Second Draw Down

We had a small dictation exercise in French the other day which made me feel really sad. This is weird, because, you know, it’s a dictation, but this was the dictation (translation follows):

C’est une vielle fille qui n’a pas de famille,
Elle est australienne et vit dans une ville tranquille.
Elle travaille dans une centre d’accueil depuis vingt ans
Et elle s’y ennuie un peu.
C’est toujours pareil, ses employeurs ne sont pas de bons payeurs,
Et passe ses dimanches avec son chien et son appareil photo
Et ses soirées devant la télévision.
Elle voudrait être ailleurs.

Translation:

She’s an old girl who doesn’t have any family,
She’s Australian and lives in a quiet town.
She works in a visitors’ centre for 20 years,
And she finds it kind of boring there.
It’s always the same, her bosses don’t pay well,
And she spends her Sundays with her dog and her camera,
And her evenings in front of the TV.
She wants to be elsewhere.

Honestly, I think that one of the saddest things in the world are people who are lonely and have no one and nothing to live for. So I’ve decided to write her a follow on story (sorry if it’s shit).

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One Sunday evening she gets a call, the call is from an insurer, of all people. He says that she no longer has a job. The visitor centre had been destroyed, it had been eaten by a fire, the details of which were unimportant, what he had called to say was that, as the longest standing employee she got all of the insurance money. (Her stingy bosses all died in the fire, they too did not have any family). Shocked at this she had to have a little sit down and a cup of tea in front of the TV and watch some Coro St before calling him back with the her bank details. Never in her life had she had so much money, she didn’t know what to do. She looked down at her faithful doggie- his name is Aeneas- and asked his little doggie face what she should do. His fluffly paw reached for her camera, the one she had had for ages and forever. And it was settled there. They were going to take photos.

The hours in front of the TV had provided enough exposure to fantastic places that one might’ve gone crazy and delusional from the thought of being able to explore such sites. However both she and Aeneas knew what they were doing. They sat down together and planned in which general direction they wanted to go, because, of course, Aeneas was coming too. And why not, she thought, buy a new camera. The young man at the store had been really helpful and had given her a camera with lots of memory, which was good she thought, seeing as she didn’t have much of her own.

And off they went, her and Aeneas. The first place was Japan where she tried sushi, udon, takoyaki, sashimi and donburi for the first time and took photos of the beautiful zen gardens. It was exhilarating being out and discovering these wonderful new things. She couldn’t remember ever feeling like this. Aeneas loved it too and everyone loved Aeneas, especially the young Japanese girls. {So much wagging, so much wagging he thought his tail might fall off from exhaustion, and just when he thought the wagging would stop, around the corner their would be another thing to wag about- most likely a group of school girls all just as excited as he was to see them. So much wagging.} She took lots of pictures of Aeneas and the girls.

Then, making their way West, or East, she wasn’t sure what direction they were going in, Aeneas knew though, they arrived in China where they climbed the Great Wall-Aeneas bounding up the stairs, watched the Imperial Opera and ate endless amounts of dim sum. Everyone at the yum cha loved Aeneas too, a little too much she thought. To the South of Asia in India she saw the slums where Aeneas played with the kids and brought smiles to their beautiful faces. The photos of these kids bought her more joy than the ones at home ever had. It was here that she made a generous donation for the kids. The kids loved Aeneas and Aeneas loved them back, but alas, they had started their journey and had to be on their way.

Though never having left her quiet town she felt that hopping from one extreme to the next felt like the most natural thing, as though she and Aeneas had been born to travel, or perhaps she was finally catching up on all of the adventures she had missed out on in her life. And onward they moved. To Turkey, Gallipoli to be precise, to visit the ANZAC Cove. Aeneas did look very brave in the picture he took next to the statute. {He had his serious face on, not so much wagging, but lots of exploring}. It was here that she realised that she had not paid any attention in school. Oh well, she thought, better late than never.

