On Young Feminism: A rebuttal to the Second-Wave

For anyone who follows left-wing media in the UK (and doubtless abroad) any time after 2000, a common criticism of modern Feminism becomes increasingly evident; I call it the Katie Price Principle, but it could be called the Pole Dancing principle or the Living Doll principle or a thousand other names. In essence, it’s the argument that the sexualisation of our culture has been gleefully bought into by Feminists, that Feminists are gradually reassuming traditional and newly-developed stereotypically feminine roles; women are becoming more narcissistic, more wrapped up in self-promotion at the expense of female-promotion, and as a result the Feminist discourse suffers.

I call it the Katie Price principle after the woman whose two year-old daughter Princess was snapped wearing false eyelashes, spawning a media-spanning argument about female role models and early sexualisation. Katie Price was no stranger to tabloid attention before that; she is a woman who has been described as “the Belle du Jour of glamour modelling”, the archetypal sexualised but empowered woman, peddling her appearance and her fame (a propos of nothing it seems) and revelling in the power she has – fundamentally, to make money. This, television moralists and traditional feminists (uniquely aligned) argued, marked the downfall of Feminism or its folly. Feminism, they argued, was becoming or had become a movement so desperate to rename victimhood as empowerment that it unknowingly condemned hidden victims, a movement which seemed to have stepped back one intellectual level from a generation of women who knew their rights and were sure as hell going to fight for them.

Every facet of female and Feminist expression is now analysed for this lack of intellectualism. A food blog written by a university student discovering cooking for the first time is “a return to traditional feminine values”.  A tentative attempt to examine why a woman might choose sex work or pole dancing without condemnation is the willing re-sexualisation of women. Young women who wear make up and paint their nails and say they feel empowered by that are unwitting slaves unaware of how the patriarchy has oppressed them, using the word “empowered” shallowly, misunderstanding what their mothers fought for. 

More than that, the critics argue, this kind of easy empowerment is subtly aiding those who seek to make victimisation of women seem appealing or sexy. Publicising the Belle Du Jours of this world means that the trafficked women, the trafficked children even, are sidelined and unspoken, and the sex industry (particularly its more softcore elements) is able to successfully rebrand itself. And what about mothers, especially poor ones? Modern feminism is all about being a liberated childless (or non child-centric) fashionable blogger with quirky yet mainstream style – it’s all about being a Jezebel editor, in other words. One post, responding to Fuck No Jezebel’s tumblr of all places, summed this up perfectly for me;  

“mommyjacking”? Can I call it “rich NYC party girl-jacking” when flippant little 22 year olds try to turn THE ENTIRETY of feminism into a heterosexpoitation high heels I choose my choice party?”

So there you have it. My generation’s feminism is shallow, exploitative, a fake veneer over hyperfeminisation. Except, well, no it’s not.

Let’s go back to our first example, the food blog, or as my mother put it, “cupcake feminism";   independent, snarky women baking on their weekends and posting it on the internet. They are indicative of a wider group of women; criticised for reassuming outdated roles of hyperfemininity, stooping over the 50s oven and cutesying it up Deschanel style, with any sense of irony removed because these women do not overtly criticise stereotypes of women. But that's not what's going on here; they’re hungry, and they're eating. They, we, can recognise intellectually the existence of those stereotypes, understand their harmful components (the lack of choice, the system of oppression they were at one time intrinsically indicative of), and we can enact them without bringing 1950s preconceptions of femininity with us. These food blogs or this make-up-tip article do not mark a lack of understanding of stereotype - they mark a complete disregard for the relevance of stereotype to competency. Second-wavers who would decry this trend, do you really underestimate our intellectual capacity so far that you believe we don’t understand the implications of the apron and the griddle? Because to me it seems that in order to condemn a woman as a stoolpigeon for the patriarchy you would have to either believe that she was unaware of the stereotypes she might be wading in to, or – worse – you would have to honestly believe that feminine traits are inherently negative, or that a woman cannot exhibit behaviours part of her conditioning without being aware of them.

So too, are we ridiculed as intellectually spurious for the emphasis our Feminism places on choice. Who are we to treat the pole dancer or even the sex worker as anything other than a victim to be rescued or martyred? How can we possibly view traditional femininity or sexualisation as things to be chosen, and possibly to be proud of? Well, firstly, not all of us do. But secondly, it is not ever a question of claiming sexualisation to be inherently positive or negative; neither is it a question of claiming anything to be inherently positive or negative. Modern feminism isn't affirming sexualisation as positive - it's rejecting self-certainty as negative. How arrogant we would have to be to presume to know every woman's experience of sexualisation, how deaf we would have to be to stop listening to the women who have chosen lives we don't necessarily understand. Just because it is harder to argue for a Feminism without absolute truths does not make those non-absolute truths any less true. We would be sacrificing our intellectual integrity as a generation wholesale if we presumed to proclaim universal truths about a Feminism that has proven itself multiferous, multicoloured and intensely personal. I will repeat it again, because it bears repeating; a lack of absolutism is not a lack of integrity. And nor does it mean that Feminism is failing; quite the opposite.
 
