THE VISITOR

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? 

Douglas Adams

‘What do you mean?’ Maureen’s jaws had stopped pumping. A large soggy chunk of orange pound was now stored in her cheek.

They were sitting on Beth’s diminutive back porch drinking Earl Grey, eating cake. “You’re the only person under sixty I know who invites people round for tea and cake girl” Maureen had said over the phone when Beth had asked her to come.

Now she sat squished into one of Beth’s wicker chairs, her jelly fish stomach struggling tautly against a caftan above her lard thighs. A bright orange tie—dye headband held her course hair off her big face. Beth liked Maureen but couldn’t look straight at her fatness. It embarrassed her. The delicate porcelain cup with its hand—glazed pink flowers looked like a toy in Maureen’s farmer’s—wife hands. Maureen winked over the rim at her. “I need to take you to a jazz club sometime and show you how we boogie in the 21^st century”.

It was a perfect day, hot and still; the lavender, motionless, sweated under the golden sun, leaking its wild scent into the day. The only sound aside from distant traffic was the zzzz of a heavy bumblebee that mooched torpidly from head to head.

‘Just … I don’t know. Don’t you ever wonder what happened to them?’

Maureen insulted the day’s stillness with her characteristic guffaw. “Happened to them? But sweetheart, they were never there; figments of the imagination at best, explanations for unsettling mysteries at worst. Perhaps a few of them were personifications of rivers or bogs ... or high windy hills”

Beth fell silent fanning hot air onto her face with her hand as she gazed at her garden. A small white butterfly skipped along the scruffy grass. She didn’t have the heart to pull out weeds. They were also living plants weren’t they?

“They must have been real on some level” she said; “even if it they were just an energy pattern in the collective subconscious or something like that; they weren’t just stories made up to scare children with… they were really there. People left milk out for brownies and carried charms to protect themselves when they travelled. We were aware of them; even if they weren’t physically present they had enough influence to make us engage with them; hence the idea of them as etheric beings.”

She looked back at Maureen who had one thick eyebrow raised towards her moist, messy hairline. “Where did our magic go? Now it’s all strip malls and cheap soap—opera values. We no longer speak to the bees or honour the cycles of the moon or wait for the sap to rise before we harvest our herbs. I think we’ve lost touch with something wonderful”.

Maureen’s voice was flatly sarcastic; “Something wonderful like imagining little winged people in green hats living at the bottom of your garden?”

“Ugh whatever” laughed Beth, and then said, “oh that’s nice”. A cool breeze had blown through the thin hem of her summer dress, the fine white—blonde hair at the base of her neck. “Yeah” said Maureen.

The bumblebee had disappeared. The lavender heads bobbed and the grass rustled.

“People were terrified of them you know” said Maureen. “Most of the folklore involves getting rid of the little fuckers”. Beth winced at Maureen’s vulgar language. “No seriously. All the stuff about cute little banquets with lights and tinkly music in your front garden is a Victorian fantasy. Folk lore is more concerned with how to stop them… you know…abducting children… what were they? Changelings; even brownies turned vicious if they didn’t get their milk. Contact between the two worlds was never a happy event; not for humans anyway. It was something that people got away with by luck or irrational fluke.”

“I suppose… but I prefer the Victorian version. Gentle folk; Fair folk; Shining folk; halfway between angels and man; and they are more than welcome in my garden”

The breeze had picked up and was soothingly cool. A cloud of midges had blown in and spun wildly in their microcosm. The lavender heads bobbed noisily. The garden whispered.

“Uh huh” said Maureen; “Orlando Bloom is welcome in mine”

Beth laughed “You’re irredeemable! Anyway; what’s wrong with believing in something that makes you happy?”

“Orlando Bloom makes me happy.”

“You have no romance in your soul.”

Maureen looked at Beth with cynical amusement; she could be pretty irritating that way, thought Beth… half looking down her nose and smiling as though she knew more than Beth did.

“Tell you what girl, wear some glitter in your bra if you want magic in your life you’ll feel much better. It’s never healthy to believe in fantasies. They tend to dissolve when you reach out to touch them. I think we need to get you on a date sometime soon. You’re going batty like old maids do”.

Beth smiled, rolling her eyes.

“Listen, this was great, thank you.” said Maureen. I have to get going though – can I help you wash up quickly?”

“Fairies will do it for me” winked Beth.

She escorted Maureen’s huge body as it stomped through her comparatively narrow passageway to the front and drowned temporarily in her goodbye hug. They made an arrangement for the next week and Maureen went down her front steps like a great ship leaving harbour. Beth stayed to wave as she drove off in her SUV. Then she hurried back to the garden. She’d sensed something there; something more than the insects and the grass blowing in the breeze. The talk of magic seemed to have evoked … she couldn’t say what but she wanted to see.

She reached the porch and glanced over the garden. The busyness that had been there moments before was gone. The garden sat as if feigning innocence. She looked searchingly through the quietness and saw nothing. Disappointed, she picked up the tray from the wicker table, pausing to look once more just in case she had missed something; and then, in a moment of pure inspiration she whispered; “You will always be welcome here. Always and all ways.”

She didn’t see, as she turned to walk in with the tray, the little shadow that scuttled into the house behind her. Black in colour. Coal—dust in texture. Spider—like in movement. Malicious of heart.

What you Probably would Rather Not Hear

I made myself very unpopular with someone the other day.

The lady in question makes “healing jewellery” out of semi-precious stones. I think she sells about R4000 a week. Good business.

