03.04.2024
I got a deep paper cut on the index finger of my left hand yesterday. It has been stinging the whole time. The paper – quite thick – sliced so much into me. The pain was terrible. But the thing about pain is that it makes you feel alive. So I have kept the cut open to the elements without a plaster. It looks like a surgical cut, so clean and crisp. For such a small injury, it occupies a big place in the mind and the senses. That’s why Indian people call love a wound. Because it hurts all over with the exquisite pain of life.
This is the second incident of pain this week. I was standing around and suddenly something collapsed in my back. It lasted two days, two days of pain. So it is the season of pain. Meaningless pain and meaningless suffering.
But the back has healed now. The body will just recover from anything that you throw at it – almost anything.
I was giving out the tours which I wrote today. One woman told me that it is the first feminist art tour that she had ever been on in her life. Why have I written this tour? Where I write about feminism sometimes, I criticise what it says. Because I honestly don’t agree with the perspectives taken. But I am not a woman. Of course, I would see things differently. We have been raised to worship the mother goddess, amongst my other religions. We see the mother as the source of power and life, the source of legitimacy and justice. That is our ‘feminism’, to use the Western word. However, in this Western feminism, the idea that women are ideally mothers is wrong. In Western feminism, what ‘choice’ means is that you should work as a wage slave. It is a capitalistic feminism, not like ours which is for the poor. Where the most important thing is not work, but family. But this is what feminism is: it is about real choice. So you have to be able to give women choice and you have to respect those choices and support those choices. And not judge someone as inferior because they are women and not men. So that is how I am a feminist: because I support choice, even when I don’t agree with those choices. Because our people have been judged as inferior. We are the same as the women have historically been. We are women. But where is our choice and the respect for it?
Another friend is leaving from my life. She understood me because although she is from a different generation, she is still Indian.
I met up with my friend after work. He is off on holiday for a bit. We went down to the pub first and then we went down to the chocolatier’s. I don’t write what we talk about here. Because those conversations are honest – too honest for the people that might be reading here. Men’s conversations. I had a chocolate orgy over there – brownies with vanilla ice cream. There was a massive portion.
People think that if you go after a woman that is younger than you, that you are using your experience to an unjust advantage. In fact, these women have more experience than me and have had more relationships than I have had. It’s just a fact. So anyone that thinks that I am putting anything over any of these younger women is wrong. They are putting something over me with the way that they are treating me. Because the innocent one is me. I have been with a few, just a few. From the times before this new generation of people that are the only people that I know now. So anyone that is judging me is wrong about it. So Helen, Girl 3 and Potential Girl are the ones that are using their experience on me. Not the other way around. It is not the case that they are younger and therefore more inexperienced.
Today’s questions – with no definite answers:
Why are some people introverts and some people are extroverts? Nobody knows. I said that it is the context that determines how you act, not some kind of innate personality trait.
Why do so many women say they are introverts (they all talk to you when I start talking to them, so I don’t think that is correct)? If they are introverts, is this socialisation and gendering? Or nature?
Why are so many obsessed with cleanliness? Is this socialisation? Or nature?
I managed to get up early in the morning today. And I managed to do some extra work in the morning. So, I am back on track. I just have to keep it up. Everything in life is just habit. When I wasn’t feeling well, I woke up late, as late as I could. I developed an unhealthy habit. Now, I just have to develop a healthy habit.
diary of a lone man 