I look up at my TV screen at the moment and I see two female news reporters discussing international politics. My female friends are among a generation who are more committed to further education and education at all than their male compatriots, who put on make-up and still insist that women have the choice not to, who are painfully aware of feminine stereotypes and aching not to be too old-fashioned. These are young women who have known their whole lives that they have access to independence and their own careers, women whose feminism is about bringing more people into the fold, rather than staring outward with hostile eyes, backs to each other, refusing to let other women drink their fill and refusing to try and understand them.

 


What we are doing to young women by telling them how to be perfect canned Feminists is exactly the same as what political orthodoxies have been doing for thousands of years. Please, you who would seek first and final feminist principles, do not claim intellectual superiority while you sit in the 1970s advocating perfect Feminists, Feminists who are untainted by the patriarchy, feminists who condemn all women who are not empowered. You are condemning as much as those you claim to hate, those you claim to fight against. And in the process, you are undervaluing a feminist consciousness that is not often reported but exists, virulent and indestructible.

For young feminists now, Feminism is about understanding, a constant effort to improve things for everyone, rather than a charged effort with no impurity tolerated. My friends understand in detail issues of Female Genital Mutilation, sex-selective abortion, human trafficking, prostitution. Their willingness not to condemn the pole dancer should not be taken as a carte blanche to the construct of pole dancing; their tactical support of legal prostitution should not be taken as support for the construct of prostitution per se. Simultaneously, young feminists are capable of understanding why patriarchy informs these constructs, and understand the negative effects of those constructs, without condemning the women who take part in them. No feminist is perfect, every feminist is worth listening to, and the struggle should not be ideologically closed.

I’m putting myself on a limb here, but I’m going to say it; our feminism is less concerned with the feminist and more concerned with the woman, and to me that has to be better. We are no longer the children of second-wave feminism, but the possessors of our own feminism; some of us are the children of the children of second-wave feminists. Some of us are men, a lot of us are racial minorities, we are LGBT, we refuse to be essentialist – about women, about feminists, about women of colour, even about our own understanding of feminism. We want to listen to what you have to say rather than what we have to say. That does not make us intellectually feeble, it makes us irrepressable. Try to find a leader of our feminism, a unified ideology, and you will fail. That makes us stronger, not weaker. If there are those among us with the power to address the subtler sexism still evident in our society (and I believe there are), they will be sourced from cupcake blogs, from book groups, from schools, from the young. In ten or fifteen years, we will be trying to shepherd a new generation of feminism.

We don't know everything yet. Don't take this as a disavowal of the achievements of second-wave feminism, but take it as an opportunity. Feminists still need their mothers, and those mothers still have incredible power - but while they condescend to their sons and daughters and condemn their willingness to tolerate "impure" feminism, they sabotage a movement aimed at a global improvement of women's rights. To sum up;

We bake, because we like to eat. And we are worthy successors.

Explanation Part 2

So. I explained in my first post that I'm at home due to illness these days, and last week sucked. It sucked balls. I'm explaining to the internet ether because I told myself I would, ha. I'm going to start a two-post a week schedule, less than I said before but just to kind of slow down a bit. I'm sorry to anyone (maybe one person, ha) who's reading, and I'm going to keep writing. Wish me luck!

Explanation!

Hi guys!

I don't know if anyone's reading this, but anyway; I haven't posted because I'm currently writing a three-part story to be posted tomorrow, Wednesday and Friday (with the conclusion obviously on Friday). Stay tuned!

-Alex.

Update: Due to family stuff I'm going to be late with this, but I will hopefully have this done by the end of the week.

Update: Due to similar, I'm conflating the story and I'm just going to post it as one part at the end of the week.

Humanity

My mother used to tell me there are two types of people in this world – people who are humane, and people who are not. She told me that there are a great many people in this world who are just not good at being human, at sympathy and empathy and all the elements of human kindness. She described the world to me as being like the centre of a vacuum cleaner; the sort where there’s a central fabric that the dirt clogs up on. Humans are the dirt, connected to each other in howling wind,  kept without consent. It was a mark of how my mother raised me that I understood this not to be a bad thing; it was merely the case. We are all stuck here; why make it more difficult?

My mother died when I was seventeen. She was my only relative. I knew I had uncles somewhere, in another country I couldn’t fathom, but for all intents and purposes I had lost the only person who shared my blood. She was a fantastic woman – two days before her death she told me not to cry, because people who die before they’re old get to be young in Hades. Hades, she said, because to claim she was headed to heaven would be arrogant. I knew her well enough to know that.