Now I’m not one of them, but there are people out there who believe that crystals have curative properties. And being the earth loving, lentil eating, patchouli wearing activists that they are, there is a huge outcry among them regarding unethical crystal mining.

Unethical crystal mining incidentally is where you get a crowd of callous non-vegetarian Mexicans with beards to rip crystals from mother earth using explosives, tractors and cranes.

Ethical crystal mining is done by asking the brownies to grow them in their little gardens after which they are lovingly hand harvested and traded for cow’s milk.

But seriously. Crystal mining comes loaded with ethical problems like child labour, explosive open cut mines and chemical pollution; just like any industry that maximises profits to feed global demand.

I had to ask:

“Are you aware”, I probed gently, “of the ethical issues surrounding crystal mining?”

“Oh yes” she said. “But they’re going to blow the stuff up anyway and as long as I’m not personally doing it…" her voice trailed off here as her thinking scattered into sub-cognitive fog.

Well you can imagine how the rest of that conversation went. But as I was driving home I thought about the general state of things and realised that we are all guilty of this kind of dumbed-down inertia.

Somehow we don’t connect our sushi order with the near extinction of blue fin tuna, now being fished from the worlds oceans at a rate of 20,500 every fifteen minutes. We’re not thinking about the pending water crisis as we flush nine litres of fresh, drinkable water down our toilets every time we go pee pee. We’re not realising that the plastic bottles, Styrofoam containers and bags we see lining our beaches and streets wouldn’t be there if we weren’t buying the soft drinks, fast food and groceries that came in them.

It’s actually bizarre that this kind of cognitive dissonance exists considering that a) most of us care and b) most of us know the drill.

We need to grow up about this and understand that we are not the victims of corrupt big business, or incompetent government. Big business only exists because of our Rand by Rand contribution.

No one holds a burning flame under the seat of your pants to shop at three-layers-of-packaging-Woolies instead of supporting a corner grocer where you can purchase fresh vegetables that come in an eco-friendly cardboard box.  

No one forces you to burn all your lights at night, use disposable diapers, buy plastic toys for your kids, buy soft drinks, buy plastic bags to carry your groceries home in, avoid public transport, swap out your cellphone every two years, print your emails, buy fast food, use your tumble dryer or buy first hand appliances.

We need to realise that we are directly responsible for the dire big picture situation we find ourselves in. It is not the fault of some amorphous “them”. It is our own consumerist apathy that has made things the way they are. We are no longer in a position to assume that things will change without our contribution.

Perhaps we need to stop caring so very much about this and instead, start to look at it in real life terms. Ethics can go to hell. Our ability to curb our consumer mentality is directly related to our continued capacity for survival. 

Simply put, if we don’t understand our contribution to the global crisis on a personal level, if we don’t start changing our choices, we will find ourselves within the next twenty years living in a world where acid oceans, climatic chaos and poverty will be our heritage.

Sins of the Spirit

3rd degree’s recent coverage on the top five blingers in South Africa got me thinking.

Our Deborah got herself comfortably settled into one of Khanyi Mbau’s leopard-print armchairs with her usual agenda – in this case, specifically to get under The Queen of Bling’s skin and break down that empty headed smugness.


Go Deborah!


She made some pretty hard nosed statements too. Comparing Khanyi to famous-for-being-famous Paris Hilton, she … well, impotently… implied that Khanyi’s lifestyle was inherently immoral saying: “In a country where we have such extreme inequalities, to display wealth so ostentatiously is no different to Marie Antoinette saying “let them eat cake”.


Actually it’s very different. Khanyi is not the queen of Africa. She is not answerable to the people of Africa. She’s just a simple girl who got lucky.


Deborah didn’t get under Khanyi’s skin either. The bling queen hardly batted a false-eye-lashed lid as she rode the storm of criticism, secure in her right to the exquisite opulence she commands. Good for her.


If Deborah had had any inkling of the actual ethical issue at hand, she might have wiped the floor with Khanyi; but she missed the point entirely.


While there are many who think Khanyi is awesome for being stylish, perky breasted and rich (which, in their view makes her an aspirational role model) there are those of us who cringe with perplexed repulsion at the mere thought of her. We know instinctively that there is something wrong; we just don’t have the foggiest clue what that might be.


Khanyi is the unwitting ambassador of a value system which is becoming alarmingly prominent in all levels of our society, from those who rent swish apartments in Camps Bay right down to those who live in Khayalitsha and keep a single starving cow in their metre wide back yard; one where our primary life aspiration is to affluence - not for the educational or altruistic opportunities that it provides but for the mere sake of unrestrained and mostly unaccountable indulgence in extreme consumerism; being able to buy whatever you want - be it the 1x2 meter TV screen, cocaine sniffed through a crystal straw, truffles flown in from France or the power to experience any sensual fantasy you dare imagine.


We’re starting to choose rich over enriched.


Khanyi tells us that she started out as a girl with a dream. That dream was to become famous for her work. She found a short cut to famous by marrying money. Now stupidly rich and workless, she insists that her dreams involve owning a private jet and being able to throw parties where everyone sips the best champagne.


It makes one feel a little sorry for her, really. It makes one realise that she is as much victim of the consumer driven value system that is raping our planet, our minds and our time as those who look enviously in at her from the trash laden streets through the windows of their television screens.


Whether these values are morally wrong or not is a separate debate (unless you take sustainability of planetary resources into account, in which case the argument becomes a no brainer) but it makes one wonder if Khanyi ever managed to answer to her heart’s desires rather than chasing money in a vain attempt for fulfilment.


