lines of, “You always struck me
as just another office worker. You
know, cubicle, gym, home, sleep,
repeat.” It wasn’t followed by
anything like, “But you’ve proven
me wrong.” It was just left to hang.
This is what you are. This is how
the world sees you.
I was floored. I knew I wasn’t
special – I knew it in the way
we all know it and yet secretly
believe we are. But just another
office worker? He saw me as the
woman in the grey flannel suit;
a faceless nine-to-five drone.
I never saw myself that way –
I worked in the arts; I had passion,
a calling, and a tiny toeing-the-
poverty-line salary to prove it.
And anyway, what was so wrong
with having a job, a routine?
Who decided which life was
the good one?
He mocked the amount of rent
I paid to live in a “fashionable”
neighbourhood; he mocked my
body consciousness, my music
taste, my ignorance of 1970s
experimental film. He told me
my sister – a musician – was
definitely the more interesting
one. That he thought she was
cool and I was not. In general, he
reduced me to a bland stereotype
and I partook in it.
And all this before I let him
into my bedroom. He shook my
perspective by holding his mirror
up to me and showing me how he
saw me. More importantly, he
shook my perspective of how I saw
myself. I thought I was a strong
feminist; a woman powerful and
brave. I was not. I’d let someone
spend the evening talking me
down, then still been grateful
to sleep with him. And I’d been
doing it my whole life.
I’d love to say I kicked him out
and changed my life, but I didn’t.
He left, and for a while the barb
kept stinging. Bit by bit, I’ve made
progress towards pushing back
on people when they insult me or
try to tell me who or what I am
or should be. I still let them slip
occasionally, but I’m getting
there. I’ll get there.
By
Eleanor
Robertson
The first time I ever made croissants,
I stuffed them up badly. They had
the texture of a light sedimentary
mineral, like mica or bauxite, and
tasted like an orthopaedic insole
impregnated with butter. As I ate
my first horrible little pastry
child, I felt the disappointment
of generations of French patissiers
slam into me like when you get
dumped by a big wave at the beach.My mistakes were numerous. I’d
chosen to make the croissants on
a hot, humid day – wrong.
Laminating croissants requires
putting a thin, rolled-out sheet
of butter between two layers of
fermented dough, and then rolling
and folding over and over to create
the classic flaky texture inside.
When it’s hot, the butter melts, and
all your dough layers stick to each
other like nude thighs on a vinyl bus
seat. I used the wrong flour. I didn’t
proof them for long enough. There’s
probably some kind of French pagan
ritual involving wheat deities and
four hours of tireless chanting
I neglected to perform.All of the information necessary
to avoid these mistakes was freely
available to me, and yet I ploughed
on, a toddler trying to tie their
shoelaces by bashing them with
a rattle and screaming. I ignored
thousands of years’ worth of baking
tips, each one learned the hard
way by some starving peasant who
depleted the village’s last wheat
stockpiles by going on a smoke break
when they should’ve been watching
the damn oven.About a week later, I was buying
a pair of shoes – high-top sneakers.
Holding them, I wondered how
many people had actually touched
the materials that made them
up. Hundreds? Maybe thousands?
How many people’s accumulated
knowledge went into making the
shoe? I thought of Ötzi the Iceman,a 5000-year-old mummy discovered
wearing the prehistoric version of
high-top sneakers, complete with
leather uppers and laces. If Ötzi the
Iceman’s Stone Age cobbler hadn’t
figured out how to wrap bits of dead
goat around people’s legs, we’d all
be hopping around on hot asphalt,
crying, “There has to be a better
way!” while suffering third-degree
burns to our feet. (The splinter
removal business would be going
gangbusters, though.)After my croissant experience, I
found myself thinking about simple
objects in this way all the time. It
was like putting on a pair of X-ray
specs, except I didn’t look like a
complete knob. (Not any more than
usual, anyway.) Everything around
us has history; this dimension of
existence that’s usually hidden from
us unless we actively investigate
it. There’s an old quote, usually
attributed to Jonathan Swift, that
sums this up pretty well: “It was a
brave man who first ate an oyster.”
I suspect the first oyster-eater was
simply hungry rather than brave,
but the point stands.This realisation made me quite
emotional for a while. Everywhere
I looked, everything I saw, reminded
me that so much of what we take for
granted as ‘ours’ was really made
for us by people who died long ago.
Petty disputes about who owns what,
or which person is entitled to which
stuff, suddenly seemed very childish.
I’d see two kids bickering over an
ice-cream, or hear some political
debate about tax policy or welfare
spending, and think, “What the hell
is wrong with us? Are humans really
so limited that we sit on top of this
pile of riches, which we had almost
no role in creating, and go, ‘Hands
off! This is mine!’”I tried the croissant recipe again,
on a colder day this time, after going
through every croissant-baking tip
I could possibly find. I even called a
French friend of mine, who laughed
at me and told me to nick down to
the local bakery instead of torturing
myself. They weren’t perfect, but
they were flakier, crisper and
lighter. My housemates ate the lot,
and I didn’t mind at all.writers’ piece