Surgery, celibacy, and the infinitely personal nature of experience
Metaphor Of The day, or Picture this:
secondary school, break time, the girls’ toilet is a hive of chatting adolescents applying lipstick. Marie-Laure is examining her complexion in the mirror – huge, white head spot alert! She starts squeezing mindlessly – SPLATTER! Conversations come to an immediate halt. Hey, isn’t that what cubicles are (also) for? Hasty wiping of the mirror, exit in shame.

This is a bit like squeezing a bit fat purulent spot. First it hurts much worse than it looks, for such a middle-of-the-range-looking spot. You just can’t leave it alone, and then you squeeze, and pus keeps coming out, a little blood too perhaps. And you keep going back for one little more squeeze, because it just has to come out, even if the mirror gets splattered in the process.
Then, maybe, when the crap’s out, then you heal.

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I bought a bumper pack of AA batteries yesterday. I’m all set for a long spell of celibacy.
cel·i·ba·cy ( P ) Pronunciation Key (sl-b-s)
n.
1.Abstinence from sexual intercourse, especially by reason of religious vows.
2.The condition of being unmarried. [syn: chastity, sexual abstention]Wait, isn’t celibacy self-imposed? Or perhaps it’s a nice word to use when deep down I’m bitter that I’m not getting any?

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I watched an Alexandr Rogozhkin film last night called The cuckoo. Wartime Lapland, three characters with no common language are thrown together by circumstances.

- [in Finnish] What’s your name, Russian; Ivan? All Russians are called Ivan.
- [ in Russian] Get lost, fascist!
- [in Finnish] Pleased to meet you, Gerlost, I’m Vekio. I’m not a fascist, I’m a Finn. I’m just wearing this uniform, I’m not fighing, the war is over for me.
- [in Lap language] Vekio, Gerlost, I’m Anny. I haven’t seen a man in four years, and now two come at once! so don’t get too close to me, or I get wet and I want to scream.

It’s a tale of prejudice and loneliness and longing and the failure to communicate, exacerbated by the language gap. At the end, all parties walk away with an altogether different version of what happened – as if they didn’t live the same events at all.
When a relationship falls through, how can both parties to walk away with the same version of events? Different memories, different emphasis. Better not compare them too much.