change in designation. So far, it had only been a weekend destination.
It's a pleasant small town, though the brick-and-mortar downtown was recently deforested, the empty little squares of earth sectioned off amidst the brick and concrete still visible to passing feet. Doing better than many such nearly-identical gatherings of homes and houses, this small town still has a Sears appliance store downtown, keeping the windowfront from going vacant, chasing the phantom of soap white abandonment a little further down the block. There's also an Ace Hardware that sells everything Sears doesn't, and that's terribly handy. A smattering of antique shops may or may not be going out of business, a Zenith television shop clings to life by its fingernails, the chain Hallmark shop is most definitely shut, a soy candle and looseleaf tea joint appears to be inexplicably thriving, and a bicycle shop is yet to be explored. The topography of the town is gently rolling, as a placid but deep sea left in the wake of retreating giants of ice, secretly hoping in its cold blue-green heart that it's blanket of ice might one day return and lay silence and stillness across its smooth belly for another ten thousand years. The Gentlewoman may give some thought to learning to ride a bicycle proficiently in this landscape devoid of major hill and obstacle in the coming, more temperate months, but she might not, who knows.
An early morning in the biting wind freezes her hair, still wet from a scalding shower and festooned with snowflakes packed like polystyrene in the clearing house of stratus clouds. It's bitterly cold and gusty as a workman's complaint, but the slant of neon coming from a coffee shop on the corner holds a promise of warmth and caffeine-- soldier on. It is indeed warm and there are tables; she spots one adjacent to an outlet and sets her oversized handbag down to claim her perch. It's a good one, a corner table with views out both windows and her back to the exterior wall pillar. She can see the counter, the door, and views down both streets. A good call. The chai latte, at first so fully of frothy milk promise, was not. The taste was hard to identify, perhaps too sweet? Almost citrus, but not, somehow. Unfortunate, regardless. The hot cocoa ordered later was far more pleasant, once one averted singeing off one's taste buds.
The other clientele are a peculiar blend of stall town stock and trade: older men, not yet truly ancient, sitting and reading print-offs of unknown provenance which support their bound and tied belief that the Lutherans will be the death of this country and the current Administration is somehow mixed up in Sharia Law. Somehow. They were a little foggy on the details. They were joined in adverse but jovial discussion by the longer-haired youthful man with impressive sideburns and a very young son, who looked a little greener with all his mixed textiles. A smattering of businessmen, no ties or wool coats (those aren't the type of businessmen who make it around here) but sporting button-downs and chinos and drinking strong coffee, talking important talk. Farm wives segregate from the in-town ladies, who have clearly patronized the local beauty shop-come-salon-sometimes-called-spa for a trim and some dye and perhaps just a little plucking. These women are artists, designers, painters, maybe a florist? They're quite nice once introduced, but our Gentlewoman is still making her way and has not yet made way of introductions, so they'll just have to go about their strategically just-into-earshot conversations in peace. The lunch crown comes and goes, all well meaning and meaning to get out of the cold.
So, the town has a coffee shop and a Gentlewoman. The little carnations in the clear glass bud vases are dying, and one might offer her expertise to brighten the tables, but when queried the only slightly balding fellow behind the counters smiles and says that an old man takes care of them once a week, doesn't know where he gets the flowers but it does a lot to brighten the place up. It certainly does.
Failing to go into detail regarding my current progress with my doctoral dissertation, my familial situation and my current hemisphere of habitation, let it suffice to say that the concluding quarter of the Year of our Lord 2011 was a tumultuous one.
Let it also go unquestioned that anyone gives even one-sixteenth of an airbourn rump of rodentia what I'm getting up to these days.
So, what to talk about?
Well, let me set forth, unknown readers, a hypothetical small town in which one Gentlewoman may have just arrived. It's going to be her home, though the town is, as of yet, unaware of this change in designation. So far, it had only been a weekend destination.
It's a pleasant small town, though the brick-and-mortar downtown was recently deforested, the empty little squares of earth sectioned off amidst the brick and concrete still visible to passing feet. Doing better than many such nearly-identical gatherings of homes and houses, this small town still has a Sears appliance store downtown, keeping the windowfront from going vacant, chasing the phantom of soap white abandonment a little further down the block. There's also an Ace Hardware that sells everything Sears doesn't, and that's terribly handy. A smattering of antique shops may or may not be going out of business, a Zenith television shop clings to life by its fingernails, the chain Hallmark shop is most definitely shut, a soy candle and looseleaf tea joint appears to be inexplicably thriving, and a bicycle shop is yet to be explored. The topography of the town is gently rolling, as a placid but deep sea left in the wake of retreating giants of ice, secretly hoping in its cold blue-green heart that it's blanket of ice might one day return and lay silence and stillness across its smooth belly for another ten thousand years. The Gentlewoman may give some thought to learning to ride a bicycle proficiently in this landscape devoid of major hill and obstacle in the coming, more temperate months, but she might not, who knows.
An early morning in the biting wind freezes her hair, still wet from a scalding shower and festooned with snowflakes packed like polystyrene in the clearing house of stratus clouds. It's bitterly cold and gusty as a workman's complaint, but the slant of neon coming from a coffee shop on the corner holds a promise of warmth and caffeine-- soldier on. It is indeed warm and there are tables; she spots one adjacent to an outlet and sets her oversized handbag down to claim her perch. It's a good one, a corner table with views out both windows and her back to the exterior wall pillar. She can see the counter, the door, and views down both streets. A good call. The chai latte, at first so fully of frothy milk promise, was not. The taste was hard to identify, perhaps too sweet? Almost citrus, but not, somehow. Unfortunate, regardless. The hot cocoa ordered later was far more pleasant, once one averted singeing off one's taste buds.
The other clientele are a peculiar blend of stall town stock and trade: older men, not yet truly ancient, sitting and reading print-offs of unknown provenance which support their bound and tied belief that the Lutherans will be the death of this country and the current Administration is somehow mixed up in Sharia Law. Somehow. They were a little foggy on the details. They were joined in adverse but jovial discussion by the longer-haired youthful man with impressive sideburns and a very young son, who looked a little greener with all his mixed textiles. A smattering of businessmen, no ties or wool coats (those aren't the type of businessmen who make it around here) but sporting button-downs and chinos and drinking strong coffee, talking important talk. Farm wives segregate from the in-town ladies, who have clearly patronized the local beauty shop-come-salon-sometimes-called-spa for a trim and some dye and perhaps just a little plucking. These women are artists, designers, painters, maybe a florist? They're quite nice once introduced, but our Gentlewoman is still making her way and has not yet made way of introductions, so they'll just have to go about their strategically just-into-earshot conversations in peace. The lunch crown comes and goes, all well meaning and meaning to get out of the cold.
So, the town has a coffee shop and a Gentlewoman. The little carnations in the clear glass bud vases are dying, and one might offer her expertise to brighten the tables, but when queried the only slightly balding fellow behind the counters smiles and says that an old man takes care of them once a week, doesn't know where he gets the flowers but it does a lot to brighten the place up. It certainly does.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)