Everyday Details: Greenery, Books and Stollen

I woke up earlier today, after six or so hours of sleep, and the sky was the fuzzy, lightless grey that seems designed to nudge us back into bed, in theory. But I stayed awake and slowly got around to brushing my teeth, etc., and arrived reasonably early at the office in Kreuzberg. In the U-Bahn station near home I bought two 'peace lily' plants to brighten up the new room that I am working in; they remind me of anthuriums, sadly, but they lend grace and a much-needed, dark green to my desk.

I had another mini-breakfast at work; today it was biscuits and water and the peppermint/eucalyptus candies that I eat throughout the day. It wasn't filling and I was hungry when lunch came around: chicken, sautéed vegetables like broccoli and pumpkin and eggplant and red bell pepper, and brown-black falafel that were round and tinier than walnuts. This time I ate at the lunch table, which was enjoyable. The more new colleagues there are, the less it feels as if we were breaking off into a narrower clan for no reason, by preferring one lunch room (with one set of colleagues) over another — which has worried me in the past. Now it's more an arrangement of convenience.

Work was a tiny bit exhausting insofar as requests outside of my customary work schedule have come in, which tend to require mental readjusting; working without having any idea of how long the task is likely to take or what new events will interrupt it; and navigating daily work, special requests that are urgent, special requests that are not urgent, etc. It jars on my instincts of caution, but it is usually nicer to feel overtasked than useless. I also gave a small tutorial to a colleague and felt as if it were the most boring thing I have ever inflicted on anyone.

Afterward I peeped into a famous bookstore, on the way home. The shop itself was closed, but the windows were clear of any blinds. After looking at the Moomintroll book in one children's window and glancing at the new adult books in the adult window — Salman Rushdie, and in the past there's been Ta-Nehisi Coates in translation, etc., I went to the U-Bahn station feeling considerably happier.

There I bought pine boughs for my room, and another plant for the workplace; and along the way I had gone into an Edeka and bought After Eights (because I have a weakness for them) as well as Stollen and a few Christmas supplies.

During the lunch hour at work — inspired by a colleague who was reading Samuel Richardson's Pamela, which made me think 'better him than me' — I went to the French National Library's website and reread and re-took-notes-about three pages of a historical source. In general I believe I should begin devoting some 15 minutes of my lunch break to this task, because I might be more in the flow of working and less likely to be distracted in that interval. We'll see!

(And in the morning transit I had read more Candide.)

The Mighty Hammer of Thor

I like to hold my finger on the pulse of modern film by reading reviews on the internet: in newspapers like The Guardian, blogs, or magazines like the New Yorker. Thor: Ragnarok was unfamiliar to me perhaps because, as a second sequel, it was less of a novelty.

Perhaps because of this critic's-eye view, I tend to think of superhero movies as a self-referential, uniform genre, with a few noble examples like the Superman films and also films-as-pop-art like Tim Burton's Batman films. Wonder Woman tried to be different. While I watched it, it felt profound, afterward I didn't feel as if any great lesson had emerged from it after all. I guess it's best to watch it again to tell which impression is truer.

Wonder Woman was putatively the work of an outsider, a woman director. But Thor: Ragnarok was in fact more of an outsider's perspective, I thought. Later I realized why, perhaps; it's because the director is a New Zealander and also felt less bound or pressurized to match or criticize other American output. There was a chummy feeling to the interactions between some of the actors, probably because they had worked on the other films in the series together, which wasn't displeasing. The Australians Chris Hemsworth as Thor and Cate Blanchett as Hela, Hemsworth's brother in a brief scene, the director himself disguised as a computer-generated rock monster, were a relaxed Antipodean grouping. But Thor and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) seemed to have an unforced camaraderie that also lent appeal to the world in the film, and Mark Ruffalo was also touchingly genuine in his dishevelled, self-deprecating way.

While Hemsworth and Hiddleston played their roles with enthusiasm, as did Tessa Thompson as a Valkyrie who had turned into a spaceship's captain far away from her native Asgard, I felt (as others have said) that Cate Blanchett's role was one-dimensional, and so was Idris Elba's. His contribution was to look sapient and lead around the hapless folk of Asgard in a cloak, with walking stick in hand.

I found 'problematic' aspects, too. In Thor's world, electrocution was a comedic element in spite of its detrimental physical effects in real life. The Valkyrie's alcoholism was a harmless voluntary quirk that, while it anesthetized her feelings and banked her ambition, did no harm to her fitness, her mental health or her social interactions. The demands of superhero films on the actors were also worrying me yet again; in Wonder Woman, too, the filmmakers had eradicated any kind of physical imperfection, and I don't think it's healthy.

Amongst other aspects, I'd freely endure films in a blurrier screen resolution if it means that Hollywood can indulge its collective wrinkles. I also see no need to build masses of muscle fibre or exercise and diet off one's lipid elements before an actor or actress is allowed to appear in the public eye.

