Marry and Gay!

 The God Thoth, was congratulating himself on having invented the alphabet when Thamus, the God-king of Egypt said to him "this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth (quoted in de Santillana, p. 348).” When I first read these words, I was taken aback. Shocked even. Isn’t the written word superior to the spoken one? 

So I pondered for days and concluded, that the debate between memory and the pen will continue forever. As a society, we’re afraid of change,  Weren’t we all told that once homosexuals enter matrimony, it will be ruined for the man-woman variety? Nothing happened. On the positive side, we got gay divorces. Two men at each other’s throats?  Ahh!! Juicy!! I’ve counseled many a girlfriend in their marriages, but counseling a man how to deal with another man is really something! 

In seriousness,  the LGBTQ +++++ community has done so much for women. You know, the cat lady oeuvre? Where a single woman sipping wine, reading a book with a cat on her lap blanket and another two snuggled in her slippers was the ultimate fate every woman was told to be afraid of.  The gay mens of this world have made it glamorous to have kitties, read Jane Austen and flaunt vintage accessories.  So, girls single or married are now flaunting their pussy cats, and the hand made lap blanket either bought from ETSY or knitted by themselves. We are displaying our crafts. It’s like we women have come into their own thanks to men. Who happen to be white - mostly. 

The influencer/podcaster called Chris Williamson said a very interesting thing the other day. He said and I paraphrase, he said  that most of us have had great moms, and yet motherhood is not aspirational anymore! It struck a chord. So true. Becoming a mother, is not aspirational? Yes let’s do the caveats first - motherhood is not for everyone, and not everyone will be a good parent. But most will. We need our education, and it is paramount that we have jobs and economic stability. And we’re taking huge strides in the work force. Yet we’re afraid of parenting. We are made to believe that motherhood will be a disuse to our education.  Every 20 year old dreams of being an influencer on the ‘gram but no way a mother.  They want the big wedding, the picturesque honeymoon, but no child. Wanting to become a mother or making motherhood a goal is frowned upon (like being a teacher but that’s another rant for another day). Why? What will you influence by becoming an influencer? Give birth to your own influenceés and you can own that cult forever!! 

And here, I look up to the men of the LGBTQ community for help, especially if they happen to be white. I know they will make motherhood aspirational again. Celebs are already doing it. Elton John and his partner have two kids and they do the school run and nativity plays. Pete Buttigieg, took paternity leave!! How cool is that? And Tan France (Not white but has a white partner) from the queer eye advertises baby products and lives a fab lifestyle with baby et al.  Ooh and who can miss mentioning Mr. Martin. Ricky Martin, with his kids.Yeah he’s Latino - but of the white, blonde variety.  I’ve mentioned the makeup issue before, where women are arching their eyebrows and contouring like drag queens to look ultra-feminine. So maybe motherhood will also be made cool by the LGBTQ team of white men!

Quiet a few!

 “Your life will be very different if you don’t look at your mobile phone every two minutes". I was staring at this refrain for a few minutes. It was posted by a woman who wanted to let people in on her success. I didn’t know what to make of it. Different, how? Like good different or bad different? And then it hit me, I’m reading this statement on a phone because I refreshed my social media two minutes ago, making this random stranger’s warning totally redundant. Worse, this stranger assumes I’ll take their advice because I want a different life.  Absolutely not!  I paid Apple big bucks (for me) so I could check the phone whenever I want. This is the life I desire. I’m on a swing surrounded  by petunias, knitting, and when I get a notification that someone has reacted to one of my messages,  I put the yarn away and make the phone scan my face so I can see the said reaction and then switch apps and crawl down into the internet abyss for a while until I reach the posts I saw a quarter of an hour ago and then I (re)take up knitting, satisfied in the knowledge that I have no pending social media occurrences. Yes, if I didn’t check my phone ever so often, I’d be living in 1988 and my life would be different

Another mantra I despise is "All bad situations teach us something and we should be grateful for those”. No and nope. I have no patience for people who were nasty to me in the past and although I learned to survive them, I’d be much happier being ignorant. Similarly, COVID 19 didn’t teach us anything worthwhile. We all already knew the world is full of greed, malice and racism. We all were well aware that SOME of our family members  love us. The only thing that the pandemic brought to the fore was ZOOM and Google MEET etc. They existed before but now employers can call meetings on Sundays and have quick group reflections in the middle of the night.  Corona put everyone through a mental grind. So do  situations like cancers, depressions, earthquakes and nasty people. They’re despicable. I refuse to learn anything from them. Nor am I grateful for anything they did to me. 

Forget the gratitude in the bad times, I like to complain when I’m good. Mercifully I live in these times where I have a lot to complain about and I’m glad I can rant about it.  I heard a comedienne recently mention that a blog post (or anything on social media) is a conversation no one is willing to have with you. And it’s absolutely true. That’s why I don’t write as much as I should. I only write stuff that I can’t talk to anybody about. And then it got me thinking, what about authors? Is the stereotypical, taciturn person who can pen an eloquent soliloquy, unable to engage in a dialogue in real life?

Artists, on the other hand can blab. Not being an artist myself and not having an artistic aptitude, I feared and revered anybody who could hold an exhibition. Age and circumstances ironically, make me interact with these beings regularly and I can say unequivocally that the only people who fib more than artists are politicians. And even those guys have some accountability. Once in a while, some journalist or editor will spill the ’T’ on a politician. But who calls out anyone in the art world? If you want attention, the spotlight, be pampered and want an award for having ‘struggled’, just call yourself an artist. 

I’m not dunking on the art, but really the explanations, artists give for their work is bizarre. A crocheted shawl on sand represents -  growth! How? I have a shawl flung on one of my chairs for nearly a month, it just represents lethargy.  A light on a plumbing fixture represents the unfinished. Duh! In my life, it’s called a hazard not art. Let me not even get started about people who use canvasses and brushes.  Most artists are pretentious prats who get by in the world because of their attitude. The confidence with which they explain their thought process, is often nothing profound but only verbose garbage. I have thoughts like those everyday and I dispel them, for the benefit of human kind. When I see a blue apple on canvas and the artist tells me he was thinking of innovation, I’m intrigued. What came first, the blue apple or the stupid explanation? It really riles me up that these folks take centre stage and go on and on about unity and peace and climate change. Has anyone peeked into the art world? A Miss World competition seems like a monastery in comparison.

Artists are insecure, backstabbing, spoilt, egotistic beings. The art world is a constant race for exhibition venues. They’re the ones who always say, money means nothing to them and yet they’re always scrambling to get buyers to shell out vulgar amounts of cash for their mind flatulence. An artist’s success parameter, like everything commercial, is the number of pieces sold. I’ve never come across a sculptor, painter, installer or whatever, that creates and exhibits for the love of it  and not for cashola. I think we’d all just be better off , if these professions were seen as professions and not as ‘arts’. The sculptors in the ancient world were sculptors, not artists. Maybe, there should be a graduation level, like if you’ve done 350 exhibits and not said a word about your ’thought process', only then you may call yourself a member of the club artistic. 

For now, I’m just grateful for people in my life to whom I speak with regularly or else I’d have to become an avid blogger!