Winter...

'Wearing three layers of coats and legwarmers, I see my own breath on the face of the door'

Changes

Do I dare 

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time 

For decisions and revisions that a minute will reverse

 

T.S. Eliot. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

The “buts” and “ands” of being a feminist

“I’m not a feminist but…”: A frequent expression I hear, spoken from the mouths of even the most independent and socially and politically intelligent women. I have come to realise over the years that women today are often reluctant to embrace and identify with a term which has given them so much. What is wrong with being a feminist? Surely every woman today, having reaped the rewards of her suffragette sisters, should be happy and proud to call herself one of them? For me, “I'm not a feminist but I believe that women should have equal pay” is an oxymoron. If you believe in any ounce of female empowerment, or even live a life which allows you to have it, you are automatically a feminist. And that is not a negative thing.

I much prefer the phrase “I am a feminist and…” I used it just the other day, when inputting some information onto the computer at work I was shocked to find a certain omission from a drop-down list of titles. Mr, Mrs, Miss and various combinations such as Mr and Mrs, Dr and Dr, were all there. The Dr and Mr combination was, however, absent. It is apparently impossible for a woman to have the title Dr, whilst her husband does not. So, I rang up the software creators and proudly used the phrase “I am a feminist and…”

I was surprised, therefore, when I found myself using a phrase which combines both the “but” and the “and” feminist phrases: “I am a feminist but…”. I came across a facebook group against Transport for London’s new posters which try to raise awareness of the dangers of taking unbooked cabs. The group claims that the posters are victim blaming women. According to the creators, the phrase “you’re putting yourself  in danger”, suggests that women are to blame for rape, and that the poster as a whole says that  “women are not entitled to be in public places without the threat violence”.

The poster is certainly shocking. And as the group claims, it probably triggers awful memories for sexual assault victims through the suggestion that the woman depicted is being raped. However, the group takes its attack on the posters too far. It moves on from critiquing the poster for what it is in itself, to slandering it because it is sponsored by the City of London Police who fail to respond to rape effectively and who should therefore not be trusted with giving safety advice to women.

Now, I am a feminist but such slandering of a poster that is raising awareness of real dangers for women, is completely ridiculous. Surely the positive effects of such a poster far outweigh any negative suggestions which it may, supposedly, imply. If anything, the fact that the poster addresses the woman, making it her responsibility, is an empowering thing: You’re safety is in you’re hands, and there are certain decisions which you can make that enable it to stay there. The dangers of unbooked cabs are a very real threat, and the truth of the matter is that women can make certain choices which lessen this threat. Using this, as an attack on the police for not taking rape cases seriously, even though this may be true, is completely unnecessary and counter-productive.

Of course, no movement in history, no attempt for equality got anywhere by being practical and letting certain slip-ups go unnoticed for the sake of the greater good. Naturally, if you’re in a minority, fighting for a cause, you have to push to extremes to be heard. But I think that it is this part of feminism today which makes women reluctant to identify with the term. People see feminist campaigns such as this, which seem so extreme and counter-productive, and automatically, being a feminist becomes associated with impracticality, extremism and over-analytical ridiculousness. And women today see it as that, instead of as what it genuinely and very simply boils down to: believing in women’s rights, empowerment and equality and being able to say it unashamedly and proudly: “I am a feminist”.

who needs syntax

e.e cummings is a strong candidate for the category of “pretentious poet”. Rarely does his poetry follow the pattern for even the most basic structures of our language; a cummings poem makes reading a vertical as opposed to horizontal process, and even his chosen spelling of his name screams self-important, over-analytical and pretentious. Primarily, his poetry is a pain to read. It is a process of putting words together yourself, deciding which word makes most sense with what the poem is attempting, somewhat tortuously, to talk about. And yet, somehow, brilliantly, cummings makes it work.

cummings was the non-modernist poet writing in the modernist time. Whilst artists of the post-war era were fixated on using poetry as a medium to create and find meaning and structure in a dilapidated world, cummings was stripping all that apart, destroying the most basic and seemingly immoveable force of our existence, language, through warping and twisting its most basic rules and patterns. Words are not supposed to be cut across two lines, separated by paragraphs or interrupted by jarring open-ended brackets. So why create such chaos in an already chaotic world? cummings is, cleverly, proposing an alternative solution to the innate rootlessness of a post-war society. By breaking down the last of the human certainties, he forces people to look towards another human certainty and find a purpose in this – emotion. If we have nothing left to root us and structure us, the only thing we have left to know is what we feel.

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all the flowers. Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

and death i think is no parenthesis

For cummings, it is in feeling that we will find life’s meaning; And poetry is the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling” (Wordsworth), the closest, most direct artistic communication of this overarching human capability. cummings’ work is rooted in this reality, the reality of emotion and human susceptibility to it. Pretentious? Or real, positive and innately, painfully human?