We all know that excessive consumerism may be entertaining for a time, but what the heart truly desires cannot be bought; authenticity, connectivity, respect, eureka moments, love, creative inspiration and humility in response to beauty. These are only available when one gives something of oneself; when one looks out and chooses to give instead of wanting and wanting more.


And yet, it seems that wealth has become the sole benchmark of success for us. We have chosen to respect each other for what we have rather than for who we are. We are so out of touch with our extinct ethics that when we experience vestigial distaste at the likes of Khanyi, we have no idea why we feel the way we do.


Yip, it’s a funny old world.

The Janitor

So there’s a man.  A quirky, kooky man, who has decided to do something about the Pacific Gyre trash heap. Some of us sit gnashing our teeth impotently and lamenting what we’ve done to this beautiful old world. Others don’t want to hear about it, their sense of tragedy being too much for them to bear confronting it. A few are too brainwashed by consumerism to care.

But Richard Rinehart is sitting up late at night, piecing together drawings of the machines that he hopes to lash together out of scrap iron and military salvage with the help of a bunch of out-of-work welders in San Felipe so that he can haul his arse out to the Pacific Gyre and start fetching plastic from the ocean on a shoe-string budget.

The Pacific Gyre (and this applies to all the world’s gyres) is miles away from all of us. Yet, it is all of our problem. It is an uncompromising testament to the fact that the way we live needs to undergo radical change. Change that we have no idea how to implement. Most of us have no idea how we would even start to contribute to cleanup.

Many have said that the world’s governments need to launch a group effort, but we know we’re fooling ourselves; governments have more far more pressing problems to deal with. The various research foundations involved with the project simply don’t have the budget or the manpower and the rest of us have a living to make.

The gyre has become the embarrassing room in the house of the world – the one we shut the door on so that guests won’t see what’s mouldering away inside.

Enter one madcap hippie and his junk ship. Superpower: Janitor.

His vision is clear; his heart and will aligned. Presently he is looking for a steampunk engineer who will help him design and build his spare-parts trash collecting equipment.

His initial trip to the gyre will be done with a 1/20 scale mock-up so as to iron out practicalities and establish a working system. His long term dream is to scrape up corporate or government funding wherever he can, and build a ship mounted machine that will pull four and a half tonnes of plastic debris out of the ocean every day, compact it and take it back to land where it will be fed into existing large-scale recycling systems that produce building material from waste. “If we have 30 of these set-ups working together,” he says, “it would be a party”.

You can shoot Richard Rinehart down easily. Pick apart his half formed plan, laugh at his lack of large-scale funding, dismiss him as a kook. Or you can admire him for the courage it takes to recognise that something needs to be done and to elect oneself as the person to do it while the rest of us mumble into our beards or stand around in helpless bewilderment as the portly sea lion, the playful dolphin and the ominous albatross choke on our debris by their hundreds of thousands.

And if you think about our history as a species, it always takes this, doesn’t it? For one person to make a start; to leap off the cliff with some wooden wings strapped to his shoulders. Then others follow, offering support where they can. If they do, Richard Rinehart stands a hope in hell of succeeding.

If we do, perhaps it will show that we humans are not such bad eggs after all. That we are still able to come together out of our own free will, step away from the money machines that lock us into consumerism and achieve the ideal of living in a world where we can say that we have showed some respect for the creatures that live with us instead of destroying the planet for the sake of our own greed.


http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=564366903#!/pages/People-in-Support-of-Richard-Rineharts-Pacific-Gyre-Cleanup-Project/164166763619697

Love Letter

 

Soft pillow

Wrinkled sheets

My arm around you in your 

Warm dreams

Ears up

Nose tucked

My darling... how i love to feel  your belly rise and fall with each breath 

As you snore like a fucking tractor.

Hans In Love

Hans pushed his shopping cart down Finnigan Road and enjoyed the feeling of the Cape Town morning sun warming his back. His shoes flapped against the tar where the soles had separated from the tops, and the string that held up his pants chafed against his hips every so often. He smelt the morning air, and knew that this would be a good day. True, he was poor, he wasn’t good looking, and he probably stank a little ‘cos his last bath had been four days ago; but today, he was buoyantly happy. Today, he had a New Girl and he loved her with all his might. 

Hans scratched in the dustbin of number 25. There was an apple with a bite taken out of it exposing the rotten core, some tins with scrapings in the bottom, and some vegetable peels. He left them. The bin at number 27 revealed half a Kentucky chicken burger and a clump of chips right at the top. Oh yes. Betsy would like that! Hans wouldn’t touch it, even though his stomach was grumbling a little. He would put it in the bottom of his trolley and save it for his lovely new girl with her knockout smile, and the playful twinkle in her eyes. 

The woman from number 29 was sweeping her stoep as he walked past. She was usually quite friendly. Hans stood a respectful distance away and bowed servilely. She glanced up and smiled; the smile was a little forced, a little tense, but it gave him the gap he needed. 

“Hello Mies.”
“Morning Hans, are you well?”
“Ja mies. Is mies well?”
“Yes I am thank you Hans.”
Hans straightened up and put on his sad face.
“Mies, does Mies have anything for me today please? I haven’t eaten since Tuesday.” It was a risky lie, but worth it. He had someone to look out for now; someone special. He didn’t want to go home without something nice for her. The lady from number 29 scowled slightly and said, “I’ll see what I have Hans, stay there.” He waited for her and thought about Betsy. 

