Tag: very weird

Like a bee to honey, I produce sweet things from bits I picked up somewhere during the day.

“One piece of cake, s’il vous plâit.”

Being pretentious, knowing it, feeling like it, and boldly expressing it, I order cake.

“What a great day for some sugar, don’t you think, sugar?”

I glance at my purple-dyed poodle. The poodle winks back.

“I shall compensate you for this cake if it meets my expectations of this extraordinary occasion, me having sugar.”

The poor lady that produced the cake bows and hands over the plate. Naturally, without looking into the magnificent and gleaming eyes of mine.

“I will retire into the corner. Bring the cake with some hot water to wash down the sugar. Preferably, put some fragrant leaves into the water and let it steep.”

The waiter forgot that he was staring at me so he quickly turns away to rush for the hot water.

“Well, well, well. Well.”

My fork digs into the cake and I pick up the whole piece. I inspect it and see that it is indeed glittering with sugar.

“Ah yes, the opium of the well-nourished.”

I part my hair and place the wedge of cake on top, facing the lady behind the counter and the waiter in front of me.

“I have seen it, the ridiculous nature of craving. More. Sugar.”

I realise that I haven’t touched my piece of cake. I am sitting on my cloud, I am the cafe, the lady and the waiter. I am the sugar and the water.

Maybe this rush is not for everyone.

Eagerly I awaited the bouncer to let me enter into the madhouse of movements. It is said to be freeing. Why the most freeing time begins at 11 PM, I will never be able to tell.

In high expectation of what lies ahead I stretch my joints and muscles. Oh how I will let my brain reign over my movements. I wonder what will guide me. The bass? The brain? The muscles? The melody? All the others? I cannot wait.

Greeted by dim lights and a deep bass I enter. Deeper and deeper I wander into the caves. I feel a bit out of place. Many people around me seem to follow a specific code of dressing, specific movements and even hairstyle. I feel like I should have read a manual before entering here. Is there one?

As I come closer to the room from which the sound looms, I cannot help but notice that the movements of all participants are synced. Is that the melody evoking the dancing style? Or is that also in the manual I skipped out on?

I wonder, is this manual really necessary? Why is the style the same and the movement synchronised across humans? Has this particular style of dancing proven to be the most fun, the most popular or beautiful? Are my movements not allowed in here?

I feel concave, curved inwards. How can I express towards the outside when all I see is no fitting part?

But what do I see there? A bright halo in front of me! And with it, a convex body! Is this what it is about? Forming a unit? Can we change to be convex or concave? And who decided whichever we are?

Oh my! If this is not a try to give the boring name “weekly review” a new spice, my name is not Papa Shanghai and this is not a Sunday. But indeed it is, and here is the new deal: the state that describes a day, an event or even the whole week. Giving you and me the chance to learn new words, adjectives to be precise. So let’s start today, with heterogeneous.

Being the antonym of homogenous, the adjective is rarely used. Maybe we strive for homogenising our surroundings. Even when we think we are a droplet of fat in the big bowl of soup that is humanity, we are still slowly, but surely, advancing towards other droplets. And, for everyone who ever cooked a soup or even paid a little attention in chemistry, it is clear what happens: incorporation of the little droplet that once was all by itself.

If you are looking closer into that bowl, you will see that every ingredient that has the chance to move around, will be drawn to similar things, aggressively emulsifying. Is it so hard to keep a state of heterogeneity? Are we damned to intrinsically float towards commonalities?

Paradoxically, as humans, we connect best by having common dislikes. Shutting ourselves off to everything that deviates from the understanding to only have a glimpse of emulsion with our counterpart. While this sounds particularly negative, it is harder to do the opposite, celebrating heterogeneity. It is harder to communicate when we speak different languages, eat different food, dress differently, vote differently, go to bed differently or have a different understanding of values. Heterogeneous states are hard to maintain.

So how do we now escape this rabbit hole?

Well, step back. Just breathe for a moment and stop. No, seriously. Stop reading now for 10 seconds and stop. Look up, and then ahead. What are you doing?

You actually are a tiny droplet. Can you see the big blob of fat? Can you see how you are somehow drawn to it? But here you are, still. Being that tiny tiny bit of fat floating in humanity’s soup. What an achievement, don’t you think?

But when it gets too much, be sure to have a rest. Maybe emulsify for a moment, maybe a week?

I’ll see you then.

“The reason I stopped is not important in this context”

“I do believe that it is, though. I mean, why would anyone start something if there was not intention of finishing? I mean, even life, which by the way is given to us involuntarily, has a finite number of days. Eternal life is yet to be discovered! So why would you think that it’s not important to reflect on the very reason you stopped doing something?”

Such is the way things roll around sometimes, my dear friends of the takeout. Often, we reflect on reasons. Try to make sense of something, give meaning to another things. Justify, deflect, accept, deny, reminisce. So what if me and you just do not find a reason right this moment. Why you are reading this very text? Doesn’t matter. Why I wrote it? Even less important!

Maybe, if the impetus of a motivation or reasoning behind something is missing, we truly let creativity unleash. Maybe we would just stare blankly into the room. Maybe we fall asleep? What an exciting exercise. As a matter of fact, I am trying the exact same thing now.

Last week I have learned something.

(What a stylistic caesura by the way)

When following a certain motivation of an action, we sometimes get lost in our way of doing it. True freedom only takes over when the task or whatever is there to be done is, at least, treated equally. More specifically, the task (or whatever) is given agency. What if we were to give it full agency?

As it is late Sunday and I have eager audience waiting, I’ll leave you with a mental exercise of sorts. So my dear friends of Papa Shanghai, in the name of all-organic weirdness, think of this:

How would the plates liked to be washed?

How does the laundry want to be folded?

How does the onion want to be cut?