Monday 10 October 2011

The Magical Mystery Bore


Today I am: Braving the tidal wave of vicious beech seed cases under foot; obsessing about the jingly jangling music of messianic show-off Edward Sharpe & his band of happy-clappy hipsters the Magnetic Zeros; spending time with my friend and her baby, forcing a buggy over Norwich cobblestones (counter-intuitively the bumpiness helps put him to sleep- I might need to try this sometime); not just running over prickly cases but running in prickly hot thunder-threatening weather, (4x round Eaton Park to hip-hop).
Always I am: Wondering W.I.T.M.O.L (What is the meaning of life?) (What am I aiming for? Without an aim is life meaningless?)
If you read my previous entry you’ll know, or you might have surmised that this question was on my mind. If you didn’t or you began but couldn’t be arsed to continue and instead chose to re-check you notifications on FakkaBooka by refreshing the browser repeatedly for twenty minutes then basically, I was just saying: “Looking for dad as life’s meaning may be indelibly caught up in the past… blah blah… looking to understand it so that I can make choices about the future... gargle, snort, blah blah.” So yes, I have been a-pondering, but try as I might, fun as I have had, T.M.O.L is continuously evading me.  Much like other unanswered questions, like, will I ever lose that 10lbs I am always circling around? Will I ever be disciplined or forever caught in the consumerist’s poorly lit changing room/circus mirror of life that tells me I don’t look good enough but crave sausage sandwiches like crack within 5 minutes of going for a 5 mile run, (and thus the cycle continues). The answer on this one has occurred to me many a time: Put all the energy I spend into ‘researching’ exercise techniques into actually doing more exercise and I might achieve my aim… or at least postpone the call of a sausage sandwich until the next day and go to the pub instead.
T.M.O.L is all about…. (Some thoughts thereon):
The traditional options (highly promoted by just about everyone under the age of 25, already in a relationship, anyone in the government, the media, anyone with children or anyone with anything to sell):-
·                   Love (most desired, but least favourable answer to the question, as if you’ve ever experienced it you’ll know love is much like an elusively delicious and extremely expensive hamburger that after being given a tip-off as to its whereabouts you chase after down a long motorway, wasting much of your time, all the while being confused by mixed reports from friends who tell you that said hamburger will be the best thing you’ve ever tasted/not to waste your time, until eventually on top of an aerial walkway, you reach the elusive hamburger, perhaps even take  a little bite out of it, or maybe not a bite but perhaps just taste a tiny amount of its sauce, before by some terrible fleeting accident the hamburger is knocked from your hands, falling into a stream of ongoing traffic which proceeds to pummel your beloved hamburger repeatedly, smashing it until none is left, leaving you alone with nothing except a few blurry photographs you had managed to take on your 5 megapixel camera phone and the confusion of whether you had ever really enjoyed the small taste of sauce that haunts your waking nights, while all your friends can say is that, it was only a hamburger and that, with time you’ll be able to buy another one, or at least until then make-do with occasional chicken nuggets or a Burger King. Just like that.)
·                   Procreation (See above… when you’re in love- not with a hamburger, obviously that would be taking a mixed metaphor way too far- when you’re in love, all you can do is imagine the bundle of joy you and your spouse may one day create, come what hardships, all other M.O.Ls are wiped away... but when you’re not in love you get upset trying to make a decision about what spread to have on your toast in the morning, you are perpetually in your overdraft and feeling sorry for yourself when you have to borrow money in order to buy another bottle of your favourite imported Jamaican beer, let alone feeling like you might be ready to bring another human being into the world and you visibly shudder when you see children in the street, remembering baby "Oscar-Diego" or one of your other imagined but never fully realised fantasy babies.)
The less traditional options:-
·                   None (why bother? Throwing oneself from the aerial walkway at 2am it is then!)
·                   None (have fun then! Have fun and possibly act like a bit of a tosser who doesn’t care!)
·                   None (create art then, lots of art and in between have fun, but unfortunately still care too much to act like a total tosser and still spend much of your time, not making art but accidentally falling in love, losing love, finding yourself on an aerial walkway pondering T.M.O.L at two in the morning, come full circle, breathe, and then resolve to create more art).
Those are the options, but quite frankly I’m not happy with any of them, and so frequently at the moment I come to the conclusion that I should maybe just put T.M.O.L on the ‘Save it for Later Board’  (something I was taught during my teacher training that you could ‘use’ for ideas that you didn’t actually want to use when you didn’t want to offend the child in question… cynical, mais non?). Putting T.M.O.L on the S.I.F.L.B basically means choosing to be a bum (something I’m aiming to do but with a dash of Streetcar crazy).
*Talking about the sausage sandwich Vs changing room mirror dichotomy makes me feel like I’ve gone a little into the Women’s Weekly/GRrraZzia territory of watered-down-feminist problems (the ‘juice drink’ equivalent of feminism as compared to the 100% freshly squeezed version), so I apologise but maybe it’s because I’ve just finished reading Caitlin Moran’s ‘How to Be a Woman’. I know it ain’t cos this whole ‘meaning of life’ shiz is new to me, cos sista it ain’t! Y’know what I’m sayin’? Whoop! LOL.  Yeah, so. I thought ‘How to Be a Woman’ had its moments and on the whole I enjoyed it but probably I’m kinda glad I only paid for the kindle version as I’m not going to pretend that I have actually gleaned any useful leads on the Meaning of Life (as a Woman or Otherwise). Thinking back on the book I can’t actually think of much I could say I learnt, other than that ‘ooh, aren’t bras a bit uncomfortable,’ and that the author was pretty obese for a while but then she became a journalist, met the love of her life, had two kids and then continued to be a journalist but just a more successful and better-paid one who wrote a book with a few funny lines in it. Thanks for that, love. 
Anyway, I’m just dancing around some more ideas here, dancing away some time, if not dancing closer to any conclusion, but at least I just wrote 1000 words off the bat without any editing, so this whole creating thing might not be too bad after all, serving as it does- at the very least- to distract us, both as writers and readers, for a half an hour… distracting, distracting, wasting time... until it’s all over? And tomorrow I intend to put my musings of love, life, the universe and Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros musical bible-study on pause and continue researching the mythical creature of ‘Shawty’ and her representation in Hip-Hop and R&B. Word.

3 comments:

  1. 1000 words of amusing and insightful prose in half an hour and no editing? That's just showing off!

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  2. I was procrastinating from something else.

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  3. Why does the time come up at 17:56? Stupid blog thinks I'm still in the Land of the Morning Calm aka, Morning Jam & Egg sandwiches.

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