At his age; to have found such joy in the company of another; to have found someone who understood him so completely; it was impossibly wonderful. He scratched his buttock and found a new hole in his trousers. Oh Well. Maybe he’d find a new pair today. 

The lady from number 29 came out with half a loaf of bread.

“Haai thank you Mies,” he said as she handed it to him, turning away as quickly as she could. “Sorry Mies,” he could see her irritation building; “sorry Mies, sorry.” he repeated, “Please Mies, do you have a little money for Hansie? Just a five rand or a ten rand?”

“I’m sorry Hans, I can’t give you money,” she said sternly, “you know it’s for your own good.” Her expression’s thin veneer of compassion betrayed a thick wad of impatience; she wasn’t going to give him more. Ah Well. He could have the bread, Betsy could have the burger; and there were lots of dustbins left. 

He was missing her already. He’d thought of bringing her along, but he hadn’t wanted to tire her, so he’d hugged her tight and asked her nicely to stay and wait for him, promising her that he would be back as soon as he could. He hadn’t wanted to expose her to these people with their disapproval; didn’t want her to see the way they looked down on him. He’d thought it might upset her a bit. And what if one of them were nasty to her? He couldn’t bear the thought. At number 48, Hans found a two litre bottle with some flat coke in the bottom, which he drank. At number 57, a T-shirt that had been used as a rag; no holes; it went into his shopping cart. 

When he got to number 60, his friend Clive, who had just arrived home in his bakkie, greeted him enthusiastically. “Hans! How are you today my broe?”

“Nee, master, I’m good today,” said Hans smiling.

“Hey dude. I have some work for you,” said Clive. Hans had a bit of a headache from the sun, and he was tired from pushing his trolley all the way from the railroad tracks, but work meant money. Money meant that he could get something nice for Betsy; so he pushed his trolley onto the pavement and helped Clive to pack some building rubble onto his truck. It was hard, heavy work and Hans hadn’t eaten yet; he wanted to wait till he got home so that he could eat with his new girl! As he lifted planks and chunks of cement, he thought of the way she looked at him, and it made him feel warm inside.

“You look happy today my broe,” said Clive as he watched Hans work. What’s happened? You win at the horses?”

Hans couldn’t help cracking a wide grin. “I have a new girl, master” he said, shyly.
“Haha that’s great,” said Clive, but his half smile told Hans that he was thinking; “these fucking coloreds… breed like rabbits… unbelievable.”

Hans didn’t mind. He knew it wasn’t like that. He had found true love; even though he was just a vagabond, Betsy didn’t seem to mind. She’d already made it clear that she loved him for who he was. Hans was ready to bet poor old Clive didn’t have that in his life. He finished loading up and wiped his dirty hands against his dirty pants with their new hole. His head was throbbing now, and he was a little dizzy and covered in sweat. He stood patiently as Clive thanked him and went inside to pull money from his wallet. Clive wouldn’t open his wallet in front of Hans; as though he thought Hans would grab the money and run.

Clive came out of the house with a whole fifty rand! “Go get that new chick of yours some good wine Hansie, no meths you hear?” He laughed.

“Thank you master, thank you very much,” said Hans, bowing repeatedly. With this, he could buy Betsy a meal fit for the queen that she was! He put the money carefully into his pocket and pushed his trolley off the pavement. He pushed his trolley all the way to Steers at the bottom end of Brooklyn and bought spare ribs for Betsy. His heart sang as the lady shoved the box into his hand. His new girl was in for a real treat! They both were; he would have Kentucky, she would have Steer’s ribs, and then she would lie in the crook of his arm and he would whisper the story of his day to her, and every so often, she would kiss him gently.

From Steers, he walked all the way back past Finnigan Road and on to the abandoned railroad tracks where he lived. It took him an hour and a half. The whole time he walked, he smiled to himself. He knew she was going to be happy to see him! She would be even happier when she saw what he had for her!

Hans went past the tracks to behind the gutted station house building, where he had found an abandoned, rusty old carriage for himself. There were lots of old trains lying around here, decaying slowly in the sea air. Betsy was in the third one from the end, a rope around her neck, where he’d tied her up that morning. He was anxious to let her loose. Maybe she needed to pee. 

He climbed into his carriage and called softly. She was sleeping peacefully on a bundle of blankets on the floor, her nose hidden under her elbow. When she heard him she sprang up in delight, her little tail wagging so fast that her whole bum wiggled with it. “Betsy my darling, my new girl,” said Hans. “Just wait till you see what I’ve brought you!”

3 am

3 am no footfall.
A city on pause
Its streets anointed with silence
Its Buildings discontinued

The city trees brush the cheek of night with sentient leaves
Bringing down the dreamtime,
bailing out the old gods
Who dance hoke-ily
Balancing on their crutches
Leaning on their zimmer frames
As they long for the good old days
When fragrant grass cushioned the ground under their ticklish hooves
When gamesome vines tangled in their horns
When they laughed
Under the honey scented sunlight
In the first year of the world 

Why I Disagree With Louise Hay

I often get clients coming through to me with a backache who lift an eyebrow meaningfully at me and say, “financial stress at the moment”. Or who come with a bladder infection and shrug resignedly saying, “I know this is because of my fear of letting go” (obviously after having dutifully gone to page 154 of their copy of ‘You Can Heal Your Life’ by Louis Hay and looked their ailment up in the book’s long list of emotional correspondences).

