Defining Classy; a Short, Sloppy but not Wholly Inaccurate History of its Evolution

Phoenix by Jennifer Stewart

In the West, there was a time when Classy was synonymous with class distinction. It was all about lineage, sophisticated social skills, the kind of wealth that stayed in the family, and a gene pool that proved not infrequently to be, over the long run, the fundamental cause of a characteristic commonly referred to as weak in the head and, more recently, creaking stupidity.

Royalty. Landed gentry. Upper crust society. Beautiful manners, gorgeous clothes, glorious homes, power, mobility. The stuff of fairy tales. Now that was class.

Outsiders—the poor, the struggling, the serfs and slaves, the farm workers, soldiers, sailors, tinkers and tailors—all either accepted their place or felt, and were, powerless to change it. Oh, and let's not forget independent-minded women and anybody who wasn't white, with the exception of those few notables who heroically managed to penetrate a ceiling made from the building materials fortresses were constructed with.

But something happened in the collective psyche of the outsiders. A lust for a bigger experience, a bigger slice of the pie. Might have had something to do with the fact that it had a sturdier gene pool, a broader mix. Something about that seems to open neurological pathways to creative thinking. 

Boom. The Industrial Revolution. Suddenly yobs with no manners, no refinement, and neither land nor lineage could amass fortunes and buy the trappings of class. Not independent spirited women, people of color or different lifestyle choices or foreign alien religions, though. Let's never forget that. Nouveau Riche they called themselves. Spurned, of course by the Original Class of Classies, and using outsiders in exactly the same way they'd been used by their masters. Gradually these upstarts developed manners and accoutrements of Class and in many cases married into lineage, because its weak gene pool had left it with land and snobbery but no bucks.

And a populace of poor people living—or barely living—off the land, giving everything of value of themselves to the Classies, became a populace of poor people still barely living, but doing it in the cities. Still giving everything of themselves, but now to the New Classies as slaves, servants, wives, factory workers. Also, for a while, collectively accepting that they had no option. It wasn't a pretty picture and the environment began to take a real beating too.

Again, though, something happened in the collective psyche of those damn outsiders, the slaves to and enablers of others' pleasure and good fortune. Maybe it's really about the spirit of the human never being satisfied with being stuck in the dark ages. Perhaps it's about the human capacity for good needing to prevail over its capacity for evil. The outsiders became more aware that moving up was a possibility even for them. 

Boom. Unions. Higher wages, access to more ideas, demanding education, finding it, getting it. Well, what a damn mess. From then on it was one boom after another, the cataclysmic collapse of the old order happening from decade to decade. The original Classies' gene pool completely buggered up. The pestilential concept of "What About Me, What About Them!" spreading like wildfire. Youth, women, people of color, diverse religions, genders, sexual preferences and lifestyle choices making their voices heard, fighting for their rights and those of others, not waiting for permission but insisting that they were equal, caring about accountability and the environment. Never giving up in the face of dreadful persecution in every imaginable application, covert and overt. Desire for decency to prevail became a conflagration impossible to control. 

As the lust for a better experience seared at hearts, souls and minds; as compassion for the exploited, and protest at the exploiters grew; as wealth and access to information became more accessible to so many more; something else happened. Classy began to be synonymous with decency, inner strength, dignity, compassion and respect for others and self, good sense, concern for the environment. 

Nowhere else for it to go, really. Boom. The Phoenix of the human spirit emerging from the ashes. That's where we are today. Class is not about what you wear, what you earn, what you own, your status, the color of your skin, your gender, your religion or your lifestyle choice. It's about who you are. Just as the outsiders always thought they were as classy as those they were desperate to be accepted by when the barriers to entry were superficial, today the ethically challenged who have amassed vast fortunes and or power swagger around with great braggadocio, loudly trumpeting how classy they are. Utterly oblivious to how obvious it is to the rest of us that whatever they got, it ain't class.

These days, no matter what else you have, without class of the soul, the kind that actually counts for something humane, you've got nothing. And it shows.

Dante's African Inferno

Photo by Jennifer Stewart

African summer in the city. You barely make it through the day, body hot and falling-down-dead lethargic, your flesh like candle-wax too close to the stove. And bones, you haven't got any; there's no structure to you, just this melt-down happening way beyond your control. 

I'd headed for the open road to get out of that hot as hell and nowhere to escape city. What did I know of what lay ahead? Zero. What did I care? I didn’t. 