Cate Blanchett appeared to think of her role as a pastiche of fashion models, glamour models, etc., in the way that she moved and walked, although perhaps that was also edited in after her own acting. I felt that it ended up being mocking and demeaning; and that it plays into the belief that women who are sexualized in their careers freely manipulate men; but I am perhaps imagining it. (It also worried me because I think that a few established Hollywood actresses are reacting to the sexual harassment reports lately in a very uncongenial way, either because they believe that everyone must suffer as they did earlier in their careers, or because they don't want to acknowledge that even people who haven't necessarily harmed them personally shouldn't be given the power that they presently wield.) Much as I admire her as an actress, I don't know if I approve of everything.

Also (on a different topic) I did find the seamless, deindividualized computer-generated world uncanny. Aside from a few strikingly realistic ideas, like the early scene that takes into account the awkward physics of suspended objects on a chain, there was not much practical and real.

Yet I left the theatre with the happy impression that this was a thought-free film, edited with an efficiency that made a Gesamtkunstwerk, and that it was partly fun to film. The computer or set designers planned out the worlds in the film with real love (as well as, in Asgard, hints of Lord of the Rings) and I liked the dystopia, a kind of 1980s-90s wonderland that was not pretty but was at least evocative.

Curling Up At Home

Winter is breaking in like the first waves of a tempest over a berm, and it is cold enough in the mornings for frost to form. The trees have lost most of their leaves, but because of the rainy and temperate autumn there are a few happy exceptions amongst the oaks and the linden trees. A day or two ago there was a deep fog in the street, which was picturesque in its turn-of-the-century London Thames-side way, but also seemed to help the icy air to permeate into the apartment. We're firing the coal stoves at the two poles of our apartment again — although my room feels like a third, North pole because I refuse to heat it...

The workload has been pretty light the past two days, and it feels as if we had prepared well for Black Friday after all. This afternoon I left early because I felt sickly. But although I still have a bit of a headache and other unalarming symptoms, imbibing 40-proof liqueur, sleeping for two hours, and then knitting a wool scarf in the corner room while watching the city and national evening news with Mama was enough to feel better. So they were as piffling as I expected. I only regret having missed the birthday celebrations of a colleague, which took place after work.

Lunch was a yellowy-orange-coloured curry — bell peppers, orange pumpkin, what tasted like buckets of coconut milk, and tender chicken pieces in the meat-eater's serving — and, interestingly in accompaniment, gnocchi. As my uncle studied Italian, he informed us how to say the latter — there was apparently a debate about it at the lunch table in the largest room. 'Apparently,' because I wasn't present at this debate, having retired to eat lunch in the room where I work, because I don't want to 'hog' room at the communal tables. Afterward I ate a tootsie pop, which a colleague brought over from the States as a remnant of a Halloween candy trove, for dessert. This profusion of detail is not wildly interesting, probably; but if Pepys could describe his dinners, so can I.

At home I made porridge for dinner: oats, chia seeds, a red winter apple, milk, powdered sugar, cinnamon sugar, and caramelized crunchy granola. It was tasty and the acme of comfort food, if not terribly virtuous.

Anyway, I hope tomorrow I can return to the fray, symptom-free. By the way, I am still reading the physics book about stars, and the book about Middle Eastern governments in Turkey, Iran and Egypt in the 'modern era,' and am rereading Candide. It's not a terribly escapist book, because you can read versions of its sensational scenes in the newspapers almost every day, and sadly they're not imaginary and disquietingly they're not taking place almost 300 years ago. At least the annotations are nice to read and don't heap up new tales of horror...

An Essay on Relationships, or Vexatious Rambling

I've been brooding a great deal about love and relationships, and as is usually the case this takes a very moralistic aspect.

One of the great surprises to me when I was no longer a teenager is that admiration, flirting or in my opinion many relationships are not so much a free gift to the other person, as something that one desires for one's self in a particular setting.

Even younger, I already felt that I didn't approve of opportunistic friendship. In other words, a friendship that is not based on real kinship of interests or opinion or character, but rather is built on a an ad hoc frame where one ignores one's external conflicts or internal criticisms as much as one can. The compensation for this pretense being that one can have companionship whenever one wants it, and also prove one's social merit.

But I failed to realize for a while that romantic relationships can also be a great deal like that. (Or all relationships.)

As a teenager I tried to analyze and steer clear of the problems that I saw with adult relationships. I became afraid of entering a relationship where one partner moulds the other partner to fit their conception and warps their character until it becomes unrecognizable. I don't want to make people amoral and greedy through knowing me; and I don't want to lose sight of the best features of my personality either, like a John Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility. Another fear was that of making life miserable for someone by bickering with them 24/7.

Nor do I want to 'use' people as personal props or therapy. If I feel lonely or insecure, these are things I must resolve for myself. While I can imagine nothing nicer than having people around me whom I can care for, and to feel that I improve their existence, I don't want to be exploited, either.

