The Relativity of Cool

Everywhere I have lived, cool people think they have a monopoly on cool. They believe they own it, it never occurs to them that cool might be cultural, cool might be relative.

But it is.

How else to explain the fact that, in the early 90s, it was cool to like Billy Joel in Munich but not in New Jersey. The fact that David Hasselhoff is still cool in Germany but the height of uncool everywhere else. Birkenstocks are ho hum, run-of-the-mill in Europe but all the rage still in North America.

In the year 2000, when I moved to Sydney, it was cool to like Shania Twain in Canada but oh so uncool to like her in Australia. Hard core techno will always be cool in Berlin but it is vulgar in Australia. Tiny skirts, fake tan and stilettos so high you can hardly walk in them are so cool right now in Sydney - and, I imagine, in LA - but so not cool in Melbourne and Northern Europe.

When I arrived at University in Canada in 1993 wearing tailored skirts I was suddenly uncool, although I was wearing the de rigeur clothing of the European chique. Traveling in France in the late 90s it was uncool to be unfamiliar with the pre-choreographed group dances that were all the rage in French clubs, but choreographed dancing in North America or Australia was decidedly uncool - except in Alberta, or Texas, where line-dancing will always be cool.

In 2008, young people wearing Lederhosen and Dirndls to Oktoberfest were cool in Germany but kitsch outside of Europe. In 2009 cynicism is cool in Australia but enthusiasm is lauded in Canada.

In order to be cool in a traditional way one must stay still, in a single cultural environment, and embrace the temporal markers of cool relevant to that place. It is always cool, in any place, to diss those who do not embrace those markers.

But for me the true mark of cool is the ability to move in and out of cultures without caring too much for trends.

That is why I wear hats. They will always be cool to me, other people be damned.

ps. Ok, maybe Hasselhoff is not truly cool in a traditional sense, even in Germany. But he has become a unique phenomenon of cool - he's so uncool that panning him is now cool everywhere.

Mars & Venus

He will not reach out to her, not properly.

He loves her, adores her, worships her, almost. Only so far as he is able to, and that is not enough for her.

She does not want worship, she wants soulmate.

Each morning he will fold her into his body so that the hairs on his chest tickle her nose, she breathes in his scent as he kisses the top of her head.

He draws a bath for her when she is tired and sad.

But days go by when she does not hear from him at all. The variety of his moods, the distance of his passion are inexplicable to her. She does not understand him, not truly, and he will not assist by explaining.

She probably needs too much from him. It is heavy upon her, this need to be loved.

A wonder, really, that men and women survive together at all.

Adam & Jessie: Chapter 3

Dinner was over all too soon. Later she couldn't recall precisely what they had talked about. Food, travel. Hopes, dreams. It almost didn't matter, they spoke as though they had known one another forever. He seemed to know her intimately, he looked into her and considered her in a way none of her other admirers had done. He entered her through her eyes and took up residency within her before she had time to consider refusing him.

He was the kind of man who broke up fights before they could start. The man in the pub who could start a conversation with anyone, without putting them offside. The man who talked sincerely to the homeless man on the street and left him laughing. He had a presence, a glow, he lit up all the dark spaces inside of her. Her loneliness started to lift.

So that it seemed perfectly natural when, after the meal had finished, he turned to her and said:

"What did you want to do tonight?"

Any other date would have ended then, but theirs was just beginning.

They danced together and instead of knocking his hand away when he reached for her the way she was wont to do with other men, she grabbed hold and allowed herself to be swung this way and that, reeling out and circling back into his arms, dipping and gliding, and then pulling close, coming up for air only to gaze into his eyes.

My Favourite Books of 2009

In no particular order. For a variety of reasons.

1. Paul Auster - The Brooklyn Follies
2. Chris Cleave - The Other Hand (also published as Little Bee)
3. Kim Echlin - The Disappeared
4. Ian McEwan - The Comfort of Strangers (warning: highly disturbing)
5. John Fowles - The Collector
6. Mary Ann Shaffer - The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
7. Christos Tsolkias - The Slap
8. Juno Diaz - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
9. Aravind Adiga - White Tiger
10. Jhumpa Lahiri - Interpreter of Maladies

Some of the books I can't wait to read in 2010:

1. Anything and everything by Paul Auster
2. A. S. Byatt - The Children‘s Book
3. Margaret Atwood - The Year of the Flood
4. Stieg Larsson - The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
5. Chris Cleave - Incendiary
6. Kazuo Ishiguro - anything
7. Haruki Murakami - anything

FURY

God how you hate him.

You were naive in the extreme. They tell you there is a power discrepancy between men and women. They tell you men will abuse that power. Somehow you don't believe it.

Until something happens, and the consequences are so foreign, so incomprehensible, and at the same time, so horribly cliched.

And you finally realise: it is still true, what they say. He has taken from you something you never intended to give, and he keeps taking, every day. It affects you deeply.

And what you did not know: it affects every facet of your being. Your career, your relationships. Your naivete has caused this fissure in your life, it was his hand but your permission.

And what you did not know: no other man will ever understand, and a part of you will hate them too, for being unable to understand.

You are a ghost of the person you once were.

November

Growing up in Europe, November was always a rainy month. The corpses of autumn-coloured leaves littered the mossy earth, moisture hung softly in the air, it grew cold and breath hung suspended in miniature cloudbursts. It was too early for snow, usually, although occasionally, oh joy, the very first snowfall - fat flakes falling slowly - would occur in the week of my mid-November birthday.

In Australia, it is as though the gods celebrate for me by causing the landscape to erupt loudly, ostentatiously into bloom. Jacarandas burst with flowers that define the very essence of purple. Bougainvilleas sprout in glorious displays of red and pink, covering the white heritage walls of Sydney houses. Lavender releases its sweet scent, and the ubiquitous eucalypts and lemongrass lend a citrus undertone to the bouquet of spring.

How lucky am I, spoilt even before cake, before champagne.

Familiar Second Person

I saw you last night. I think you might have seen me, too.

For the first time, the sight of you did not send shivers up and down my spine. I did not attempt to catch your eye. I did not approach you, or say hello. I saw you, surrounded as usual by beautiful people, and, this time, I did not feel a need to interrupt, to make my presence known, to smile and nod knowingly in your direction.

The air did not zing, or pop, with the energy usually generated by our proximity.

I left, last night, without a backward glance. I left, knowing that the place I would lay my head shortly thereafter was more welcoming than you have ever been. Even when you were most drawn to me, you pushed me away with your other hand. A human yin-yang. I loved you but I am not a see-saw, being pushed and pulled like flotsam and jetsam in the fickle tide of your desire does not suit my fragile temperament. Over time, you would destroy me. My edges rubbed raw through constant friction against the relentless rockface of your occasional indifference.

Now it is my turn to exert my indifference upon you. Schadenfreude. I hope you feel the coldness of it. I hope it affects you.

And this: in that hope lies the truth, that I will never truly be indifferent, much though I wish to be.