The End of An Era...

The capitalised title's back, people. D'you know what that means?! It means I have BIG NEWS (note the caps returning again there!).

Today (or should I say yesterday, Wednesday?) was a big day. It was officially the end of the last term of my final year. I have exams and a teaching placement coming up, as well as a research project and an essay - but I am mere months away from OBTAINING MY DEGREE. It seems incredible to think that this was my last day of teaching "ever" (apart from when I start my Master's, haha). Time is a wriggly caterpillar - sometimes it squiggles along, very speedy, and you follow with your eyes, conscious of the rapid movement; sometimes it basks wearily, slumping as if beaten down upon by the sun and at other times, it heaves the many compartments of itself efficiently over the leaf. Very often, we miss the latter because we bounce between extreme activity and then none at all. I think it's very handy when we do though, since it reminds that Time does not stop and start in blocks of 'routine' as we do, but is ever flowing.

Er... not too sure where that came from. Blame the fact that I'm delirious from a heady cocktail of sleeping late, waking early, reading a book on the Internet, and seeing TL. Seeing TL is a fine way to get drunk without the alcohol. I think that if I were with him in company and he held eye contact, my knees would bid me a speedy farewell. I'd like to remonstrate with them, but really, it just doesn't work. What chance does my brain have against someone who actually made my pulse race for a day and a half - yes, a day and a half! - after we first kissed?

It's not just the end of an era at university though. It's the end of a destructive era for me, I hope. I realised that I was running from dealing with family-based issues (which are probably the source of any depression I may have), because my previous relationship was very co-dependent and so if you like, my bad feelings about myself were inflicted upon me by a proxy - my ex. This time round though, I have a super-awesome libertarian, really great blog-readers and friends and I've realised that writing might help more than I've given it credit for previously. I made an appointment with the doctor for next week, and then jumped around shrieking happily. Ironic, much?

I also made an omelette yesterday. Yes. It wasn't bad at all, and next time, I'll remember to put the cheese into the beaten egg so that it's even better. :-D Resolutions have been taken - not promises made, because breaking promises brings on guilt, whereas you can't really break resolutions. I mean, you're resolving - you're essentially steeling yourself to try to do something, rather than committing. I think that's why they're called 'New Year's Resolutions,' so people don't have to feel bad if they fall off the wagon!

1) I will continue to write.
2) If I'm sinking, I will admit it - even if it's just to my blog. People ARE capable of love. The world is not a cartoon, and I will not be 'put down' for being stressed.
3) I'm going to the doctor, the lady doctor. I laughed when I realised that not even at the fucking doctor's was I safe from my family.

Anecdote time: my doctor is a Sikh man (so, like my family). A couple of years back, I was a bit chesty and over from abroad, so my dad took me to see him. On a previous occasion, I'd seen him with stomach trouble and just mentioned that I hadn't eaten much and hadn't been eating properly because of my stomach being weird. He said breezily, 'Well, you've gained weight.'

... So anyway, I asked him when it might clear up - politely as always - because it'd been around about 2 weeks, and I don't generally do illness. He essentially revealed in a hectoring way that he didn't know - that it could be up to a month or something. He and my dad were sort of sporadically making conversation at this point, I think. He said my nose had gotten sore (of which I was, unsurprisingly, aware), probably just from blowing it too hard. I asked if that was the only reason why it was so red, 'because,' I said, 'it does seem redder to me than previous times when I've had a cold.' I don't really get colds, and maybe I sound like an ignorant prat, but is that really such an awful thing to say?

He became exasperated. 'Well, you probably did before, but you just don't remember it. That's why you think it's worse now. We tend to remember significant events in our lives. Illness is hardly a significant event, is it?' Withering gaze. 'I mean, in conversation, we retain only 40% of what we're told.'

In the shallows of my mouth, the cry of Arrogant tosspot! died bitterly on my tongue. This was swiftly followed by the rejoinder 'Well, next time you want to show off to my father, you might as well just fellate him - and not in front of me either, PLEASE.' Still, my dad is slightly hard of hearing and rarely ever tuned in enough to other people's conversations to have realised what was going on. Even then, it's not like I can count on his - or any of my family's - support. I kept quiet, stunned. My suspicions about him wanting to show off were forthwith proven when he and my dad engaged in a sort of random and automated braggadicio-bout of what community work each had done. There was a strange sentiment to it, as though they were in reality striving for the same thing, but by nature falling into a wearied machismo routine of competing cockerels.

