Well not quite literally. I am no poet and I do not think anyone
thinks of me as one.
So rather than an ode it is more a ramble. Which I am quite proficient
in I might add.
But I got to thinking of Covid and its impact on society on a recent phone
call with my mother half a planet away. She is computer illiterate having
grown up in a generation devoid of too much electronics. That is to say she is not surfing the WWW or sending status updates on her gum lines to make believe friends and followers.
Even electrical appliances were a luxury during her formative years and only
recently did she send her first whatsapp message and still did not know what
had happened.
So back to this Covid and its implications. Boredom comes to mind
right away. I mean to find the world forced into stasis in a domino
effect of rules and regs that cascaded from federal or central governments of
the land to the local; people suddenly found themselves in varying forms of
imprisonment.
So in talking to the woman that birthed me I realized that she did not mind
the quiet of her life one bit. The repetitive yet simple life did not
seem to faze her especially with the recent unexpected loss of my father, her
companion, to whom she was married for almost 60 years.
Buying food in grams to eat when needed is her lifestyle. I buy stuff
in pounds like we do stateside and then figuring out innovative ways to utilize
that vat of ketchup becomes a first world problem. That tedium is not
something she has to contend. But does the tropical torpor not bore
her? I try to gage that in our conversation because I myself am.
Bored silly. My typical lifestyle is to earn enough to get on the road
and gallivant. Then come back to earn again. I have not been able
to accomplish said wandering for a solid eight months and counting.
She on the other hand has taken the covid in stride. Add to that some much
needed dental work and she has found that she can spend time figuring out what
foods could taste best in mushy form.
All this coincided with a recent book I came upon. Yawn - Adventures
in Boredom. Mary Mann takes us on a hilarious rendering of her research
into this very poignant of subjects.
Speaking of travel one of the passage in the book points out that Mary got
interested in boredom as a way to remain excited. She found in her research that tourism as an
idea stemmed from people’s sense of boredom.
Thomas Cook and the eponymous travel operator that recently shuttered
was an idea that started with Cook, a cabinet maker and social entrepreneur (I
am making up stuff here folks) asking folks in an English village to show up
for a train journey 10 miles away for a shilling round trip. He got 400 people to sign up. That was huge
for the day and locale.
She observes that people are restless wherever they are and want novelty as
a way to escape their sense of boredom.
In so doing they look up places online and come to expect some sameness
along with the newness all in one when they visit a new place.
“As a result, I think we’re less apt to be surprised by places we visit, and
possibly less patient with the people in those places” she observes.
She quotes a Caribbean writer called Jamaica Kincaid who wrote that locals
look at tourists and “envy your ability to leave your own banality and boredom,
they envy your ability to turn their own banality and boredom into a source of
pleasure for yourself.”
I can attest to that. In a recent
trip to Prague in Czech Republic my wife wandered into a beauty unguents and
oil selling outlet in a mall and the cashier kept staring at her. After few minutes of this non-interaction, at
which point the wife was getting uncomfortable the lady cashier/store keeper
approached her with trepidation and said “can I ask where you are from and what
are you doing here”?
I think part of her curiosity was to see a brown face walk into the store
seemingly aware of the containers for sale and taking an interest in specific
samples. This in a place that typically
no one has witnessed said demographic before. More so the clerk was fascinated that
someone would leave their own land and come all the way to middle Europe to try
out a hand cream. The woman had not left
her town ever in her 60 years and hence the awe.
Mary’s book is a must read to break the monotony of not knowing what to do
next.
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