Last night I went to an opening at the National Gallery.

Pop Life was a pretty banal exhibit and it turns out it was borrowed from the Tate so I guess I'm not surprised. It was probably very resonant to the British public for whom it was originally curated but its snap and smack falls flat in this context.

We all know how Andy Warhol informed north american culture, we live within it. And truth be told, most of the art was pretty boring and not terribly well executed by anyone's standards. People who objected to it were right, it's not good art. What it did at the time was bring art back into line with the personal and the political which I still feel was important. I just don't think its importance rests with preserving or displaying the individual works themselves.

Likewise, I ran into an old friend there. It was kind of him to say hello, he was in a suit, I was in a tee-shirt and jeans, trying hard to be invisible. I am savoring the position of the observer now and do not really want it to be interrupted.

We were at university together and at school he was brilliant, mobile, facing the idea of life, he was an open book and he could have done great things. Now he is flat to me, I was pleased to see he is physically well but knew before I turned to acknowledge him that we would add nothing to each other's experience of the evening. He has settled into a predictable existence and although he feigns a friendly face when he sees me, really? He's not in there.

For a change, I was able to remember myself and not engage with this on any level. I did not wonder why he follows me on Twitter and ignores me on Facebook. I did not wonder about the general lack of insight, the predictable turns of logic and idiom in the few conversations we have had since university, I didn't say what I was doing or worry about fishing out a bit of his old-school soul to show to and reassure myself that there was hope for us all. For a change I wasn't that arrogant.

There doesn't have to be hope for us all with us all. You decide what kind of hope is right for you, you decide who matters in your life. It's ok to let go.

I took out my earbud, smiled and said hello. I said I was fine and asked how he was. He said he was fine, I said "nice to see you," put my earbud back in and carried on. I was surprised and pleased not to have felt the urge to "catch up."

I like to think we are all connected and that everyone and everything matters and I think they probably do but you know, sometimes, the individual expressions aren't part of our own personal universes and that's perfectly ok too.

I open my eyes and the world is created. I close my eyes and the world dissolves. You open your eyes and a world is created, you close your eyes and that world dissolves and when we open our eyes, once again, a new world is born. That's the dance. It's always ok. It does not require our approval.

We only matter when we matter. We exist as the center of the universe for ourselves every day but we only exist for each other in those moments of contact. I guess I am at the point where I can allow some people to exist solely in the abstract. It does not mean I value their place in my past less, it means I understand the flow of time over this plane of existence enough to embrace their passage.

I am also at the point where I am consciously moving to the American stylebooks in terms of my writing and I do wish the computer, the software, the blogs, all of that, would stop trying so damned hard to prevent me from doing it.

Spurious Equality

It is, consider yourself warned, a particularly touchy time of month. I am not one to suffer fools gladly but during this time, I drop the attempt at pretending I do and I don't mince words.

Truth is, I'm pretty damned tired of pretending I don't go through this stuff to anyone and I am tired of living in a culture where one half of the population is forced to pretend we have the same hormonal equilibrium and level of sensitivity (or lack of it) as the other half.

So I'm writing about it.

I was doing my nails this morning when, once again, I remembered the last time I said anything about this particular social custom and two of my male friends piped up about how well they understood because they play guitar and so have to take care of their nails too. The irritation from those fatuous, me-too comments, faux egalitarian BS still galls me when I think of it.

I am doing my nails for the same reason men shave or trim their ear hair, it's not because I want a particular tool to play a particular instrument, it's because, in this culture, it's something women do. I will scrub my floors and do my dishes and my nails will get battered and chipped and I will have to do it all over again in a few days. If I remember to wear gloves, I might be able to go a week. It also requires not only filing but buffing and massaging and polishing and waiting for polish to dry. Whole businesses are given over to this custom and no, I would not do it for myself, I am doing it for two reasons, first - there is a certain level of cultural acceptance that goes with being manicured in my professional circles and second, the man who has my attention really likes it.

See? Like shaving.

When a man complains about shaving, I do not chime in and tell him how I feel his pain because every week or so I have to take a razor into the bathroom and shave my legs. Why don't I do this? Because it's stupid, it dismisses his real and valid complaint about something he has to do all the time to conform to an idea of masculinity here and it misses the point, entirely.

My shaving the scraps of barely visible hair off my legs does not compare to shaving one's entire face and neck every single day and it would never occur to me to be such an insensitive dolt that I would suggest that it does. Nevertheless, say even one word about your nails and some pretend-liberal moron who, if he is married, does the dishes about as often as I shave my legs, I promise you, will sigh and say - "Oh I know what you mean because I play guitar." No pal, you don't know what I mean probably not by a long shot.

This is just one small example of something that happens every day. There are groups of us, male and female, who assume that equal means identical - it does not.

My irritation with these people extends beyond the fact that they say insensitive things, it penetrates into the way they see others, including me, and how they insist on the principles of justice being upheld as though every single one of us were exactly the same and as though we all make the choice, every day, to walk through the world exactly as we are - male, female, short, tall, rich, poor, physically or intellectually inclined. You get the idea.

Society, up until now, has had different expectations for each of these personal traits and it was right to do so. Where it was wrong was in making the assumption that the easiest way to be was the best way to be and therefore all others were something less and deserved to be treated as such.

It is easy to be male, young, slender, straight-identified, white and smart. That is the easy part - at least on the surface. It is easier to have a consistently even temperament, easier for everybody, on both sides. But that does not mean it is always better.

Hormonal women do not take crap from anybody and sometimes that is a very good thing for everybody. Many hormonal women are emotional, aggressive, insightful and perceptive in the extreme. There are things we are really good at that we are not so good at for the rest of the month - wanna get right to the point of a difficult personal issue? ask a hormonal woman. Need to spot a liar? Show your candidates to a hormonal woman. Need to fine tune the nuances of a piece of writing meant for the public? A hormonal woman will have a different take on it than anyone else in the room, sometimes that take seems off base but sometimes it is more insightful than you could have imagined and usually it is on-the-money for the other women in your audience even if they never tell you so.

Nobody can expect to be everything to everyone and human variation is as rich and multifaceted as the landscape of the planet but here's the thing - someone who is experiencing something you cannot experience is not experiencing something that puts them above or below you, it just puts them outside of you. We are not all the same and pretending we are as insistently as we do negates the important differences that are, ironically, pretty general and nullifies the subtle differences that make each of us individual, makes each one of us interesting.

I am hormonal right now. I get this way every month. I've been ashamed and kind of horrified by it all my life but now I am trying to embrace it. This is when I do my best poetic work (for what it's worth) this is when I am most empathetic, most tender, most physical and most volatile. If you need to fine-tune your communicative/diplomatic skills, I am a great place to do it right now. I am easily hurt and yes, I do lash out. On behalf of my sex, I'm trying to reclaim the good parts of this and still keep my dignity as a writer and a fully functioning member of society. I'm still me - just a little more exposed than usual.

If you go through this too, I hope you will find your own way to embrace it. If you don't, I hope you have people in your life who recognize your own particular swings and times and tender areas because I do think we all have them but the thing is this; they are all different. And if you broke a nail that you use to fingerpick your guitar, here's the deal; when you have razor burn or cut yourself shaving, I won't whine about shaving my legs and you don't compare your broken pick-substitute to something I have to deal with on a daily basis.

We're different. I like it that way.