The Time Thief

When I went to work this morning it was the 10^th January; then a hundred hour later I looked at the clock to drool over my favourite digits of the day (18h00) flashing at me in that glorious fluorescent green and was met with the 11^th June…Where did it go? Who stole January? Give it back!! Give it back I say!

So I started thinking (more thinking aaaahhhh) about the notion of time, I researched Einstein because I always fancied myself a woman of science (Tozz*). I wanted to understand what makes time feel like it’s passing quickly, flying by and leaving me with unfished tasks, unticked lists and an unfulfilled life …so I started to read about theories!

Apparently this can be down to the different methods the brain uses to judge the passage of time, like the more fun you’re having the faster time is perceived to pass and the more bored and anxious you are, the slower it seems to be, but in reality it’s about the memories you’re making during the passage of this time, so if you are sitting in a waiting room and you’re at all thinking you’d be repeating previous thoughts and it will seem like nothing really happened, a waste of time, and that’s a fact, nothing did happen, nothing new, it’s the same memory so the only indicator of the time is really the making of new memories like it’s 4 o’clock, now it’s 5 o’clock then you look again and it’s the 11^th June.

So if this is in any way sensical and if I go by my random yet effective analytical methods, it would mean that my life is a busy one, full of joy, new memories and stuff! This would explain why time seems to be flying so rapidly and extraordinarily, or there’s a time thief lurking around me stealing my precious time and not giving me memories in exchange!! Well come to think of it, thieves never give you anything in exchange except for grief …and germs!

So that led me to think about how time is somewhat subjectively constructed within the brain…bla bla bla….Gawd I am boring myself!

So the point of this is really to say, I am kind of bored and time is not playing fair! Bored of constructing the same memories or similar ones to the point of having a life of Deja-vus and jaded repetitions, bored of fooling myself into thinking I am leading a worthwhile life (ok maybe I am too hard on myself), bored of waiting for change when I am not doing anything about it and frankly I am boring myself with these same repetitive thoughts and the same faces in the same trains in the same places, even across the globe in distant continents and different time zones, finding the same faces with the same annoying angry ungrateful and uncultured features fill me with dread – thank you shallow globalisation, you bitch!

So whoever stole time; stole particularity and individuality and turned us all into a mushy cloned mess which is getting in the way of my happiness and making me cranky and random. Thank you again mushy cloned brains!

Anyway, I better get on with some stuff or time will never move and I wouldn’t have marked its passage like a needy little achievement-hungry little brat ! Also you know what they say “A watched pot never boils”…

Dz-Chick….time really is of the essence

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*Tozz = a noise that could mean “yeah right”, it could also mean fart but I am too much of a lady for that shit! Obviously...

Not all who wander are lost

What I want to be when I grow up? Mmm…A pilot …or… a military doctor…I ran out of choices that I liked enough to admit I want to do and that I felt complied enough with the list of "things to be" when you grow up, the list that society has written in the fabric of its own flesh, a Doctor, an Architect and a Lawyer. That's it, everything else would mean you'd struggle through life and your mother would struggle to be proud in the midst of the social gatherings and crumble under peer pressure until financial capital or gain is attained in the hope of readdressing the situation and regaining some social standing.

Well, I never became a pilot or a military anything, what if I got it wrong? What if somehow I missed THE THING that I was supposed to do with my life? This thing that I was supposed to just know at the age of 16 when I still didn't work out my own body or what my little pinkie was for!

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Years later I still don’t know what my pinkie is for and find myself forever struggling with this intrinsic urge to go somewhere, to find myself as the hippies would say, the need to get lost, the need to wander…maybe my calling is to be an explorer!

I would pack my backpack and bare essentials, lots of tampons since I seem to have my period every two weeks (what's the opposite of menopause?), a strong deodorant, cotton wear, a map (of the world), some money and other stuff that would save my life or at least make it as comfortable as possible then go into the wilderness. I’d walk and walk for days, stop off to set up my tent, cook some dehydrated food or live off the land where possible (I can’t hunt or fish to save my life and I am scared of cockroaches), I write my travel journal and think about life, wonder what my family are doing and if they understand what I am doing and why?

I want to get lost so badly, start new, I dream of this often and everywhere I look, I see what I take as signs, I want them to be signs, like a divine intervention guiding me somewhere I am supposed to be…Every time I open my cupboard I give a nod in the direction of my ginormous hiking boots as if to reassure them that I didn’t forget about them and that I was working on it, I put on my painful courts (they’re shoes with heels for you boys) that give me bunions of indiscriminate colour and shape, and wish it was time to ditch the heals and don my safe hiking boots again.

