Fake Wails and Fake Tears

Like Claudia in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye as a young girl I had a strong desire to dismember dolls. And some of my old childhood friends were particularly ugly to look at. I seemed to have a weird attraction to those undesired by other little girls. I found beauty in them, though I'm not sure I could explain what that beauty was. A differentness maybe...

One had a glossy cap of painted hair on an unusually large head, while another after undergoing too many bath times looked like a blonde scarecrow, her hair sparse and sticking out at all angles, for if they weren't that ugly to begin with I made them so. One considered more appealing in a pink romper suit crawled and gave high-pitched wails; I came to detest everything about her as did the dog and the rest of the household. She was punished: her voice silenced and sent to the naughty corner. Permanently. And another, whom I called Andrea, was always naughty, except I liked her for it. She was my 'Amelia-Jane' of the Enid Blyton story with a red mop of hair and huge blue eyes.

But as much as I liked my dolls, something about them offended me. I wasn't exactly a caring 'mother'. They brought out a cruel streak as (again like Claudia) I took their heads, arms and legs off 'to see of what it was made'. Even Barbies were beheaded. These dismemberments, however, usually ended in disappointment because there was nothing more to be found, nothing more to be seen. Their bodies were still hard and unyielding. Their eyes, as Claudia says, were still moronic. It made me want to hurt them. They had flesh-coloured skin yet there was no softness in them. None to be found anywhere, just occasionally a mechanism that made them howl, sometimes cry fake tears or wet themselves.

A mother that was nice; a mother that was horrid. A mother that tried to play nice as she fought the urge to do horrid things; all the 'boy' things that little girls are not supposed to do, like pinch and bite. I strapped them in buggies, I wheeled them in prams; I swaddled and jogged them; I held them by the hand and dragged them on the ground. I let them fall over and scream; I let them lie neglected and made no attempts to pick them up or offer comfort. I changed them, I fed them, from a bottle, from a spoon. One fed as if she was a drunk glug glug glug. I went through these play motions but still failed to understand why I should want to play 'mother'. And why my friends seemed perfectly content with their baby dolls, who were, according to them, perfectly behaved.

They weren't real!

And I never could pretend they were, not to the satisfaction of my imagination anyway. I much preferred the toy appliances I was given; I still like the grown-up versions now, though it doesn't say a lot for feminism, other than the fact that these labour saving devices went some way towards saving women. Time spent beating rugs and scrubbing floors and hand-washing and mangling clothes was returned to spend elsewhere; it just took a while, in the beginning, to find what that time should be spent on. What was a woman's role? Who was she outside of the home?

As a girl-child I chose pretend domesticity over pretend motherhood, and that, too, has been my choice in adult life. It's natural, I think, to want the home to be clean and habitable and the doing and the regularity with which these tasks have to be done I personally find soothing. They de-clutter a busy head. When you're a mother, the choice can't be made between one or the other, you have to do both: you can't escape either entirely, even with help.

But sometimes I wonder how much my experience of playing with dolls has played into the choices I've made? Did I always realised I lacked that something? Can you lack maternal instinct at so young an age?

I held proper conversations with soft animals and knitted people. I saw the human in furry unreal creatures. I saw 'life' in a knitted man or woman. Bears I could cosset and cuddle and love and make real.

Why the urge, the rush to give babies to girls? 

Picture credit: The Popoffs Doll, Teddy Bear and Toy Elephant, Zinaida Serebriakova, 1947 (source: WikiArt).

Written early 2020.

Dust and Din and Vapour

How would the poets and word-smiths of yesteryears describe the cities and towns of today? It's a thought that's been uppermost in my mind ever since renewing my acquaintance with Tennyson and Kenneth Grahame. The latter described London as a great whirling mill, whereas Tennyson said of a town that it was dust and din and steam. But would they use those very same words now? 

London is still a-whirl, and in towns there's still a din, though no dust, no steam. Our air polluted now with particles you cannot see. Our streets have roads, not dust tracks, which cars share with bicycles and not horse-drawn carts. Nothing is powered by steam. Very little is powered by man. And there are no mills, of the sort that once existed. Mills that grind and whirr and belch smoke and need many hands of different sizes. Banking too has changed since Kenneth's day. Computers and e-commerce happened. 

