Outside, not wanting to come in

I am outside again. And not with the shrubs, trees, or tweety things. Outside this society. Melancholic and in search of upmarket literary expression, I shall go and find Camus' L'Étranger. (Not in the original French, obviously.)

It won't make me feel any better. I will simply be made more absurd, more alienated, and even more outside, just looking for the bastard book.

This is on account of the stupid idea someone had in 1990. The stupid idea called, Let's knock out the ceiling and put bookshelves in a roof recess. Guaranteed to look amazing! It has only guaranteed that any book not looked at since 1990 has gone twelve foot up. And Camus will be there. To locate him, I need only to take a pair of military night-sight field glasses, scale a ladder, and scan the horizon as if fearful that L'Étranger will become Le Sniper.1 This would be typical. It will be the icing on my cak du jour. Old books firing bullet-words at me.

Anyway, Camus twelve foot up is not the point.

I am an outsider. Again. I do not understand this society. I feel a frustrating concoction of incoherent rage plus raging indifference. The upshot is, I am shrugging my shoulders and tutting.2

Here is the thing which starts it. It is a thing I do not understand. I am alienated from it. I click through a discussion that promises (Women and Power) and I discover this really means Should I have botox or not, especially when my husband says I shouldn't?

As the discussion gently doesn't drift from this subject but continues with enthusiastic answers around yes/no, there is a lone voice (not mine) gamely shouting No! This is a Pointless Discussion! You should not conform to socially-created images of yourself!

Everyone ignores Lone Voice Woman. She gives up, and the debate fizzles out with the consensus, It's your money and you can do what the hell you like, why not dump him? Divorce seems a bit of an over-reaction to me, but there you go, the modern woman's freedom to choose, huh?

But Lone Voice Woman is right. It is mad to botox anyone's face. Or any bit of anyone. Especially in the search of cosmetic perfection. A face is an authentic version of a person. And what is wrong with authenticity?

But I know I am out of this society.

Botox is the equivalency of some extraplanetary orbit of my world. The furthest my skin travels is with Vaseline and Coconut oil.3 Hair has gone the same way. I gave up with the bottle of brown hair fluid some years ago, and have grown fantastically grey. But I am in love with it! Why should men get words like flint, gunmetal and steel, and it's all good, like wisdom, distinguished, handsome, and all women get is old, faded glory, ashen and dull. I am become my own ambassador for wise grey.

Pft. I resolve to stay an outsider. Ambassador for the outside, or alienated from the inside. Either state will do. Don't care. Off to drink tea and eat biscuits. Wisely.


1 Watch Woman Power in action in the fantastic short film Le Sniper. 
2 I am British.
3 Not only cheap, but doesn't contain plumping or filler materials. I am creased, and I like it.