I considered myself a success. I had a flat, a four year-old Chartreux, and a job that kept me stocked in long shabby coats and cigarettes. I took trains for important reasons, and sometimes travelled business class. Not today.

“Is this seat taken?” The words were rushed out, mumbled as if they were rude. I’ve found it’s a particular trait of the British that we are embarrassed of politeness, as if somehow daring to speak at all is rudeness in and of itself.

“No, feel free.” I meant it, as well. My welcome intruder was shorter than me, curly haired, with the heavy lilt of south Wales on his voice. I remembered something about Tolkein and cellar door, something from my good degree at my average University.

“Cold, isn’t it?” He was shivering, as if to prove that yes, it was cold.
“Seems so. Winter’s always fashionably late in Britain.”
My companion laughed. That was my favourite weather-line. You need a specialised script in a country with weather like ours.
“You headed to Edinburgh too?” I could already tell the Welshman had a talent for small talk. He had that quality of casual interest; a voice that seemed to wash over you, comfort you instinctually.
“Stirling. But via Edinburgh. I’m visiting a friend.”
“Stirling. All I know about Stirling is there’s a castle. Must be one of those half-child memories.” I smiled. He made ignorance sound like bliss, and I liked that he said half-child instead of half-memories; it was poetic.
“I’ve never been. It’s her hometown. I brought layers.”
He laughed. “Good shout.”

We lapsed comfortably into silence. An old woman settled in across the aisle, and we exchanged a look of indignation, as if our sudden and public conclave should be respected. It was clear we were both unenthralled by our books, so after a while of glancing at each other, the Welshman brought the courage.

“I know it’s childish, but I still find train rides a bit exciting. Like they mean a trip.” He grinned sheepishly.
“S’not childish. I was a London kid. Getting somewhere non-rectangular was a fucking field day for me.”
He laughed at that, and we earned an edifying scowl from the old woman.
“Not a London kid now?”
“In spirit, but I’m Peterborough-dwelt these days.”
“Ah. I’m in Cambridge.”
“As in the University?” I was impressed. He grinned the grin of somebody proud of their achievements and nervous about their possible arrogance.
“Yeah. I’m doing my doctorate in Biochemistry. I study Yeast for a paltry living.”
“How bourgeois.”
“First against the wall, right? It’s a good thing I’m a Welsh miner’s boy, very socialist. Can’t argue with my credentials.” The Welshman flashed pearly whites, uneven.
“Mixed-race child of a single mother; I’m bred for reality television.” I smirked.
“Ah right, you get stuck with all the R&B throwbacks week-to-week.”
“People of colour can’t sing indie. You’re a biochemist, you should know these things.”
“Must’ve slept through that lecture.” We laughed in unison, looked at our books, and fell silent.

The ticket collector shuffled through our carriage a few minutes later, pushing his little cart. Both of us were over-eager ticket-finders; both of us had return tickets.

“So what’re you planning in grand old Stirling?” He was casual again. I paused, letting the hiss of my newly-opened Sprite subside.
“A funeral.”
His eyebrows rose. “A funeral. Oh. Of your fr-“
“My friend, yeah.” I shrugged a little.
“I didn’t mean t-“
“You didn’t.” I looked up.
“What was it?” His curiosity was innocent, it understood the value of sharing.
“Car accident. Standard, you know.”
“Death’s not standard.” He was frowning for me.
“I mean for a car accident.”
“Right.”
We settled into a more awkward silence this time. I could tell he was forming an apology, but I could also tell he thought it would sound insincere. Twenty minutes trundled by.

“Her name was Sarah.”
Welshman looked up. It was the kindness in his eyes. It prompted you. “Sorry?”
“Sarah. My friend. She was an estate agent; she liked to make jokes about how estate agents are evil, but she actually believed all of that rubbish about potential and character – she loved houses. She did her A-levels and went straight into an apprenticeship with the estate agent’s, because she knew what she wanted to do. Used to tease me about University life while she was pulling down more than I do now. Team mother, you know? That was Sarah.”
“Why was she living down south if her hometown’s Stirling?”
“It’s not, really. I mean, not emotionally. But her family’s from there and they get say, obviously.”
Welshman nodded.
“She was just nice. Most people aren’t just nice for shits, you know? They do it because they think it makes them good people or they do it selectively, but Sarah was really honestly nice. She did volunteer work, for fuck’s sake. All I do is sit in my flat and read and stare at the world like it’s going to bite me. Sarah was fucking brave. She’d talk to people like they were an old friend, instantly. She had this talent of...humanity. It was humanity.”
Welshman wrinkled his brow. “How d’you mean?”
“You know how some people do good things but they’re still fundamentally practical? They can look at people and turn them into numbers in their head, even if they really, really care, because they have to?” I was leaning forward, willing him to absorb the words I was saying. He tilted his head in assent.
“Well,  Sarah couldn’t. She was gloriously, wonderfully impractical, and you know - I think practicality’s overrated. I think a lot of practicality is just heartlessness justified – wise heartlessness maybe, but still heartlessness. And I wish we were allowed to call it that without it being a personal attack, because the people who can’t put their heart aside are really fucking rare and deserve recognition for it. Because they’re fucking wonderful, they really are.” I realised I was speaking pretty loudly, and I felt suddenly chastened. Welshman was looking at me with this strange look; this implicit recognition, combined with something like pain, but calmer.