Toward the desert lands riding camels in Egypt. The camels didn’t like Aeneas although Aeneas liked the camels. He got his very best hieroglyphic pose on for the camera. If climbing the Great Wall was hard, the pyramids were harder, only Aeneas decided to go up. It was so hot here she mused. Perhaps something less sandy next.

Something more somber was the concentration camp in Auschwitz in Poland. She had known of some survivors, although that was a long time ago, and was amazed to see and hear of the brutality that they endured. No photos here. Aeneas didn’t like it and stuck close the whole time they were there. Somewhere more lively she thought and somewhere more to Aeneas’s liking. So off they went to Paris, the city of love, where Aeneas more than fit in, and found more than just croissants and wine. They were right tourists seeing Eiffel Tower and walking down the Champs-Elysees. So many people. So many dogs. They both wanted somewhere quieter.

And that is how they found themselves in a small town out somewhere in the French country-side nibbling on the most exquisite bread and cheese either of them had ever had, watching the sunset along some beautiful river. She was happy. Aeneas was happy- he loved cheese. It was just at this moment that a man approached them, he too had bread and cheese and a bottle of wine. How lovely, thought Aeneas, tail wagging. She and the Baker talked for hours sharing stories of their lives, his stories had happened many years before, hers all just recently. He was lovely. This evening was too lovely for words.

By the time that she realised anytime had passed it had been months since they had last moved. Aeneas had already began to settle into this pace of life. She found a job as a baker’s wife. Although both were past their golden years, the Baker taught her the art of bread making with such enthusiasm and skill that it filled her with an energy she didn’t know if she had ever felt. If I stay here, she thought, then the adventure will never end. And it never did.

THE END (that makes me feel better)

www.seconddrawdown.com

This maybe a few days old before it gets published to Facebook.

It was noted by Lud, one of my few diligent followers of this blog, that the last post was actually worth reading. Funny that. Seeing as I do want you to read what I write, I’m going to try my best to control quality. Ok, so here goes.

I just finished watching Stepford Wives : http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi318439705/

Absolutely fantastic. Very interesting. I really wish that they made more movies of the comedy thriller genre. This movie really gives you so much to talk about. One of the things that came up in real life recently, as well as the movie, was the question: what is it to be a man? Although the movie focuses primarily on the role of woman and their function in relation to the lives of men the movie is also about what it means to be a man in an increasingly gender equal society.

WARNING: DO NOT READ ON IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IN THE MOVIE.

The men of Stepford are husbands to powerful, career-driven women who are better than their men in the professional domain, gaining positions in higher places, earning larger figures; in many ways the woman are the breadwinners of these relationships. This role reversal of what is held to be the traditional roles of male and female have caused these men to turn their high-earning wives into robots and the perfect 50’s wife in order to re-become men. To summarise Mike Wellington, they had become the women in the relationship and had to regain their manliness. (The big surprise is that this is not orchestrated by the mayor but the mayor’s wife (the mayor is a robot). This idea was a guise that worked toward the larger goal of creating the perfect society.) ANYWAY, the way that the men tried to recalibrate this imbalance of power was by taking away the masculine features from their wives. In reality making their wives less manly/more womanly didn’t really make themselves manlier but made them appear or feel more manly. It’s like if everyone around you became really dumb, that doesn’t make you any smarter, you are the same (you shithead). So it’s all relative, right?

