SEVEN DAYS A WEEK.

 

Image credit: Pinterest - author unknown (emulating Charles Schulz).

As I come to terms with my recent retirement, one day at a time, searching for meaning and losing track of what day it is, I came to wonder why a week is seven days.  I did a little research, although I had an inkling that the Torah and then the Bible may have had something to do with it.

It seems that our seven-day week arose in Mesopotamia some four thousand years ago.  I quote from: Chronicles of chronology: The power of seven,” Economist, 2001-12-20: - 

"The Sumerians … worshipped seven gods whom they could see in the sky. Reverently, they named the days of their week for these seven heavenly bodies … For the Sumerians themselves, seven was a very special number. They conceived of a seven-branched Tree of Life, and of seven heavens … In spite of all that, Ur’s seventh day was not holy. On the contrary, it represented danger and darkness. It was risky to do anything at such a time. So it became a day of rest. Ever since the time when Abraham trekked westward from Ur, Mesopotamian influences had helped to form Hebrew traditions."

 My guess is that the Sumerians concept of time influenced the Hebrew Bible's creation story, and the Christian Bible.  No other religions' creation stories limit it to seven days, or six, if you will, plus a day of rest.

Anyone acquainted with the Christian bible knows about its version of the creation:  it starts with, "In the beginning", and goes on to say that God took six days to make the heavens and the Earth, and on the seventh he rested.  It doesn't say why God decided to create the universe and, apparently, he didn't have a beginning, which implies that time only started to exist when God took up the hobby of Creation.

With time, however, civilizations imposed the names of their own gods on days of the week, once seven days became the norm.  I could go into how each day of the week came to get its name in English, French or German, etc., but basically, they can all be traced back to gods, Roman, German, Norse and so on.

It is interesting that other segments of time, such as a month and a year, were not defined by the religious aspect but by the natural movement of the Earth's rotation around the Sun and the moon's rotation around the Earth.  That's what makes the number seven, a unnatural choice for a segment of time.  But woe to those in history who have tried to change it by making the 'week' longer, from the Egyptians to Napoleon.  They did not have long term success.  The seven-day week is, to my knowledge, now globally accepted and religion doesn't come into it.  Well, it does, in that different religions have different days of rest, but still incorporated into the seven-day allotment.

What I was also contemplating about the week, was the different feelings each day of the week elicits in us.  Each day has a different vibe for each of us for personal reasons and based on life experience.  I think that we all have favourite, and not so favourite, days.  This is, no doubt, because of the pattern of life, work and recreation that the seven-day segment of time creates.  I also feel that we pace ourselves according to this arbitrary slice of time.  Songs are dedicated to certain days of the week and the emotional effect they produce in us.

Monday has a bad reputation simply because it's the start of the working week, but it does motivate us.  We glimpse the shining lights of Saturday and Sunday in the distance and work towards them.  "Rainy Days and Mondays (always get me down)", by the Carpenters pretty much sums up most people's attitude to the poor benighted day.

Tuesday manages to keep its head under the radar of being typecast as we settle into the working week and put at least one day behind us.  Wednesday, I have only recently discovered, is known as Hump Day.  We've reached the top of the hill at mid-working-week and can now coast downhill.  Thursday we're almost at the finishing line but not quite.  There is a restrained sense of optimism about it, but by Friday, the horse has broken into a canter, and nothing will hold it back.

Friday has always been, Thank God It's Friday, even if you aren't religious.  It's like a fever that's broken after the 'flu.  It's time for whoopee.  

As a child, I loved Sundays.  Saturday was the weekend too, of course, but Sunday seemed special somehow.  Dad would drag me off to church on that day regularly, but it was our time together.  My mother was a Church of England but, basically, just Christian.  Dad, on the other hand, was the product of a devout Irish Catholic mother who died before I was born.  Dad was, simply, the nicest man on the planet in my estimation, and that remains my opinion to this day.

Once home, he would read the Sunday paper and would give me the comics section from the middle.  I would read this as I lay sprawled on the living room floor from the age of five.  Sunday would roll on in its salubrious and unhurried way and Dad would usually end up mowing the lawn, then napping on the sofa.  We would usually watch a matinee on television after lunch in winter.  In summer we might go to the beach.  My mother was a fabulous entertainer and, often, Sundays included guests to a barbeque that Dad cooked on the patio accompanied by salads, baked potatoes in their jackets and ratatouille cooked by Mum.  All this would be eaten overlooking the beautiful bay of Pittwater north of Sydney.