He took out a packaged sandwich.
“Do you want half?” It wasn’t a question. I took it meekly and we broke bread together.
“You cared about her a lot.”
I paused, chewing. “I knew her for a really long time. After my mum died she did all of it right; didn’t try to be family, didn’t encroach on my space, but…pestered me just enough. Allowed me to get annoyed with her, told me when I was being a dick, kept me standing on the ground. Some people just feel like elements, and she felt like Earth. Fuck, her tea. This woman’s tea.”
“Did you love her?” Welshman had sat back.
“Of course. Y’know, platonically.” I smirked a bit, despite myself. “We could’ve spent a whole life together, talking about fuck-all.”
“Did you guys travel in wide circles?” He was avoiding the use of the word “friends”, I think.
“She did, I didn’t. I think that’s probably part of it. I’m not a social person, you know?”
“That’s a shame.” He was watching me, I could feel it on my bowed brow.
“Not really.” I looked up, faced him properly. “I’m a loner, fundamentally.”
“But even loners need people.”
“Yes. I needed her.”
Welshman looked at me for a long time after I said that, but we slipped into silence again. By the time he spoke again, we were pulling into Edinburgh station; our stop.

“I could be that person. I mean, not face-to-face all the time, but I don’t think you’d need it anyway.”
He said it so simply, like it was an offer to look after my cat. I could tell my eyes were swimming. It was that fundamental trait, that humanity. It was slipping off of him as if he was bathed by a moving light, like he was shedding it.
“I just mean – if you need it.”

I looked at him for a few seconds, coughed, and nodded.
“I think I do.”
Like two fleshy pebbles we found our way into the flow of passengers emptying onto the platform, the hubbub of conversation washing over our subsiding exchange. A wrought iron roof magnified the speech, like some vast urban choir playing for a strange Cathedral.  As we left the platform, I turned to him.
“You know, you remind me of my mother.”

Screw!

I suck and am late. I was having a life. =/ But I've almost finished something for tomorrow. =D

Bhanga from a Stereo

My hands wove through his hair like diving birds or a snake through grass; eminently natural, collecting the individual strands of thick black Pakistani curl. I was a field-working woman, gathering together the crop into one swaying basket that tilted as I tilted. Cross-legged behind him, I could have been meditating – and he could have been some Rajah, some great King.

“Now you do my head,” he had said, in his accent thick as the qeema he had served us three or four times, to our naïve Western tongues untouched by the spices of the east. He had a way of speaking that made what he said seem timeless, self-evident and unquestionable – so I had sat behind his wicker chair and now I massaged his scalp, took his hair around each of my fingers as we slipped further into a strange sort of coalescent movement; he, swaying slightly to the bhanga from the stereo, I, tilting both with the music and the undulation of my fingerprints against his skull. We had reached a queer conclave, a bizarre stasis.

We were miles from the nearest city, and maybe that was what made unfurling here so easy. I felt as if over the last few days I had opened, allowed the sun I hid from on any ordinary day to absorb into my blood vessels and warm my body. He was a strange man, alternating between childishness and hopping rage; but I had been brought up an Englishman. I was proud of my stoicism, proud of my ability to withstand stress with a straight face and no trace of embarrassment. My travelling companion, my best friend, dwelt in England but didn’t claim herself English – she was as continental as her parentage. Thus, she said, knee deep in our weeding patches, she was perfectly qualified to complain.

 I had tuned her out a while ago, and since we were working on opposite sides of the farm, I was left to my own silence, left to lose myself like a million tourists in the repetition of manual labour, the calmness of small-scale natural exploitation. We worked eight hours a day and were always finished by two in the afternoon (followed by long walks through the countryside). After our conversation died, we were left to continue on, watching the aquamarine Polish sky bring out the lustre of the surrounding agriculture.

“I know, he’s a Pakistani in Poland who speaks average Polish at best, it’s weird,” my friend had said, tapping at the keyboard to find airline tickets. “But he’s paying for us to go and paying for us to work. So we might as well go.”

