Life is but a Trinket
February 14, 2013
Life is but a Trinket.
She was sitting next to me in one of those leather seats that those large Westfield shopping centers have sprinkled around their cavernous Meccas of consumption for the masses… Oddly enough, very often no one sits on them. Perhaps, sitting down is not in the spirit of what those temples are about; spending money and consume, consume.
The girl had a dark somewhat Gauguinish Polynesian look about her and was dressed in a multi coloured tropical fashion. I did not want to be seen as curious but decided to occasionally take a side-long glance at her. She seemed to be busy fiddling with something around her ample brown neck. I had noticed her earlier opposite from where I was sitting at a shop where they were selling lots of low-cost jewelry. You know, there are always lots of those shops about, selling indefinable trinkets, together with gold looking necklaces, also hairclips and mobile phone covers, Valentine love tags with ‘for Sandy, Macy, Lorraine or Shane, Bob, Wayne or a Ron’ together with shoulder strapped handbags. Those shops also have salesgirls who are permanently yawning or on urgent texting missions behind the counter, refusing to give service or make eye contact with the customer.
Those shopping centers have a noise unique in the world of public sounds. There are traffic noises, airplanes, street noises, barking dogs, tolling church bells and so many others. However, those large shopping centers have a noise that is different. It is the noise of the people swept up and totally concentrated on and busy with consuming. Like a tidal wave it sweeps up everything in front of them towards the cash register with the consumables clutched in both hands, the card ready at the fore, often held between teeth and the pram pushed by determined women with child bearing thighs or a brutish looking but compliant husband… You can actually hear the swiping of thousands of cards with the familiar high pitched timbre of the electronic print out receipts coming from dozens if not hundreds of shops and their purchases.
That is the noise of a shopping center.
Yet, unbelievably as it seems, there are sometimes scenes of serenity and calm in those raging seas of frenzied shopping. There was a barefooted blond woman sitting opposite me and the Gauguin girl. She was peacefully reading a book with her legs comfortably tucked under her hips. Her slippers were on the polished floor beneath the leather settee together with a small bag. I don’t think she had bought anything. She was reading a book titled ‘Snow White the Huntsman’ and seemed to devour the pages rather quickly. She was obviously reading a good story. I noticed that on her toe (next to the big one) of her left foot, there was a small silver looking ring. She wriggled her toes every now and then. A few times she looked up with a quick glance around her before returning once more to her book.
In the meantime I had found out that the Polynesian Gauguin looking girl next to me had bought a small necklace with a kind of silver wood nail as a pendant. She had managed to put it around her neck. She looked a normal girl with a friendly face, not too pretty but with a soft and feminine demeanor about her. After her success with this silver fence- nail necklace she took out her mobile phone and held it at arm’s length and started taking pictures of her adorned face with neck. This was followed by a rapid swiping and moving about of her fingers on her mobile. I suppose she was sending the pictures to a friend, possibly a nice boyfriend. A kind and caring boy, I hoped. Was the ‘nail’ a kind of promise of a more permanent thing to be fixed for the future? I am probably running ahead here, but; who knows?
Life is a Trinket.
Tags: Gauguin, Mecca, Polynesian.Westfield, Snow White, The Huntsman, Trinket
Googlehoover said:
Perhaps the pendant nail was a culturally appropriate piece. Polynesian women have been exchanging nails for sex since the eighteenth century. Cook’s men found that the Hawaiian women would gladly acquiesce to the common matelots eager encouraging mime, providing the sailor bathed first and paid the price of one iron nail. Apparently when they left the Sandwich Islands as Hawaii was known then, they actually suffered a smal crisis if provisioning, having almost run out of nails. The blacksmith had to convert other iron objects to ensure the safety and integrity of the ships and fittings.
History eh? I don’t have to make this stuff up. Reality is always stranger than fiction.
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helvityni said:
Many a fickle romance moved to the second, more solid stage after the boy gave the girl a nail necklace, and whispered to her: I’m going to build you a house,my darling…
Girls did not compare their rings, they did not have any…even then there were some bitchy ones about; fiddling with their nails they asked the necklace-less maidens: Did you lose yours…?
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gerard oosterman said:
Is this where the ‘I nailed her’ comes from or is that a more recent saying.?
verb: to penetrate with penis
verb: to screw financially
1. I nailed her 3 times last night.
2. She really nailed me in the divorce settlement, I lost almost everything of value to her lawyer
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Therese Trouserzoff said:
A sympathetic eye …. and ear, Gez and a nourishing vignette. I love artichokes with a vignette sauce, too.
It occurred to me how manipulative things have become in our Coles supermarket. Mixed amongst the music of my salad days is a subliminal exhortation that goes “Down, down, prices are down” to a catchy riff. And everywhere savings can apparently be had if you buy two or more of the item you wanted to buy. Coercion.
And you are certainly right about supermarkets and malls having a goodly supply of beautiful women of a certain age. I often take one with me too.