These were the happiest days of my life, and so I rate Sundays as my best day of the week.  They were also filled, eventually, with sadness as I had to return to my hated boarding school on Monday for the week until Friday and, for me, these days were a torment until I left school.  I no longer attend church on Sunday.  Nature is my church, and I haven't found one with as much God in it as the small one at Mona Vale, on the northern beaches of Sydney that Dad and I attended together.

It's now hard enough for me not working weekdays let alone trying to remember what day it is.  A rhythm has been removed from my life that I found quite satisfactory.  It's good when things have a beginning, a middle and an end.  It gives one an anchor, a map and a destination.  Time may not be tangible, but it sure feels like it, forgive the pun.  Perhaps that's an interesting thing to note about human nature; we can take something abstract and give it form.

I'm now trying to find something to fill the form.  I had a pattern to my life but now I need a passion to work on.  When I find it, I'm going to apply my pattern to it again so I can get my rhythm back.

Wish me luck.

END 

HAIR

My Mother handled Col's hair as if it was live snakes.

Have you ever wondered why humans were left with hair on top of their heads and not much anywhere else post the Homo Erectus stage of evolution? In fact why did hair make an exodus from the body?

At first I thought it must have been the result of humans covering themselves against the cold and the elements so that evolution, taking the hint, made a substantial amount of the body hair drop away.

Then I realised that humans had lost their hirsute covering before leaving Africa and its relative warmth.  Clothing, therefore, doesn't explain it.  I think hair must have remained on the head to protect the skull and brain but why does our head hair grow when that of most other animals grows to a certain length and stops?  The body hair that we do retain only grows to a certain length as well.

Some dogs have hair that grows constantly but this is probably the result of genetic mutation when humans interfered with breeding to create certain types of characteristics in dogs.

Whatever the reason we have retained head hair, it has provided humans with a lot of fun.  Not only that, it doesn't hurt if you cut it and you can manipulate it in all sorts of ways.  I also have a little theory.   Let me try it on you.

Intellect and self-consciousness are a bit like unstable atoms.  Things whirl around changing places and making connections.  It's remarkable we're not all quite mad.  As the brain evolved and self-awareness and thought came about we were fortunate in still having the basic desires of hunger and sex to keep them under control; to give them some direction.  And then there is hair.  What an interesting little distraction that is to a newly formed intellect.  So if a human is feeling a tad unstable or depressed there's always that mop on top which never behaves itself or does what it should that we can attack before turning our angst on some innocent party standing nearby.

Sound crazy?  Well I'll get back to that at a personal level but for now...

In ancient times women discovered that using certain fruits and herbs could alter their hair colour.  Henna and lemon were probably among the first to be used.  Henna was used as a red dye and lemon as a lightener particularly when out in the sun.

The Swedes had the monopoly on blonde and this desirable shade was often accompanied by blue eyes.  While grey and white hair signify age for some reason the equally pale blonde does not.  Perhaps it is more like the sun and has warmth in the tones.  The Northern peoples, who were the first natural blondes, saw little sunlight and this caused the exodus of Melatonin from their skin and hair.  In fact its absence caused them to appear more like that which they had lost, and that was light.  So in a sunless land, hair shone like the missing star.

In 1907 Eugene Schueller, a French chemist, invented "Aureole" a hair lightener that didn't damage the hair.  Its name later changed to "L'Oreal", the company that is still a leader in cosmetic and hair care research today.

I find it is very interesting that, unlike eyes, the colour of hair when passed on genetically seems to become a mixture of the parents, or it can throw up a recessive gene just to be perverse.  Eye colour follows certain rules but have you noticed how a child's hair can be a combination of its parents' colour?

I first noticed this in Eurasions.  The child of a Caucasion and an Asian didn't necessarily turn out with the hair of the Asian parent or that of the Caucasion.  It was often a dark-reddish brown.  My son is a mixture of my natural dark brown hair and his father's blond hair.  He is light brown or ash.  I dye my hair blonde and people get a shock these days when, at my age, they notice my roots coming through a splendid, grey free dark brown.

I inherited this gene from my mother and her mother.  Neither had a grey hair in their heads when they passed away, my mother at eighty-one.  My hair was light brown mouse in my youth but decided to darken as I grew older.

When I was about seven my mother's father told me that if I didn't eat the crusts on my bread, my hair wouldn't curl.  He was stunned when I told him I didn't want curly hair.  It must have been much prized by his generation.

