I call bullshit!

I always had high and renewed hopes for the New Year, I always excitedly jot down a list of things I wanted to achieve, countries I dreamed of visiting, kilos I desperately needed to lose and I go about my year working on my objectives with such optimism you’d think I was American. But this year feels different, something is definitely missing…I didn’t even make a list! I am consumed by something else, less superficial than a few kilos or some Hollywood-inspired objective.

First day back in London after the long Xmas break, I already know I don’t want to be here and it wasn’t the lack of sunshine or morning coffee at home or the familiar safety of my parents’ house. This time it’s different and I can feel a chasm opening and slowly widening.

As I proceed with my usual work commute, the sky is a dull grey unpunctuated by anything, I can’t see where it begins and where it ends, people are so quiet on the train you’d think they’re on their way to their executions, the only sounds coming through my headphones are coughs, a lot of coughing!

In the office, I sit at my desk and as I look around, I see my colleagues milling around the floor, repeatedly wishing each other Happy new year, nobody knows when it’s appropriate to stop, the media hadn’t spoken on the subject.  They sit in front of their screens, they run to meetings, they hold papers in their hands and discuss business, I feel part of the engrenage and simultaneously out of place, something nags at my brain, the feeling of being trapped is strong, like a lab rat, I think of the long hours we’re expected to work for nothing in return but the boss’s own pleasing, of the work-week that seems to be designed subtly enough to send us home lobotomised for the evenings and comatose for the weekend.

Resistance is futile, I am part of this system, this modern society that transformed us into new-world slaves, I am a slave, an agent of the system, a slave to the matrix.

The feeling is stronger in the last few years, all I see is flaws, this modern society model we live in is flawed, it works only to enrich the ruling elites and enslave the masses, full of social conventions put in place to control us, transforming us into sheep. Once you wake up and see it, you can never go back to “normal”....either that....

 

…or I am getting my period soon!

The impossibility of being Free

Lately, I let go a little, started to wear baggy trousers (God bless that elasticated waist), let my hair run wilder and spotted a few holes in my socks, knickers and now shirts, I let go!! I think this is due to the fact I believe I am naturally beautiful so basic grooming suffices, though I noticed men only  check me out when I wear my hair conformingly straight, it’s like I fit more into their mentally-etched image of the type of women they could consider suitable, because anything curly is considered foreign, wild or difficult.

One day on a plane back (to London) from Algeria, the guy sitting next to me asked me if I was Algerian. And that got me thinking, even if I looked painstakingly English (which I don’t), the very fact I was on an airplane flying back from Algeria could considerably improve the chances I was in fact Algerian. I acquiesced to his delight that I was indeed Algerian and to continue with the charade he said well you’re a bit Shoreditch! A free spirit?  Ha ha ha I said to him ”No I am Algerian, I can’t be a free-spirit” he didn’t get it. Then I went back to my nap from which he had yanked me to question me about the freedom of my spirit and I started to think about that ….and stuff!

A bit Shoreditch?? Moi? Well I never! Anyway, a long story not so short, that got me thinking about the nationally agreed Algerian look and how wearing baggy trousers did not fit into it.  But more about the very notion of “free spirit”, how it got highjacked and “shorditified” as if all the twats prancing around Shoreditch in those uber-skinny jeans or baggy trousers (depends on the level of Artiness or Lositude…or somink), blazers and beards are free spirits or true artists. You can’t be the free spirit you’re dressed to be if in essence you are actually conforming to the Shoreditch image. Conforming being the operative word here.

As an Algerian, who considers herself a creative being I realised I could never claim to be a free-spirit simply because I know to attain the status of true free spirit I’ll have to live a life of a hermit away from all societal coercion, religion or any political distribution of power and social tourbillon of conformity somewhere I can live off the land and recycle my own pee. But perhaps I can claim the title of a rebel, who doesn’t reject all societal obstructions and rules but fights some, rejects some and accepts some.

Besides the Algerian free spirit does not exist; “they” just won’t let it happen! They’ll use the weapon of mass oppression, the rolling of the heads with the lips in a downward line, they will laugh at your strange dress sense and curly hair or semblant of afro you’ve been nursing for the last 3 years with no convincing result; They’ll say it’s just a phase, your hair will be straight again one day, and they will attribute your beard to religious beliefs to save face with the neighbours or will coerce you into shaving it, it’s inevitable. If the phase lasts too long, then it could be a case of hormonal instability or it has already been decided you’re a sore loser and all your quirkiness is nothing other than a mean to hide your loositude (new word)!  It’s just not you, so stop trying to stand out and go get married or something, your peers got married and died already and you’re still wearing baggy trousers and leather bands on your wrists! Seriously!

