Here's a new one
If you know me rather well, you may know that I think that "no shoes in the house" policies are, well, at odds with the first duty of a host. But it's the first duty of the guest to keep such views to oneself.
Here's a new one: I was just invited to a shoeless garden party.
"NOTE: we'll be shoeless in the backyard, so if you MUST wear socks with your sandals make sure they don't have holes."
Don't get me wrong, I'm delighted to be invited to the social event of the season. However, I was involved in an online chat when the invite came in, and I've been a little lean on the material front since The Most Qualified Candidate in Our History dropped out and I got busy on a deal . . . so I'll present a lightly edited transcript. All in good fun, of course, since the guest of honor reads this blog.
10:16 PM me: no shoes outdoors
fucking unbelievable
that's what reminded me of the [story about persnickety person], go figure
10:17 PM MVS: HA HA
are you upset to be outside with no shoes on?
10:18 PM me: I think anyone who's ever stepped on a bee would be a little shaken up by this dangerous and irrational "house rule"
MVS: i have stepped on a bee and more than my share of nails
but...
10:19 PM i don't mind being barefoot
10:20 PM me: I don't think even the Franco regime had rules like that.
10:22 PM I'm struggling to get my imagination around a scenario where you would offer up your fragile back-yard ecosystem for a big bash and then mitigate the damage with a no-shoes policy.
Most people with no-shoes policies are worried about dirt.
However, yards and dirt are closely linked.
10:23 PM Perhaps they are worried about an insidious form of dirt theft, topsoil being tracked away.
10:24 PM MVS: or maybe they have some new grass that will feel really nice and soft under your feet
me: Well, one hopes.
10:25 PM But that gets back to my "don't volunteer your yard if it's that wimpy grass." issue
10:27 PM me: Shoe-free garden party.
10:30 PM MVS: Tip Toe Through the Tulips
me: Have you ever tried tiptoeing with no shoes on?
10:31 PM It might be hard.
10:32 PM But maybe not.
Maybe it's a really big yard and people will be sneaking up on one another all the time!
With any luck the completely rational explanation will show up in the comments before too long and we will all learn something.
EDITED TO ADD: I was just rereading the bit about socks and sandals. It can't possibly be that shoes are banned and sandals are allowed, right? Because that would be totally irrational . . . right? But it seems to suggest that if you want to come in goofball attire, you can. I am more confused than ever.
Labels: bottled water and other extremely weird things we consider "normal", composition fatigue, Only in Don't Trust Snakes
You try writing a headline for this one
My father intimated that I might encounter a blogging void when you know who finally does you know what, and suggested I could do a series of posts on "bottled water and other extremely weird things we consider 'normal.'" It warrants a label, at the very least. I think that, not being normal myself, I might have trouble with the "we" part (
e.g., "deciding a pet is the thing we need"). I suggested that blogging itself belonged on any list of such weird things. It's too much to say that the impulses behind a lot of blogging are lost on me, but they sure don't resonate with me.
In particular, I don't get the "my public diary" impulse that brings us those neverending holiday letters of narcissism. I'm unusually private in all sorts of ways (openness has always seemed to me, in the Terminator's wonderful phrase, tactically dangerous), so I probably couldn't sustain a public diary even if I felt the call for one. Most of the things you would find interesting, I don't want you to know. Most of the things I wouldn't mind sharing, I can't be bothered to relate. The real reason you'll never see me using blog nicknames is that there are no characters in this blog—certainly not as I see it, though people will show up from time to time in anecdotes or to introduce topics.
I have forgotten why I started this entry, but maybe it was for the irony of using all that to preface the announcement that last week I decided I should really plan at trip to India, like, for real, not the sort of two-months-if-I-ever-can sort of trip I've had in mind since at least 2000 (to go by the date of my earliest guidebook). If two months is fanciful, I figure three weeks may not be, especially if I time it according to my likely slow time here (August), rather than seasonal weather patterns there. I'm still at the concept stage, but thinking about itineraries, whether I could pull it off with just a day pack (it could happen, but 40
l might be more sensible), and the most critical question of
which cameras and films to bring (no digital—life's too short). Three weeks is a "tweener" length of time to plan. I think it's a safe assumption that days of travel between cities will be mostly shot for other purposes, so I want to minimize those. It's a great advantage to be going by myself with little more ambitious agenda than doing a lot of photography I like. This means I can skip the standard tourist destinations (a certain building comes to mind) and spend time poking around lesser-known, less celebrated places, even those "of little interest." I'm having a hard time there being anything of little interest.
Most likely I would arrive in Delhi and stay in central and east-central areas, maybe departing from Calcutta to make the internal travel more linear. The only certain destination will be Varanasi. It could be interesting to dip into Orissa near the end on such an itinerary, but more than four internal travel days starts to seem like a material part of the whole trip. All suggestions are welcome in comments or by email to donttrustsnakes@gmail.com.
Nothing like talk of an India trip to divide people up. It's either a dream, or unfathomable, with very little middle ground.
Labels: bottled water and other extremely weird things we consider "normal", India, Things I might blog about if this were my public diary