My mother probably did eat her crusts but to no avail.  Her hair was flat as a pancake and fine as silk.  She spent her whole life torturing and tormenting these tragic strands to her will.  Sadly she tried to do the same to mine.  I asked her why she kept her hair short and she insisted it wouldn't grow but, given what she did to it, that wasn't surprising.  It wouldn't have had the resolve or strength of will left to grow.  I know it could because there were pictures of her in her youth when it reached her shoulders.

My mother was a neat freak and that meant not a strand of hair was allowed to stray out of place.  As a child I would walk into her room as she sprayed her hair with pressure pack hairspray.  There is some chemical in it that has a very pungeant odour.  I would run from the room.  To this day, if I must use hairspray, it is aerosol only.

Mum felt the need to exert power over me by controlling my hair.  She insisted it was kept short.  It was bad enough I was given two boys names without adding the insult of boyish hair.  Mum's mother had auburn hair to her waist which she kept in a bun.  I find it odd that Mum had such an aversion to long hair because of this but I believe she had issues with her mother and maybe that was the reason, but don't we all?

She told me that I could grow my hair when I reached twelve years of age.  At twelve I tried, but she bribed, she cajoled, she complained, and I gave in until I was eighteen.  My childhood friend Colleen had gorgeous long hair that her mother plaited each side and looped up and tied with ribbons.

When Col's mother went to hospital to have a baby, Col who was seven at the time, stayed with us.  Mum attempted to do her hair.  It was only recently that Col told me what happened.  She said that when my mother tried to plait her hair, she had handled it as if it was a live snake.  She could barely stand to touch it.  Col said it was such a mess that when she arrived at school, she re-did it herself.  It was the first time she had ever done her own hair.

It is obvious that my early obsessive-compulsive disorder came from my mother.  The very strange thing is that she didn't recognise that she had it.  While I beat mine, she had hers for life.  On Friday afternoon when she would pick me up from boarding school, I would comb my hair before seeing her.  I would get into the car and Mum would, almost without fail, tell me my hair was a mess.  I would say I had just combed it.  She would reply, "Well comb it again."

She also complained about having to pick me up at all.  On Mondays she drove me to school and on Fridays she collected me.  I was a very considerate child and tried never to upset her but this complaint fell on deaf ears.  I hated the school and didn't want to be there.  It was just revenge that she had to do this for me.

Once I got my own way with my hair she couldn't stand it.  When I was in my thirties Rob, my husband, actually forbade her to mention my hair at all again, ever.  He could see the effect it had on me and he could also see she was irrational in regard to it.  It really doesn't pay to have a parent constantly criticise you no matter what your age.

My hair has been long ever since I turned eighteen except for one disastrous occasion when a bad hairdresser bleached it off.  I was not happy for the three years it took to grow back.  For some reason I like being blonde.  I call myself a psychological blonde, but my roots insist on remaining dark brown.  I'm rather proud of the lack of grey but like Mum, my hair is silky and flat as a pancake.

I wear it just above shoulder length now and the beauty of longish hair is being able to pull it up into a bun or a ponytail.  Also, in winter I cover my neck and ears with it at night so they don't get cold.  It is a lovely feeling against my skin and makes me feel cosy.

Something lovely happened when Mum was in the nursing home.  She finally said nice things about my hair.  She was an entirely different person.  Perhaps the mini strokes had changed her personality or perhaps, once Dad had died, she finally turned to me.  Sadly no one could maintain her hair to her standards once she was there.  It was cut shorter than before and lay flat against her head.

All those years of putting rollers in it to give it body had gone.  She did need the body as her face was round and she had large cheekbones but oddly, she quite liked her new gamin style.  I truly wish I could have afforded a hairdresser to keep it plumped and perfect just for her sense of grooming.  I don't hold a grudge, I just miss her.

She had been a hyper-critical mother and her lack of being able to praise me taught me to always praise my own son.  It took me years to develop a sense of self-confidence for, whether she realised it or not, she was always putting me down.  I also learned that you must apologise to your children when you are wrong.  My mother never once in my life apologised to me.  My son isn't aware of the good things I did as a mother.  It's sad to say that a child only really notices when parents do the wrong thing.  Nonetheless I consider this a success for he is a mentally healthy young man.

My mother's obsession with my hair was simply a symptom of her need to control all her surroundings.  As her dementia grew the degree of her problem became glaringly obvious in many other areas as well.  I'm sorry she wasn't able to get help for it but the first thing is to recognise that you have a problem.  It was channeled into her hair and thankfully that probably saved the rest of us from worse repercussions as it bore the brunt of it.

