Descent into madness and avoiding rabbit holes

Lockdown felt, at times, like a rabbit hole down which one sinks with remorseless ease.  Its progress or regress could be expressed most simply in terms of television viewing habits.  But I feared that under the surface, far more insidious changes are happening. 

“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.”        Khalil Gibran

It started with "Say, yes to the dress" a programme where women young and old come to find their bridal outfit in a plush shop in New York City.  There, they spend small fortunes to find that mystical dress that will transform their wedding into a fantasy story.  In the plush, spoiled environment they prance and complain and demand still more.  After a while one grows tired of their demands and expectations.  You simply become bored with their selfish absorption of how they want to look on the big day.  It is no coincidence that even the most expensive extreme dress is not quite enough and disappointment is often clear on their cosmetically enhanced features. 

Beauty and folly are often companions.                                    French Proverb

So I turned to another type of wedding outfitters.  Nazranaa Diaries offered a much more extreme range of dresses in terms of colour and richness both for brides and bridegrooms.  The vivid colours and range of styles make the ordinary bride wear very humdrum indeed.

An extra component is that the men are regaled in outfits just as over the top as the women.  It is refreshing to see men decide what suits them.

However, it is the young brides who usually dictate the colour and design of both bridal outfits.  Remonstrating with their groom-to-be about the colours of the wedding venue, their chosen colour palette and how the groom's outfit has to fit with her dress.    Her bridesmaids often have strong opinions too and the grooms are commonly paraded in increasingly bizarre clothes that are chosen for them whatever their own wishes.  It suddenly occurs to the viewer that this does not bode well for the future of the marriage.  Just once a groom held firm to his favourite outfit and his bride sulked and threatened him.  Her bridesmaid told him it made him look ridiculous.  He decided he wanted it anyway.  After a hundred episodes of hen picked grooms it was a wonder to behold.  "But it clashes with my dress!" His bride cried real tears to get her way. In the awkward moments that followed of his weeping tear-stained bride,  he fixed her with a steely glare and said: "I want this one!" I wanted to stand and clap in satisfaction.  But there are only so many Asian outfits despite the wider range of colours and shapes and sizes one can watch.  I grew weary of the expense and the shallowness of all it portrayed.

After that, I turned to the series on Big Fat Gipsy Weddings where the wedding dresses are so extreme and over the top that after only a few episodes I wearied of the excesses.  Somehow the outfits remind me of the tackiness and creepiness of Punch and Judy puppets.  I don't know why?

“Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it.”                         Confucius

By this stage, I was sickening of the self-obsessed prancing of brides-to-be in front of mirrors and screams of "Oh how beautiful I look!"  Quite frankly their happiness neither pleased nor entertained but merely bored me.  I needed something more hard-hitting, more emotion-inducing.  I found it in the series Curvy Brides Boutique.  Here very fat brides go to a wedding dress shop in the countryside designed for the larger woman.  Instead of being disappointed at finding one or no dresses to fit them, they are delighted to find an entire shop full of wedding dresses that actually fit them.  Nearly all these fat woman hate their image in the mirror so much that they don't like looking at themselves at all.  Their humility and lack of pride are refreshing.  They come across as so much nicer people.  Modest and self-effacing.  Prepared to laugh at themselves and with the very lowest of expectations regarding their wedding dress.  They just want to find a dress that fits, that will do.  So watching them get perfect makeup and hair then being given a dress that, with corsets, creates a waist was like watching Cinderella being transformed for the ball.  A kindly, fat, lacking in confidence Cinderella that deserved to have her big moment.  The look on their faces when the right dress is found is not triumphant but emotional and tearful.  They look genuinely surprised at their reflection in the mirror and say things like "I cannot believe I look alright in this dress".  As if being hideous was their birthright.  Their happiness makes them beautiful and you suddenly see that too.  All have stories and many touch your heart.  So many have been bullied because of their weight throughout school and they speak of the unkindness of others.  One feels ashamed at the cruelty of humankind and how much damage is inflicted to sweet souls every single day because of how they look.  A large young twenty-four-year-old had donated one kidney to her Mum and had put on a lot of weight since the operation.  Her bravery and act of selflessness which saved her mother's life spoke of the quality of this young lady and suddenly you realised what a lucky man her groom was.  The compassion and kindness of these self-deprecating ladies was the perfect antidote to the self-absorption of those earlier skinny brides.