Besides, I think that trust and loyalty are admirable things, most of all if the person who inspires them has earned them. I can't imagine why you would want to be close with someone whom, a few years later, you might despise or hate, or don't really give a darn about.

The Tale of the Mysterious Parcel

I was sitting at my desk at work when yet another of a procession of delivery men filed into our office with a cardboard parcel. The human resources colleague accepted it and dropped off the parcel into the largest room in our office, then wrote a note to all of us informing us that there was no name on the parcel.

Having read newspapers and short stories of a criminal bent in the course of my lifetime, and having watched a considerable quantity of hours of television, this inflamed my imagination.

In short order I observed that my colleagues were as fascinated.

We have a principal rival within the electronic commerce field, and a coworker theorized that the parcel was a Trojan horse for corporate espionage. Many of us wondered non-seriously whether it was what was once called an 'infernal machine,' and a colleague from the Middle East noted rather drily that in his native country one would have sent someone in to defuse the package by this time.  But one of the colleagues opened the package (I sort of wished he wouldn't, in case it was actually dangerous).

This opening took place in a different room. Our prying eyes could be of no use to us. The curiosity did not die down.

Our Australian colleague (who seemed to be, as they say, 'seized of the matter') laconically noted that none of us had exploded, so we should be pleased with the outcome.

Then a colleague who is working in an annex two floors up in our building, hopped into the conversation. She hurriedly wrote that if it was incense, it was for her. Hilarity ensued and I wasn't certain if she meant it as a statement of fact, or as a comedic anticlimax.

There was little or no discussion of the subject during lunch (as far as I could tell), although our long and satisfyingly thorough discussions mostly take place then. I presumed all questions from relevant parties — instead of insatiable snoops like me — had been answered.

Apparently not. After lunch the colleague of the incense asked what the package had been. The colleague who opened it answered, 'It should probably remain a secret package.'

Of course I believe as a morally upright individual that the post should remain secret except as the rightful recipient wishes it to be revealed. But I admit that I am still all agog to hear about what was within the secret package.

(And I contributed to the conversation by mentioning the lurid Sherlock Holmes "Adventure of the Cardboard Box.")

My Two New Boots

In the past week I've felt disgruntled as work has piled up and up, and special and important requests have flocked in from colleagues at an unprecedented rate. Because of our clients in the USA and because of the internationalization of Cyber Monday, we are beginning to feel the first simmering bubbles in the pressure cooker of Black Friday. (If this is an unknown 'holiday,' I'll explain that the Friday before Thanksgiving in the United States is popular as a day on which to buy things cheaply in seasonal sales, which means that an enormous volume of goods is sold. It is conveniently close to Christmas, so I gather that people will also buy their Christmas presents then. I have no idea why it is called Black Friday. Lately a 'Cyber Monday' has been added onto this weekend of unbridled consumption, for consumers who prefer to buy online instead of taking the trouble to travel to a brick-and-mortar store. A 'Giving Tuesday,' less relevant to my company, has entered the queue of shopping days too; consumers are encouraged to donate to charity.)

***
Today I waited for and bolted down lunch within 6 minutes: a lightning-quick time in my personal opinion. Then I excused myself for the sake of a shopping trip. I managed within 30 minutes to go to the bank, travel three blocks to Karstadt, locate the correct floor for shoes, find a pair of ankle boots in what should be the right size, pay for these boots, and travel back to work again. It was needlessly suspenseful because I hadn't tried on the shoes. In the evening I did, and they fit.

My previous shoes are black leather flat shoes that Mama bought for me in Europe in 2003. My old shoes at that time were broken and it was painful to walk in them. I did so for eight excruciating hours in the city we were travelling in. (It was Florence, which is almost apt, although I'm not silly enough to think that I really emulated Savonarola's torments when he was burned at the stake.) The next day Mama took me into a shoemaker's shop and bought these shoes. It's too much information, but we were very short on money, so it's generous that she did.

A relative told me at least three years ago that I shouldn't wear them any more; the tongue was admittedly ripping away from the rest of the shoe leather. Bah, humbug, I replied internally, still feeling deeply indebted to the footwear that had saved my sanity a decade earlier.

At work I have noticed that the shoes are squeaky. They practically echo whenever I walk in them.

And recently I felt that my feet were becoming wet when I walked to work. My feet became grubby. I was sitting at my desk at work today and noticed that my feet were still whiffy, and still wet and chilled, even though the streets had dried. Furthermore, I could feel a wintry draft seeping through the (s/h)oles. I sprayed lavender air freshener into one shoe, but I prefer to honestly neutralize the source of odours.

So I outlined the 'dangerously Victorian state of affairs' to the coworkers who would notice my absence, and went shopping as mentioned above. Tactfully, during my explanation I left out the rich detail about stink that I have described here.

***
A moral: It is obvious yet again that I will let some things escalate to a ludicrous extent before taking the trouble to do something about them. But I am proud that the events of this tale fell short of pneumonia.