A Half-Skeptical Take on Things
(Two girls, ladies, young adults, perhaps women – who can tell nowadays? – sitting for lunch in a happening restaurant. They are discussing the instagram stories flashing across a phone screen on the center of the table as they eat.)
A: “It used to be all about the perfect liquid center of molten lava cakes. There was an art to the slice of the knife through the doughy sugar clump to set the melted chocolate inside free. I don’t feel the joy in desserts anymore, except from cheap café accounts that battered the finesse of it all. The foodies shunned the lava center! Now? Look at this!”
Z: “Who’s pissing you off with their food posts?”
A: “Now the challenge went up a notch! Now the trend calls for the perfect liquid spill from the puffiest eggs benedict since sugar is an inflammatory enemy. It takes more of a talent to perfect that cut of the knife through the white wobble of the egg to set the sunshine inside free.”
Z: “And? What’s so wrong in that? By the way, eggs benedict are so yesterday.”
A: “We used to love to take pictures of our steaks. But now that’s cruel, it cuts down the market for the brand that is you. The vegans may question your integrity, so might your naturopath. It is way more reliable to depend on avocado toast as a brand symbol now. Count the café’s that serve it, take pictures of your avo-toast in all. Talk about the gut – from the feeling you had about the place, to the actual organ. Cover it all.”
Z: “Joachim Phoenix makes a very strong point. You can’t argue with that. As of yesterday you wanted to be vegan. What’s the issue then?”
A: “8 out of 9 women you deeply respect and follow on instagram are wearing spandex 98.4% of the time, squatting their pain away, and stretching their tendons to oblivion. All of them have good things to say; all of them say the same thing differently. All of them plan on going on a retreat somewhere in Asia soon. All of them are inner goddesses. All of them don’t want to heal alone.”
Z: “Oh, so now you know them that intimately? You just said – well you kind of said – that they put their spandex up as a wall! How do you know what they want to do alone? By the way, didn’t you just join this group meditation? And don’t you repeat all of their workouts? You are benefitting.”
A: “That’s what I mean! Or whatever. But almost everyone who is anyone is gliding vertically down a pole. Or an aerial swing. Or doing a handstand on someone else’s hands trembling and smiling to the camera. Or just hanging upside down for circulation. Very, very few say that they are just hanging, literally, on to life itself. On the grand scale of things, that would be awkward to share unless you’re selling something.”
(There’s silence, the sound of cutlery is clinking as the screen of the phone keeps flashing different images in the middle of the table between the plates of the two female diners).
A: “Look at this! Read this meme! Memes are the modern call for help now, and there are plenty to choose from that will fit your plea. No one wants personal negativity on social media. Find a therapist. Or a pole.”
Z: “So? Find one or the other! It seems that it helps! Can’t we eat in peace?”
A: “Eat. Eat. If all goes downhill, and you have nothing new that is post-able to share your genuine desire to be part of the community, don’t worry. Just share a photo of a flask full of liquid, preferably a transparent one filled with celery juice. Hydration says a lot about a person’s clarity. You’ll jump right back on the scene. Especially if your juice is in a bio-degradable cup.”
Z: “I posted my smoothie yesterday. It was only because it was good. It’s not always for the depressing reasons you list. Maybe if you try one of my recipes your thoughts will be less acidic? You used to love this stuff- now even a vegetable is accused of being loud!”
A: “It is! Soooo loud! If you want to tell anyone that you’ve got it all together and right in life, but you can’t say it so bluntly in a caption, then write something about energy or use the word “holistic”. If you really want to be cool, you will spell it as: WHOLISTIC with a ‘W’. If you want to clarify the pun, you can put a dash between the ‘W’ and the ‘H’.”
Z: “Everyone is trying. No one has anything compact and ‘together’. It seems that you are mostly bashing the women around you.”
A: “Not just women! Men, too! Speaking of…. Women! Women’s conventions; Women’s sacral chakra; The miracle that is a woman; Males becoming females and turning into great women. It’s all about us putting our foot down now, together, like a stadium filled with worked up fans stomping their feet in tandem on the rusty metal flooring. Except, it’s chatter because we already are doomed for being a headache. So I don’t know if I buy all this noise –”
Z: “Ugh! Would you stop? I cannot digest my food with this rant of yours. Take it easy! No one’s selling you anything.”
A: “I am trying so hard at not being skeptical, or sarcastic. I am not resentful of my friends or the trends and the way it’s so easy for some to keep a clean kitchen. I love it all! I learn, I learn!
I know they are there to serve me, repetitively, mechanically, unfailingly in tandem. They are my chanting gurus booming the mantra ‘OM’ with a background of hysterical giggles.”
Z: “So? OM! Learn! Giggle along! You’re so moody today.”
(The sound of a fork falling to the floor.)
A: “And whenever I do roll my eyes at seeing the same thing, I stop and I think… wait a minute! There is actually something cool happening. Intrinsic. Different. Healing. Collective. But so unoriginal! This last part is my resentment there when I’m having a day as bad as this one!”
