Month: February 2022

Speciesism

When a horse is either excited or nervous, you can tell. They prance, each step springing upwards more than outwards, nostrils flared, neck arched, tail high, hind-quarters primed for action. The distinction between excitement and anxiety, like for us, is more about context than physiology, so you can’t necessarily tell the difference unless you have some insider knowledge, but either way, they look impressive. Like a tuned-in, turned-up vessel of Nature’s power. To see a horse keyed up like that is often to see it at its most beautiful, and enough to inspire at least some element of awe.

So, why is it then, when I’m excited and I prance down the street, I just look crazy? No-one’s looking at me thinking ‘my God, what a divine creature!’, they’re just giving me the side-eye.

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Happy Val Day, Sab

Some things stick with you, I guess.

Like that episode of Sabrina The Teenage Witch where Harvey made her a Valentine’s card but he was so obsessed with it being symmetrical that he kept cutting it smaller and smaller, and in the end he could only fit on ‘Happy Val Day, Sab’, but then the knowledge that he liked symmetry became crucial in a test of Sabrina’s love that would decide his fate. Or something.

I thought about that episode when I was hitching a ride from a shady older lady who was scared to give me her real name so called herself Sabrina, and I thought about it today when considering the possibility of a Valentine’s Day post.

For a long time I had a story that I’d never received a Valentine’s card. That changed in 2017, courtesy of my son’s father. He even wrote me a poem inside. It was an excellent first Valentine’s Day card . It was small and simple – tasteful, even – and the poem was sweet, but suitably tongue in cheek, and admirably executed. It was a truly beautiful thing he did for me and, despite the torrent of sludge that followed between then and now, I still look back on it with pleasure, gratitude and a kind of quiet awe. I keep it in my box of memories, and I imagine I will keep it there for as long as I have a box of memories.

There was never a follow up though. And I don’t mind – it’s not a thing that troubles me, and it’s not a thing I hanker after. But it’s sobering, sometimes, to think, on the one hand, how eager I am to just fucking pour out love onto somebody else in every way I can imagine and, on the other, how easily fucking pleased I am with the smallest of affectionate gestures. How little it takes for my mind to be blown.

It honestly probably scares me more than anything else to imagine someone giving me the kind of love that I want to give to someone else. Not because I don’t want it. Not because I think I don’t deserve it. Rather because it is so precisely, exactly, exquisitely what I do want and deserve that it would catapult me into some other plane of existence that I can’t fully comprehend.

I have earned a person who wants to pour love onto me. And I have earned a person who values the love I want to pour onto them. Not that you should have to earn that, but I fucking have anyway. I have earned a new plane of existence. And I do want to go there, scary though it may be. But I wonder…if I’m still scared of it, are they too? Is the person I am theoretically seeking to exchange with mirroring my apprehension? And, if so, where do I go from here, to get to there?

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Mitigation

I am attention grabbing by nature.

I’m tall and ‘attractive’, to kick things off. I like to wear bright colours, and items that would generally be considered statements. I have big eyes, and I use them extensively. My walk is more of a dance to the music, and I’m often grinning for no good reason. I might be singing. I’m very expressive, and I like to exhibit myself. I am inclined to obliviously defy hierarchy. I interrupt excitedly because I already know how the sentence ends and it’s given me an idea. I gesticulate profusely. Once I start talking, most people label me intelligent. My opinions are usually outlandish, complex and challenging.

Except, most of the time, if you actually see me, I’m not sure you’d notice me doing any of this stuff. Because, whilst I read that description and like this person already, I have invested a great deal into mitigating all of it in myself. Ashamedly shirking the attention my traits would have me grab. Mitigating my nature. Not because I don’t like me, and, looking back on it, not because other people don’t like me either. Just because I never knew how to handle the attention, or the effect I had on other people.

Quite a long time ago, I stopped wearing makeup. I stopped wearing colours. I stopped talking unless someone expressly asked me to. And, to this day, I’m almost constantly monitoring my own behaviour when out in public.

I’ve been working to undo a lot of my acts of self-diminishment, but they’re fucking engrained little fuckers. I’m not sure I’ll ever be complete.

I was walking to the shop earlier. I had my music loud and no-one was around. Life was good. And then, at some point, I spotted a guy headed my way. And I toned down my swagger, lest it be too noticeable to him. Lest it cause him to make comment. Lest I leave an impression.

Later, when I was walking down the high street, there were suddenly lots of people around, so I suppressed my joyful glee at being alive and moving, lest I cause someone to question it – be that outwardly or inwardly. Lest my defiant difference make somebody uncomfortable.

When I catch myself, I try to reverse it, because it’s stupid and unhelpful. But the effort is lacking. It’s like I’m faking the thing that I stifled that was so authentically me.

We must all do this; we must. It can’t just be me. But we mustn’t do this. We mustn’t. The world needs us to be more, not less.

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Proximity

I started a new job this week.

One of the things this means for my life is that I now must regularly travel to the office.

One of the things this means for my life is partaking in public transport during rush hour. Namely the local Metro system.

The first day this went remarkably smoothly. The local Metro system has something of a reputation, which mainly centres around its perpetual struggle with low rail adhesion, so to arrive on schedule was something of a miracle.

The second day, it did not go smoothly.

On the way in, this was a simple not running according to timetable situation which led to me being twenty minutes later than intended, but still on time.

On the way home, however, an exciting ‘police incident’ in the station brought all trains to a standstill, and we all got to listen to the voice over the tannoy sternly address a misbehaving passenger and repeatedly threaten them with arrest. Unfortunately, this was resolved magically without providing any closure for us poor bystanders, and we were left to await our transportation with no further entertainment.

When my train, after having been overtaken by multiple other trains and comedically appearing to get further away on the station information, finally arrived over half an hour later, there were a lot of people waiting for it. Approximately three times the amount there normally would be. This was to be replicated at a number of stations further along the line.

I am quite unusual in that I fucking love a crowded space. I love being squished up against strangers in a serendipitous manner. I love the enforced and bizarre intimacy of it. So, while it was not in accordance with COVID-related recommendations, I was thrilled to be part of the disgruntled wave of people that swept into the train car and spilled into every cranny with a reserved British disquiet.

I think an important thing I like about these situations is that there is a collective decision not to talk to each other, because it would take the enforced and bizarre intimacy into more uncomfortable territory. So I get to indulge in the energetic presence of all these people, without any distracting expectations. I get to sense them, and imagine I can feel who they are. I get to connect with something of them; a part of them that it’s not worth trying to articulate. I find that enriching. I find it more enriching than talking to people in most instances. For a person who likes words so much, I think I could very happily never talk to anyone again, as long as they didn’t talk to me either, and instead we just enjoyed the space around each other. The space between. Oh, that space between.

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