So to recapitulate; if you have: A pair of baggy trousers or über skinny jeans, some kind of rainbow old t-shirt, quirky jewellery and rubber bands, curly natural hair and no make-up, wash your hair less than once a week, don’t own a deodorant, own a rusty old vintage bike, by vintage I mean stolen and have a jumper with a hole in it, have enough creativity to border on neurotic, the unexplainable desire to break rules and just the right amount of weird! Then you could qualify as a conforming free-spirit! But you’ll never reach full potential or what Nietzsche calls “The Free spirit by excellence”

What is striking here is that even the rebels, free-spirits, artists and anarchists who boast individuality and rebellion find themselves following a certain look, a certain lifestyle, they are manipulated and affected by the same ideas and images and flux into the same urban worm-holes and nukes and crannies of the city (any city) to live amongst other similar-minded people, to escape the more rigid, superficial and shallow sides of the city (again any city) only to find themselves delving into a not so different social tourbillon of conformity and end up pigeonholed like I was on that plane and put in the Shoreditch box.

Conformity and rebellion are part of or two side of the same syndrome, because both are reactions to the same pressure source, though there are those who secretly question society and conformity and there are those who secretly conform like the Shoreditch crowd and whatnots. So you conform secretly, when you straighten your hair until its burnt smell is recognised before you come into view, or when you iron your trousers (focusing on that line that parts your thigh in two -yeah you know who you are), you conform when you think being a free spirit is a way of attracting attention and is often a call for help! You also conform when you become the source of pressure!

Isn't it scary (and a bit boring frankly) to live your life exactly how someone else's or because someone else decided on the status quo and you are just living it within a line drawn by a parent, a teacher or an authority figure or entity?  And every time you try to peer outside of that marked line, you’ll be called a rebel.  It almost feels as though the “free spirit” label was invented to fool people into thinking they attained and are in fact allowed to attain a certain level of free thinking and being without any barriers.

So my point is (finally got there), you can be free to dress the part, but your spirit is far from being free as long as you are shackled by temporary possession and pleasures and can’t resist the tug of conformity and the imposing dams of society, you will spend your whole life a laver never turning into the butterfly.

Dz-chick….a conformist in denial…I think!

Happiness and Shiny Hair!

I question myself; I ask questions, lots of questions, some silly like “why doesn’t my hair shine? “, others, more existential like “why am I even here?” and “what now?” and with every question, the need to question becomes stronger …so I ask questions, but never actively seek the answers, I never once stopped to ask Lilia how she gets her hair to freakishly shine like that or why I met someone so special, yet so different and so unattainable that I want him with all my might. So I philosophise a little to make it more bearable, meeting for a reason, the great unknown, destiny and other such terms only used in a timely manner and with careful consideration not to sound overly deep and depressing, even to myself.

So to take my mind off things, I hang out with specific friends, the shallow kind, the kind that worry about having shiny hair and collecting rich friends and the latest iphone etc…, I find it helps to relativise on my own life and achievements, or lack of. They don’t worry themselves about why they are here or what’s going to happen to the world if Shale gas is exploited or if World War III starts, they don’t think about Syrian or Palestinian people, they don’t watch the news, it’s easier that way.

I don’t discuss existential questions with them, I am embarrassed, they’ll think I was a geek, they’ll look at me with the same puzzled looks they wear (as much as Botox allows)  when they hear such words as “existentialism” or “neurones”, they’ll think I take myself too seriously, we discuss and laugh about light subjects, other people (not Syrian or Palestinian), we sing and sound awful, we laugh and sound worse, be merry and pretend life is AWESOME, that we are still young and nobody can see our wrinkles if we continue socialising at night.

After about ohhh a minute! I am bored out of my wits! So I hang out with other more existentially motivated  friends, who over-analyse everything and find comfort in learning and using geeky long-ass-complicated words, you nod when you hear them talk, like you understand everything, you will google it later anyway, sometimes you dare to ask what they meant, you ask your questions so intelligently they think you’re debating, sometimes your mind wonders to places and times when things were simpler and choices weren’t as multiple, you continue nodding and sometimes you even give an hmmm like you’re doubting the accuracy of their statement, then you snap out of your day-dreaming through time, past and future, you refocus your dilated irises and come back to realise there is no comfort to be found in the present.

