Neither new nor particularly revolutionary

I’M BACK, MY PRETTIES, I’M BACK! I am probably getting if anything less sleep at the moment than previously, but the shadow of healthful fitness lingers over the horizon (trans.: I joined the gym) and I’m starting to get a handle on my work a little. Plus, I think it’s about time I came to terms with Facts and accepted that even if I got some sort of work in the Real World, I’m just not capable of keeping it up without trying to off myself. I need stimulation, and I need to be able to write. So... I shall have to face down my parents and tell them that the prospect of doing a Master’s seems more than likely. Hopefully, my soon-to-be-happening interview with the Careers Office will fill me with shining career guidance goodness (if they don’t get back to me tomorrow morn, I’ll just drop in myself).

While fighting nodding-off in the course of French III Séance Courte, my teacher said something about Chateaubriand and communication. We were attempting to create a ‘plan of development’ for certain ideas that our homework presented us with. What ol’ Chatty actually said was: « Est-il bon que les communications entre les hommes soient devenues aussi faciles ? Les nations ne conserveraient-elles pas mieux leur caractère en s’ignorant les unes les autres, en gardant une fidélité religieuse aux habitudes et aux traditions de leurs pères ? » (Chateaubriand, Préface au Voyage en Amérique(1827)).

To translate: ‘Is it a good thing that communication between men has become so easy? Would nations not better conserve their particular characters, in ignoring each other, in maintaining a religious faithfulness to the habits and traditions of their fathers?’(Yes, yes, I know, it still sounds a bit fancy, but whaddaya expect? It’s 19th-century French political theory!).

Laetitia, our lovely seminar leader, opened up a whole new possibility of thought in revealing to us that ‘religion’ comes from the Latin religare, which is (to translate from the French, relier, faire le lien), to ‘make a link.’ Hence, Chateaubriand’s comment suddenly seems to become paradoxical, she said. How can you say that communications should be reduced, while promoting a ‘religious’ attitude? A cheeky Christian called Skye sitting opposite refuted that in well-murmured tones that my afternoon-fuddled mind failed to grasp completely. Something about religion and culture and them not necessarily being linked always, I believe. This (eventually) made Laetitia quite pleased and she wrote: ‘The paradox is only superficial. No exclusivity: communication is not necessarily the conservation of an ‘own identity.’ Ex. The richness of multiculturalism.’

Bingo! It hit me – like a Biblical thunderbolt – that we are all, inherently, multicultural. I am playing here with semantic suppleness, and I’m sure somebody will tell me that I am wrong according to the current, politicised understanding of ‘multiculturalism.’ People simplify these things, but look at the history of the world, HELLO! It’s much like people who talk about ‘racial purity.’ My BS-detector begins to keen urgently.The history of the world is one littered with rapes, invasions, immigration, emigration and travel. You CANNOT – many people have tried and failed – pin down the exact ‘point of origin’ of everyone out there. Anglo-Saxon people come from two different peoples! In India, there is the theory (not scientifically substantiated – check this out for a pretty interesting debunk) of the modern population being largely descended from the Aryans and the Dravidians – but the lovely man that I am seeing, WHO IS A HISTORIAN (ergo, he deals in facts unlike my brother-in-law, who once tried to interpret LoTR as being exclusively about India and Indians) – told me that apparently these two tribes were nomadic. What’s that, you cry? Nomadic? As in, ‘they moved about a lot’? As in, that means it’s pretty bloody hard to assert, with scientific evidence, exactly where the originated from?

Hopefully you get the gist of what I’m saying by now. It’s ironic really, since as any fule kno (that's for you, Rumbold :-D), ‘multiculturalism: the failure of’ is more often than not a hypocritical hijacking of reality by (usually white... but not always) right-wingers who want to use it to comfort themselves over the fact that they have difficulty understanding people who don’t think or look like them.

(I know this is supremely graceless and untimely, as are most of my political reflections, but... eh. I dance to my own beat :-D). Let’s make this relevant to ‘right now’ by saying: it’s little victories like this - over things as apparently small but utterly fundamental to effective communication that spans difference – conceded to loons, that don’t help the cause of the left any. I could REALLY time-lock this now, by talking about 42 days, which appears to be dying at last (hopefully), and which the supposedly left-wing Prime Minister pretty much forced through in attempting a show of power. Ironic really, since it was little more than pandering to our daily papers, if you ask me, and who are the imagined readership of most of those?

...Yes, that’s right, you’ve got it. LOONS. The Daily Mail – LOONS. The Sun – LOONS. The Mirror and the Express – LOONS (need I go any further?). People have a right to read these papers, and sometimes they may even be reasonable – as they say, ‘even a stopped clock is right twice a day.’ However, in the main, their truth-embroidered narratives – spun of fiction! – are not much more than self-serving bile. But hey. People are stupid and most people probably don’t tend to deconstruct in quite the same fashion as yours truly (the image that comes to mind is of a particularly enraged bulldozer). As a lover of language, I make my own esoteric contributions to the political stage, and hope that it entertains if nowt else!