Have you ever driven through the Karoo in a heat wave in a car which doesn't have air conditioning? Let me tell you first about the Karoo. It goes on forever, the road as straight as a ruler. It gets almost unbearable, no matter what you do to try and distract yourself. Your brain is baked anyway. On and on and on without relief, and as for the heat, if you close the windows you suffocate, but if you open them the hot air sears your lungs, dry-heat burns your mouth.

Even water doesn't help. How could it? It's hot in the bottle, anyway. Still, you try it and you shout in frustration, your throat is a furnace. I was trapped in the inferno before I could say Jack Rabbit. 

It'll get cooler, soon. Soon. You realize you said the words out loud. Your voice wavering like the shimmering road ahead. On and on and on and on, through dry, dusty scrubland. No trees, no animals, no people. Just the straight road and the heat. It's not going to get cooler. Ever.

Seconds dragged themselves lead-heavily, milestones passed interminably, face red, blood pounding, body a hot and sweat-sticky hell. That's when I knew, it's never going to end, this road, I'm stuck on a highway to perpetual hell. The ferocity of my longing for the open road in my new car, it stopped the world, turned it on its head. I'd forever be trapped in a Dante-type open-road-Inferno. I stopped fighting it, stuck in a dry-heat warp. I spoke the words out loud again, I forgot the damn air conditioning doesn't work. My voice sounded strange and eery, throat heat-gravel. I stayed silent and my thoughts shouted burningly, searing my brain.

The tarmac shimmered. Was that water? No, fool! Time stretched sluggishly, life became a slow-motion mirage, the straight road a hallucinated river tormenting me with a never-to-be-fulfilled promise of cool quench to my searing body-thirst.

It will never end. The words became a mantra. Something had happened to the workings of time. It had really stopped. Was I moving, was I imagining it? Hot air in my face, hot air down my dry throat. Please god let it rain, please, I'll do anything. No rain. It doesn't rain in the Karoo. If it did, the rain drops would boil. It can never end.

Suddenly it had. Ended.  

The torture was miraculously over. Out of the blue it was evening, and have you any idea what that means? It means the sun had set and I had arrived at a small hotel awash in an oasis sea of green, soft, moist grass, huge willow-green cool trees, cool on my face, cool under my bare throbbing feet, cool water drenching the thirst of my sweat-sticky body, cool crisp linen on my luxurious bed.

Then I heard the thunder, and Oh Sweet Heaven. Cool rain. 

Thoughts On Life

Every time I see a photo of a certain Republican candidate with orange hair and an increasingly tanned-from-a-booth visage I think of the scene in The Wedding Planner where, the day before her wedding, a panicky bride presents with a blotchy, orange face from too long under the tanner. JLo says ‘quarter cup of lemon juice and half a cup of salt and scrub scrub scrub’.

You live most of your life with your eyes screwed shut and you don’t even know it. Then one day you open them and realize that your real is godawful. You close them again; don’t want to look at that picture. Sometimes when you open them again you realize your real is freaking brilliant.

Does that make you schizo, or manic depressive or just very alive and aware? Or all three? Life is mercurial for some and that’s a fact.

The law of increasing complexity: the less aware you are the fewer choices you make consciously and the simpler life seems at some level. At a consequence level though, it’s chaotic because the unconscious choices you make control your behaviour and your world as if you were a puppet.

The great thing is that if you want to you can say it’s not my fault. The world is doing this to me. And it is.

But the big cahuna question is why the hell do I let it? The more you figure it out the more you realize how many unconscious choices you’ve been making to let people over-ride you. You have to make more conscious choices and face the fear that made you avoid them in the first place. And there’s no turning back, more’s the pity. It’s much easier to just be a victim and let life and people crucify you.

Well, not really.

Some people can see all the repressed emotions that are flying around in a group, all the passive aggressive behaviour. It can be pretty damn lonely because they can’t talk to  anybody, hey, did you see that?!! If they have somebody to share it with, that’s great. If they don’t, they either drive themselves dilly with the debate is it me, is it them, am I mad, are they crazy.

Or they write a screenplay or a play.

Much as everybody says being lonely is the worst thing in the world, it isn’t. Being mostly numb, half dead, passive aggressive, controlling, blind and deaf, that’s the worst. Because some part of you knows it and screams at you all the time. You have to work real hard to keep it out of your awareness so there’s nothing left for you to focus on joy. It exhausts you at a level you can’t access but it takes a toll on your body. One day, boom!