So yeah, that fucking charmer? Not testing me for depression! Although this may sound terrible, I really suspect that were I to see him and not absolutely insist on confidentiality, he might find a way to suggest something, if not bring it up, to my family upon encountering them.

4) I made an omelette yesterday. With mature Cheddar cheese and fresh parsley. I fried up some shredded ham, sliced fresh spring greens (originally misspelt as 'grins'! Oh dear), a plum tomato and one large-ish mushroom. This I piled on top of the omelette, with two pieces of wholemeal toast and a very fine dinner was had by all.
5) I will keep trying new things with The Libertarian. In the space of just two weeks, or so, he has gone from having no strong feelings about wholegrain strawberry Biopot yoghurt, to actively encouraging me to buy it at Tesco, because 'it's only 30 pence more.' This, here, is proof of the goodness of the world. My lover adores yoghurt as much as I do now. I was also absurdly proud of him when I made one of my makeshift desserts (rhubarb and vanilla Biopot poured over warm golden syrup cake - SWOON) and he rapidly cleared it. Were I not so busy thinking 'Crikey, this is moist,' I would've shed tears of joy, I tell you. TL is of a, er, limited palate to say the least, but his heart is large and so I have converted him to many a cuisine and the journey ain't stopping yet, ohhhhhhh no.

(I apologise to anyone who is suddenly repulsed and morally outraged by my food-based burblings. I LOVE food and always have. Some people like to look at porn, or celebrity gossip late at night. I floss to cake recipes. Yes, that's right. Cake recipes. I actually emitted animal noises of wounded envy and desire when discovering that people, out there, have combined brownie and cheesecake).

Something I meant to do ages ago, but had neither the time nor energy to do - I think it's really high time that somebody either a) assassinated the Pope (why is it confined just to political leaders?!) or b) committed him. I'm sorry to sound so violent, but my patience wears ever thinner with this dangerous loon, who practises inefficiency, corruption and hypocrisy at Olympic levels and continually endangers public health/human rights/world improvement in the process.

This is old news, from the 18th. I just couldnae resist though:

The Roman Catholic Church believes marital fidelity and sexual abstinence are the best way to prevent the spread of HIV.

... On his way to Cameroon, the Pope said HIV/Aids was "a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem".

The solution lay, he said, in a "spiritual and human awakening" and "friendship for those who suffer".

SPIRITUAL AND HUMAN AWAKENING? FRIENDSHIP FOR THOSE WHO SUFFER? Oh, don't worry, woman-who-has-no-rights-thanks-to-our-religion-upholding-cultural-misogyny! If your husband cheats on you and then infects you with the virus, it's OK, there's nothing you can do about it - because it's YOUR FAULT in the first place! You clearly didn't work hard enough at putting him off sex in the first place and erecting the correct psychical walls of guilt and shame in his consciousness! You should have put him off sex, apart from procreation, and then none of this would have happened!

I mean, you've failed in your basic wifely duties and he may accuse you of cheating - for a betrayal has occurred, hasn't it? You've betrayed him, just like Eve betrayed Adam. He may as well cast you out. Don't even THINK about getting an abortion, you've got a baby to bear - and if you die, then that's just divine retribution, really. Don't worry about that latex thingy that could've stopped the transfer of bodily fluid that gave you HIV! God made it, he'll deal with it! *looks desperately heavenwards, then develops carefree glint in eye* And if he doesn't, well then, tough shit anyway. As long as the white Western world's safe, you darkies can go on dying en masse for all I care. I mean, sure, I can hold you up as an example of outstanding devotion when it suits me, but you lot don't have the money or influence to lobby international governments and 'do God's work,' do you? You're the foot soldiers.

"In the context of globalisation with which we are all familiar, the Church takes a particular interest in those who are most deprived," he said.

A particular interest in making sure that 2/3rds of global Aids victims continue to die in sub-Saharan Africa, sure.

He said it was the duty of Christians to help to build "a more just world where everyone can live with dignity"

... Just not the duty of Roman Catholics.

From a separate analysis:

The Pope said the "cruel epidemic" should be tackled through fidelity and abstinence rather than condoms, and that "the traditional teaching of the Church has proven to be the only failsafe way to prevent the spread of HIV/Aids".