I know that these clients are trying to take some responsibility for their disease and this is understandable, since the popular view is that  physical disease has its root in negative emotions and assumes that true healing starts at an emotional level.

The problem with this philosophy is that it tends to place the client under undue stress; logic dictates that if your emotions are causing your disease, you need to change them before full healing can take effect. But emotions are not something that we do. They are something we feel, they are our natural responses to our environment and as such, provide a healthy yardstick for assessing events in our lives.

We only know that we are being mistreated when we start to feel bad in an unhealthy business or personal relationship. We only know that we have mistreated someone else when we get that creeping sense of guilt. Balanced positive and negative emotions are a valuable, valid part of our being; they teach us how to live.

Coming from a New-Agey background in healing, I struggled terribly with this concept of emotional causality while I was studying acupuncture and repeatedly *ahem* needled my teacher with questions such as “Will acupuncture help if the cause of disease is emotional?” and “What if someone has relevant grief – should they receive acupuncture to balance it?” I just couldn’t seem to put it all together in my head.

In his ineffable patience, he would give me the same answer every time. “Everything comes from chi (energy)”.  Eventually I understood, but it took me damn near my whole acupuncture course to truly grasp it.

Which is why I was quite amused to find that another healer had also butted heads with this idea. The healer in question is one Dr David Servan-Schreiber, clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and author of the fascinating book, ‘Healing without Freud or Prozac’ in which he explores alternative ways of overcoming depression without psychoanalysis or drugs. In the book, he tells the story of how, in his process of discovery, he visited a Tibetan acupuncturist in Dharamsala to ask how depression and anxiety are treated with acupuncture.

“You Westerners,” (said the Tibetan healer) “have a vision of emotional problems that’s all topsy-turvy. You’re always surprised to see that what you call depression or anxiety or stress has physical symptoms. You talk about fatigue, weight gain or loss and irregular heartbeats as if they were physical manifestations of an emotional problem. To us, the opposite is true. Sadness, loss of self-esteem, guilt feelings and the absence of pleasure can be mental manifestations of a physical problem. In truth, both of these views are wrong. Emotional symptoms and physical ones are simply two sides of the same thing: an imbalance in the circulation of energy, the chi.”

As I read this, I thought of how often my teacher had repeated his minimalistic version of that same answer to me. We always want to find some kind of reason for disease - much as we do in an office where some process has gone wrong. We want to know who didn’t send the fax, who spilt the coffee on the contract or who took the call that lost the business. But when we think in this way, we develop a false sense of a division in ourselves. It’s not one part of the being that makes the other sick; it is the whole being that lives in a state of harmony or becomes disharmonized. 

The Buddha explained it eloquently and gracefully when he said: "In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true."

The Problem of Marriage

So what is it these days, with the divorce rate?

According to enrichment journal on the divorce rate in America:
For first marriages the divorce rate is 41%
For second marriages it’s 60%
For third marriages it’s 73%

You’d think they’d learn. Wait a minute...what am I thinking… these are human beings we’re talking about.

Snide remarks aside, looking at these statistics, you have to wonder; do these people really want to be married or do they just like weddings? Or do they just have some vague piece of glitchy preschool programming that compels them to marry when deep down they are simply not cut out for it? And (considering the high divorce rate) how many of us are really cut out for it?

Marriage as an institution cannot be ignored; every known culture has some form of legalized marriage proceeding, whether it involves banana leaves and a goat or lots of cake and a ring. Anthropologists have had many bitter and book throwing bitch-fights over the attempt to find a universal explanation for why human beings marry each other. The one who summed it up most neatly was Kathleen Gough who defined marriage as "a union between a man and a woman such that children born to the woman are the recognized legitimate offspring of both partners." Later, she modified this to "a woman and one or more other persons."  Because… you know… people are weird and complicated.

A look at the marriage traditions of various cultures over the ages seems to bear her theory out to some extent. Marriage arrangements historically, appear primarily to have involved making sure your children were your children. It didn’t pay to be bringing up someone else’s brats in the bad old days of bloody hard work and nothing but a donkey to show for it. Without paternity tests at their disposal, no one knew what those lusty hussies were getting up to behind the cow shed while their virtuous men toiled in the wheat fields. So, it became a common (if euphemized) practice to “buy the rights” to a woman’s body (*cough* uterus) with some kind of offering to her family (goats) or to give the husband exclusive sexual access to her in exchange for financial support. In effect, marriage was all about buying secure breeding real estate.

This observation is strongly supported by the fact that adultery was universally seen as a gross violation of marriage terms, but only when performed with or by a woman. In Greco-Roman culture, it was not considered at all criminal for husbands to indulge themselves with pretty handmaidens or slaves, but being caught in flagrante with a married woman would lead to a whole world of trouble. This nonchalantly self-important quote attributed to Demosthenes gives some insight;

"We keep mistresses for our pleasures, concubines for constant attendance, and wives to bear us legitimate children and to be our faithful housekeepers. Yet, because of the wrong done to the husband only, the Athenian lawgiver Solon allowed any man to kill an adulterer whom he had taken in the act”. (Plutarch, Solon)

Coming forward in time, we see that many cultures started to lock women into their function as submissive breeding heifers by progressively diminishing their social status. Two telling examples are the Chinese tradition of foot binding which impeded women from leaving their homes, making them largely useless for anything but bearing children, and the Victorian ideal of the submissive, domesticated wife, denied higher education and presumed too hare-brained to vote. This deliciously draconian quote from Queen Vicky illustrates the attitude of the day;

"I am most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of 'Women's Rights', with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feelings and propriety. Feminists ought to get a good whipping. Were woman to 'unsex' themselves by claiming equality with men, they would become the most hateful, heathen and disgusting of beings and would surely perish without male protection."