The money-man today is different to yesterday's money-man. Still suited, still booted, but the bowler hat is extinct and the briefcase is rare. Has a briefcase ever contained important papers? And not instead the workings of a novel or some illustrations, or a comic to read in moments of boredom? For working in banking, all day, every day, I imagine, must have more of these moments than most other jobs, as well as more opportunity to break the monotony of figures. But then perhaps those opportunities are less, and the profession, if it's entered, is entered from choice rather than push and family ties. Money drove life back then and it drives life now. The lack of it, the want of it, the needing more. 

There's toilers, there's idlers. There's people trying to both toil and idle, to have security in their lives as well as creativity. People are fundamentally the same, it's the world that's changed. People changed the world but failed, in their heads and hearts, to change with it. 

There's dirt and din and vapour. There's hurry and frayed tempers. There's undisguised rage. There's a tidal motion to go with or battle against. Ants on the march. Up and down and cross the country. Ants in the skies. Flying towards home or away. The ants from above look down on toy houses; the ants below look up at toy planes. 

Where are they going? Is it business or pleasure? 

Are they going to visit their factories in China? Their sweatshops in Bangladesh? Management ant people visiting ant workers in another great whirling city, in the dust and din of another town. Perhaps they are holidaying ants who won't when they get there experience the country they're visiting; they'll stay in their resorts and tip the uniformed ants scurrying around them. Their money, they tell themselves, is boosting the economy, and so they disrespect their host's culture and expect to be served the food they're used to. They see nothing of the dust and din, only the surface calm. Only the pool rippled by swimmers, who swim up and down, up and down and then lounge in a deckchair for the rest of the day. The great mill, almost within their ken, just outside it they evade.

What might they find anyway? Isn't rush and bustle all the same?

Wouldn't there be the same purposeful walks? The same stop-start shuffle? It all depends. On what? On progress, my friend. 

The progress which gives us efficiency and distractions. Amusements which don't broaden the mind, but shrink it. That take us one step closer to an adult-friendly Disneyland. That gives us profit without (or less) individual productivity. That gives us time to kill brain cells. And each other. 

Others, though, will still be ants. Worker ants. Who decides? The banks? The economists? The leaders of nations? The CEOs? 

Who decides which cities, towns should arise to the sound of music? To the sound of a brass band proclaiming cheap labour, cheap labour. 

The soldier ants assemble to defend it in their racing green or fire engine red tunics with gold braiding, as their citizen ants rush to and from, from and to, and stand in queues to buy. 

Picture credit: St Paul's Cathedral, London, 1890, Camille Pissarro (source: WikiArt).

Written in 2020.

The Half-way Inn

Theory, in gauzy pastel robes, looked on, scroll and pen in hand:

An old man, his mind lost, scatters dust. Then sweeps it up and scatters it again.

He calls himself Time.

When black-cloaked Death enters, he stamps his broom and shouts

'Time Please! Drink up and leave, or Death will take you.'

But that moment is not yet – Death comes in the darkest hour -

and so Time sweeps and whistles, whistles and scatters.

Dust settles, dust flies. The Half-way Inn is full.

Life, an angry red-haired woman, is flinging flames;

Cackling at each dart that falls short of the mark.

Small flames lick but do not take hold. Men leap but do not burn.

At the farther end of the room, gold-crowned Fortune, with Chance at her side, deals out cards, with a droll expression.

Who will have luck? Who will have none? Whose fate will she decide?

In a near well-lit corner Philosophy, an inconstant sprite, is holding forth.

Regulars drift to her and drift away; some newcomers stay to listen longer.

One rises to his feet as if to challenge her,

when a wizened man urgently whispers to him:

Disagree and on your way you'll be to the Lords and Hounds of Hell!

Philosophy, whose eyes and ears are sharp, notices his countenance pale

and watches him hastily retreat to where men sing and don't chatter.

Peace sits amongst these merry gentlemen;

their wild carousing a trial to her poor nerves.

She shakes, she trembles. She shrinks away from their carolled words.

Her mind screaming: Peace! I long for peace. Peace At Last!

As too does a man's, not far from her, who has lately taken a second wife. His first not dead.

Her name is Sorrow. A frail young woman who stands beside or behind him,

and who will only speak when spoken to. Her eyes downcast, her hands clasped.

Though sometimes, if he swears to part from her,

she'll appear in front of him on bended knee and beseechingly touch his chin.

He then gives in; and gives leave for Sorrow to remain and shroud his nights.

As his wife, Wisdom, waits at home, for she cannot force him to be wise.

And as patient Knowledge, in the shadows, waits to be his third.

Then Sorrow, at last, might depart, to become the wife of another.