Z: “Are you done?”
A: “Well what do YOU think?”
Z: “What do I think? Who wants to know?”
A: “I want to know.”
Z: “So that you can bring me down to your low and deep double bass notes?”
A: “So that I know what you think before we cave and sign up for another healing windfall we can’t afford.”
Z: “I think you ask too much. Listen. We, humans, did this – do this – all the time. We’ve always tried to be like everyone else to up our market, or make more friends, or climb up in society. We just know about it more now because of the media and what not. This is just history keeping its promise. Why does anyone have to be original for you? To inspire you? To entertain you? You’re not doing it yourself. You’re all pissed off cause you can’t keep up and you’re not a vegan yet, or whatever.”
A: “It should all be original. If we know the real story of each person… there should be more creativity and no fear of truth. We’d have more real friends. We’d be celebrated for not conforming and even make money out of it.”
Z: “And it’s their responsibility? Whether you take that risk to conform or not conform? Freak. I love you still. Eat your food. It’s not their responsibility.”
A: “It is all of our responsibility.”
Z: “But isn’t that, then, a ‘mob mentality’? And why don’t you start your non-confirmatory project whatever it is?”
A: “I don’t know. I am confused now.”
(The waiter comes to pour more water. When he leaves, the phone is unlocked out of sleep mode to bring instagram back to the center of the table).
A: “Let me ask you, do you like what you see on instagram?”
Z: “I hate it. And I love it. It’s a fine line.”
A: “See?”
Z: “But I don’t see. Not the way you do. No. The Law of Nature shows us that this loving game of compromise that our organism plays to compensate for any lack of wellbeing in a part of our bodies –”
A: “Wait – wha-?”
Z: “Yes. Our organism! Law of Nature. It applies. Bear with me. When we heal one organ, another organ has to compensate. Like, another one is compromised whether you know it or not. It uses more energy so that the weak organ can relax. So if you hurt your right leg, the left one will be compromised with your reliability on it until the right one fully heals.”
A: “So for it to apply, you’re saying that a post of someone balancing on an aerial swing is a given that they are compensating for an inner imbalance? As per the Law of Nature or whatever…?”
Z: “… And we should just get it and stop being annoyed when hundreds of others start doing the same and taking over the newsfeed. It’s perfectly natural to want to first clean up before we share the better half of who we are. The more the better halves of people match up, no matter how unreal, the stronger the message is. So what if you follow the shepherd? He knows where he is going. He keeps you safe from coyotes. That’s how eggs, or chocolate cakes, or steaks, or avo-toasts, become a THING. It’s beautiful, really.”
A: “You think it’s natural to mask our true selves, by keeping private our rawest life-changing experiences that prompted us to use this mask?”
Z: “The mask IS the compensation. Where there is a mask there is complex pain in a compromised heart and much, much growth is happening. That’s it. No need to know more to love people. I believe we are made up of halves. And we don’t need to give others both of these halves. Nothing will be left for us.”
A: “But we ALL say that the compensating half, masking the compromised half, is everything- it’s the whole. We say that in our captions below the picture of the squat, or the dish, or the yoga pose, or the run to a finish line. Why do we strive to make ourselves, and each other, so whole? It’s so final!”
Z: “I know. Why strive so much to make ‘us’ whole? What is this obsession with the word ‘whole’? You are made up of half your dad and half your mom. Why do both ends of who they are have to meet in you and trap you into a whole? They were each made up of half their dads and half their moms, and so on…. we are never really whole. I like to think that our ends flap freely according to the wind direction.”
(Silence. The phone went out of battery. The waiter cleared the table and the sounds of the clinking and clearing of plates got louder with lunchtime’s peak hour coming to an end.)
A: “I think our ends aren’t free because of the wind direction. But I’m gonna find me an aerial swing and post my eggs benedict. I can sure be one of the upside down yogis who aren’t quiet satisfied the right side up. Sorry I even brought this up. In other words that you’d use: frankly, my compromised strong thoughts, compensating for the weaker ones, need a break.”
Z: “That’s more like it. Swing along; hang upside down, or something sensible like that. Do not ask too much. Learn how to design your masked half wisely, and love it the way they do. Be a smarter half. Let’s pay?”
(The conversation turned inevitably lighter as they signed the receipts of their separate bills. They talked about the latest trendy ‘feels’ of that week, more of yoga plans and such, where to go for cheap drinks, and when to meet next.
Then they left to join the mob, one to her bank job, and the other to her hunt for non-existent clients. They scurried away without a second thought of the impression their words made on their genes during today’s speculation.
They are made up of halves – half-dreams, half-thoughts, half-truths – lingering and loitering with the direction of today’s strong North wind. Today they stayed farther from the South, and seldom ventured to either East or West – the wind made it hard. Their ends kept flapping, not yet meeting to become ‘whole’. They are two girls with just one good head on their shoulder. For today. Tomorrow could be a whole other day.)
Beisan A. Alshafei
February 17th, 2020
Beisan's Burble 