2. The Haberdashery

Crouch End is not really an area of North London I frequent very often, but I started working there a week ago, and whilst exploring on my lunch break, stumbled upon a gem of a cafe. This is The Haberdashery. With its Cath Kidston-esque prints,its patterned crockery fit for your grandma’s tea parties, and Victorian fireplace tiles colouring its walls,  it oozes super-cute flower kitsch like nothing you’ve seen before. They serve a great bowl-sized cup of coffee, bake their own organic bread and on the first Friday of each month they hold a bar boot sale; pretty vintage flower dresses to match the pretty vintage teapots- what more could you ask for? However, despite it ticking all the right old-school-quaintness boxes, it would not normally make the list of exciting new places in London that I am trying to compile, just because of its not-so-great location. But my visit there today, changed this judgement as, to accompany my tasty butternut squash soup was an awesome visitor in the shape of the comical and musical genius that is Tim Minchin. Well, if it’s good enough for Tim, it’s certainly good enough for me.

http://www.the-haberdashery.com/Home.html

And…

1. The Blues Kitchen

I can’t believe I have managed to go so many years of nights out in Camden without finding this place. Blues/jazz restaurant and bar, with chequered baby blue wallpaper, little wooden tables and a great American-south feel.  The kind of place where the barmaid whose been making your cocktails all night gets up on stage and belts out “Ain’t No Sunshine” with a voice that will knock the olive out of your martini. Head there on a Wednesday night for 2-for-1 cocktails (making them an amazing £3.50 each). And if you’re into Bourbon, they have quite an impressive selection. Cocktail recommendation: The Gin Julep.

www.theblueskitchen.com

London lovin’

“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford”

So said Samuel Johnson, one of the many writers and artists helplessly absorbed in an ongoing love affair with London town. I, now in London for the a while before I disappear to another capital, would like to test his unbounded love for the thrilling streets of the capital.

Admittedly, I am already a bit of a London elitist myself. After many stays in many European cities, I always return to London thrilled to be back somewhere where the buses are red, the sky is grey and the people are every colour under the sun. But, having spent three years at university outside this multicoloured capital, I, the permanent defender of everything “London”, feel the need to justify my own love affair with the city and rediscover the crooks and crannies that make it what it is. Whatever that identity may be.

So whilst I’m here, I will endeavour to visit places in London that I’ve never been to before and make a record of them in blog form; a short and sweet review of any restaurants, bars, cafes, parks, streets, theatres and the like which I happen to discover whilst back in the capital. So, when I leave it again, this time, I hope, on a more permanent basis to another exciting capital, I will be certain that my love for London can never be usurped.

“A sunny place for shady people”

Travelling along the Cote d’Azur, it does not take long to understand why F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel of American New World decadence was set on the French Riviera of the 1920’s. The strip of French coast-line, with its average of 300 days of sunshine a year, is still as beautiful and glittering as the lavish world of Dick and Nicole Diver, the wealthy, glamorous but fatally tragic duo of Tender is the Night. The Divers’ world is one which oozes money and decadence, a world which slots perfectly into the the sun-drenched towns along the alluringly blue Mediterranean coast line. It is hard to envisage the tragedy of the novel, with its morass of broken families and identities, taking place in the charming winding streets of each pastel-coloured “vieille ville". And yet, ironically, it is the persistent sunshine which brings out the darker edge in this scenic setting. It is the sun which makes the coast glitter in a way which suggests a restless impermanence, a shroud of volatile and intangible light. Perhaps this feeling is induced by mere paranoia on my part, an impact of the tragic outcome of the novel still firmly imprinted in my mind. Or perhaps, it is the feeling of money in the air, the awareness that this is a slightly rootless world constructed on paper, ink and rays of sun, without anything hugely substantial holding it to the ground. In places such as Beaulieu, Ville Franche and Antibes, the big coastal houses and the littering of private yachts certainly endorse this notion. In Saint Jean Cap-Ferrat, the Rothschild Villa with its intricately designed numerous gardens and 18th century style house, stands again as a reminder of the sheer overflow of money that existed here in the early twentieth century.

Nowhere, however, is this hedonistic excess more obvious than in Monaco, a place of tall, grey concrete, and big, big bucks. The private yachts are stacked high and mighty in its port, almost on top of each other, creating a mountain of luxury which greets you as you enter the tax-free city state. Lamborghini’s and Ferrari’s drive past on the roads which annually stage the Formula One Grand Prix. This is the 21st century equivalent of the Diver world, hovering above the ground idealistically and aimlessly, totally divorced from reality. Like the £35,000 bottle of champagne on the bar menu, it is total insanity. And yet, almost a century after the money, sex and tragedy of Fitzgerald’s world, it persists, the sun still beautifully shining on.

Photos all my own