journal 24.2.2019

…wondered what male climax feels like; the run up. Asked myself is it like a swimming contest and then you win? Rejected that.  Asked myself where were the literary descriptions of male climax which weren`t disguised as something else? Research required if I care enough to pursue such a fleeting curiosity.

Dragged out the sun lounger and lounged in the sun for 20 mins, after pootling in/round garden. The birds, having helped themselves to most of the sphagnum moss liner in the ridiculous metal basket on a stick I salvaged from the dump a few years back, was emptied, after redistributing the salvageable soil on garden beds. Pot gardening is like playing chess; always thinking three moves ahead to what pot where and consequence of. Found a tiny bulb sprouting on gravel which had rooted despite evidently being dropped while planting last autumn. Grape hyacinth? Poked it into pot with J`s gift of snakeshead fritillary, now budding. Happy time of filthy fingernails.

Started reading Effi Briest by Theodor Fontane who I keep calling Thomas Verlane for some reason. I bought it in order to try and understand why the novel  is referenced in Krapp’s Last Tape. I saw the play Friday 15^th at a friend`s home. The event was entitled Krapp in Your Living Room. The actor was Philip Robinson. He`s taken the play into people`s homes for the past 12 months plus, in various countries, and I`ve never spent 50 minutes like it in my life. After rereading the text and digesting the performance, I think it was too much pantomime. He said afterwards while chatting that the audience reaction was never predictable; some were very quiet, some laughed uproariously. We had both at S`s in an audience of 16 I think. I found the self-loathing aspect hard to bear. On discussing post –show, tenderness was found in the performance, but seriously, it was minimal. Tiny rememberances. Comedy yes, but at a cost. I don’t find it an amusing play. It breaks my heart. Think I lean too much toward the dark. Back to Effi, it might have been a mistake to read the extended introduction. Now I`ll be looking for the ‘tausend finessen` (possibly); the subtextual. The allusory. I hate being directed.

Phone interruption. End.

The Body

Will Self​`s take on life is always interesting, even if the your experience of his writings is one which induces a desire to strangle the bloke.

Speaking on Radio 4 this morning, Self gave voice to the cultural phenomenon of ‘body silence’, which manifests as an awkward intolerance of the aging body, and any attempt to express, or simply allow for, its inevitable entropy. For example, it’s okay to be stoic in the limping evidence of failing joints, but not okay to talk about it.

I’m totally with him on this one. I recently experienced this particular type of silencing in a local greengrocers. A friend was relating her experience of being taken into hospital, all the while accompanied by theatrical sighs and moans from the shop keeper filling shelves nearby. It took me a while to understand that the sighing and moaning was meant for us, two older women talking about body stuff, as a means to shut us up.

So thank you Will Self for bringing this rather crap lack of tolerance, which appears to desire a negation of our fundamental humanity, into the spotlight. If indeed Radio 4 qualifies as such. But come on, is the fact that our bodies fail over time so hideous that we can`t talk about it in public? What is it the admission of frailty trespasses upon?