I was talking to Lud on the bus on Friday morning about this project that he has to do research which relates masculinity and how men are meant to behave or something like that. So he said that the idea of how men are meant to act/what it is to be a man (and a woman) was in fact created by men through advertising, media and all of those other things that interfere with our subconscious. This makes sense. These of course have varying degrees of influence in different societies. My favourite country for comparison for everything these days is a perfect example for this topic: Ukraine. Others who were lucky enough to travel there also agree on the following points I’m going to make. So, in Ukraine, men are men and the women are gorgeous, gorgeous because they take such good care of themselves and they have this inner womanliness in them that seems to be lacking with others of their species (myself included). They actually carry themselves differently. Guys- Go to Ukraine and find yourself a beautiful Slavic bride. In contrast, the men are manly, manly like a lumberjack-truckdriving-builder, but more like a moustachetouting-cigarttesmoking-vodkadrinker; think your stereotypical Russian a la Boris the Babysitter from Little Britain. Yulia’s Dad actually looks kind of like Boris the Babysitter. Being a man in Ukraine means being a complete hardarse. However, the way men treat woman is something NZ hasn’t seen since the 60’s: opening doors, holding heavy bags, a helping hand off of the bus. Which is nice and slightly degrading, but mainly nice. I put this down to the fact that the women are so womanly that, naturally, the men have become so manly. The extremes have developed together/caused the existence of one another.

In Stepford Wives the men were not manly at all; becoming more manly was facilitated by the women becoming more womanly. And so, it’s all relative. The creation of such a role has to be be accompanied by a contrasting opposite by which we can judge the qualities of one against the other. As one extreme grows, so does the other. Therefore manliness can be enhanced by a corresponding growth in womanliness. ”Men” cannot exist without “women”. I may be wrong but this is what these things tell me.

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On a more dull note, I’ve lost my phone and so have no way of knowing what time it is or what time to get up. I fear that I’ll still be in bed when Vanessa comes over tomorrow. Awkward.

I actually haven’t had any sleep and now I’m trying to organise Bartenders to meet the needs of Barcampers while I feel like I’m in a dream, there’s a visual/audio lag. It just doesn’t match. Omg, and Heino’s gone wandering. Errgh. Wonder what it’s going to feel like after lunch. I might just crash. Um, not only that, I had a huge spazz at Lud for not being able to figure out the timing even though, “TECHNICALLY”, it’s my job. WOOPS. However, didn’t want to piss off the organiser with making the first session too short. Shit. Shalaaa la laaa. Hopefully my Bartenders know enough to keep the Barcampers happy otherwise, another year of doing a shit job as head Bartender. What sucks is I’ve almost forgotten how to talk to people in a normal manner because I’ve had such little sleep. Right now my idea of helpful and friendly is just coming off crazy and condescending. I wonder if I’ve spelt that right… hummm… OH WELL

It never fails to amaze me about how you can wake up expecting one thing to happen and spend the rest of your day doing something that you had never planned on.

It also never fails to amaze me at how retarded I am. I thought I had learnt from last time that I booked flights wrongly that I would be pedantic in checking when and where I would be going. Oh how wrong I was.

Sunday night I booked flights to Wellington for JulyCo which goes 2nd-6th of July, so naturally I book flights for 1st of July. Normal right? NO!

So this morning I get a text message from JetStar saying that I should arrive at the airport an hour early, I thought this was odd, seeing as I was meant to be leaving tomorrow, so I check my flight… WRONG NOVIA! WRONG, YOU STUPID SHIT! Instead of booking flights for the 1st of July, I booked them for the 30 of June… So. First. I freak out and start yelling, in the process waking Genie up. Ring my parents and try to exercise some sort of damage control. I ring JetStar and to ask if I can change my flights, you can, but not on the day of the flight. So. Parents are telling me I need to book another flight, Andrey is telling me just to fly down today and Genie is trying to calm me down by holding and patting the toy panda that she found in Docie’s room… and all I want to do is stab myself in the head for making another stupid mistake.

So I spent the morning packing my bags and trying in vain to tidy my room. LUCKILY! I have accommodation thanks to Liz who is letting me stay at hers tonight and tomorrow. I imagine a good night, getting tipsy, reminscing about Ukraine bonus.

I have learnt 1. Tidy room days before it needs to be tidy, 2. Freaking out doesn’t help anything, 3. ALWAYS HAVE SOMEONE CHECK YOUR FLIGHTS!!!