Musings on Monday Mornings

As someone who chooses to live on the periphery of ‘home’ crowds—avoiding ‘women’s associations’ get togethers, the more-than-necessary dinners and most importantly the brain draining ‘ladies parties’ that are comities, one is at something of a disadvantage when it comes to ‘common knowledge’. A) It is common knowledge that EVERYONE has exhibitions. When you work the circuit, the circuit works you. You meet, rub shoulders, buy silly clothes that don’t suit you and which you’ll never wear…and voila, you are in. “Nosheen had an exhibition” “Did you buy anything?” “No…terribly expensive, but lovely things.” And thereafter follows much enthused conversation running two and fro. Meanwhile, I’m still stuck on Nosheen who? On average there are some 3 odd exhibitions every week. The Little Me still in the Convent frock vying to make friends quips: “Why didn’t anyone invite me?” B) Insider information. It turns out there is a guy who comes to your house to fix electrical appliances. One doesn’t...

I discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well-deserved reward of an ordered mind but just the opposite: a complete system of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature. I discovered that I am not disciplined out of virtue but as a reaction to my negligence, that I appear generous in order to conceal my meanness, that I pass myself off as prudent because I am evil minded, that I am conciliatory in order not to succumb to my repressed rage, that I am punctual only to hide how little I care about other people's time. I learned in short, that love is not a condition of the spirit but a sign of the zodiac.