Boy Racers Foreshadowed
These
people who drive around in black
Not
quite sports cars — Pontiacs
That
get shitty mileage and handle like tanks —
I
know because I drove one for a couple of weeks once —
And
they have the Rock station’s decal
In
the middle of their rear window —
What
about them, anyway? How do you explain that?
Is
it God’s will?
Or
just assholes without any idea of what’s going on,
Like
me?
Fashion and Style
Fashion is fleeting;
style lasts.
Fashion is dictated by others;
style comes from within.
Fashion is a group thing;
style is an individual thing.
Fashion is superficial;
style is integral.
Fashion comes from the mass media;
style is personal.
Fashion is a commercial phenomenon –
it costs money;
style can’t be bought – it’s free.
People pick fashions from the
available options;
Style is a matter of unlimited
choice.
Fashion is a part of our culture;
style is a part of our souls.
Legs
& Tits
The
women of Yap in Micronesia
go
about their days bare breasted
because
it’s hot and babies need feeding.
They
do, however, always wear
foot-length
lava-lavas,
because
women’s legs are scandalously
provocative
sexually.
The
Chamoru women of Guam ,
another
Micronesian island,
being
overwhelmingly Catholic
of
an Inquisition-era Spanish variety,
wouldn’t
dream of going out in public
with
their breasts uncovered.
Mother-of-God!
But,
since it’s hot, they almost all wear shorts.
Yapese
tend to think that Chamoru women
are
a bunch of sluts for showing their legs.
Chamorus
overwhelmingly consider Yapese women
to
be a bunch of sluts for showing their tits.
Testosterone & Culture
It
would be interesting to read a study
of
the various ways that adult men
in
various cultures and subcultures
express
the reality
of
the testosterone in their bloodstreams.
In
which cultures do they express it primarily with violence?
In
which with sexual promiscuity?
In
which with displays of physical strength?
In
which with posturing?
In
which with piety?
In
which with insensitivity to others?
In
which with the ability to endure pain?
In
which with emotionlessness?
In
which with vigorous defending of family honour?
In
which with attention-demanding public behaviour?
In
which with acquisitiveness?
In
which with the ability to dominate others?
In
which with conspicuous consumption and waste?
In
which, if any, other than rural New
Zealand
is
going about outdoors
in
near-freezing weather
wearing
only shorts, a singlet, gumboots,
and
maybe a floppy cricket cap
the
mark of being a Real Man?
An
Obvious Observation
I was
watching the opening ceremonies
and
highlights of the first few events
of the
2011 Pacifica Games in New Caledonia
via
digital delay on Maori TV.
To
provide the all-important
atmosphere
and ambience,
the
producers showed heaps of long shots
of Noumea
It
struck me as a pleasant place in which to live or winter
for
those who have plenty of money –
but
then, any place would be.
Cultural-Stereotype Similarities
When I was a freelance writer in the
early 1980s
I did a story about Southeast Asian
refugees in San Antonio
One educated Vietnamese man whom I
interviewed
made the wry observation
that the city’s two main Southeast
Asian refugee groups
resembled the two main groups
that flooded into New York
during the mass migrations
of the last two decades of the
nineteenth century.
The Vietnamese, he told me, were like
the Eastern European Jews –
ambitious, shrewd, ready to delay gratification, and
keen on education.
The Laotians, he went on, were like the people from
southern Italy
easily satisfied with just about any job
and keen on food and drinking
and generally enjoying life with their extended families
and friends.
Remembering this and curious, I asked my mate
Michael,
who’s lived in Southeast Asia
and whose thesis on Cambodian politics I edited,
who the Khmers’ stereotype would resemble
and he told me the Irish –
they have close-knit families, are wary of
strangers, distrust authority, bear a grudge toward the Vietnamese as the Irish
do the English,
and tend to behave jovially up to a point,
but can suddenly turn violent when drinking or
provoked.
I wonder to what extent
these cultural stereotypes
are accurate.
More than a bit, I imagine,
but definitely far from entirely.
A
Status Hierarchy
Out
behind the school
the
extensive onion and carrot fields
stretched
expansively
in every
direction.
The
migrant workers’ kids
showed
up for school
during
the picking seasons.
They had
their own
special
classroom
in a
one-room relocatable building
right
next to the one
in which
I supervised In-School Suspension,
the
school jail.
The
other kids
(such as
most of those
the
school administration sent to me),
who were
permanent residents
of the
painfully downmarket barrio
spreading
out from the school
in the
three other directions
and as
poor as piss,
looked
down on the migrant pickers’ children
as
inferior.
That’s
how humans are.
Population Density
The bus
rolled slowly
past a
line of mansions.
Inside,
the gaggle of slum kids
on their
way
to their
first volleyball game
at the
posh school’s gym
gaped at
the three-storey residences,
as wide
as they were high,
beneath
enormous old shade trees.
One girl
asked me
how many
families lived in them.
When I
answered, “One each,”
they
didn’t know whether to believe me.
What
Explorers Say
They came from their cultures,
Armstrong and Hillary,
which is probably the source
of the difference between
“That’s one small step for man,
one giant leap for mankind” and
“We knocked the bastard off.”
I know which of these cultures,
although flawed as all are,
sits better with me.
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