Tuesday 27 June 2017

Australia - I'm standing in it

Welcome to another edition of Footwear Log

New clogs

Let's face it, this purchase was inevitable from the moment I wrote here that I was having lemming-like urges about buying myself a pair of shoes exactly like my psychoanalyst's. Do you know what I keep thinking about? Apart from how excellent these are on my feet? You do of course. I keep thinking about the scene in The Young Ones where Rik's sociology tutor comes to the party and Rik says to him in this excruciating way "ooh look I've got trousers like yours, they're great aren't they." In case you're not quite sure what I'm saying, I am in fact Rik in this instance, and also everywhere else in my life, 100% of the time.


I suppose I should be more disturbed about how pleased with myself I am about these shoes, which, it bears saying one more time, I wanted because my doctor has a pair exactly the same. I've wanted shoes of hers before but never actually taken the step of acquiring some, until now. I am all about taking the step these days. But stepping where? Is this a sort of payback for her freaking me out so deeply by copying me and changing her hair from dyed brown to silvery grey? (Yes I dare say it is.) Yesterday's session was another of the ones where I can't meet her eyes and so spend too much time staring at her feet. She had a confusing pair of knee-high boots on. They have zippers down the inside of the leg as is usual but also zippers down the outside, ie two zips per boot. Maybe a little bit on the kink side of things. I have no desire to follow suit there. The ways of the lemming heart are hard to fathom.

I was amused but also very embarrassed last week to find I'd accidentally started a mini lemming-stampede on facebook (hello friends) by posting about the skincare stuff I use: it's good stuff and I have no hesitation recommending it but it was quite weirdly interesting to have about half a dozen women tell me publicly and privately that they'd bought some after I talked about it. I guess what that's about is how old we all are. We're starting to see the lines on our faces. Though in my case the problem is not really caused by old age and decrepitude, I would not need to rub potions into my skin to stave off "the rapid increase of the crows' feet about the temples"* if I could somehow crack myself up a bit less often and/or a bit less completely. This morning I was riding to work (where things are still tense) in the dark, it was painfully cold, but I couldn't help laughing; I was thinking about the phenomenal crimes against human decency you could commit if you set yourself the task of making porn / exploitation versions of mainstream movies; Schindler's Slit is the one that did me in to the point where I had to pull over until I could breathe again. 

Also on facebook last week, speaking as I am of narcissism and masks, there was a game did the rounds where you invite your friends to post a gif that obliquely illustrates how they think of you. Zoe posted this, saying by way of explanation that it hadn't been what she was looking for but the thought the image was perfect; Kate said she thought so too.



I see what they're getting at. It's interesting. I certainly don't have these clean lines but I understand that I might seem to be structured like this. But from my perspective, it's different. Always when I write, and almost always when I talk, I'm very conscious that there's a lot I'm not talking about, and very often it's the stuff that I think about all the time. But as I think i've said before, evasiveness is the only language available to me (maybe to anyone?) and there does seem to be a possibility that it can be used to say otherwise unsayable things. The other thing this image reminds me of is an object I saw recently. Last Saturday Lenny and I visited the RAAF aircraft museum at Point Cook. He was about as interested in it as I thought he'd be: he liked the planes and not much else. One object he was most unfortunately smitten with was a horrid thing that looked like a superceded recruiting device : a black display case sort of object with a clear glass box on top with a hologram pyramid in the centre, inside of which appeared a succession of 3D images of recent aviation weaponry. Len was fascinated by this rotten thing like a mouse hypnotised by a snake.

Well. In the photo, my beautifully shod feet are standing on an Australia-shaped patch of light on the floor in the museum at work. It's one of a set of lighting effects that is meant to help visitors understand, in the absence of much signage, what they're looking at in different sections of this gallery which is devoted to WWII. This is the home front corridor. This light on the floor is easily the most photographed object in the entire museum - feet planted on the continent as I'm doing is a popular one, as is dumping your cute child somewhere on the map and taking a picture of that, god knows why. Most people who take this photo are overseas tourists. I don't know what they're thinking but I guess it's not about Tim & Debbie and chunky custard. Their loss.


*Persuasion. 

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