Well we’ve certainly come a long way. Nowadays no one tries to tell women what to do anymore… not twice anyway. They can don pencil skirts, look svelte, crack the corporate whip and marry whoever they like; and as much as they might want to, they certainly no longer need to be married – especially not on anybody else’s terms. Women these days have choices, and they’re using them.

A quick Google for statistics shows:

From 1975 to 1988 in the US, in families with children present, wives file for divorce in approximately two-thirds of cases.

In 1988, 65% of divorces were filed by women.

(The National Center for Health Statistics)

Among college-educated couples, the percentage of divorces initiated by women is approximately 90%.

(American Law and Economics Review)

From these statistics we can deduce that marriage works a lot better for men that it does for women (I’m guessing that was true five hundred years ago too). They also suggest that more educated (independent) women are less likely to stay married. Evidently, the low divorce rate of yester-year had precious little to do with good Christian, Hindu or Pagan fidelity and a whole hell of a lot to do with having options.

Perhaps it’s time to re-examine our motives for a moment and think about whether lifelong institutionalization of our romantic partnerships is still a relevant choice. Yes, we are social beings. We like to live with others. We like to have children and cuddle and talk. We like falling in love, staying in love and making contracts to run our relationships by. Over some two thousand years, marriage has become our norm, our expectation and our final rite of passage into adulthood; but let us not fail to acknowledge that in these days of radical technological, social and personal change, ‘til death do us part’ might be a little much.

In 2007 Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) party candidate Gabriele Pauli, proposed that marriage contracts become subject to active renewal after seven years or be terminated. She was ridiculed and rejected by the German public. Federal food and agriculture minister Horst Seehofer, called her idea absurd, adding; "We are not in a circus; with ideas like that, she should give up her candidacy." Granted, it’s a kooky sounding arrangement, but it is also a forward-thinking and elegant solution to the 45% German divorce rate. While Pauli’s chief objective seems to have been saving people the probable expenses, from a personal point of view, her proposal would have provided a baseline from which one would have been able to engage in marriage by continual choice (and anyone who’s been there knows that those choices can change). One might argue that the more sensible option is not to marry at all, but as long as there are little girls who dream of walking down the aisle in tasteless white dresses (and lots of cake and a ring) marriage will be with us. The “seven year contract” model allows for re-assessment of what ‘for better or worse’ really means to us by adjusting the rigid structure of marital vows to one that accommodates the reality of our ever changing lives and our ever changing relationships.

Incidentally, Ms Pauli’s principal adversary, Seehofer, later came under pressure to surrender his own candidacy after it was publicized that the married father of three had impregnated his (much younger) girlfriend. (Just sayin’).

Seven year contract or not, with the financial, sexual and social independence; high powered jobs, crèches and 4x4’s that women now enjoy, there is a new mode of existence that no longer fits into the antiquated cast of happily ever after. The critical requirement for a long term support partnerships is gone; drifted off into history along with the job you started at 18 and left at 60, shoe fashions that stayed in vogue for fifty years and living in the house your dad built with his own hands. Once the pheromones have cleared, we may come to a place where we realize that it would be a healthier option to acknowledge marriage as a quaint but outdated custom that some engage in by choice, rather than a norm that we repeatedly fail to succeed at because it no longer fits the animal we’ve become.

The Changing Rules of Sex

1956. The chronological bulls-eye in an era of stodgy conservatism. Dean Martin was still a hot item, although not as hot as Elvis who had just shimmied onto the stage, shocking the older generation out of their diligently starched corsets with his wildly elastic legs and blatantly seductive stage presence. Rock Hudson was still makin’ the ladies swoon, but not so swoonily as they swooned for James Dean who brought the petulant male anti-hero home in ‘Rebel without a Cause’. Change was a-brewing. The well ironed zeitgeist had hit an ideological midlife crisis and was shopping for a second hand Porche. It was the year that Grace Kelly married her prince, that Autherin Lucy faced a hostile mob trying to prevent her from attending the University of Alabama as their first ever black student and that Science Magazine published an article informing readers of the possibility of a new hormonal oral contraceptive pill; one that would work. 

In 1957 ‘Evonid’ was approved by the FDA for the treatment of menstrual disorders, and made available on prescription packaged in uncharismatic bottles with a bright red warning: “will prevent ovulation”. Perhaps ‘warning’ was not quite the term they were looking for. The next two years saw a suspiciously sudden rise in menstrual disorders reported in every doctor’s office in every small town in America. By 1960, pretenses had been dropped and Enovid was being sold unabashedly, as an oral contraceptive. The sexual revolution had started.

‘Sexual revolution’ is, of course,  really just a stuffy feminist academic’s euphemism for hundreds and thousands of women thinking “Yaay risk free sex” and hurtling joyously into this newly opened carnival with bouncing abandon. A quick look at women in the spotlight over the last six decades exposes the memes through which women’s idea of their own sexuality have developed.  The 1950’s gave us the peachy and professedly naïve Marilyn Monroe, lifting her skirts coyly to give her public a peek of her milky thighs. The magazines of the 1960’s gave us page after page of lean, expressionless girls showing mile after tiresome mile of leg. In the 1970’s and 1980’s the zeitgeist settled down for a nice cup of tea and got comfortable with the female sexual status such as it had become. The 1986 sex thriller ‘9 ½ Half Weeks’ starringMickey Rourke and Kim Basinger portrayed it’s lead female character as being in control of herself and sexually active, but still completely overcome by her domineering mate so long as she was a willing participant.