We’re all over-adaptive in some way or another. If you’re aware of it you’ll feel like a ghost in your own town until you find your voice. And when you do you might also find that you don’t like that town at all. You might grab the only horse there is and head on out. Some of the people left behind will be sad to see you go but thrilled for you. Others will blacken your name. If it happens, just keep on riding, don’t look back.

Or you might find that you are the horse. You're just a kid horse and you have to head on out alone. Don't worry, you'll find others soon enough.

I don’t like missionaries who target the poor or the needy, give them nice stuff like food and shelter and then indoctrinate them because at some level, even if they’re adults, there’s a vulnerable child within. The missionaries exploit the same principle that makes a child loyal to a man or woman who takes them hostage and then rapes them for years. Stockholm Syndrome, it’s called. It has many variations and there’s more than one way to take a child hostage and rape it.

Missionaries don’t respect your right to think for yourself. They respect their right to overpower your mind, though. And they sure believe that God talks to them more than he/she does to you.

To date James Patterson has written 130 books in 38 years and sold 305 million copies in all. He’s been the world’s best-selling author since 2001; way ahead of JK Rowling. He writes unashamedly to a formula and has an army of ghost writers working for him now, as well as a PR department in his publisher Little, Brown which he rules with an iron fist. He’s having a ball with it all.

His first book, The Thomas Berryman Number, was rejected 31 times before somebody at Little, Brown said ‘yeah, this is a winner’.

Lemons, Lemonade and a Day in the Life (Clue: Not Hillary's, Bernie's or Donald's)

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Funny how sometimes you have a lot of monster bitter nasty lemons and you’re convinced that the world is falling down about your ears and you’ll never be able to crawl out of the wreckage in a million light years. And it all really is your fault. Then from some place that you don’t even believe in, some kind guiding hand that most of the time you cynically believe is a figment of somebody’s over-optimistic imagination turns your lemons into delicious lemonade for you.

And you didn’t even have to believe or meditate or even be positive. Ha!

Yesterday was Friday. Or that’s what I thought when I woke up. And when I made coffee. And when I read the New York Times with my coffee.

And when I planned my day, including in the mix a few hefty nasty bitter lemon-type challenges—that I could see had the potential to be lemonade at some point, guiding hand or not—which, if I didn’t do this week would turn the whole week into a total achievement-bust.

I had it all planned out. I was going to go to town to talk to the curator of the Rugby museum about either helping me find funding for the script I’ve just co-written, or for another rugby script idea I’ve got that might even be better. Or for both. The world is your oyster when you’re in the planning stages. I was going to do it on Monday. But I had to think about it. Can’t rush into these things. So I told myself. Come Thursday I said, OK, tomorrow. That’s it.

I’d also kind of sort of totally procrastinated on rehearsing a song for my end-of-month concert. Haven’t sung for two months, barely played the guitar. But, on Thursday it was part of my Friday planning. I’d get out of my funk and bloody rehearse.

So there I was on Friday. Everything under control. After coffee I thought I’d spend a little time on Facebook. Not long. Just checking in. It was Friday, I still had time. I started thinking about my friends on Facebook and how much connection I really do have with so many, notwithstanding all the clichés.

Relax. I haven’t got to the lemons yet. At that point I had a plentiful supply of natural lemonade. Not too sweet, not bitter at all. Just perfect.

Then I realized. Crap! It’s not Friday at all. It’s frigging Saturday. And there it was. A nasty bitter lemon bloody barrel bomb exploded in my world. Total achievement and get out of my musical funk bust and I was an hour late for a Very Important Seminar. More haste less speed was never more evident as I piled everything I needed into my bag and downed the rest of my coffee, contemplating having another cup which I really needed. Sense won the day. I put on my makeup which always takes hours, changed clothes three times and raced out.

Remembered that I forgot to brush my teeth. Raced back in, brushed my teeth, smudged my lipstick blah blah blah. Raced out. Started the car, nearly backed out with the garage door closed. Remembered I hadn’t set the alarm. Raced—fine, you get the picture.

Somewhere along the busy road into town packed with irritating, indecisive drivers or grindingly slow day-trippers—God! I hate those silly day-trippers—BOOM! Another lemon barrel bomb detonated. I forgot to check where the seminar was. No turning back now. I had a vestigial memory and just went with it. And ended up in a building that looked right from the outside and was in the right part of town. There was even parking right there. Ha! I’d been here before. I went inside.