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helvityni said:
I love the strong colours of that Gauguin girl in the picture, any trinket would look good on her…
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hph said:
Gerard, you are a high-spirited, patient and peaceful -wise- man. When I go to my local shopping centre and take a few steps into the mall I immediately wish for a cattle prod.
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hph said:
No, …make that two!
🙂
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Venise Alstergren said:
Lovely bit of writing here Gerard. Gorgeous descriptions, you’ve caught the atmosphere to perfection.
BTW: That’s a very classy ceiling for a supermarketaria; surely it is the gutted remains of a previous establishment; forlorn by failing a national heritage test? That, or perhaps the architects in your neck of the woods are superior to their Victorian namesakes?
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gerard oosterman said:
No Venise, it’s not Queen Victoria Mall. I think it might be in Dubai. They must have used triple glass panels in the ceiling with the temperature normally over 40c. I have never been there but I believe shopping there is something else altogether. No trinkets, all are cluster diamonds and even the salesgirls are clad in gold-leaf with no yawning allowed.
Geez, There is nothing like the praise to move the pen. Thank you..
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Venise Alstergren said:
Ah ha! I thought I’d seen it somewhere. No matter how beautiful it is it cannot match the beauty of your prose. (Suck, suck!)
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Venise Alstergren said:
I think I’ve lost a comment Gerard…
I said Ah ha! I thought I’d seen that ceiling/roof before. Then something like….”No matter how beautiful it is it cannot compete with the beauty of your prose.” How about that for a fulsome comment?
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Venise Alstergren said:
Bugger! They both turned up.
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gerard oosterman said:
Ah well , blushing , twice praised from most venerable Venise within 5 minutes is dream come true. Most chuffed, stuck for words and raise my glass,’proost’.
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gerard oosterman said:
Thanks Shoe; The girl was a girl that was a lovely person, or so she seemed and looked it. Not being too pretty is a compliment, anything with the word ‘too’ in front usually is a bit suspect. I probably would not have written much about a ‘pretty pretty’ woman. They are often difficult to read with not much having been written on all that smooth prettyness.
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sandshoe said:
I don’t know what you mean here in your reply, Gez, I am sorry. Whether the lass is a lovely girl or what degree or what degree of prettiness is irrelevant I think.
I am commenting from the view of writing methodology, Gez. I don’t get anything out of that description. Linking the description of ‘pretty’ as you have with a concept of ‘feminine’ is unfortunately comparative as well by a measure you are claiming (in your mind’s eye). I recall an amazing description of ‘feminine’ I commented on in a review. I will look it out later, Gez.
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sandshoe said:
I am not suggesting you offended the girl’s loveliness or otherwise or prettiness by that description Gez regards how pretty or not she is.
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gerard oosterman said:
I mean, perhaps clumsily expressed, that femininity and being pretty or having a beautiful exterior don’t have to go together.
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sandshoe said:
No. It doesn’t.
The reference that put me in awe regards a description of ‘feminine’ was in a novel by Pamela Hansford Johnson, An Impossible Marriage, Gez, I’ve turned the house upside down searching for. The female protagonist (from memory) recalls her best friend as being so feminine she evoked … something along lines of a basket of pink flowers tied around with a pink ribbon … the wording of which made me chuckle in the context it was, literally, so florid and satirically conventional. 🙂
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sandshoe said:
Moderated.
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sandshoe said:
I spotted that I entered an extra letter in the email address.
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Elisabeth said:
Lovely writing here, Gerard. I could not stop. You capture the atmosphere brilliantly as you always do. Thanks.
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sandshoe said:
Elisabeth, you said what I said re ‘not being able to stop’. I said it was rivetting.
Gosh golly Gez. I truly didn’t even mean to immediately read it all straight off. You got us in. 🙂
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gerard oosterman said:
Thank you for those encouraging words. You are good with words and seem to have lots of memories in need of outing as well.
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sandshoe said:
I hope to stimulate ideas Gez and I like your own canvas well.
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helvityni said:
Elisabeth, I often visit your blog, I admire your honesty…I liked The Family Frown very much…we all have those family things, a cow’s lick, irritating or sometimes endearing ways of behaving, crying too easily, or laughing too loud…tapping our feet when nervous, walking around when talking on the phone..
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sandshoe said:
I balked at your description linking and coupling ‘not too pretty but a soft and feminine demeanour about her’ Gez.
Apart from that glitch for me, this is one of the most rivetting pieces of writing I have read because it is so succinctly fresh with our collective lives lived in the trek between work places or homes and studios and shopping meccas, even if not to shop for the glitzy consumables but ironically now even for the humble battery or lead for a digital unit from Dick Smiths or other IT retailer. I love your description of Gaugin girl in general sense and your structure of this as it flows along around its meaning. What a lifter. You must be pleased with that.
Distinctly a bloke’s bit of writing, it is almost however shocking. We don’t ordinarily see this viewpoint in everyday literature.
Gez, you really, really do rock.
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