I was glad I’d come. We were sleeping in the attic of a barn, but I’d never slept better. I was reliably informed that this was not the real face of rural Poland but a result of him demolishing his house two days before he arrived. There was a lot that had been proclaimed to me as if it was unassailable. Living here was like living without science. But there were upsides; there were moments that seemed unpleasant in conception, but turned out to be calming. Like these massages.

He was a little man with a little head, and I dwarfed him by at least half a foot; so it was not difficult to position my hands correctly, enough so that the novice swirls I pressed against his hairbed were not too uncomfortable. He seemed to radiate calm while I massaged his head – as if I was bringing him a taste of Nirvana. When he fell asleep, inevitably lulled by the sitar music he had playing out of his stereo, I would leave, gentler and quieter for the effort. I did not have to say anything for him to know that my English bones were softer than when I had arrived.

Cambrians: The Candidates

“Mooorning”. Syllables duly dragged, Naomi dropped into the train seat opposite Max and Mags. It was a point of pride for the three of them that they never phoned each other before nine o’clock in the morning; they liked to prove to each other that they were not yet co-dependent. If they met up on the train, it was by coincidence. There was a long pause.

“Morning.” This was with more emphasis. Mags looked up dully, pushing back a lock of dark red hair, dyed. “Hi.” Max looked up and gave his little half-smile.
“Jesus, you guys are lively.”
Mags grimaced. “Blame history. I understand that 19^th century British politics is important, but couldn’t they have taken a break from legislation and done something…I don’t know, important AND fun?”
Max coughed amusedly. “What, like windsurfing?”
“You laugh, you always laugh,” Mags stabbed a finger at them both, “but I honestly think the Great Reform Act would’ve been a lot easier to pass if at least one Whig was into extreme sports. How do you say no to a liberal in a wetsuit?”
“It’d be madness.”
“Exactly!” Mags slumped again. “Anyway, I was up until midnight. It’s the least fun I’ve ever had after dark.”
Naomi grinned. “I reckon I can cheer you up.” She fished around a bit in her cavernous bag and pulled out five, shiny looking rectangles. “We’re going to see…a play.” This was, of course, in her best Pippa Middleton accent.
“A play?”
“A play.”
Max raised an eyebrow. “I feel very middle class.”
“Don’t you though.” Mags had approached Joanna Lumley levels of drawl.
“My dad did some of the specialist set building,” Naomi put in, “and it’s also kind of a new production so they want anyone to show up.” She paused. “I mean it’s supposed to be really good, but Cambridge is the first place they’re doing it, so –“
“Bad plays are almost better than good plays, so it doesn’t matter.” Mags waved a hand. “Who are we inviting, anyway? I dunno who qualifies to tour with the Ely Massive.”
“Christ, we have a name?” Max looked sceptical.
“Of course. You can’t be as awesome as we are and not put a name to it.” Mags shrugged off-handedly. “I say we invite Alfie.”
Naomi gave confused face. “Is he the big one?”
Max spoke. “He’s from the Hearse, I think, private school guy. Quiet, though. He’s not a dick.”
“He’s nice.” Mags nodded. “He gave me a pencil, he’s in my tutor group and we’ve got most of our frees together. I like him.”
“What about Eddie?” Naomi shook her hair back a bit. “He’s the guy who sits at the back in German. Always looks stoned. He’s funny.”
Max thought. “I like Dylan.” Mags and Naomi both gave him the same confused look, which would’ve made him smile, except for the fact that people always forced him to explain his smiles. “Newspaper guy. The one really eager to take the arts and books section. I think he’d appreciate the play best.”
“But he’s so moody.” Naomi was sceptical.
Mags frowned, slightly bemused that she’d forgotten his name. “He’s not, he’s just…sarky. I think he’s funny in the right space.”
Max shrugged.  “I prefer him over Alfie.”
Mags scowled. “I’ll take anyone over Eddie, I think he just thinks he’s funny and people go along with it.”

They looked at each other, realised they’d just cancelled out each other’s choices, and laughed. Mags thought to herself. “Why don’t we just…talk to all of them. For a week or something. And then decide in a week?”

Max and Naomi looked at one another, thought to themselves, then nodded. Naomi gave a cat-like smile.

“This is the first interesting thing to happen all year.”

Cambrians: Breakfast

Naomi had always been taught that introspection was the highest form of reflection. For years, she had envied the hermit, the glamour of solitude, the aloof sort of fame that comes  from being easily and happily alone. Few people have the talents that lead to such a fame, and even fewer actually achieve it; Naomi was neither. She had spent so much of her adolescence attempting to be aloof and separate from the main; as a child, she had silenced her critics by pointing out that no man is an island, and had given herself her own space.