I took them out for a walk, I wore them to the cinema, I even went to watch “Wild”, then I went home to watch “Into the Wild” on dvd, then read snippets of other wilderness books and explorer tales, by then I was so enthralled with the idea and challenges of getting lost that I managed to force myself to watch the excruciating “The Island with Bear Grylls” and if you can watch that, you can probably do anything ...probably (you know …because it’s so shit)!

But then I'll miss facebook, I'll miss all the attention from friends and strangers, attention that is wanted and sometimes provoked and the likes we're all seem to be getting addicted to albeit in denial about, we crave them like a fix we have to score. I guess I will miss my comfort and my friends and my family, or will I?

Perhaps I am just using this as a pretext not to take the plunge and disconnect, because I know my parents will never understand why I feel the need to do it, my parents who I use like a shield from the eyes of God like he can’t see what I do because they’re my protection, I will be forgiven all sins because they’re my salvation, I often wonder if I didn’t have my parents would my faith be stronger? What would stop me from going where I want to go but not sure I want to go?

My friends will probably think I am attention seeking, then I feel guilty for things I didn't do as per usual (pathetic really), then will probably start doubting myself along with my motives, I will doubt myself like I do so many things and will give up and blame it on society.

Why do I feel so shackled and unfree? Forever struggling with choices! Does everyone else feel the same? We who proclaim our freedom, are we truly free? I am single (yes still), I have no responsibilities that I can’t shake off, no commitments I can’t break from, yet I feel like to make the move would be to let down so many people and the pangs of guilt would kill me slowly, so I sit miserably still to make others happy and forget my dreams and wants, afraid of upsetting or offending others whilst ignoring my own desires and feelings! Resenting myself instead of others in that giving, generous and modest way we’re brought up to be, the way that eats at you slowly until there is nothing left but bitterness and regrets of not packing up when I had the chance to.

Dz-Chick...wondering still!

The hard life of the activist …

So I tried to become a famous …writer, blogger, singer, actress, hooligan, a famous Algerian…a famous anything! Nothing seems to stick, it’s almost as though I was unmemorable, despite my huge knockers and shockingly orange-ish hair…it’s a hard world to break into when you are a talentless nincompoop!

I decided to study the field, see how famous and popular people get so famous and popular.
Turns out it’s just a damn popularity contest. If you use a lot of long and complicated Shakespearean words or a number of ISMS you’ll get a few likes for a few days then people will eventually stop trying to pretend to understand what the hell nepotism and expansionism mean and go scouring for the next cause of the week to follow, like, tweet or photograph next to.

So I started working the anger angle, indignant angry Facebook status, as much indignation and revulsion as the twitter 140 characters permit and other aspiring activists followed through like lambs to the slaughter.

I scour the internet for a new cause on a weekly basis, slavery week, Arab week, fanaticism, Islamophobia week and as ever the Palestinian occupation and the shale Gas issue even if I understand squat about it, it’s got to be bad for you…and me…probably!

Sometimes I find scoops, I like scoops, the joy posting a scoop on my Facebook gives me is only comparable with the joy sex would provide, but I wouldn’t know…I am a virgin, always have been.

Topics I pick have to be relatively easy if deep and complicated, I run the risk of being challenged by some know-it-all smart-ass, I better be ready with some copy and paste argument I found on some obscure book no one can google and I will just omit to use the quotation marks! If found out, there’s always “Ooops, sorry”.

Maybe I’ll just talk about fuel prices, that’s kinda easy enough, what is there to say anyway, “prices have gone up GRRRRR, DOWN WITH CAPITALISM”

I also like to join any going protest, I don’t tend to start them because that’s obviously hard work but I will join them and the hardest job for me is really to get to the front line and borrow someone’s placard so I am photographed to death and filmed shouting abuse at the imperialist governments, at Apartheid Israel, at racist America etc...It’s important I capture the attention of the photojournalists etc! Better make my causes bloody and violent that’ll definitely get the western media interested, maybe they’ll invite me for an interview! That’d be swell.

I can sit there looking western and confusingly white-ish with my orange hair comparing to my fellow African people, so they’ll trust me more after all I am almost white. And as my name and the word activist appear on the screen, the farce has been proved. I am now a renewed activist, a regular revolutionary with many mild opinions about many things.