Bull-fucking-shit, Benny. Seriously, is your dress laced with psychotropics? Since when does 22 million infected Africans = 'the only failsafe way to prevent the spread of HIV/Aids?' EPIC fail.

OK, 3.05 a.m. Face melting. Will release my pincer-like grip now, and thank you all so much for your kindness, I LOVE Y'ALL.

P.S.: BBC Two is going to start showing The Wire! The fuckin' Wire! If you have not ventured forth into its glorious, glorious fictive terrain, then you MUST. Even The Times has counselled readers to get a piece of the action. Let's put it this way: it's routinely referred to by fans (including myself, I am guilty) as 'the best show on television ever' which is, granted, a little on the sweeping side. Just a little though. If The Wire by some freakish miracle, of the ever-hypothetical nature, were to transform into a person, then I would marry it and have its children. WITHOUT FAIL. Even if it involved polyamory. That's how good it is!

For those of you scared for my sanity - I'm going now. Really. Byeee!

Tradition: The Skinny

In keeping with my entirely non-existent claim to be an expert on well, pretty much everything, I am going to publish another rant (hopefully briefer than my previous ones, I hear you pant. We just can't keep up with these marathon spewings! Why, my pretties, I do apologise. I've been staying up too late and eating badly, and these are the pungent results... :-D).

So, here's the deal, as the Genie says in Disney's Aladdin while dressed as a sort of weird blue teddy-boy. Tradition is something I militate against quite frequently. Not in the fashion of a D.H. Lawrence or a Marinetti. I do go off on one about the importance of art to life, but I'm not kidding myself. I am more in line with the likes of Forster and Proust, as already stated, in that I believe we can't just break off from the past.

However, we really mustn't enshrine it either. LESSON NUMBER ONE!

We have our individual pasts, and then there is also the 'collective' past, generally expressed (or seen to be) through popular culture. We tend to see our individual pasts as branching off from the 'collective' past, often through our experiences of popular culture. In short, everyone often feels a need to watch the 'It' programme, or listen to the 'It' band of the moment, even though they might not be aware of what this entails. (I always felt very left out for not being able to watch Trigger Happy TV, but now it doesn't seem to me that I really missed out...).

Humans are social beings, innit, and that's why the collective past is important to us. It gives our lives meaning in a small way, and it gives them meaning in a much easier way than the painfully grown-up notion of our responsibility to the world as inhabitants of it that we get slapped with later on.

I mean, think of how beautifully simple it is when you can discuss Eastenders with somebody. For that brief period of time, you exist fully and purely in your satisfying and simple interaction with another person. Nothing tangible has been created, but a connection has flared, flickered and thrown the whole, creaking framework of your drudging life into a sort of glorious perspective for a while. Equally, this is a moment of real freedom, because you are not being forced to produce, nor are you at the mercy of a biological drive which demands that you compare yourself to another being, or procreate with them. 'Survival of the fittest,' 'the rat race' and 'the daily grind' all fall away for a minute and do you know what the best thing is? It's a secular connection. This is not some out-of-yourself moment of transcendance; you are fully conscious of what occurs. Now, ain't that almost spiritual?

We need to stop behaving as if this disappears altogether when we grow up, because it doesn't. Life is undoubtedly harder in adulthood than it is in childhood, but at least now we can appreciate these little moments of connection. People forget how much time you spend being bored and whiny when you're a kid... because you take all that shit for granted. Everything is easy, we are taught to expect... and therein lies the key-phrase. Taught to expect. We are also taught to expect adulthood a certain way. Can we not just get a grip, please? Not everyone's past is that amazing. I loved the books I read, but I'm pretty happy to be who I am now.

These days, because people limply accept that they will have to work forever to afford all the things they want and the lifestyle they think they deserve, we seem to be losing sight more and more of that very infantile luxury: the luxury of taking stock. That poem about how we don't have time to just exist, sums it up for me. Why on Earth can people not just drop their standards a little? You don't HAVE to have a 36-inch TV. If need be, surely you could just use your laptop instead of buying a DVD player. And just how many sofas do you need, really?

I hate to sound all poncey and spiritual, but it's true - those things won't go with you when you die. Knowing that you finally managed to get that Mercedes-Benz is REALLY going to make that passage to the Other Side so much easier, isn't it? What the fuck is wrong with people?

This is where people go badly wrong. In the hopes of having something which will defy human mortality, they cling to tradition. The idea, if you think about it, being that traditions are passed down from generation to generation. In short, they are another manifestation of the human ego's frantic need to circumvent death.