Wrong bloody place. By now everything above the height of my head is one giant barrel bomb and it’s hailing lemons.

That’s when it happened. Out of the blue. Lemonade. And not raining on me either. That would be rather disgusting, I admit. A rather dishy fella came out of a shop in the center and said the magic words.

“You look lost. Can I help?”

Oooh, Dishy British accent too. He pulled out his smartphone—and yes, I’m aware of how idiotic it is to not have one of my own—and found the place for me. We had a nice few moments there. He walked with me out onto the street even though the directions were tremendously simple, and sent me on my way with a measure of reluctance that was Very Nice. I burst into song as I started the car. Hey presto! I was out of my musical funk too. The song? Dream a Little Dream of Me.

The seminar was just wrapping up but it didn’t matter anyway because I got the info I needed. And I got home to have that second cup of coffee. And I got to my concert on time. And I sang. Oh Great Gods. My heart soared. Now that’s lemonade for you. 

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2015 New Year Resolutions

I love the beginning of January. It gives off a sparkly aura of space, the year ahead stretched out to infinity. It’s a day when you can legitimately, if legitimate is what you need, believe that you can relax, there’s plenty of time for everything. As for the notion of getting older, it’s a far away fantasy, it ain’t happening today. It’s going to be 2015 for a long, long time. Oh yes.

That figure rolling over again is months and months away. At the beginning of January a month seems like a very long time and you’ve got 12 of them for heaven’s sake!

Pause. OK 12 isn’t such a big number, better stick to 360 odd. Forget about the months; think about how many days you’ve got. Another Pause as imagination gets out of hand and an image of numbers running down faster than the speed of light intrudes very rudely. Probably best to forget about the numbers altogether. 

Alright, where was I? Ah yes, in fantasy land. It’s also a day when you can make yourself a bunch of promises and believe you’ll keep them. It’s all about faith, the beginning of January, yes I can! Yes I even want to!

Right. I roll up my metaphorical sleeves. Where should I start? Well, I discovered one thing I can’t do and get away with it, no matter what day of the year it is and that’s eat a yummy fluffy omelet for lunch then follow it up with a delicious cup of hot tea and an ecstatically orgasmic slab of dark creamy melt in your mouth chocolate. Hmm, my taste buds had a field day but my digestion didn’t. If you get my drift. Okay, so why not make that one of my New Year Resolutions?

Hmm. Maybe I should just give up eggs. They’re kind of prosaic, and no matter how good my omelet is it doesn’t really melt in my mouth or stimulate my imagination, and I’m a writer, so I have to take that into account. My career is a serious business.

Ha! You see, the beginning of January is a very special time, a time when creative thinking comes into its own.

But as quickly as it came it went. I sit and stare at the screen, suddenly bereft of words. Rather wish I hadn’t finished that slab. Then I slap my forehead! I bought two yesterday.

Actually I bought four. Ah well. In for a penny in for a pound. Definitely not having an omelet for supper. Definitely going to start running tomorrow. Or the next day. Or next week or next month. Or if I find I’m too busy – being creative, you know – I can do it next year. Next year’s just around the corner.

No, I haven’t been drinking champagne, I promise. Are you kidding? Champagne, omelets, hot tea and dark chocolate? Even I’m not that nuts.

Champagne, indigestion and silliness aside, I only have one New Year’s Resolution. Some time ago I watched an old episode of Grey’s Anatomy where the character Meredith said:

“Benjamin Franklin said never put off till tomorrow what you can complete today. But the thing is, we have to sweep today’s possibilities under tomorrow’s rug until we can’t any more, until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin meant.

That waking is better than sleeping. That knowing is better than wondering. And even the worst failure, the most intractable mistake beats the hell out of never trying.”

It’s true. Well, it’s true for me. Nothing is worse than the mind-numbing, heart deadening, soul freezing limbo of doing nothing. So my resolution is to make this a year of action and fly in the face of fear of flying. Oh hang on, I’ve got another - resolution, I mean; carry on eating yummy smooth melt in your mouth dark chocolate - because it’s good for you and feeling good when you eat it is very good for you - just not in combination with omelets.