Deep within her stomach, however, she had found an anxiety for other people. It manifested itself in hair extensions and carefully applied mascara, no longer a costume purely for her mirror and the Narnia within her bedroom but now for the world; it had eaten her younger self whole and replaced it with something beautiful and cruel. Naomi knew that her behaviour lay on a razor’s edge between her pride and the quiet awareness she had of her own terrible leverage, her own ability to ruin the thoughts of others.

In the mirror, she saw luck. Naomi scraped six foot in heels, and had defined herself by the long, wavy blonde hair she kept;  a wry signpost to the fifties, some visual reference of fashionable intelligence. Her clothes were a testament to her ability to reckon the eyes of others; sleek and only revealing in one place, as if she had ducked under an invisible quota on women’s dress. She fogged herself with a light mist of perfume and left her cave.

Naomi lived with her father, a man who revelled in his specialties. He was a man of details and deep, fundamental knowledge of the function of things – in his case, carpentry. He made beautiful things for people to ignore, so Naomi made an effort not to. As a result they were very close, physically affectionate in the way some daughters get to be past the age of ten, safe enough not to care.

“Morning, Dad.” Fifteen years of the same house had established strict seating traditions, and Naomi took hers (back to the window, light out of her eyes).
He was a kind-eyed man, broad and slow-souled. He moved carefully, kissing Naomi on the cheek and settling across from her as they both poured out their cereal. There was a quiet conclave between them, a silence of consumption that lingered long after Naomi had grabbed her bag and left the house. In their home, noise was foreign.

Cambrians: Hometime for Mags

(This is a continuation of the post “The Fenlands.” I quite liked the established characters, and I think they may become a regular part of my writing.)

Mags considered it a badge of honour that her trainers were scuffed. Scuffed trainers said a lot about a person; they implied a joie de vivre, a willingness to approach life without stringent preparation and with ten toes firmly forward. The right pair, marked indelibly with the stuff of nonchalance; well, they evoked that grist to the mill spirit, a pro-active sort of friction, a positive abrasion.

They also implied a dwindling bank account.

A small part of Mags supposed she couldn’t really blame her life that much for her current state of relative poverty. She lived in Europe, continent of the slightly haughty and well-governmentally-catered-for. Even if she broke her face and couldn’t be an astronaut or a supervillain any more, she’d still have disability benefits and jobcentre and telemarketing. But humans are slaves to relativity and mostly, she was lamenting at her lack of ability to blow a part-time-earned £150 on box sets of old TV shows and still have money to troll Nike.  

“At least”, her brain said to itself, crossing with her body across a narrow rivulet of the Ouse, “there’s still loitering.” There was nothing Mags liked better than a bit of loitering. She predicted that her epitaph would read “Loiter with direction”, for that was Mags’ highest calling. Unexceptional in dress or intelligence, she made up for her ordinariness with her air of astonishment. Mags surprised people, elicited things from them, made them feel almost imperceptibly as if they had crossed over into a film, and their life was being narrated – but her greatest quality was in pulling them into a film where she was the protagonist. This had won her a seat on the school council and easy friendships.

She walked alongside the river for a while, then climbed through a fence up onto the pavement and coursed across the road, threading her way into her house like one continuously edited shot. When she dropped down onto a decrepit sofa (emblazoned on one arm with the claw-induced debris of at least two cats) it was an event for only a little girl, equal occupant of the sofa and (in theory) of their parent’s inheritance.

“You’re late.” Nina was ten, also adopted, and also possessed of this photographic charm. Mags shrugged.
“Arthur can wait.”
“Maybe for you.”
“Alright, alright, I’m told. Get on with it.”

Nina’s hand went swiftly to the TV remote, and her book (a Jacqueline Wilson, which she called “lighter fare”) to the coffee table. The ritual of Arthur was one deeply entrenched. It had begun with Mags’ insistence eight years ago and continued mostly out of their shared belief that anything with anthropomorphic animals which rode bikes must be fundamentally A Good Thing. It was yet another manifestation of their quieter, stronger belief; that though they shared no genes, they had been born sisters. It was as simple as that.

November

I had never been the type to get cold easily; it wasn't some kind of environmental factor, any Siberian upbringing or frozen Scottish winter - it was just how I functioned, wearing my thin jumpers year-round, regardless of hail or sleet. When I was fourteen I bought a sleek black coat and wore it every day; I looked three years older, and dowdy, but I liked it that way; I thought my lack of fashion showed a commitment to my studies.

On the last day, I fumbled around on the floor and found my coat. There was a packet of these disgusting random continental cigarettes I'd bought on autopilot three days earlier. I pushed myself off of the bed as gently as possible, drifting to the open french doors that let in the North Sea wind. There was always something honest about winter to me - you got to see the trees' real shape, the contour of each building - and in ice, your own reflection. Actually, I preferred Autumn; it was like Winter's undramatic cousin, heralding the onset of death with a quiet, respectful sweep of leaves across a Hamburg pavement. I couldn't say what had brought us both here, of all places, except coincidence.

