Show me yours and I'll show you mine

A Rapunzel figure with a sweep of hair sat alongside me in a wifi cafè. She leaned across to plug in her notebook at the communal wall socket, so I was conscious of her fresh-smelling hair brushing my arm. I noticed, too, that her arms were fully covered and that her long, clean nails were perfectly filed. But I did not turn to look at her as such. My personal space had been concertina-ed, and so I kept my eyes on my own screen.

And then her fingers began flying across her keyboard with a speed that begged commenting on. I turned to compliment her on her finger fandango, and it was then that I noticed, peeking out from the cuff on her sleeve, a delicately inked scene of tropical complexity and possible spiritual significance. I noticed, too, because my now all-seeing eyes caught sight of her ankle, that Rapunzel was tattooed in what seemed to be an enveloping inked body stocking. Only this was a body stocking that could not be peeled off or back.

Once upon a time - perhaps fifteen years ago - tattoos were the preserve of sluts, convicts and sailors. Rapunzel was, to my mind, pretty and dignified (and possibly intelligent) prior to my espying her body art. My remaining impression, after catching a hint of her panorama, was pity and revulsion. Why indelibly stamp beautiful skin? Why allow a delicately inked panorama to become faded and crepey, and to remain a sad impediment and permanent reminder of a mad moment in time?

The same can be said of those people - photographers included - who post soft porn (or worse) pics of self or others onto the Web. Recently a teenager was heard to say that 'everybody's doing it so it's no big deal', and when pressed to respond to the charge that such pics would be unearthed one day and blight her chances of promotion or political office, 'cool' teenager replied with another 'no big deal' response because 'everybody' would, by then, have an Internet porn history.

Paul Simon was right: we are, indeed, 'slip-sliding away' ...

Copyright © Barbara Elion, 2010

Pollyannas and other cheerful chicks

I was born a Thursday child: what this means is that I am, by nature, not bonny, nor full of grace, and certainly not fair of face. A Thursday child is 'full of woe'. How much more chipper life would have been had the contractions started sooner.

At times, so it has been said, I am curmudgeonly , especially when faced with the Happiness industry - which pedals trite, hollow affirmations, the spread of 'glow' and 'light' and 'love' and whatever else sanitises, and flattens, and reduces to sushi bite-size catch-phrases the full range of human feeling and the complex responses to people and events that shape our lives.

This industry, once only the domain of the greeting card business, or featured on the back of cereal boxes, is everywhere: in email signatures; in platitudinous quotes and channelings and slogans; in the blogosphere and, particularly, on social networking sites, where the expectation is that you should be a constantly happy camper.

There is no room for complex thought or for soulful feeling in the face of the Happiness quaffers of bubbly and nibblers of bon-bons.

Does one join the Gatsby crowd in order to find a place to hide?

I wonder.

Copyright © Barbara Elion, 2010

The Wisdom of Hiss, ISBN 978-0-620-44478-1