23 Cool Things to Do or Not

1. Use your head and listen to your heart.

2.  Aim for being imperfect. You'll probably succeed. And success is good for you.

3. Make rules and then use your head, listen to your heart and if your rules don’t apply any more, toss them. When you’re making new ones, use your head, listen to your heart.

4. If you’re going to speculate on the future, make sure your speculations make you happy and optimistic about life and you and everything. If they don’t, find something else to do other than speculating. (Hint, see 7, 11, 12…)

5. Avoid smugly spiritual people. In fact, avoid smugly anything people.

6. People who believe they’re better than you usually have a tremendous skill you don’t have – bullshitting themselves.

7. Snuggle up as often as you can to a furry animal that loves you and wants to be snuggled up to.

8. The word anal sounds horrible because it is horrible. When you see it disguising itself as a human, run as fast and as far as you can.

9. Do something new for God’s sake. And yours.

10. Bored is angry.

11. Let yourself fall in love once in a while. And have sex. Sex is good for you. At least I think that’s what somebody said to me once.

12. Eat dark chocolate more than once in a while. Especially if the sex thing isn’t happening. Mind you, if that’s the case, there’s always the other option… Have the chocolate afterwards. Or before. Or during.

13. If you want a face lift, to hell with all the smugs who say you should learn to love yourself for who you are.

14. If you want something you can’t afford, find a way. Try to stop short of robbing a bank but if you must, then be Hollywood about it and don’t get caught. Hey, you can even write the book or the screenplay and sell it to George Clooney. If you don't know how to write, here's my number...

15. Get the heck out of whatever one horse town you inhabit in some part of you. Jump on that one horse before somebody else does and ride on out of town.

16. This whole business of worshipping at the altar of balance is getting out of hand. Go on, take a risk; get unbalanced now and then.
17. Which would you rather have on your tombstone: “she was always soooo nice to everybody” or “damn bitch drove me crazy sometimes”.

18. If there’s something you don’t like about yourself find a way to change it. If you don’t want to be bothered… Oh. I got nothing for you then.

19. If somebody bullies you, clock them.

20. Too much insurance = not enough living. It's a proven mathematical formula discovered in the tombful depths of some Egyptian queen or other. Or was it Euclid? Darwin? Well, whether they said it or not, I just did.

21. If you're feeling blue be kind to yourself. Whatever you do, lecturing yourself into a false state of blissful happiness is neither listening to your heart nor using your head. Blue is blue. Better to cry and have somebody hold you or snuggle up to a furry animal that likes it and loves you. Pretty soon you won't be feeling blue any more.

22. Take up the hula hoop.

23. It’s much more fun to be sassy than overly well-mannered. On the note of fun, have some. Have a lot. Throw balance right out of the window on this one.

What's Happened to the art of Art? 1953 Painting Goes for $43.8 Million

The above painting is by Barnett Newman. This major and complex work of art was completed in 1953 and is entitled Onement VI. Hard to understand how the artist came up with such a creative title.

Sotheby's outdid itself on Tuesday. A packed and hushed audience watched while Onement VI was auctioned off for US$43.8 million. There was a faint smattering of applause. The global head of Sotheby's contemporary art had this to say about those who bid for this inspiring piece. "People are very educated; they know what is what."

It's difficult to be reverent about art these days. Not particularly difficult to produce a forgery, mind you. One thing this proves: people who make it in the art world don't necessarily have any talent at all, but they do have sass. And entitlement.

The real prize, though, has to go to Sotheby's, who pocketed a neat $5.6 million for pulling that stunt off. Ah, the good life.

A Day in the Life of an Ordinary Gal

I wake up at 6:30. Damn, it’s late. I fall out of bed and stumble through to the kitchen to make breakfast. That damn conference, I wish I hadn’t said I’d go. What persuaded me to think I would enjoy being in a room full of producers and directors and film movers and shakers, all of them important, none of them likely to be much interested in me?

In any case, it’s a government thing, and will probably be a mindless spewing of long words, a lot of sound and noise signifying nothing. I drag my heels through breakfast and take a longer shower than I should. Crap, no time to wash my hair. Nothing decent to wear. Well at least I’ve got my heels, they make the jeans that I should have washed yesterday look sophisticated, right?

I try to tease my hair into something that says nonchalant chic and dash out the door. It’s hot already, and I’m sweating. Traffic is at a standstill, which makes me sweat some more. Minutes flash by, heart beating, mad at myself. I should have set the alarm. Drumming my fingers on the steering wheel doesn’t achieve anything, curiously. Eventually traffic moves.