In the 1990’s a new female archetype exploded into being. She was a woman with no desire to settle down and a rampant sex drive; a self-determined tramp, domineering and permissibly perverse. She was expressed by Sharon Stone as the psycho-killer female sex maniac in ‘Basic Instinct’, Madonna as she lived the dream dancing around on stage in her underwear with symbolically penis-esque breasts jutting bizarrely from her chest and has reached its peak with Lady Gaga repeatedly portraying herself as a man-poisoning femme fatale. The new woman is sexually aggressive and emotionally unavailable; a man dressed in suspenders and heels.

In the system of spoken and unspoken rules by which we poke, shag, fondle and hump, female chastity has long been considered a desirable trait. This was a view largely prescribed by the famous book ‘How to live slowly and die old for Dummies’ (otherwise known as The Bible).

When asked “Why are religions so concerned with sex?” by bigthink.com, Lionel Tiger, professor of anthropology at Rutgers University said: “Men and women have different reproductive strategies because the costs of sex (unprotected sex) for females are infinitely different than for males, so there always has to be, in any community, the basic mammalian contract, which is, somebody has to take care of the mother child bond. Chastity is usually respected only to the point of marriage, and with marriage suddenly it all changes. You’re supposed to be chaste and then at marriage suddenly you have sexual obligations. So the system is very aware of the relationship between sexual license and responsibility”

Naturally the oral contraceptive pill can be expected to have changed all that. After centuries of oppression, women seem happy to adopt an increasingly masculine sexual agenda and moreover, are being expected by men to do so. In a sense, without the risk of pregnancy to create balance, the male sexual agenda (plant as many oats as possible) can realize a completely uninhibited (though impotent) expression of itself. The female sexual agenda on the other hand (yes, I’m talking about being swept off your feet by a strong capable man with manicured fingernails) seems to have been locked in the trunk of that 1956 Buick.

In her books, ‘The male brain’ and ‘The Female Brain’, Dr Louise Brizendine, neuro-psychiatrist at the University of California outlines the differences between men and women. She reveals that “men have two and a half times the brain space devoted to sexual drive in their hypothalamus” while women have larger parts of their brains devoted to centers for communication, observation, processing of emotion and emotional memory.

According to Dr Brizendine, the structure of our brain has a profound effect over our values, priorities, perceptions and behaviour. “Baby girls are born interested in emotional expression. They take meaning about themselves from a look, a touch, every reaction from the people they come into contact with. From these cues they discover whether they are worthy, lovable, or annoying. But take away the signposts that an expressive face provides and you've taken away the female brain's main touchstone for reality.”

These needs, processes and reactions happen below the level of our conscious thought.

“Ho Hum” I hear you say, “we’ve known this all along… relationship and nurturing is more important to women and sex is more important to men blah blah… what’s new?”

Here’s what’s new: Considering that the sexual revolution was ostensibly about women coming to terms with their sexuality, they are suddenly doing the most extraordinary things to themselves in the name of sexual liberation. Things that offer no enhancement to the biologically built-in female sexual agenda. Things that in fact, betray a disquietingly strong presence of the female ‘need to please’ in view of the fact that they seem to cater primarily to male pleasure enhancement.

In typical “do whatever pleases your man” style, women are having Brazilian waxes to look like a porn stars (no one’s idea of an afternoon picnic) becoming more willing to experiment with anal sex, which, according to AskMen.com is a perfectly reasonable request since it “only really hurts like a bitch the first three or so times” (Eh?) having labia reduction surgery (excuse me?) and being more willing to engage in increasingly frequent casual sex (not exactly in line with the female emotional agenda) to name a few. For the first time in history women are experiencing sexual performance anxiety (the inability to achieve orgasm after 30 thrusts) and feeling anxious enough to have their G-spots enhanced with Hyaluronic acid (so that it sticks out so much you don't have to look for it). These expressions of ‘female sexuality’ don’t come any where near the natural feminine desire to find a loving, caring mate who is sensitive to your needs not to mention being largely defunct of things that are naturally valuable to us; communication, nurturing and emotional bonding. 

The ancient contracts of sex are clearly no longer being honoured.

There is also a growing, subtle assessment of women who want to be in love with their lover and establish long term meaningful relationships as clingy and naïve. By extension, single motherhood is on the rise. The ‘Tinbergen Institute discussion paper on Marriage Markets and Single Motherhood in South Africa’ reveals a whopping 46% of women between the ages of twenty and forty have at least one child out of wedlock and are bringing up their children with no access to the father’s resources. Census figures from Britain show that the proportion of single parents has more than doubled since 1986.

While certainly a lot of women are comfortable in this new sexual territory, many of us can’t help but cringe a little and the saner among us have to be asking themselves “why in the seven hells would I want to cut my labia off?”  

Wherever you are on the proverbial fence, there is a distinct possibility that women have taken their “man pleasing” exercise to a ridiculous level. It might be time to sit back and ask ourselves whether this behaviour is really an expression of our sexual self-worth and independence or whether we have conned ourselves into a new echelon of self-imposed sexual compliance (mistaken for self-determination) causing us to engage in behaviour which essentially denies our needs under the guise of feminine equality.

