2006 November « the other side of the mountain

Margin of error

29 November 2006 at 4:24 pm | In Relationship ruminations | 19 Comments

The Tart recently asked me to do a post on personal boundaries. While it is true that I have some experience in this regard, I am not at all sure that this necessarily qualifies me to undertake the task. In fact, I suspect that anything I have to say on the subject would be a little bit like a person with a bullet wound trying to write a monograph on ballistics. Nevertheless, I told her I would take a shot at it.

You see, during the dissolution of my marriage, among the (many) connubial crimes I stood accused of, being possessed of an ungenerous spirit was pretty close to the top of the list. Consequently, when my ex-wife decided to return to the Fairest Cape for a short holiday, I nearly fell over myself to prove just how accommodating I could be. Kind of absurd, if you think about it, but overcompensation has never bowed to the tyranny of logic. I was so busy bending over backwards that I ended up with my head planted firmly up my arse+.

This is undoubtedly why I never noticed how deftly I’d been manoeuvred into acting as her taxi driver, factotum and general errand-boy – sort of like when we were still married, but without the sex. It took more than a week of running around like your proverbial winged insect with a viridian backside before I realised what was happening.

In the words of my sociopathic, but nonetheless eminently quotable, sister – “If you’re going to be a doormat, you should expect to be walked on”

+ don’t try this at home kids

Eve’s dropping

27 November 2006 at 4:20 pm | In Domestic affairs | 34 Comments

I took a week off work to spend some quality time with Kyknoord Junior, while my ex-wife used this temporary respite to try and round up the scattered remnants of her sanity. A rather pointless exercise, in my opinion. I don’t think sanity is particularly useful when it comes to child-rearing.

Overheard at the Muizenberg municipal swimming pool – uttered by a mother who was concerned that her young son was straying too close to the deep end (obviously she wasn’t sufficiently concerned to actually get up and drag him to safety, but still…): “There are sharks there. They’re going to eat your pipi off!” Judging by the speed at which he moved into the shallows, I would guess that the seed that will ultimately grow into a tangled hedge of hang-ups has been successfully planted and watered. A mother’s love is beautiful thing, is it not? Actually, I understand the woman’s lackadaisical attitude entirely. Protecting toddlers from their own relentless self-destructive tendencies can be exhausting.

Of course, when kiddies aren’t engaged in the serious business of engineering their own demise, their favourite game in the whole world is Insert Daddy’s Last Nerve Into The Nuclear-Powered Fraying Machine. Had you been in the vicinity of Casa Kyknoord during the past week, you would have been witness to this little scene, which played out between me and Junior (with minor variations) around lunch time every day:

“Are you hungry?’
“No”
“Do you want a sandwich?”
”No!!”
“Well, okay then. I’ll eat it myself, shall I?”
“WAAAHAAA!!! I wanna sangwidge!”

I shit you not. Every. Single. Day. I think it’s the female ability to multitask that makes them better parents than men. The rational part of their brain is better equipped to override the instinctive strangulation commands issued to the hands by the emotional centres of the cortex.

Parenthood, it would seem, is somewhat reminiscent of looking for a gas-leak with a lit match. The consequences are often not fully understood until it is too late. This is probably a good thing, because if people had the vaguest clue about what they were letting themselves in for, the very survival of the species would be in jeopardy.

Single minded

16 November 2006 at 5:11 pm | In Relationship ruminations | 31 Comments

I bumped into an old acquaintance at the Waterfront last night. We’ve been out of contact since last year, so we spent a bit of time catching up and I gave her my usual sixty-second trouble in paradise > separation > divorce > poverty sound bite+ to bring her up to speed on the happenings of the past twelve months or so. Then things took a turn for the worse:

SHE: So, are you seeing anyone at the moment?
ME: [putting on stupid accent] Yes, I am seeing you. You are not being invisible yet.
SHE: You know what I mean.
ME: Yes. Unfortunately I do. ”So, are you seeing anyone?”, is usually the opening gambit in a depressingly predictable attempt to set me up with your first-cousin-with-brain-removed or whatever. Please tell me I’m wrong.
SHE: Um…
ME: Nnnnnngh. I bloody knew it!

I am convinced that there is a matchmaking gene lurking somewhere in our DNA. Experience suggests that it is mainly dominant in women and is usually activated whenever a woman who is in a relationship comes into contact with someone who is not. It seems that the discomfort caused by the awful prospect of an unattached individual can only be relieved by the sound of wedding bells.

I suppose I should be less of an ungrateful bastard when people make an effort, but I really wish they would try and “fix” my (apparently) broken, hopeless, utterly desolate and joyless existence with packages marked “Lindt” or preferably, colourful paper rectangles autographed by Tito Mboweni.

+ this is the short version which specifically excludes exciting embellishments such as alien abductions, disembodied voices, exploding heads and the like – i.e. it’s almost true.

The seventh sense

14 November 2006 at 5:51 pm | In Philosophical meanderings | 25 Comments

I see needy people. All the time. They’re everywhere.

Hands up anyone who knows someone stuck in the needy+ cycle? This business of neediness seems to afflict an enormous number of people in modern society. Whatever the song may have led us to believe, “people who need people” are not, in fact, the luckiest people in the world. “Misery loves company” would be a bit more accurate, although I don’t think anybody’s made it into a Broadway song. At least, not yet.

I put it down to shoddy programming. Humans have a nasty tendency to get stuck in these destructive behaviour loops++ that prove surprisingly difficult to break – even when we are fully aware of them. People can spend years in therapy trying to come to terms with their own (apparent) weirdness and still be no closer to an answer at the end.

Although there is a certain elegance to this all-pervasive fucked-upness that permeates pretty much everyone’s lives, it does kind of beg the question whether such a thing as “normal” exists at all. Hands up anyone who knows someone normal? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

+ i.e. someone who is insecure, so they continually need others to validate their self worth. This can be seriously annoying and consequently, others will tend to avoid them. This, in turn, makes them insecure, so they continually need others to… (Repeat ad infinitum)

++ or the psychological equivalent of the Blue Screen of Death, if you will

Disk count

9 November 2006 at 10:11 am | In Random observations | 29 Comments

The theatre has been chewing up most of my after-hours time lately, but I did manage to meet up with Salman for coffee at Canal Walk the other night. This resulted in an unexpected entertainment bonus, which took the form of the Musica Clearance Store (which I happened to walk past on my way to the restaurant). It is an entire shop full of truly horrendous R20+ bargain-bin CDs, so I just had to investigate.

The fact that many of the items on offer had been marked down several times (before finally being relegated to the Last Chance Saloon of the music world) was a poignant and beautiful example of what happens when greed decays into hopelessness.

Tempted as I was by gems such as ‘Worsie Visser – the Early Years’ and ‘Stool Pigeon’ by Kid Creole and the Coconuts, I somehow found myself leaving empty-handed.

On my way out, I briefly considered buying a ‘Music Awards Kylie’ doll as a going-away present for someone, but I swiftly discarded that idea, because some practical jokes really are unforgivable.

+ About $2-70 in real money or roughly equivalent to the GDP of Zimbabwe++

++ Yes, I know this joke is getting old