To my astonishment I get there. No problem with parking. I swan out of the parking garage and cross the road into a dark glass and glistening crystal chandelier hotel foyer where life kind of stands still, trapped in a time warp. An awfully polite concierge directs me to the second floor. Where nothing is happening. Damn, I should have checked the email, where the hell is this conference.

Relax, take a deep breath, I tell myself as another awfully polite gentleman guides me out onto the street and points. It’s across the road. I have twenty minutes to spare as it happens, but I’m back in panic mode. I dash across the street hoping my heels don’t get caught in a grill a la The Wedding Planner, although having a clever funny handsome doctor fall on top of me isn’t such a bad idea.

It's so not a bad idea that it entertains me until I’m in the foyer of the right place. Everybody is so friendly in these rich-dude hotels these days, I like it. I’m feeling a little more like myself again – fantasising about yummy men will do that to you – as the friendly foyer fellow dashes to keep the lift open for me. It’s occupied by an important-looking woman. My heart sinks. I know where she’s heading.

I try to hold onto myself and engage her, but she knows I’m just a writer without a film to my name yet – which tiny little word is in capitals and bold in my head, but not in hers. She’s a film producer, director, writer. “We all have to do a little of everything these days don’t we?” she says as she swans out of the lift. That does it for me. I don’t like her.

She pushes in front of me at the welcome table, states her name and loudly insists she replied to the RSVP email about the conference. Of course there’s no name tag. She flies off the handle. Because she’s so important. Funny that everybody else who replied has a name tag. “Well, I must be lucky,” I say, “my tag is here.” I say it, albeit it in my head, with just the right touch of chic frothy sarcasm. 

She gets a makeshift tag. I get mine and we move to the breakfast table. Yum. Nice hot strong coffee, hot milk, scones piled with jam and cream. She’s still bitching about bad organisation. I’m still a little in her power, I’m ashamed to admit, and I make a friendly comment. We start a kind of a conversation, she on her pedestal and me being nice and friendly and knowing my place. At her feet.

Seriously I gag at myself sometimes. I’m in mid sentence and she notices somebody more important. She latches ingratiatingly onto him. He’s not that interested. I can’t help laughing, and it totally breaks the spell for me. I let it all go. I don’t know anybody, I don’t need to try and impress anybody. Can’t, anyway. I got here on time, I’ve got my coffee and my name tag. It’s enough. 

I walk into the conference room and sit down, open my laptop. Might as well get to the 8^th draft of a screenplay I think I’m working on. In between working at staying alive, eating, sleeping, and probably watching too much TV. Life in the fast lane. The room starts to fill up with people who look pretty normal to me. Huh. A man sits down in front of me. I smile hallo at him and he beams back at me. 

This day is starting to look good. The Minister for Arts and Culture and Something Else is a dynamo, and so are all the other speakers. This is really fun. The room gets opened up to questions. I have one. My heart pounds as my internal Dementor lets fly at me. Nobody wants to hear your stupid questions. Dammit, I wish my body and my mind wouldn’t do this to me. I stick my hand up anyway. Damn Dementor. 

I get handed a mike. I stand up. I look around the room. Huh. Everybody looking at me. I like this! Dementor slides away in shame and skulks somewhere out of sight. I like that even more. I ask my question, my voice is strong, I’m to the point. Last time I tried this I was too scared to enjoy it. This time I just want more! My moment in the spotlight. My question gets a direct and lucid answer. 

The room is alive, buzzing with energy. No political speak here. No bureaucratic crap here. What a day this has been, what a rare mood I’m in. I reluctantly relinquish the mic and sit back down looking ahead to my next question, thrilled at being part of this crowd, not an outsider. Could there be anything more exciting than this?

Well, having a handsome clever funny doctor fall on top of you in the middle of the street maybe.

Oprah, A Cat And I

Some time ago, from a position of great spiritual awareness and inner poise, and conviction that I'm a woman of substance and that the bright future I've been dreaming about since I was a kid is actually going to happen one day, I got an email from Oprah and OWN.  Hah!

Okay, so a million other people also got one, still it's something, isn't it, and for a few seconds I basked in the fantasy that it was personal.  Why not?  A woman's got to dream.  Oprah sends out mail asking questions, and the question du jour was "what brought about change in your life?"  Aha!  Ahahahahahah!  I've got an answer for that one, I thought, it's tailor made for me.

