Skip to main content

Further Sunday Mulling

Another step (however small) was made last night towards following Socrates' ambitious exhortation: Γνώθι Σεαυτόν; for me, an enduring struggle which has been ongoing for almost two decades now and will probably keep me busy for a while, still. Slightly had alluded at a possible meeting between the two of us but what he calls his parental obligations, which sound oddly like cruising to me, made him forget about it. So, after an unexpectedly busy and rather enjoyable week-end made up of rehearsals, baroque music concerts and meetings with new friends (not to forget the Weekly Cultural Outing to Tesco), yet again I found myself in a sauna, which prompted further Sunday mullings on the reasons for my persistent attendance to these places.

There are of course superficial reasons. The facilities first; depending on which venue I go there is a pool to enjoy. All saunas, by definition, offer steam rooms and saunas. I also generally like people watching and these are of course great places for this. Finally there is the sense of the chase, like playing hide and seek in a way, which keeps me intellectually alert somehow and assures that, despite the amount of time I spend there, I am entertained enough not to get too bored (most of the time anyway). I certainly don't go for the sex. As I said before, most of the time nothing happens these days (last night was no exception although, probably due to it being the end of the month, the place was heaving when I got there).

But the real reason why I keep going back is, I think, desperation. I go to saunas because they are the only places where I (sometimes) get a positive response from people I am interested in. In "real life" nothing whatsoever happens. On the net, I do get some interest but not from whom I would like to get it.

That leaves me with saunas. Because, despite my reasoned decision not to care about these things, not to expect anything from life, I am still the product (however flawed) of the society I live in and I have "expecting" ingrained in me. We are taught to expect something from life, that we deserve what is due to us (whatever we might decide it to be). This is obviously wrong but a capitalist society would probably not work so well without that sort of psychological make up in its members. A further cliché about western societies (and this is becoming true of some eastern societies too), is that appearance is all-important. What do you do when you have issues with your appearance? You seek reassurance before perhaps, in some cases, going for more drastic solutions. I don't like the way I look and the opinion is apparently shared by most people.

In the darkest recesses of my tortured psyche, I must have decided unbeknownst to myself, that I deserved to be loved and to be admired. Looking at it in the cold light of day, this is obviously not going to happen, so I will probably have to keep hiding in dark rooms for a while.



Tags: , , , , , , , .

Comments

  1. I'll ignore the crusing remark.

    I think you need to realise people do love you and do respect you, you just fail to see/except it. I know not in the same way, but it is a start.

    I'll tell you off when I am free of 'parental duties'.

    Slightly xxx

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Please leave your comment here. Note that comments are moderated and only those in French or in English will be published. Thank you for taking the time to read this blog and to leave a thought.

Popular posts from this blog

A Short History of the Elephant and Castle and Its Name

Last night I attended a lecture by local historian Stephen Humphrey who discussed the general history of the Elephant & Castle, focussing more particularly on what he called its heyday (between 1850 and 1940). This is part of a week-long art project ( The Elephant Project ) hosted in an empty unit on the first floor of the infamous shopping centre, aiming to chart some of the changes currently happening to the area. When an historian starts talking about the Elephant and Castle, there is one subject he can not possibly avoid, even if he wanted to. Indeed my unsuspecting announcement on Facebook that I was attending such talk prompted a few people to ask the dreaded question: Where does the name of the area come from, for realz? Panoramic view of the Elephant and Castle around 1960/61. Those of us less badly informed than the rest have long discarded the theory that the name comes from the linguistic deformation of "Infanta de Castille", a name which would have become at

pink sauce | life, with a pink seasoning

As of tonight, my blog Aimless Ramblings of Zefrog , that "place where I can vent my frustration, express ideas and generally open my big gob without bothering too many people" which will be 6 in a couple of months, becomes Pink Sauce . While the URLs zefrog.blogspot.com and www.zefrog.eu are still valid to access this page, the main URL now becomes www.pinksauce.co.uk. There is a vague plan to create a proper website for www.zefrog.eu to which the blog would be linked. Why Pink Sauce , you may ask. It is both simple and complicated. For several years, I have grown out of love for the name of the blog. It felt a bit cumbersome and clumsy. That said, I never really looked into changing it, seriously. Tonight, for dinner, I had pasta with a special pink sauce of my concoction ; single cream and ketchup. I know most people while feel nauseous at the very though of the mixture but trust me, it's gorgeous. Don't knock it till you've tried it. After having had my platte

Review: Park Avenue Cat @ Arts Theatre

As we are steadily reminded throughout the hour and half hour of Park Avenue Cat , the new play by Frank Strausser, which had its "world premiere" this week-end at the Arts Theatre, time is money. Most of the play takes place in the office of a posh LA therapist who charges $200 per hour. So, having sat through the play, I am wondering why the author spent time writing it, why a production team spent time putting it up and why I and any audience member are asked to spent time (and money) watching it. The play, said to be "a triangle with four corners" (!), brings together a therapist (Tessa Peake-Jones), who is probably not enjoying her job all that much), Lily (Josefina Gabrielle - the eponymous Parc Avenue cat) as well as Philip (Gray O'Brien - aka Tony Gordon in Coronation Street) and Dorian (Daniel Weyman), Lily's lovers. In an interview on the play's dedicated website, Strausser (who was in the audience) explains that he thinks comedy comes out of a