Labiaplasties

I was visiting the pretty opticians for about 2 months while trying to overcome the restless repulsion of a contact lens approaching my eye on top of the tip of my pointing-finger. It took me 2 months to get them in. That day and the next couple, of course, the pretty optician available had to assist me to take it out when the metallic shutters of the door were already half-way down. Months later, I could not help but notice that, although getting the lenses in was becoming easier, the process of taking them out was doubtless harder and got me strangely anxious. I started to hate the routine of spending 5 minutes to take the lenses out late at night before going to bed and, mostly, the weird palpitations I used to get. I have never been able to see properly with contacts anyhow and my eyes were often irritated. So, now, if the glasses bother me somehow, I just take them off and hang them on the top of the head or whatever, and prefer not to see neatly.

The only male optician in the store convinced me of the wrong principle of surgery to correct the prescription. I mean: if you don't really need it. His point was clear: via surgery, you burn something in the eye (so delicate!), an organ which is just a little flawed, but otherwise perfectly healthy. Do you want to burn something that is right? I say no.

Obviously, other people would say "why not". This morning in the tube I read the following: "Girls as young as nine are asking for vaginal cosmetic surgery on the NHS (...). Some 343 labiaplasties were performed on girls aged 14 or younger over the last 6 years". That accounts for an average close to 60 a year. The lead-in title of the information stressed the blame on "the porn-star chic" that Tory MP Claire Perry claims, and the Shadow Public Health Minister, Diane Abbott, "called for better regulation of the cosmetic surgery industry". (Both declarations came from women, noticeably).

However, surprisingly, what about the parents? The responsibility of parenthood is totally skipped, overseen by the pundits of the Governmental regime. Who else is to blame, if not the parents? I can guess that the 343 labiaplasties-achievers walked in the corridor of the operating room along their mothers or fathers or both... So?

It was a time when the role of the parents was to say "no" to their children, with or without reason, wasn't it?

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Cosa fece

More than twenty years ago, Don F. told a group of boys the story of Michelangelo engraving his name in the ribbon band that his Pieta was wearing. He wrote: "Michael Angelus Bonarotus Florentinus Facievat". Cosa fece. The young Michelangelo was burning in a flame of rage. Blind, gay, work-alcoholic, crazy or not, one can empathize with his feelings of being wrong. Nothing is worst than being doubted or disposed of the inner intimacy: one's own creature.

Those boys of the group could not understand for sure the subtleties of our deranged man's world. I could not, but I certainly can now. Taken right or wrong, the wounds of such harm are deep and endure. I can see that any project you undertake must go beyond the pure state of its art; it starts before and it goes farther the credits part. Not many people stays at the end of the movie to see the names, to listen to the music. Like an iceberg, the unknown consume themselves in the shadows of the unsung. The big fish eats the small. The spot light is powerful and jealous and allows nothing else to be seen. The company, the institution, the idea, the culture, the group, the social class, all tend to wrong the individual. The burn of wrath is so bad that, although you see it right, you can always take it wrong. Or so, someone as strange as Ayn Rand, did_ pushed it to an unacceptable consequence.

When the Jesus Christ told his disciples to act in secrecy and abnegation, He was asking too much: "That thine almes may be in secret: And thy father which seeth in secret, himselfe shall reward thee openly" (Mt 6, 4). Oh, My! Very hard for the able.

However, the anguish of claiming one's rights, of protecting one's intimacy, of being faithful to one's principles is hard and offers no more that a continuous strain. I can't stop thinking of those many peoples the Jesus spoke to, unable to do so, that probably found these words soothing and exonerating... .

My question is severe: Was that the right message for them?

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Britain, my Britain

Like the damped sounds of the rocky sea against the menacing cliffs far in the distance, I am following the echos of the so-called BBC crisis. It all started with Jimmy Savile, a man buried and honored like a king only one year ago. The man is Sir, knighted for charity services in 1990. He held a list of honorific titles, including one bestowed by the former Pope, Jean Paul II. In all the tempest, I have not heard any attempt to revoke his titles, to separate his name, at least provisionally, from the "Sir". When the sexual allegations against Michael Jackson came to light sometime in 2004, if I remember right, an American acquaintance told me: "He is a freak". Why! What does it make of Jimmy Savile? The list of adjectives in the dictionary is not enough for him.

The nastier corner of this case is that BBC knew. The sacrilege did even happen too many times in its own premises! Also the police. The question is why? Why did BBC kept silent? Why did it become an accomplice?... I guess that when the BBC and other networks kept saying in the past for decades that ETA was a separatist group (not a terrorist group), as they say now and will say in the future, some room might be allowed to distrust, dishonor and prosecute them because, in my view, political reasons or interests or shear complicity were possible or likely to lay underneath.

