(no subject)
[written yesterday, but had no internet at cousin's house in Quebec, so am posting now that i have returned home.]
I like the girls here. Up this far north one gets far enough away from the American beach-blonde aesthetic and les filles start to look and dress mostly normal again. Like Europe, but without that pesky cultural tendency to weigh something normal - London girls minus 15 or 20 pounds. A nice blend of American ED-inspired skinniness but without the attention-seeking, slutty mode of personal appearance and grooming; in a word, ideal.* Plus, it’s wintertime and I have always been a sucker for girls in winter coats.
Was riding around in the car the other day and noticed a cultural difference I didn’t know existed when an ad for condoms came over la radio francophone. Turns out that if you ask a French-Canadian lady to do a ‘sexy voice’ you won’t get the usual boring western cliché of low husky whispers suggesting “naughty” things that is such a detestably long-lived vestige of the west’s long history of puritanically-fueled attitudes towards these things. Instead you’d get something much more subtle** and, I find, much more apropos. Something more along the lines of … alert interest. And excitement. But not in a dirty way. It’s still new to me when I notice it elsewhere and I’ve done a pretty dismal job of explaining it but I think my point is that it is v. refreshing to hear an alternative cultural perspective for once, especially from a place not separated from the U.S. by an ocean.
I have lost my existential moorings lately. Nowhere I go is mine anymore; they are all cities and places where I live or used to live but they have lost the essential features of home-ness. The only places I feel at home anymore are on the couches and balconies, in the basements, beds and passenger seats of and with the people I l___. It is a loss of stability that is simply a part of being a big-boy grown-up*** but it is one that is entirely unwelcome and disturbing to me as is it creates way too much vulnerability for my tastes. I am Mr. Dorian Grey and you are all my little portraits in which pieces of my self are crucially invested that I need to protect and keep - but unlike paintings, I cannot lock people away in my attic**** and they will all inevitably drift away someday. A large part of my inner emotional life the past few months has been learning to deal with this fact but Inner Me not been taking it so well. Luckily I have recently been offered a chance to go far away with someone else and start a new life with them and I am going to take it. It is just a matter of when and where.
* if you’re asking me, of course -- which you are.
** you know, comparatively speaking
*** the proper word here is probably (and hopefully will always be) becoming and not being. If you know me well enough you know that this statement is not indicative of an sort of mature view of personal development but is actually just a symptom of my Peter-Panesque refusal to grow up and accept responsibility.
**** that’s what basements are for.
I like the girls here. Up this far north one gets far enough away from the American beach-blonde aesthetic and les filles start to look and dress mostly normal again. Like Europe, but without that pesky cultural tendency to weigh something normal - London girls minus 15 or 20 pounds. A nice blend of American ED-inspired skinniness but without the attention-seeking, slutty mode of personal appearance and grooming; in a word, ideal.* Plus, it’s wintertime and I have always been a sucker for girls in winter coats.
Was riding around in the car the other day and noticed a cultural difference I didn’t know existed when an ad for condoms came over la radio francophone. Turns out that if you ask a French-Canadian lady to do a ‘sexy voice’ you won’t get the usual boring western cliché of low husky whispers suggesting “naughty” things that is such a detestably long-lived vestige of the west’s long history of puritanically-fueled attitudes towards these things. Instead you’d get something much more subtle** and, I find, much more apropos. Something more along the lines of … alert interest. And excitement. But not in a dirty way. It’s still new to me when I notice it elsewhere and I’ve done a pretty dismal job of explaining it but I think my point is that it is v. refreshing to hear an alternative cultural perspective for once, especially from a place not separated from the U.S. by an ocean.
I have lost my existential moorings lately. Nowhere I go is mine anymore; they are all cities and places where I live or used to live but they have lost the essential features of home-ness. The only places I feel at home anymore are on the couches and balconies, in the basements, beds and passenger seats of and with the people I l___. It is a loss of stability that is simply a part of being a big-boy grown-up*** but it is one that is entirely unwelcome and disturbing to me as is it creates way too much vulnerability for my tastes. I am Mr. Dorian Grey and you are all my little portraits in which pieces of my self are crucially invested that I need to protect and keep - but unlike paintings, I cannot lock people away in my attic**** and they will all inevitably drift away someday. A large part of my inner emotional life the past few months has been learning to deal with this fact but Inner Me not been taking it so well. Luckily I have recently been offered a chance to go far away with someone else and start a new life with them and I am going to take it. It is just a matter of when and where.
* if you’re asking me, of course -- which you are.
** you know, comparatively speaking
*** the proper word here is probably (and hopefully will always be) becoming and not being. If you know me well enough you know that this statement is not indicative of an sort of mature view of personal development but is actually just a symptom of my Peter-Panesque refusal to grow up and accept responsibility.
**** that’s what basements are for.