“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.”              Rumi

Then, I grew tired of this rabbit hole entirely and saught the light.  Watching TV is such a degrading sedentary practice in so many ways.  You spend so much time digesting stuff that is unwholesome searching for more extreme versions of what you have already seen.  Your taste becomes odder and quirkier and jaded.    I call it a descent into madness and I tell the tale as a warning.  Avoid this particular rabbit hole and choose a healthier and more productive path.  WE are what we Do.

Like sea water they aid healing

Today my son, Daniel went swimming off the coast near our flat in Malta.  I watched frankly worried from the shore.  I dislike big waves when swimming.  Instead of feeling you are deciding your direction and pace in the water a greater force dictates, unseen with considerable power.  I wonder is it the lack of control or lack of power over this medium that disturbs.  My son has no such qualms and will do his swim sun, rain or hail.  After a day working indoors he is longing for the freedom of the waves and sea.  For many, the daily swim almost acts as a form of necessary therapy for body, spirit and mind.  There may be even some anecdotal evidence for this.

It is said, “Navy SEALS even say that if they have a scrape or cut, they know that being in the sea water will clean them up and speed up the healing process.”

Ancient Egyptians apparently, used salt water for stomach ulcers and external skin injuries.  Of course there is also Hippocrates from 460 BC – c. 370 BC who was a strong believer in salt water’s usefulness…

“Hippocrates, also known as Father of Medicine, concocted multiple cures using saltwater to heal cuts, scrapes, and even more serious skin injuries. He also used saltwater for internal problems, such as ulcers of the mouth or stomach. Hippocrates became interested in exploring the healing powers of saline after he observed how quickly fishermen’s hands and other minor skin injuries healed after exposure to seawater.”

“The Romans treated stomach ulcers and digestive problems with the solution by preparing drinks for their patients. They also made ointments to treat skin injuries, and had patients bathe in the solution to clear up skin diseases and combat itching and inflammation...effectively recommending saltwater as a primary medicinal for skin care and common skin problems.”

I don’t know if is true but I remember being told Alexander the Great urged his wounded solders to bath in the sea and dry in the sun to heal wounds.  Given these days were all long before antibiotics the sea was probably a reasonable option if you had an open wound, ripe for infection.

World War aircraft crash victims who went down in the sea strangely healed better than burn victims on land.  It is not just humans who have benefited from the magic of water treatments.  Hydrotherapy is used in veterinary clinics up and down the country where it allows animals, especially post operative, to strengthen muscles when weight bearing is too much.

Perhaps there is something deep in our psychic about being from the sea originally?  After all, our ancestors crept ashore millions of years ago before evolving into land animals.  Who knows, but I do love water enough to feel genuinely horrified when adults announce they cannot swim.  It feels so unfair that they have missed out on this delightful therapeutic experience.

My son is talking to a Greek man on the rocks with his two small daughters playing at his side.  All my sons speak Greek with a distinctive Rhodes island twang, as they were brought up there, and it is a very strong dialect indeed.   The man seems overjoyed to find a native Greek speaker on a Maltese shore so far from home and they rattle away their own language.  

He tells Daniel all about his life.  Working in a small family owned business for decades.  Of how he met and married a tourist. Then he spoke of the dreadful economic situation in Greece at present that saw him lose his business and turn his home into a liability rather than an asset.  Of his separation from his wife.  Then he holds up his hands asking,

“What did I do wrong?  I couldn't have worked any harder. I never cheated anyone.  I love my family more than my life!”

He stops and stares at the sea shaking his head at the mystery of it all.  Then he continues,

“It's wreaking even village life in Greece, everyone is having to leave to work abroad, to earn money.  Only the old are left, alone.  It is all changing.”

He describes in fast Greek, how he works in Germany and Malta, wherever a job comes up.  Desperate to make progress but aware that he is barely afloat financially these days.  He says. 

“  I had my own business in Greece and was good at it.  I made something good of my life.  I did, I really did.”

Then he turns his palms heavenward and explains,

“Now, I try and get hotel jobs, any jobs.  Just any work to support my family.  I’m not giving up, but I do want to understand what happened.”

They talk for an hour of politics, world affairs, Greek village life (which they both adore) football and even Greek history and language.  His two small daughters, half German and half Greek, speak perfect Greek and tell Daniel stories they know by heart.  The tales of heroes and villains and great deeds from Greek mythology, as their father smiles proudly.

Then as they part Kostas, hugs Daniel to his chest as you would a dear brother and wishes both of us well.  There is a sweetness about Greeks that takes the breath away when they open their heart to you.  Even in their pain, you somehow gain.  Like sea water they aid healing.