**

A couple of days ago, I was coming back after grocery shopping from Muswell Hill. I was in the bus, absorbed in the discussion of the BBC crisis in one radio station (through my phone) when, suddenly, the bus stopped short. The handle of the shopping trolley slipped itself free from my grip and the bag tipped and fell over the ground. A few items scattered on the floor of the bus and spred a good 6-ft distance forward. (No, goodness, no: no eggs involved). Apart from the lady next to me, who held the trolley while I was collecting the food from the floor, no one did help me. No one... Go, Britain! What a glorious spirit!

Is this all what your brave soldiers fought for? Is this what your poppies honor?

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The iron and the tweezers

In the course of a First Aid training today at the Red Cross, we were asked to draw in an A1-sheet of paper objects representing possible sources of burns. One, two, up to three people draw, as good as they could, a pair of hair-tweezers. "It is the number-one cause of burn in children", we were told. And I said to myself: "Self, times are changed: it used to be the iron".

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The sisters

The Sisters is the first story of Joyce's Dubliners. Although written sometime before 1914, the whole Universe of this story is totally familiar to me: the priest's sisters, the priest's altar-boy and the priest himself. I grew up astride the 80s and 90s, so I guess certain things have clung on uses and cultures for too long. That or that certain things have certainly changed dramatically in the last fifteen or twenty years.

The edition I am reading is annotated by Terence Brown and I can say that this man -educated at Trinity College in Dublin- had little regard for religious believes, particularly Catholicism, and any form of its rites and practices. I am just guessing from the notes he wrote on the following paragraph: "He has told me stories about the catacombs and about Napoleon Bonaparte, and he had explained to me the meaning of the different ceremonies of the Mass and of the different vestments worn by the priest". The boy is telling in first person all about the death -solitary and tormented death- of Rev. James Flynn. The underline is mine.

In his notes, after explaining that "the Mass is the supreme act of worship in the Roman Catholic Church", Brown tells that "there are many Masses associated with different times in the liturgical year and Masses for different ecclesiastical occasions", and points out as, an example, those celebrated after the wish of a person. He called them votive Masses, which is not strictly correct. Finally, he concludes: "It is probably these complex regulations that Father Flynn explains to the boy narrator".

I think, on the contrary, that the meaning of "the different ceremonies of the Mass" refers rather to the different parts of the Mass: the Liturgy of The Word, Offertory, Consecration, etc. All parts full of meaning, good purpose and rich symbolism. One can for sure confirm from time to time how superficial, gullible and prejudiced is the knowledge of scholars in matters of Religion (the Religion traditionally rooted in their own countries and culture!). In a similar way, the second note of Terence Brown on the vestments of the priest is unnecessarily recherche and misleading. Although "during the liturgical year the outer garments of the priest at Mass" are of different colors, their symbolism is not complex at all, as he states: as far as I know, green means hope, white means life and red means blood. Simpler, simply impossible. Additionally, it is only the chasuble and the stole the vestments that changes color along the year. The alb is normally always white (from alba, white, dawn) and so is the girdle.

One does not need to study to know this. It is something you learn from going to Mass... It permeates you like water down a patch of clay, until you stop going to Mass and the memory forsakes you. This is why I can guess that the number of Masses Terence Brown attended can be counted with the fingers on one hand... Two, tops.

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Remora

Few weeks ago, during the course of an early evening radio talk-show, of magazine type, three or four very interesting guys disclosed the novelty for me of a mythological fish who was used to attached itself to the hull of the boats and prevent them from sailing. Indeed, the first question that these three pundits were asking to the young announcers and presenters was this: "do you know what a remora is?

In Spanish, almost everybody knows that a remora is a "burden", quite often used as a synonym of "ballast". However, only quite a few might know that remora is the name of a fish: Echeneida or, popularly, the sucker-fish.

One, two, three, the three pundits pointed out several cases of historical documents that underline the capability of these fishes to suck themselves in the hull of a boat and make it useless for navigation. For example, it is in the chronicles of Pliny the Younger and accounted in the Treasure of the Spanish Language (1611) by Sebastian de Covarrubias.

The question is whether this is or not at all possible. The pundits could not believe it would and I guess that no sage little-learned in Hydrodynamics would. However, I am inclined to believe that these fishes, variable in size (from about 15 cm to 1 meter), with a remarkable sucker on top of their head, could somehow affect the hydrodynamic of primitive vessels and make the sailing or the steering difficult. I can imagine the rotten wooden keels of the nutshells that conformed the fleets of the Ancient Times infested of crustaceans and mollusks, all entangled in algae and, why not, remoras.  It is easy to imagine the precarious ships of the past at the mercy of the winds... And the waters.

Of course, no one knew anything about Hydrodynamics at the time... It just makes sense to me.

Remora: the sucker on its head makes it look like swimming upside down when attached to another fish.

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