Old Feet New Walking Boots
I barely have time to touch the keyboard when a radio voice interjects to tell me this, 2005, is a summer of love. What the hell? Are we really that in thrall to the nostalgia of a version of the sixties that barely existed? It is a soundbite phrase, one that drips with the filthy liquid produced by a baby boomer turned corporate marketing whore. Balls to these smug liars.
Anyway. Before I find myself spiralling off on a further tangent about Puff the Magic Dragon, let us get to the point here.
I walked home a different route the other day after it dawned on me at last minute that there was a reason why they were selling such cheap fish and chips... To hell with lunch, I thought, turning on the proverbial dime and heading home.
As I took this new route I began how little I knew the area. I had walked up and down the usual hill every day and never deviated from the trail...I was Sysyphus's shadow with a packed lunch instead of a boulder. On this day, however, I turned right instead of left and I was immediately surrounded by the unfamiliar.
But who cares? In this case 'unfamiliar' means another row of identical Victorian terraces with a fucking dream catcher in the window. The family name may be different but the people on the steps are just as gobby as the ones on the next street along. This is not a fertile corner of the country for sightseeing and I have no desire to waste shoe leather just because the road on which I walk has a different name to normal.
But I found myself wondering about how much we know about where we live. If we move to an area as an adult, we are not tourists and do not explore any more than is necessary to find the local pub. We only really get to know an area if we live there as children. At the age of eighteen the exploration gene tends to suck its own cock so hard it gobbles itself up and disappears with a pop.
Well...sort of. We are happy to explore once we have put on the traveller's coat during the designated few weeks per year we allow ourselves to be get deliberately lost and immersed in something about which we know nothing. Call it a holiday, a gap year, whatever...we switch these feelings and attitudes on and off like a goddamn machine. Today is the day I'll be Open to Other Cultures. Tomorrow I'll get pissed and slag off Islam with my mates an' that.
We know its fashionable and expected of us to do certain things in our lives, and we do it not because it is Good and feels the Right Thing to Do...but because it gets us the kudos equivalent of a Cub Scout badge. We collect experiences like we each have our own I-Spy book. I went to a developing country for three weeks...tick. I bought a poverty wristband and did not make a big deal of it because I'm, like, always this good...tick. I bought a bottle of Pinot Noir because Sideways pointed out how good it is...tick. We scuttle to our tribes like flies landing on shit. And we never quite reach that place of contentness...even if we do "make it" we are stressed to the tits and find ourselves longing for a little place in the country to pursue whatever downshifting lifestyle the Guardian wrote about last week.
Everything must be compartmentalised. Friends, work, home life, fun, whatever... a lifetime of having Good Lifestyle shit thrown at us from all possible media, and so we can never be content. We end up fearful of pieces of our lives overlapping, and we end up letting life pass by as we make up endless detailed plans, go to events we feel will be Good for Us, and worry about whether we are making the most of our supposed time poor cash rich existence, blah fucking blah.
But that is shouting into the darkness to little effect. I have no answer, no solution to this. Why should it even be a problem to be solved? This is the only we can realistically live in a world where there are a billion more experiences than we can fit into a lifetime. And everything needs a system, right?
The point was...the point was, that as children we have endless evenings and summers to roam our neighbourhoods, seeing all the places we should and many of the ones we should not. The local roads and paths through the woods are as familiar as anything. We know the shortcuts to the rec ground, the routes behind the golf course that leads to the secret fields, where the rope swing is and where be the dragons.
Whereas as adults we just about know which local kebab shop breaks the fewest health and safety regulations. And we don't, and probably shouldn't, care. Exploration is a kind of play, a game, for nobody's benefit for your own. And that is practically the definition of childhood. No wonder we all yearn after some kind of summer of love as espoused by the man on the radio. It is not the apocryphal shagging for which we ache, but the idea of the endless childhood days of sunshine and fun. We look to the past to give meaning to the present.
Oh, now what the hell am I talking about? Fuck this, I'm going to make a cup of tea.
Anyway. Before I find myself spiralling off on a further tangent about Puff the Magic Dragon, let us get to the point here.
I walked home a different route the other day after it dawned on me at last minute that there was a reason why they were selling such cheap fish and chips... To hell with lunch, I thought, turning on the proverbial dime and heading home.
As I took this new route I began how little I knew the area. I had walked up and down the usual hill every day and never deviated from the trail...I was Sysyphus's shadow with a packed lunch instead of a boulder. On this day, however, I turned right instead of left and I was immediately surrounded by the unfamiliar.
But who cares? In this case 'unfamiliar' means another row of identical Victorian terraces with a fucking dream catcher in the window. The family name may be different but the people on the steps are just as gobby as the ones on the next street along. This is not a fertile corner of the country for sightseeing and I have no desire to waste shoe leather just because the road on which I walk has a different name to normal.
But I found myself wondering about how much we know about where we live. If we move to an area as an adult, we are not tourists and do not explore any more than is necessary to find the local pub. We only really get to know an area if we live there as children. At the age of eighteen the exploration gene tends to suck its own cock so hard it gobbles itself up and disappears with a pop.
Well...sort of. We are happy to explore once we have put on the traveller's coat during the designated few weeks per year we allow ourselves to be get deliberately lost and immersed in something about which we know nothing. Call it a holiday, a gap year, whatever...we switch these feelings and attitudes on and off like a goddamn machine. Today is the day I'll be Open to Other Cultures. Tomorrow I'll get pissed and slag off Islam with my mates an' that.
We know its fashionable and expected of us to do certain things in our lives, and we do it not because it is Good and feels the Right Thing to Do...but because it gets us the kudos equivalent of a Cub Scout badge. We collect experiences like we each have our own I-Spy book. I went to a developing country for three weeks...tick. I bought a poverty wristband and did not make a big deal of it because I'm, like, always this good...tick. I bought a bottle of Pinot Noir because Sideways pointed out how good it is...tick. We scuttle to our tribes like flies landing on shit. And we never quite reach that place of contentness...even if we do "make it" we are stressed to the tits and find ourselves longing for a little place in the country to pursue whatever downshifting lifestyle the Guardian wrote about last week.
Everything must be compartmentalised. Friends, work, home life, fun, whatever... a lifetime of having Good Lifestyle shit thrown at us from all possible media, and so we can never be content. We end up fearful of pieces of our lives overlapping, and we end up letting life pass by as we make up endless detailed plans, go to events we feel will be Good for Us, and worry about whether we are making the most of our supposed time poor cash rich existence, blah fucking blah.
But that is shouting into the darkness to little effect. I have no answer, no solution to this. Why should it even be a problem to be solved? This is the only we can realistically live in a world where there are a billion more experiences than we can fit into a lifetime. And everything needs a system, right?
The point was...the point was, that as children we have endless evenings and summers to roam our neighbourhoods, seeing all the places we should and many of the ones we should not. The local roads and paths through the woods are as familiar as anything. We know the shortcuts to the rec ground, the routes behind the golf course that leads to the secret fields, where the rope swing is and where be the dragons.
Whereas as adults we just about know which local kebab shop breaks the fewest health and safety regulations. And we don't, and probably shouldn't, care. Exploration is a kind of play, a game, for nobody's benefit for your own. And that is practically the definition of childhood. No wonder we all yearn after some kind of summer of love as espoused by the man on the radio. It is not the apocryphal shagging for which we ache, but the idea of the endless childhood days of sunshine and fun. We look to the past to give meaning to the present.
Oh, now what the hell am I talking about? Fuck this, I'm going to make a cup of tea.
posted by Jamie at 6:53 PM
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