At last, it's my turn to be noticed by Oprah Winfrey.  She's going to get my reply and the next thing there'll be a knock on my door and she'll be standing there with the cameras.  Or else Gail will be, and she'll have a plane ticket to Chicago.  Whoopee!  I like Gail.

Imagine my excitement when I saw Oprah was also looking to discover somebody.  I thought the two were connected.  Definitely my stars were aligned, this was my moment.  "YOU SEE!!!  I TOLD YOU IT COULD HAPPEN FOR ME!", I shouted to the world and nobody in particular.  My landlady's cat, asleep on a chair, opened one eye and contemplated me through it.

I felt like a kid in class who had the answer.  I know what made me change.  First of all I've known I needed to change since I was pretty young, just didn't know how to.  Longed to, though.  Then, my life became a bit of a mess actually as I tried to make all my dreams come true but fell flat on my face.  Then to top it all I went bankrupt!   Nothing like a good hefty crisis or ten of them to bring about that change.

That's pretty exciting isn't it?  It is to me.  So in 1500 words I told the story of my Adventurous Life so far.  Yes, yes yes!!!   I was sure to be discovered by Oprah.  God, the universe and I were  all aligned in conspiring to create that brilliant future for me in real time.  My blog, Stepping out of History, will become world famous, my scripts, bio, novel and e-book will sell millions of copies and be New York Times best seller and life will be roses and I'll meet – okay, I'm going to stop now.

Then I noticed that the story about your change was different to the person Oprah was looking to discover.  Oh.  And you have to have a big personality for her to be interested.

Oh. 

Some time ago, from a position of great spiritual awareness and inner poise, and conviction that I'm a woman of substance and that the bright future I've been dreaming about since I was a kid is actually going to happen one day, I got an email from Oprah and OWN.  Hah!

Okay, so a million other people also got one, still it's something, isn't it, and for a few seconds I basked in the fantasy that it was personal.  Why not?  A woman's got to dream.  Oprah sends out mail asking questions, and the question du jour was "what brought about change in your life?"  Aha!  Ahahahahahah!  I've got an answer for that one, I thought, it's tailor made for me.

At last, it's my turn to be noticed by Oprah Winfrey.  She's going to get my reply and the next thing there'll be a knock on my door and she'll be standing there with the cameras.  Or else Gail will be, and she'll have a plane ticket to Chicago.  Whoopee!  I like Gail.

Imagine my excitement when I saw Oprah was also looking to discover somebody.  I thought the two were connected.  Definitely my stars were aligned, this was my moment.  "YOU SEE!!!  I TOLD YOU IT COULD HAPPEN FOR ME!", I shouted to the world and nobody in particular.  My landlady's cat, asleep on a chair, opened one eye and contemplated me through it.

I felt like a kid in class who had the answer.  I know what made me change.  First of all I've known I needed to change since I was pretty young, just didn't know how to.  Longed to, though.  Then, my life became a bit of a mess actually as I tried to make all my dreams come true but fell flat on my face.  Then to top it all I went bankrupt!   Nothing like a good hefty crisis or ten of them to bring about that change.

That's pretty exciting isn't it?  It is to me.  So in 1500 words I told the story of my Adventurous Life so far.  Yes, yes yes!!!   I was sure to be discovered by Oprah.  God, the universe and I were  all aligned in conspiring to create that brilliant future for me in real time.  My blog, Stepping out of History, will become world famous, my scripts, bio, novel and e-book will sell millions of copies and be New York Times best seller and life will be roses and I'll meet – okay, I'm going to stop now.

Then I noticed that the story about your change was different to the person Oprah was looking to discover.  Oh.  And you have to have a big personality for her to be interested.

Oh.

Blast.

CRASH!!  I'm not woman of substance after all, am just mousy, unfunny, unoriginal wishful thinking loser.  I'll never be good enough to make it into Oprah's club of Important People who've really made it.   Oprah would look at me and say "you?  I don't think so."   That's if she ever looked at me, which she never would, of course.

I hate the universe and god and my mother’s brother’s cousin’s aunt.  I hate the title of my old Wordpress blog Stepping Out Of History.  I haven't stepped out of history, hate history, hate stepping.  Wish the cat would stop staring at me.

To read a sample of or buy my ebook Make The Connection: And What About Me? on how to be real love and be loved and be the boss of your own life, Click here or go to Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble Nook