Sunday, everywhere.

Sunday. As always, wanting it to be a little bit more. Unusually, it is. I am listening to jazz, looking at pictures of Paris, of all the philosophers and musicians who tried, in the midst of post-disaster, to push out the boundaries, to make more of what was there. Self-questioning and improvement can mean so much more than just another run, or another healthy meal. I read an article the other day about women and the new obsession with not revealing your age through your hands. I guess we could say, on one level, that this is the epitome of happiness. Our richest and best have nothing more to worry about than whether their hands reveal their age and near-skeletal frame. The ugliness of the world is rarely more revealed than when someone is trying to profit from fear and pride. And the plastic surgeons are sailing in the salty breeze, their thin-thighed partners smiling dazzling smiles at them.

Looking at the pictures of Sartre and de Beauvoir, thinking of the ultimate failure of their experiment, makes me consider how their desire to transcend social norms eventually disintegrated, bringing them both down to symbolise their age and gender. The woman facing pain, aging and reality, as de Beauvoir did in her book on her mother’s death. The man escaping into abstractions and younger women, as Sartre did in his later works and adopted ‘daughter’. Does it matter? None of the bright young things pouring on to the Heath, with their picnics and some wine, the women tottering along in high heels over the grass, the menfolk strutting alongside in shorts that reveal dangerously skinny knees and the fact that they don’t shave their legs, although it might look better if they did, seem to be worried about gender divisions and pushing any boundaries.

I wonder why I still think about it sometimes. The media has made it so clear that these concerns are outdated and passé. Therefore, why should I still reflect on inequalities and difference? The beauty of art, of thinking, is that it erases these questions, or it should. Or should it explode them, expand the weird thinking of male/female opposites in some social supernova? I’m all for it, until I see a picture of someone I went to school with, happy at a barbeque, surrounded by artists and fat lesbians, and hairy, asexual men.

She’s happy, right? They are all happy with the way it is. I had a friend who used to reproach me, every time I questioned the way the world worked out. His question was that if they were happy, what did I care? This was also the same man who claimed I wasn’t a real woman if I couldn’t have vaginal orgasms. The sad part? For a long while, I believed he was right.

Walk away, walk away.