He lay across a waterbed that belonged to neither of us, asleep. The party had ended hours ago, and a pale blue-grey light was beginning to spread across the Binnenalster, calling the residents back to life. It was a very rich friend of a friend's apartment, and it was better than the view I had - of the back of a restaurant called (in a magnificent display of Dummdeutsch) "Empire of Doner und Kebab". We'd laughed about it, but their kebabs were fantastic, and when I flirted enough with Karl on Saturdays, he'd throw in as much Coke Zero as I wanted, as if my virtue could be bought for two litres of caffeine free. For some reason, I wasn't hungover - probably the cold, which would've been very disappointed with a malingerer.

I checked my watch and exhaled my smoke like a chimney, watching it drift, staggering, off of the balcony. I needed to wash my face - I could feel the make-up congealing on me - and so I only stuck around for a few minutes before finding the nearest bathroom (occupied by a sleeping Dutchman I knew from lectures who, thankfully, only filled a bath). The water helped. I liked the sensation of being awake in a building full of sleeping bodies. It felt like being awake before the creation of the world, in my own private universe. I lingered on my way back to our room, taking in the view from every window, as if I'd never be here again. When I came back, he was still asleep on the bed, his torso bare to the cold.

I wasn't impractical enough to bother preparing that much, since I'd hardly be expected to dress like a Queen, but I still brushed my hair and changed my clothes perfunctorily, hoping the new ones would smell less of vodka and cheap (and very dodgy) Bulgarian wine. I checked my watch again, and then found the cupboard, hoisting a holdall out of it with the few clothes I had left. Hanna had gotten most of the swag, Carlotta my kettle, since she'd made more coffee in it than I had. It was vaguely depressing to see my whole life reduced to a holdall. That and six hundred euros.

"Karel?"
His dark fringe twitched slightly, a frown escaping across his skinny brow. "Nnh?"
"Half an hour."
His eyes opened a fraction more, letting the same pale blue-grey light hit his equally pale blue-grey eyes. Slavic eyes, I'd called them. He had said I had read too much sentimental Russian literature, and he was probably right. It wasn't as if he needed to be here. By any accounts, two weeks wasn't enough time to...to make airport-taking commitments. To be up when I was on the morning I left.

But then, I think both of us realised there had been a shift. Something about the way we didn't talk, about the way we could spend hours in silence - two weeks was both enough and cruelly not enough. Ours was something that required physical presence. It was as if both of us were standing mute on each side of an hourglass, trying not to look at the sand. Two weeks wasn't enough to pin our lives on, not logically - but we could feel ourselves doing it, in the glancing eye contact he gave me as I stirred my milky tea, in the cerebral British game shows we watched via skype on my sister's TV - Only Connect and University Challenge every tuesday night for the last (very unromantic) year, utterly silent except to give short, curt answers, as if giving them too enthusiastically would be bragging.

We needed longer to make sure. But we didn't have it. We weren't the types to say I love you before it was unnecessary, but there needed to be something to hold onto in our minds, intellectually - as if conceptualising each others' limbs would make them solid.

"Karel."
"Mm?"
"We should skype."

He nodded. I took the 10:37 flight, Ryanair.

Cambrians: The Fenlands

Where the hills of the Midlands roll gently northwest into the Fens, the soul of the country becomes watery; a subtle edict of a pagan God, enacted in heavy banks of fog which settle like a gown over the stagnant canals. Marsh Harriers reign cruel over the flat, wet soil, and are audience to the liquid song of Garden Warbler and Nightingale. It is a rare man who understands the Court of that mud, the simple truth of waterlogged earth, the linear hierarchy of migrating bird under dwelling bird, pond skater under grey fox, algae-clogged water under draped-cloth willow.  He who understands this natural fen’s heart understands the true meaning of ‘marsh fire’ – the alcohol flame held within, a water-fire natural in its paradox.

Some are taught the fenland way; they sit in riverboats and live their lives sodden. But some are born with marshland hearts, and when reunited with their true habitat understand in a second the fragile beauty of a wetland winter, never quite frozen or melting, the smell of stem and brittle tree branch rich in the air like bonfire. These people, when reunited with their heart-home, smell the wet fen air as toast, mown grass and frying bacon – a smell so intrinsically good as to be unquestionable. They find their way by the lighthouse Cathedrals dotting the Holy Land of the English, and take refuge on islands above the inevitable tide of a thousand years of history.

