'I do suck lips 'til hips jerk in double time'
Above is a lyric to the song Fresh and Clean by duo Outkast. Who, as my brother says, aren’t as misogynist as other hip-hop artists in the 80s.
Above is a lyric to the song Fresh and Clean by duo Outkast. Who, as my brother says, aren’t as misogynist as other hip-hop artists in the 80s. We both laugh - they have a song called Rosa Parks and by god it’s a great song; it gives all the right ‘young civil rights activism that could get you killed, or worse, incarcarated’ vibes. More jokes follow and I say (incredulously): ”They can’t be that misogynistic - I mean they have a song about Rosa Parks. It’s not like they were like ‚’hell yeah to Martin Luther but nahhh women should to go to hell.” My brother tells me a joke.
Speaking of which, as part of the IB Diploma, you have to take what’s known as ‚Theory of Knowledge’ (TOK). For the first year I went to class, my brain called it ‚the making things up.’ It called a lot of things that - English literature, foreign languages, classics, sociology - my brain did. Yes, I used to believe that the art of being alive is making things up. It felt a bit too easy for me. If I say something and people believe it, is it real? I’m not over it yet. What is TOK really though, you ask?
As my teacher put it ‚the amateur’s study of truth’. I used to remember longer words for that, not anymore. We wondered about the dimensions of knowledge - its quality, size, whether any of it mattered, or existed for that matter. I wrote about ‚To what extent does the breadth of language reduce the quality of knowledge?’ Others wrote about models and the real world. Little did I know, questions like these would be a daily feature of scientific practice. Back then, I just thought TOK was the perfect subject for me - I liked thinking, and making things up.
It did also help that the teacher was what one could call ‚an eccentric’. A type where you never knew whether their words were entirely sincere or fabricated. They walked the plank between real and surreal. I enjoyed that, the breezy nature of it. I felt very comfortable. It fit, very much, with what TOK is. Each lesson, he’d affirm that he identified as an old black woman who skinned and ate live babies on Sundays. Sometimes he’d say that, yet other times simply used it as an ‚if... then’ example for a topic. The whole class was shocked, barr me. Every time he mentioned it, there’d be nervous giggling, wide-eyed stares, and. I. felt. very. neutral. I imagined it sometimes— On the last day in that school, I asked him about my future; I can still see him in his matted woolen grey suite, flat cap, long beard and the gaze of someone whose eyes never rest on anything in particular. One word: providence.
‘…in need of vit D’
is an earlier lyric of the song Fresh and Clean, by Outkast. My brother and I were singing kareoke by now. At the point, we sang it and I looked at him, said: „huh yeah me too”. Stopped. „goddamit, I just realised what they meant.” My brother laughed: „Sara that took you too long.”
A man I know made the same joke to me a couple of weeks back. We were trying to organise a walk.
He said: „Do you need some vitamin D?” I replied: „I have a lot in the cupboard.” I knew what he meant but he, of course, thought I was too innocent, didn’t ‚get’ his joke. He said: „I meant...” Me: „Jars with dead penises in them.”
January time is blues?
No plans for New Years. By the time mid-January rolls in, I will have still not coped with processing what a ‚new year’ is. Come my birthday, I won’t want to celebrate nothing. I’ll discover 2023 in April.
Though, what I do find as someone with a stable full-time job as opposed to my previous far more hectic work life, is that this Christmas-New Years time brings about a nice lull in activity; time to think and reflect. 2017 was the last time I felt this around this time of year and I welcome it.
This year, I tracked most of my working hours in a timesheet - my time towards all of my projects, networking, writing, research, paid work. I haven’t processed the data yet but I plan to.
Whilst I can’t be too sure about the advantages of doing that, I do know that it made one thing clear: it emphasised what I would like to do preferrably to filling out a timesheet. Each time I wrote out the time, I thought about what I’d rather be doing than the act I was summarising in the table.
Another thing is made quite plain is that I do an unnecessary amount of work for other people. By week two of last year, I had to make that into a separate category. I’m not sure I’ll grow out of it.
Happy new year, humanoids!
What more can I say except thank you, you’re welcome and please. You are all very much still my humans, and still cordially invited into the future as adopted Polish citizens.
I hope you keep reading my sporadic gifts to you.
with love.