Stealth Acupuncture

Names have been changed for privacy purposes:

So a funny thing happened the other day. Granted, as an acupuncturist, awkward situations, and hysteria-peppered-hilarity are things you get used to; after all, your job involves sticking needles into people. It’s not like being an accountant.

But this incident can be chalked up as a first.

I got my first call on from Mary’s husband on a Friday. He wanted to know if acupuncture could help with Sciatica (painful inflammation of the sciatic nerve which begins in the lower back and runs through the buttock into the leg). This is the largest nerve in the body and if something goes wrong with it can cause excruciating pain (as you can imagine). After a fair amount of backing and forthing about where and when we were going to set up an appointment, I ended up tootling through to Mary’s place in the Beetle with a set of needles packed in my bag.

When I arrived, I found her pretty much confined to her bed from pain. She had visited the doctor a number of times but gotten no relief. On her latest visit, she had been told that she would need x-rays to check if her disks were collapsing but after a couple of hours waiting for a radiologist, she had been so sore that she’d thought ‘bugger this for a lark’ and gone home.

Seeing a new client is always a little awkward. There’s normally a faint aura of suspicion (acupuncture is not exactly mainstream) and clients will frequently try to lock you into some kind of guarantee. Acupuncture works extremely well, but even the most brilliant surgeon essentially fumbles along with the mystery that is the human body as best he can, unable to guarantee anything. I normally start with a new client by asking them if they’ve ever had acupuncture before, and if they haven’t, giving a short introductory brief to manage expectations, familiarize them with the procedure and let them get an idea of who this strange person is who will be … well, stabbing them repeatedly.

In Mary’s case, I skipped this step.  She was obviously in too much pain to be having a casual pre-session chat; the priority here was getting her comfortable as quickly as possible.

The first challenge was to get her on top of the covers so that I could reach the acupuncture points I needed to work on. The acupuncture fix for sciatica involves inserting a two inch long needle into the point ‘Haun Tiao’ (GB30) and shaking it around a little to unblock the energy flows in the area. Huan Tiao is parked (brazenly) smack bang in the middle of the human buttock.

Mary slowly and painfully got out from under the covers and hobbled around the bed, trying to help me straighten it out. I felt really sorry for her. Every step she took was accompanied by an “ooh” an “ah” or a grunt of pain and her movements were severely restricted.

Eventually we got her lying face down (not comfortable) with her buttocks proudly jutted towards the heavens through her pj’s for me to have my evil way with them. I palpated her glutes to find the exact spot and then swiftly inserted the long needle through the thin pajama material. I was rewarded with mild exclamation of surprise from the direction of Mary’s face, now buried firmly in her pillows.

I unwrapped the second long needle from its sterile packaging and inserted into the other buttock with no reaction – so far so good, and then inserted a couple of other needles behind her knees, and in her ankles to support the action of Haun Tiao.

It was at this point that she suddenly pulled her face out of the pillow and said; “What are you doing to me?”

Now the tone of voice used by a person tells you a lot about what they actually mean when they ask you a question like that. This wasn’t an enquiry for explanation of process or the response of someone who feels a lot of energy coursing through their body from the effects of the treatment. She was in that “what the hell is going on here???” place. She wanted to know what I was up to. Immediately.

“Um” I said. “acupuncture?”

“Yes but why is it pulling like that?” she asked.

Ok that explained it. She was just feeling the “de chi”, a sensation often experienced by acupuncture patients, which feels like their muscles are contracting independently of their will. It’s a little weird, but not painful.

“Oh that’s nothing to worry about” I said, “It’s just energy moving in your body because of the needle”

“Did you just stick a needle into me?” she asked incredulously.

Well of course I had. What had she been expecting?

It was at this point that I realized that Mary and I had something of a severe communication breakdown. We’d missed each other as gracefully as Hailey’s comet misses the earth every seventy odd years.

“Um…” I said uncertainly, “this is acupuncture… um it’s sticking needles into people for um… pain relief”

Yes, I was completely aware in that moment how wacky that sounded.

“Oh my god!” she said “I though you were just going to massage me or something!”

Well.

The deed was done, so the only thing left was to let the needles take effect. I sat down on the corner of the bed and dutifully performed the previously omitted preliminary chat. From her reaction, I could see that Mary thought this acupuncture malarkey was simply the kookiest idea she’d ever heard. At the end of it, she asked, “well what do we do now?”

“We wait” I said. And we did.

Considering that she’d had no idea what was going to go down, she took it extremely well. Or maybe she thought I was mad and she had better behave before I started throwing things around the room. Either way, she lay still and gave me good feedback about the sensations created by the needling. Every now and then, I asked her to stretch towards her nightstand to assess if and how fast her pain was clearing, and quickly, the movement became more comfortable for her. She started relaxing and talked to me about her family and her work. By the end of the session I think she’d decided I was OK.

Then it was time for the acid test, otherwise known as “ok I’m going to take the needles out now and let’s see if it’s worked”

It had.

Brilliantly.

I know this because Mary kept on saying so. Granted she was a little more flabbergasted than I’d have preferred, but it was good to see her marching up and down her bedroom and telling me “look it worked!”, bending down and touching her toes and saying, “look here! It actually worked!” and leaning from side to side with her arms out and saying… you get the picture.

I didn’t hear from Mary again. Weirdly, that’s a good thing when you’re an acupuncturist, but sometimes it would be nice to have a phone call or so, just to confirm that the results have held. I got my little reward a week later from a friend of hers who told me Mary is still absolutely fine and not suffering any lasting trauma from the strange goings on in her bedroom that Tuesday night.