Sometimes I walk past café terraces where people are drinking and laughing, leaving a theatre after watching a musical and I wonder if they’re truly as careless and free as they look, or do they all go home and think “well this sucks!”.

How long does that happiness last? Do we all put on a show for other friends and families? “The happy and I know it show”, or is happiness something that cannot be measured by conventional ways, like the GNH “Gross National Happiness” proposes!

I find myself drawn to the conclusion that only a time-machine can solve my dilemma, that or I find a median or the place where the lobotomised go, maybe where happiness is like a magic potion you can store in a kitchen jar for rougher times, that would stop you from driving yourself grey with existential questions that serve only to torment you and make your shallow friends feel stupider and where your hair is shinier.

The end.

Dz-chick….stealing from the past, selling it to the present…and calling it happiness!*

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Inspired by Paul Hawken’ famous (or not) saying: At present, we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it GDP.

London's up!

It was Samuel Johnson who once said “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life” an outdated, Victorian (or whatever), mono-gender quote from this erudite man of letters who gave the English language its first dictionary. What does the average Londoner nowadays have in common with Samuel Johnson to use this as a life-long modus vivendi?  The man was probably filthy rich and he might have even had servants, you, don’t even have a hoover!! His London and your London aren’t exactly the same nor will they ever be, and no not even if you’re playing in a costume drama.
 

All this to get to the following statement whilst avoiding judgment: BORED of London!

London life has become increasingly predictable and monotonous, perhaps you peeked too soon, perhaps you are too old now and it doesn’t help when you’re being deafened by that ever-ticking proverbial biological clock, finding things mundane and unexciting, getting by on one’s low boredom threshold and very high amazement standards because not everything is “AMAZING”, feeling jaded, provoking change, waiting for a change…

Waking up in the morning; an achievement in its own, going through the same repetitive routine of brushing teeth, showering and choosing something to wear that is suitable for a work environment, one that your bastard boss wouldn’t comment on again, trying hopelessly to predict the weather so you can arm yourself with that polar jacket you bought on sale for that polar trip you think you’ll take one day, getting on the tube, standing under someone’s arm pit and someone who reads with his mouth open and understanding the need to brush ones teeth, supress gag reflex, breath through your scarf and realise you need to do a load of wash. Get to your desk all flustered and bothered cursing the choice of big coat after the barmy temperatures of the tube. Make coffee, read the daily 1000 emails, delete 2000. Smile at colleagues, laugh at bosses jokes and curse hypocrisy but rationalise it with one word: Bonus

Spend all your money and lunch break standing at Pret-a-manger, you choose the same delicious falafel warm wrap, you eat it standing up for a change whilst cursing the corporate machine, you have the same tasteless coffee and go back to slavery, there are emails waiting to be deleted.

Checking ever increasing overdraft on bank balance, never recalling where your money went despite all your best efforts to remember whilst looking up at the ceiling and frowning a little, nothing comes to mind! Nothing moves either; well at least you know the Botox worked.

Getting tired of fighting conformity, hating the fact you feel you are living on the outside because you chose to be different, but you’re not really living on the outside, unless you live on a tree, drink your own wee and shower with the full moon, then you are right in the middle, and you know it and hate yourself for it.

You watch friends and colleagues race each other to the coolest Bar right now or some stupid costume party or rather and think how far away you are from that. Always running to the west End like they had their umbilical cord cut and buried there, sometimes you find yourself standing in the cold for hours holding a drink you’ve been sipping since the first round and wonder what you’re doing there, pretending to be having fun and not freezing at all when you’d rather be on your sofa wrapped in a throw reading a good book and sipping a hot cup of tea, so you excuse yourself to go to the bathroom and never come back.

You go about your London life with the same tenacity and stamina you had in your early twenties and expect it to be somehow different, you feel in a race to have more fun, to discover more of its borrowed culture, to do more things, you exhaust yourself with “fun” yet you’re hardly amused.

Just because there is a new restaurant open in town doesn’t mean London is brand new, reinvented or bearable until the next opening of the next place to be.

Sometimes it’s better to acknowledge the change and deal with it rather than go on pretending you still cared what London had to offer and spend your time and money getting there, queuing outside it or schmoozing with its punters or checking-in on your facebook.

Sometimes it’s best to recognise that when you’re tired of London, you’re tired of London and it looks like the only possible plausible FUN solution to this dilemma is to end one’s London tenure, though I doubt the verity of this very solution or the desire to solve this problematic.

Dz-chick…a-future-ex-Londoner