The subliminal message here is: interracial couples should make you jump for joy, because they are totally hot. And most utterly hot people are... that’s right, of interracial ‘stock’? (Why does that make me think of a giant Oxo cube with Jessica Alba’s face on one side and Angelina Jolie’s on the other? Freak). I should know, because I am*ahem* seeing somebody of ANOTHER RACE, gasp, splutter etc.

In other news, I really want to make friends with some of the the people who repeatedly bob up in my French classes – who I have never seen before, sheltered as I was for two years in the top group and then shipped off to France comme un colis rempli de madeleines (a packet full of madeleines – blame Proust for giving me French cake-based desires). This is hampered by the fact that:

a) I am often too stressed/hungry/lazy/knackered to bother speaking (delete and equate as appropriate). When I am tired, I also have the most unfortunate tendency to lose control of my face, which doesn’t help the cause of socialising. When you are trying to make eye contact with somebody as they gibber gently into the distance like a nursing-home grandma, then suddenly blurt out a stream of throaty French as if they have been saving it for just this very instant... well. Fear would not be inappropriate, would it now? At this particular moment, I have developed ANOTHER fucking coldsore as well, so les pauvres get to be treated to my throbbing, red, second and third heads too (it’s more of a ‘they’ than an ‘it’, I’m afraid to say...)

b) They are all really weird looking.

This is INCREDIBLY rich coming from me – especially after what I just revealed. Maybe it is the return of my incredibly cruel and childish creative mind – but Jeez. Let’s start with one called Emily. She is tall and thin and just really reminds me of a horse in a way. She has large eyes (nice eyes – blue), the sort of mouth that probably once required braces and (I realised today) a frighteningly small chin, which kind of melts into the rest of her bony visage as if receding. Maybe it is a little? She wears a leather jacket which kind of matches her hair and makes me think ‘chestnut mare’...

Then there is Maya. She is an Asian girl (as the name suggests), with a warm kind of slightly reddish complexion – think Parminder Nagra in terms of colour and the sort of sleek, short hair she has too – but facially, she has huge eyes and a little mouth which always bears the hint of a pout, but only very slightly. No, I know what you’re thinking and this is no lemon-sucking pout – this is that slight twist of the mouth that says ‘I’m not altogether confident about this. What’s goin’ on ‘ere, like?’ Though she doesn’t sound anything like that.

Next comes Salma. Salma strikes me as... large. Not fat (not at all!), just taller and with bigger proportions than me. Her face is one you would describe as ‘sensual’ – I suppose... heavy-lidded eyes (which give the impression of a scowl, paired with the mouth), a full mouth with the slightest hint of disapproval, slightly slanted eyes... everything in its place. Glossy hair, fringe, shoulder-length, usually half-pulled back (front strands pinned at the back of the head, or a little ponytail on the side). She seems to turn that pout at me a lot, which really unnerves me (am I being judged?!).

Finally, we have Skye and Vanitha. Skye – the cheeky Christian – is less expressive than the others. She looks like a total tomboy – I couldn’t stop myself from writing down the logo on the breast of her sweatshirt, which read ‘British Car Auctions’ and beneath ‘Maureen Connolly Trophy, Bournemouth 1999.’ She is often as semi-conscious as me, and always has the hint of a grin and a surprisingly good French accent and expressiveness whenever called upon. I believe the term is ‘firecracker’? Vanitha is apparently French and has lived in London for 6 years. She is, however, of Indian extraction (the name!). She dresses a lot like Emily and Salma – that is in faux-leather jackets with jeans and boots or similar. Hardly fascinating. She has a low, unsure murmur of a voice and she trains what feels like the full force of her eyeballs on me surreptitiously quite a lot. She seems to wear a lot of eye-make up and her hair (which is ear-length) tends to kind of go a bit poker-ish and pointy at the ends which give her a slightly mad air. Add this to her audible nerves or fatigue (I think it’s got to be one or both of those,) and you have an interesting picture.

Funnily enough, there is a common link between all these people (excepting Maya and Skye)... they are the ab initios! They took French ‘from scratch’! Does this mean that someday, I will seem like some sort of subterranean weirdo if I decide to make the leap into learning Spanish, or somesuch? I know it sounds like I think they’re ‘out to get me,’ but just you come to our Séance Courte and see Emily staring, slack-jawed off into the distance, apparently at you; or Salma’s hollow-eyed accusatory stare, Maya’s ‘nervous mouse’ face... You’ll understand.