Then I would push things to get arrested, that would be the pinnacle of my activist career, when I come out, I could attempt to write a book about 24 hours life behind bars, perhaps steal a couple of tales from my cell mate, it could be a best seller…doubt it! But who cares…I will be a renowned activist.

But my dream really is to go to Africa, live somewhere cool in West Africa or even South East Asia or wherever there’s trouble (will google it before deciding), join an NGO that helps educate children, maybe help the Kids Who Can't Read Good and Wanna Learn to Do Other Stuff Good Too and provide them with clean water and vaccinations, so I attend a number of meetings, I check in from different locations wearing old t-shirts and look scruffy, bad hair and a poor wardrobe are essential to the image of the activist. Because they’ve evolved past materiel needs and possessions that come with the prevailing consumerist… blah blah blah …


I would get involved with a few causes whilst I am there, always putting my name down on collective articles and films and projects so my name would come up on any google search.   

I always pick the easiest job, like communication or PR, that way I get to communicate to the world through Facebook, Instagram and twitter all the while working that tan. I can always say I’m always out on the field and a lot of the time I get burnt from the hot African sun. No one will ever question my skills, how tangible or relevant my work really is. They will just like my posts, respect me, secretly envy me but unwillingly keep following me with keen interest like the National Geographic.

Most people will probably hate me but that’s only because they’re jealous of me, obviously!! They don’t know that whilst they’re slaving away at their desk-bound jobs in the city earning big bucks and paying it all back in taxes and whatnots, I’ll be living it up on the very government funds I am supposed to be opposing and UN money of course! Cunning!!!

I know a lot of people will finally start talking about me, of the work that I do, of the causes I support and of the sacrifices I made to become the ever unfulfilled activist whose hobbies are collecting twitter followers , facebook likes and photos in impoverished and war torn areas (these will be mostly photoshoped, I ain’t going to no war zone) of the world, but through all of this amazing life of mine, I know really that I have mastered the art of acting and could always fall back on a Hollywood career, after all I am almost white and almost famous.

 

Dz-chick….taking the active out of Activism ...or somink!

Are we there yet?

 

I have been known to moan and whinge a fair amount, I've also been known to be sarcastic, ironic and a tad bitchy and that as you all know has served me… and you by extension very well over the last few years.
Unfortunately I have grown out of it, I let go of a lot of my negativity and anger which gave way to sedation and boredom. Dull dull dull

So much to whinge about, so little will to do it, I seem to have developed this thing where I see the better side of things, good side of people, of shit, as a result I became what some would consider a wise person, I try to excuse every prick that says something stupid, I don’t slap the slapables, I smile when annoyed now, I almost made friends with a stingy busy little bee God forbid, I say things like “it’s ok they’re just kids”, or in other words I became a pushover and to overcome that problem I thought it's safer if I stopped hanging out with people who would take advantage of my Buddha-like demeanour (whaaaat?) and eventually I stopped going out altogether.

London has become a challenge to overcome, like a purgatory waiting to know where you'll end up heaven or hell, or maybe that's a bit dramatic!! Alright ....it feels like a groundhog day, repeating itself tirelessly waiting for something to change to break the cycle. Taking the same train to the same job, working with the same insane boss, doing the same workouts yet looking exactly the same even when I dye my hair orange and think I dropped a couple of kilos, walking the same streets, hearing the same natter between the same idiots who still to this day rave about the 70% Sales, about Big Brother and XFactor.

So I take a different walk, try to do something new, see if I can trip this groundhog day up, I decide to walk, I walk in the park, see so many faces and I get the feeling that they’re all new here, I keep walking until I find myself by a pond, I don’t know where I am but you always know you’re in the royal borough when they’re throwing ciabatta at the ducks, so I don't roll my eyes and I just move on, I want to be around people who aren’t fooled by status and possessions, I want my feet to take me somewhere I can meet someone interesting and fun who stands for things and doesn’t run a mile when I open my mouth, who looks beyond what is expected of us and dares to be different.

There’s no shame in saying, I always felt it was ok to talk about this as long as I was writing anonymously but pretty soon everyone else will know who I am and it’s about time I took responsibility for Dz-Chick, maybe Groundhod Day will soon be over…

Until then…still walking in the hope of stumbling on a different path or waking up on a different day!

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!