 *****                        

Max knelt. He disliked the sweating incessancy  of a Mass held with others; it felt claustrophobic and suffocating – so he had joined the choir, initially for a better seat from which to worship his Lord and later out of real piety. For Max, faith had been natural, but not easy. He had trained some incorporeal vine around his belief; it had grown steadily alongside or maybe around him, reinforcing the ground underfoot. He was seventeen, and the least godless person he knew. Every Wednesday at four o’clock (just after school), he reinforced the solidity he felt behind his heart, cocooned by the heavy walls of Ely Cathedral.

Afterwards, when his knees were sore and his thoughts tired, he would take a short walk down by the Maltings, where the chips were too expensive but the service was good, and watch people float by on the river. He had been watching the water for a while when a girl four inches and four weeks his junior settled next to him, her hair settling quite suddenly to one side of her face, as if displaying an expression of its own. Maggie was like that.

“Are you contemplating the Universe again?” She yawned slightly, as if the Universe bored her. Maggie affected her boredom. Her aim in this wasn’t exactly to deceive you, but to slow down your speech. People spoke to Maggie, they didn’t just talk.
“I think you think I’m more profound than I am.” He took a chip, as did Maggie, with almost impossible vagary. “You want to be a priest. Won’t profundity be your job?”
“No, my job is a constant air of self-deprecation; this is the Church of England, Mags.”

Their exchange would’ve continued in earnest, satisfied in its own aimless humour, but for the whiff of £12 fragrance coming from the doorway. Naomi had arrived.

“Hey choirboy, hey Mags.” She settled herself down effortlessly, in the way only very deliberate people can, and set about rummaging through her purse. “I am done. I’m completely done.”
“Really.” Mags glanced at her lazily.
“Really, Mags.” Max was grinning.
“Really.”
“Shut up, you two. Seriously, I spent half an hour at Ryan’s and he didn’t look at me once. Not once. It’s a fucking joke, and I’m not gonna spend time with an idiot who prefers his fucking limp-dick Xbox over his so-called girlfriend. So I left. I’ve been waiting for like half an hour for him to text me and say sorry.” She pouted, and stole a chip.
“What if he’s not?” This was from Mags; Max had already silently consigned this conversation to the space he dared not tread.
“What if he’s not what?”
“Not sorry.”
“Of course he’s fucking sorry.” But Naomi had been weakened, and Mags pounced.
“I think he’s a twat. What’s the point of having legs to Morocco if you never get to wrap them around anything?” Ignoring Max’s sudden attack of spluttering, she continued; “I’m just saying, you actually had interesting things to say when  you weren’t mooning around after him. Do you know what the last and only conversation I had with him was about? Trainers. Fucking trainers, Naomi.”
Naomi made a sound somewhere between protest and resignation, and eventually slumped. “Ugh, you’re right, he’s braindead. I’ll text him and end it.”

There was a pause, in which Max stared at Naomi with faint amusement. “In twenty years, when humanity first contacts the aliens and they demand of us that we prove our worth as a species, we will search and search the wide and rich canon of human creative output; from it we will take Rilke and Confucius and Fitzgerald and Shakespeare and Descartes, hundreds of our most talented writers and theorists and politicians. But lest we forget; nay, lest the Universe forget, the saga of Naomi and Ryan will be consigned too to that rich and varied list of human achievement. And they will cry. The aliens will cry, Naomi.”

“You are such a dickhead, Max."

My Weapon Against Procrastination

So, I like to write. I know this may seem pretty obvious since I'm posting a blog, but it is important, so bear with me. I've been writing since I was seven. I'd like to be able to say I had some unique world-view or something new to offer the world or a distinct writing style or even particularly inspired characters, but in all honesty I don't know if any of that is true. I do know that writing calms me down, that it regulates me, and regardless of quality it always makes me feel like I've produced something; on a page, yes, but also in my head. I like the feeling of construction that writing gives you, the sense that you've mapped something out in your mind and then put down the thought-schematics. There's a satisfying sense of completion.

However, I find it difficult to write regularly; partly because of a longstanding illness that makes keeping to a schedule hard work, and partly because I'm a lazy bastard. This year I left school because of said illness, and it's not until this June that I'll be returning. I've been gone two months now and done nothing. So, you ask (no doubt with bated breath) - what's the point of this blog? Well, basically, it's to write. To write regularly, to structure my empty, pill-filled weeks with something to aim toward and dwell on. To give a routine other than doctor's appointments and "take two at nighttime". It breeds inactivity, and I'm tired of being that person.

So this blog stands as a way to try and stop me from procrastinating. Every two days, I will post some writing here, or I'll have to answer to cyberspace with an empty cyberapology of cyberplatitudes and cy- well, you get my point. I'm making myself accountable to the Internet, so that I develop what I'm doing.

I know enough about blogging to know that asking for no critique is pointless and hilariously naive, so I'll ask only that you keep it constructive. This is my attempt to metaphorically get off my arse. All I can say is, I hope it works.

Yours,

Alex.