Let me put it to you people straight: YOU WILL DIE AND STOP EXISTING. Unappealing as that sounds, that's just how it is. Get it through your heads. God may or may not exist, who fuckin' KNOWS if we have an afterlife, but we are born and we die. Clinging to tradition does NOT mean you escape.

A lot of diasporans have this real anxiety about mortality, you will notice, if you speak to them about their children becoming 'Westernised' and 'losing their culture.'

Permit me to be outrageous. Mummy, Daddy, I'm afraid that Indian culture is NOT MY CULTURE. I do enjoy elements of it, but I grew up in this country. I have internalised a different set of norms, I plan on living within the social mores which I am used to, and your grief, while understandable and upsetting, is entirely deluded. I personally believe that many 1st-generation Asians are actually projecting their own insecurities onto their children. Many of them are well aware of the fact that their 'homeland' has changed almost beyond belief and that even if they were to return, they wouldn't be able to hack it. To put it bluntly, the India they knew is long dead and they have not been able to grieve and move on because they are stuck in the denial stage.

That's why I consider patriotism - the full-blown emotional strain of it that borders on chauvinism and nationalism - to be really fucking dumb. Nations are composed of people, and people change. Pretty simple, I'd think. And yet, when it's only when talking to family friends, that my mum remarks how 'They have become modern and we are old-fashioned now.' Yes. Well done. Now write it down and learn it by heart.

To return to what I was saying: Indian culture is not 'mine' and it never was. That's tantamount to throwing a book at somebody and shouting 'Why haven't you read it? It's yours!' What utter cack. If you value the dissemination of tradition above all, if the mortality of your memories and the loss of your emotional world is something that you are not adult enough to handle, then please do everyone a favour and fuck off back to where you came from. I would say, in fatalistic fashion 'Raise your kids there if it bothers you that much!' but that would contravene my beliefs about parenthood being a process of nurturing rather than of ownership.

Traditions are a big lie, because, like everything else in the world spawned of humanity, they are subject to perversion and misinterpretation. Bitch please, they do not all carry on being the same after you die. I mean, is child-marriage as common in India as it used to be? Thank Gawd, no! I am stressing this because the lie of tradition is that you are 'investing' in something that you consider to be yours, and effectively trying to overcome death in the process.

I find it really funny that people give so much prominence to tradition when all it is, is habit. I could make a 'tradition' out of only bathing once a week if I wanted to... but I don't because it would be disgusting. That's why, similarly, 'traditions' based around, for example, the wearing of a certain religious symbol, or dressing in a particular manner, are often pretty stupid. Most people won't be aware of the original meaning, and many of them won't necessarily even agree, but the force of habit will hold them tight nonetheless.

Sometimes I wonder why we humans are so desperately keen to latch onto abstract notions when, much of the time, we can't be arsed to invest the time and effort to fully comprehend those abstract notions. Fucking idiots, so we are. Or are we geniuses? The whole point of making something that is so utterly abstract as to be verging on incomprehensible, is that people find it that much harder to question!

I'll finish by fielding a perhaps scandalous suggestion: maybe, oh 1st-gens, maybe your cultures are 'dying' (or so it seems to you) because you yourselves do not have sufficient awareness to teach the yoot about them properly. Or maybe they are dying because that is the natural order of things? Did I not speak earlier of 'survival of the fittest'? It can apply to the world of culture too, you know.

Personally, I believe that saying cultures are 'dying' is bullshit, especially if a lot of people are aware of their existence. A tiny mountain tribe which goes unchronicled and whose inhabitants all move away and convert to Christianity - perhaps that could be called a 'death,' but c'mon, how often does that really happen?

Another reason why I think clinging fervently to traditions is to be avoided at best is because it leads to things like the Partition of India, which involved horrific behaviour by people of all religions in the name of religion and tradition (oh, how cosily synonymous are the two on most occasions! *grimaces*). People can level all sorts of names and accusations at me, but I kind of agree with Nietzsche on this one: the world needs to indulge in a little more 'active forgetting' at times. (OBVIOUSLY some things, like the Holocaust, and indeed Partition, must never be forgotten, but they must also be remembered for the right reasons). We need to learn to let the tide of change come sweeping in, because it's always going to, whether we like it or not. Don't be making yourself look as foolish as ol' Canute did (although he did it intentionally...)!