A Truly Great Barber

I finally relented this week and took my hair self in for a haircut.

Despite appearances, I would actually go to my barber fairly frequently. My inability to spend money with any kind of free abandon makes me tentative to book dentist or doctor appointments. The fair prices that I have worked out with my barber (without discussing it!) are based on whether I am working or not. This gives an early insight into the kind of barbershop this man runs. The next insight comes from the standard by which any barbershop can be judged.

I generally look forward to our haircut chat. This is usually primed by a quick perusal of the newspapers lying around the shop. It is pretty much the only opportunity I get to read the papers that are inclined to use red ink in their title headlines. Our usual chat moves from here to sporting issues, the weather, the state of the country and other general areas. Even if you consider these areas 'mundane', the level of discourse is always very high. The man is highly intelligent and experienced and leaves me chasing him through a myriad of debates.

We even had a frank and illuminating discussion on death this time around. It was a fairly abrupt change of conversation and yet it was not out of place in the barbershop. We did not say a huge amount on the subject, despite the fact that we were actually discussing it for a large amount of time. We came to the conclusion that there really is not anything that can be said to encompass death and so we did not feel the need to bandy words about. It was appropriate and enthralling.

He also did an excellent job on my hair throughout it all: the mark of a truly great barber!

-The English Student

A-Adventurous

I really do seem incapable of having any kind of adventure.

In the last week some of my friends spontaneously took off for a little adventure. It may not have been fully on the spur of the moment, but within a few hours of discussing a plan they were out of the country fulfilling it. Some people seemed to be a touch angry at them, others shocked, while plenty thought the whole situation was hilarious. I have felt a huge amount of envy.

In a previous post I discussed my ridiculous frugal tendencies and in some respects, this explains my inability to feel free to go off and have such an adventure. My brain would constantly be worrying about spending money when something this spontaneous can only be done without this restraint. But this is incidental to the foundation of my problem. Time is the real resource that I would not be able to give in. If I am not in work, then I am studying. If I am not studying, then I am trying to recuperate energy for work and study. While I still spend a lot of time doing nothing, this nothing is a part of my solid schedule that leaves no room for adventure.

If this keeps up I will truly lose my ability to have wild experiences. It seems that it is an issue of control and reassurance. If someone cannot release some of the control they exert over their internal and external lives then they will never be open to alternative experience. Yet I type all this knowing that I am very unlikely to release this intense control that I hold over myself.

If I continue to wait for an epiphany that will shock me out of this control I may very well miss my opportunity to explore. I may very well become a-adventurous.

-Then English Student

Breaking Down in the City

Everything seems on the precipice of collapsing in our capital city.

Two separate stories show how close we are to this collapse. While going to work over the week I was confronted by an unusual sight. It was quite early in the morning and in the new day sun a lady sat down on one of the main thorough fares of the city. She was dressed in typical business attire and was likely on her way to work. Instead she was sitting by the road, with her head in her hands as an apparent stranger attempted to comfort her. An ambulance arrived as I passed to tend to the woman.

The second story has a similar tone. This was related to me by a friend many months ago. While on a bus, my friend saw a man, again apparently heading to work have a similar breakdown. The man was hysterically crying as he sat alone on the bus. This must have been very awkward in such a public place for both the man and the other passengers on the bus.

The identification of 'awkwardness' as the main overriding pattern in these stories may seem callous. But that is the nature of our city and our society. The city is apparently created to make our lives easier. Perhaps this is a fallacy and the convenience of the city is really just a contrived method of allowing us to survive just enough. Going to work and engaging in numbing monotony is somewhat alleviated by how easily the city facilitates these patterns. Public transport allows us to turn our brains off and ignore our natural instinct to rebel against a grey existence.

These people that broke down in the city under this strain and they will certainly not be the last to do so.

-The English Student

Pedestals

Another bizarre night in the city has lead to some bizarre conclusions.

Due to ridiculous, self-imposed factors I ended up sitting around in our capital city the other night, with nothing to do except watch people passing by for an hour and a half. I saw many things, some heart warming, some disgusting. As a woman hobbled by me, wearing one high-heel, I began to notice more people doing the same and plenty that had abandoned heels altogether in favour of walking around in their bare feet.

This would not surprise someone that wore heels and had to put up with the lack of comfort on a regular basis. It made me question why these types of shoes are actually a normality on nights out when in reality, women do not take comfort in wearing them. In a way a physical argument could be made. In the same way that women have breasts, they have support. In parallel, the average height of a woman would be slightly less than a man and so heels go towards addressing this imbalance. While this seems rational, I do think that there is a very important difference. Where brassieres create comfort, heels do not. Where brassieres were reclaimed in the 60s as an empowering symbol of femininity, heels are a subtle inequality that women feel obliged to wear.

As I sat there in the city, watching heeled women passing by I was reminded of statuesque forms standing on pedestals. They are raised up by the demands of men and placed on pedestals to be adorned or scorned. It is also worth noting the etymology of this word "pedestals" as containing the Latin "foot", further highlighting how important foot-wear actually is in our perceptions. As usual with these posts, I am certainly simplifying things and making a small observation rather than analysing an entire social issue. I do however think that this subtle form of inequality is not due to the natural differences between men and women.

They seem to be a socially imposed one that are, from this perspective, fundamentally unfair.

-The English Student

Vanilla

My taste buds seemed to have become dulled.

Food just has not tasted as vibrant as it once did. Two very obvious sources of this are my new tooth paste and mouthwash. They just seem to overpower the taste of food to some kind of extent for the whole day. I actually believe that it is directly affecting my happiness. I get less pleasure from food now. In a way, some would call this state (pardoning the pun) vanilla.

But I actually quite like the flavour of vanilla. Far from being boring, vanilla is absolutely fascinating. The plant is a strange blacky green stick that is quite sticky. The seeds inside contain the real flavour of the plant and can be mixed into just about any liquid to give it a vanilla flavour. It would also be one of my favourite types of ice-cream, up there with the top notch raspberry ripple.

So why does vanilla get a bad reputation? A colour, flavour and plant that is so bizarre that it is seen as completely normal is quite amazing. I really do find myself adding vanilla to different foods these days in an attempt to get back a bit of the flavour of food that I have missed. Maybe I am trying to restart my entire taste system by regaining a standard plateau.

But in the end, maybe normal life, normal sensations can be vivid in and of themselves.

-The English Student