Or she might instead sit beside Regret in her ill-lit corner.

Regret who has wept and wept but now her eyes are dry.

Regret has died. Death will soon arrive to take her.

Even now he's on his way...A hush falls, as the outside darkness thickens.

And brings the sound of infants crying, and their nursemaid, Nature, shrieking.

As she gives all those in her charge evil dreams.

The infants, in the dark, cry for light, for light, light.

Which God, at war with Nature, will not grant.

The door creaks and on the threshold stands dark Death,

with brown-hooded Doubt behind him, and behind him the bright-faced angel, Comfort.

Fear tonight is missing.

'Time Please!' shouts Time, and stamps his broom. Death's cue to enter.

And for paying customers, visitors to the Halfway Inn, to drain their glasses,

leave a coin, and shake Time warmly by the hand.

Only dry-eyed Regret has walked towards Death, for her turn has come to again be led away,

and spare, as she has spared before, a man, or two, or three.

Picture credit: Theory, Sir Joshua Reynolds (source: WikiArt).

Inspired by Tennyson's In Memoriam A. H. H., written November-December 2019

Second Chances

Asking do you believe in second chances is a bit like asking do you believe in fairies. At one time you will and at another time you won't. Neither is as straightforward as you might imagine, because if you want to believe you find you cannot. Believing in either cannot be forced, nor is it true to say that if you believe in one it will follow that you'll believe in the other. Myself, I find fairies, myths and legends easier. And always have done so this is nothing new. But second chances I'm suspicious of. I'll grant them to others but I'm less sure I want them granted to me.

By second chances I mean opportunities perhaps missed or not taken up that come around again, or those that were tried and failed. The problem with 'do-overs' is the past doesn't stay in the past. It's always there, forming a part of your history. You might be different, the circumstances in which the offer or opportunity has again reoccurred might be altered, but still there's always the last time to think of. And if it failed then, what's to say it won't fail again. Or even that the first time can be improved upon.

So you work harder, yes, but that can be a strain and cause ructions. And anyhow I believe, as I've said, there's less of a forward flow in second times; there will always be a harking back or a falling into old patterns. Some things are better left: left where they ended or where they didn't, for whatever reason, happen. Another go may only reinforce what came before or prove what you already knew to be true.

And yet let's be honest I'm making this up as I go along because you don't know when second chances will occur and when they do how you will react. Second chances are impulsive, to be snatched at or flung away. They very rarely come a third time, but in that moment there's very little time for consideration. The decision is made and ruminated upon after, or when it has again all gone awry.

I really couldn't tell you, with any surety, what I'd do if a second chance came along right now. I might lap it up; I might slap it down. I might dismiss it cruelly; I might accept it with unconcealed pleasure. There's no telling.

I would be worried about my own failure however. And I would feel the pressure of getting it right. That worry and that pressure would start instantly, and would shortly be followed by lots of inner questioning and possibly a resurfacing of the same old doubts. Second chances are, for me, red herrings, leading down paths trod, or almost trodden, when really what I should be doing is looking in (and then going) another direction. A second coming of people, of offers are not necessarily there to be taken but to again be refused. They are meant to seduce, yet there's strength in resisting, in turning away and in recognising that whatever it is that's come again is now not right for you. Perhaps it never was and so the decision you originally made, that may have since plagued you, is a plague no more. Your blinded eyes are blind no more. You're done. With feeling regret, remorse or guilt, if those were felt.

But similarly a second chance shouldn't be counted upon. It may not come. What's done is done. And if, by luck, it does come you may regret it came. Words from the wise to the unwise, although none of us are wise in such circumstances when something has again reappeared for us to take, to sample, to redo.

It's the glass half-full, half-empty riddle. In a way. Your view of second chances depends on your attitude to life with its joys and adversities. For myself, half of anything seems too fortunate, and creates confusion within, so my glass is either full or empty; there are no half-measures. It's either all in or all out. Because a second chance is really just another opportunity to stuff up or end on a worse note than before. Though if the latter does occur maybe that note of finality was required. That door now firmly closed; no wonderment remaining. A fresh chapter can begin, where you're less likely to be blown off course and where new patterns will emerge which will be more in tune with the you of now than the you of yesterday. Second chances are a returning to, a revisiting, and should in, my view, only be accepted if you strongly feel the first opportunity was, and has been since, sorely missed. 

Picture credit: Emblemata Dice, M. C. Escher (source: WikiArt).

Written in November 2019.