In praise of Symposia

I have resolved to watch Hedwig and the Angry Inch again. This particular compulsion struck me during a beer-battered conversation about Plato’s Symposium. The subject of Aristophanes’ speech on Love was raised, and my friend instantly mentioned the Hedwig animation of the “Origin of Love”. So, of course, I have become obsessed with it once again; this obsession of mine rears it’s beautiful Hed every couple of years or so, and cannot be laid to rest until I have gleefully re-watched the film. Here is a tiny wee taste of the awesomeness of Hedwig:

As I watched every last snippet of this movie that I could find on Youtube, the thought came to me that Hedwig always looks like she’s reveling in femininity. She bathes in it, twists it round her tongue and pops it back out tied in a silky, cherry-red bow. Why don’t I enjoy my femininity that much? In that instant, the need to tart myself up suddenly overwhelmed me. Femininity is something put on. You wear it, you have to make it up and wrap it around you. Fortunately, it’s also something you can strip off, and leave abandoned on the bathroom floor. Some women* never take it off, like those 1950’s housewives who wear mascara to bed and wake up halfway through the night to reapply.

Now, I know that I could never be one of those- it just simply is not in me. However, I have decided to set aside one day this summer to squeeze myself into a gown (something I will have to willfully acquire from a nearby Salvation Army, for I have woefully never been a bride’s maid), strap myself into a pair of patent-leather stiletto heels, lather my face in colourful creams and powders, spritz slightly too smelly flowery perfume over my body, paint my nails – those on toes included- and tease my hair up into some ungodly configuration held up by putty, hairspray and a miracle. I’m getting tired already, just thinking about all it takes to perform this type of hyper-femininity. Phew – methinks it will take the better part of the day to assemble all the pieces.

Um….. on second thought, maybe I won’t.

*by women, I mean anyone who either identifies as or dresses up as one every once in a while (and not just on Halloween

Flower Shop Findings

The next time you order a bouquet of roses for your mother or lover (or both, for the more Oedipal among you) remember that someone personally de-thorns those roses for you. This is a lesson I’ve learned over the last couple of weeks while working a temp job at a flower depot. It can’t quite be considered a flower shop because the company does wholesale arrangements for the likes of other companies like Costco.

Working in the flower business turned out to be an incredibly interesting experience, giving rise to abundant social, political and cultural commentary. The particular flower shop I worked at was predominantly staffed by Portuguese people. I was working in the back with a crew of seven middle aged Portuguese women; all of whom were armed with acerbic wits and rosary beads. They oohed and aahed as they prepared the hundreds of beautiful floral arrangements that were distributed to delighted mothers all across Canada this mother’s day. These women were mothers too, but during the week running up to mother’s day, they forsook their families in order to put in 15 hour days at the flower shop.

The flower prepping was much along the same lines as any other type of factory work: repetitive, physically strenuous and alienating. While de-thorning my first batch of red long-stem roses, my mind raced with all the Marxist theory I’ve ever been exposed to. My inner monologue espoused all the Marxist rhetoric it could muster: “the proletariat will rise someday. They will stop considering themselves simply petite bourgeoisie and recognize the extent of the exploitation to which they are subjected. They will realize their collective potential and overthrow capitalism once and for all; they will!”

And I shit you not: the exploitation was palpable, if not aparently self imposed. These middle aged Portuguese women were like work-horses. They worked as if their lives depended on it. In some sense, I guess that is true. They got to work early, de-thorned, chopped and plucked the plants so quickly that I expected they were doing two at a time. At the very least, that is the rate at which they seemed to be outpacing me.

When it came to the unscheduled break times, they would glance at each other furtively, and if the majority of women looked like they were about to give out, someone would yell: “Break time!!” The room then exploded in a frenzy of activity as they communally picked up brooms and swept up the marsh of dead flower bits that had accumulated around them, changed garbage bags, wiped down counters and set up the ‘dining area’. Even after having worked from 9am to midnight the previous day, they each had some delectable homemade leftovers they pulled out of their bags and devoured while poking raucous fun at each other. The breaks lasted for at most twenty minutes before their weathered hands returned to the tiresome work of molesting flowers once again.

These women rarely complained, they bickered briefly, laughed heartily and refused to stop moving for a second. Their work ethic is outrageous to me. How could they sustain that level of activity for a measly ten dollars an hour? How could they impose this on themselves? There was no one breathing down their necks. No obvious supervisor or manager was present; there was no one holding their hands to the fire, so why the hell did they work so back-breakingly hard?

I’m starting to believe that there is something in the older Portuguese character that the new generations lack. It seems like their vitality didn’t get passed down – well not to me or mine, at any rate. And over and above it all, towards the end of the workday, one of my middle aged coworkers would start giggling and joking around about how she couldn’t wait to get home and get some nookie from her husband. I just couldn’t help wondering how the fuck she had the energy for all that?! This just crystallized for me the vivid truth in the physical truism that objects in motion like to stay in motion; and that objects at rest like to stay at rest. I really like the idea of momentum as a life philosophy. I really do. I just don’t know if I can keep up with it.

Dois Gritos Calados

Este e um fado da Amalia Rodrigues. Ultimamente, estou pensando na perdicao e no destino. E que mais ha para pensar na vida? Que vida e esta que continua a nos bailar sem sentido? Agora ha so perguntas, e nenhumas respostas. Mas, bem, e assim a vida, nao e. Os meus pontos nao tenhem pontuacao. Nem lhes quero dar. E mais sincero deste jeito.

Agora e o tempo de musica, d’a Amalia Rodrigues- essa geniosa cantora, encantadora.

O fado da Maldicao:

Que destino, ou maldição
Manda em nós, meu coração?
Um do outro assim perdido,
Somos dois gritos calados,
Dois fados desencontrados,
Dois amantes desunidos.

Por ti sofro e vou morrendo,
Não te encontro, nem te entendo,
A mim o digo sem razão:
Coração… quando te cansas
Das nossas mortas esperanças,
Quando paras, coração?

Nesta luta, esta agonia,
Canto e choro de alegria,
Sou feliz e desgraçada.
Que sina a tua, meu peito,
Que nunca estás satisfeito,
Que dás tudo… e não tens nada.

Na gelada solidão,
Que tu me dás coração,
Não é vida nem é morte:
É lucidez, desatino,
De ler no próprio destino
sem poder mudar-lhe a sorte…

O fado nao e assim tao mysterioso como a vida. Disto tenho certeza.