Hair, therefore, has its uses at a deeply psychological level and I'm sure there are people out there with lots of similar stories.  A lot of our personality is described by the way we wear our hair and the way we try to control it.  A psychologist should write a book on it, if one already hasn't.

END

THE HAPPIEST DAY OF MY LIFE.

The Winning Spermatozoon

You know what it's like when someone asks you what is the best book you've ever read or best film you've seen? I honestly couldn't name one from either of the two categories.

I've enjoyed quite a lot of both but there are none that top either list.  Also, as I grow older, a lot of things lose their original impact.

When I see a film for the first time, I may really like it, but later it will blend in with all the other good ones that I remember.  It's the same with a good time.  Something may be momentous when it happens, but will gradually become just a part of the large quilt of experiences that make up my life.

I have many happy memories but oddly there are three separate days that really stand out in memory and it is because of their dreadfulness.  They were the kind of awful that, at the time, detached me momentarily from reality.  Each involved the extraordinary behavior of people I knew and loved.

I am not about to recount the events but they stand out as crystalline episodes of horror.  I don't dwell on them at all and they came to mind as a comparison when I had the idea to write a blog about my happiest memories.  I'd rather not remember these unhappy ones but they made me wonder why my happy memories don't compare with them in intensity.

When I tried to think of my happiest memories the three bad ones presented themselves as memories that spring vividly to mind, while the happy ones tended to homogenize into a whole.  This concerned me and I had to think of why this had occurred.

I do have very happy memories.  I really gave this some thought and came to an interesting conclusion but will take you along the lines of thinking that led me to it.

Do the memories of the unhappy episodes stand out because of some survival instinct?  Is it the shock value of an event that imprints it so distinctly on my mind?

The happy memories have no shock value.  There may be the element of surprise but not of shock.  The happy experiences are also usually longer lasting and as such, the time frame is less concentrated and intense than an unhappy experience.

I thought about the day I was married, being the usual generic notion of a happy day.  Is that a happy memory of mine?  In a word 'no'.  I hate weddings and wanted to elope and spend the money on a honeymoon but my mother insisted.  I spent the morning detailing my car to keep my mind off the coming ceremony and post-celebration.  I also hate wedding dresses and can't understand people who save for years for the ceremony and reception rather than spending it all on a honeymoon.  This isn't criticism, I just don't relate to them.

Well, didn't I enjoy it at the end of the day?  No, I breathed a sigh of relief when it was all over.  In fact that made me happy.  There's nothing like relief to make you happy.  I do credit my parents with giving a wonderful reception at our home.  I only wish my heart had been in it.

What about having a baby, which is meant to be one of your happiest days?  No, it hurt and I felt too sick to be overcome with joy.  I loved the result but only after I was capable of feeling normal again.  It is a very foolish thing to make women think that they should be overwhelmed with joy after they give birth.  I'm sure many feel guilty when they don't feel this way.  Some women do, of course, but most are too exhausted or overwhelmed after the experience to feel immediate joy.  Some births are kinder than others naturally which helps mother and child bonding.

My mother did a rather sweet thing before I had my son.  I asked her if giving birth to me had hurt.  She said she was too anesthetized to really notice.  Afterwards I told her it had been incredibly painful and that she must have been lucky.  I had also been given two epidurals, one when the other wore off.  "No," she said, "I lied.  I didn't want  to worry you."

It's unexpected things that make people happy.  For me it's a beautiful day, the sight of the ocean or some other body of water, the quality of sunlight or a storm.  Nature has always been my greatest source of joy.

Having eyesight makes me happy.  I couldn't enjoy life without mine.  I'm not a bit musical and can live without music entirely.  I love silence and the sounds of nature.  I love the smell of the beach and an ocean breeze.

Living in Hong Kong for three years is one of my happiest memories.  Some bad things also happened there but my love of the place was such a buffer these faded away.  Most of all the memory of where I grew up makes me happy.  I was lucky enough to live in the most beautiful place in Australia.

It had an incomparable view of water and headlands.  The colours changed with every angle of the sun and the weather changed the mood and colour of the water.  There was nothing like it when, after a sunny day with a dazzling blue sky and calm water, a Southerly buster blew in and the water whipped up into frothy tips, dark clouds swirled above it and lighting forks split the sky.

Sadly my parents sold the place to retire and I mourn the loss of it to this day.  I am still eternally grateful to have experienced my childhood in such a beautiful setting.  I honestly feel that I am a part of it that has been torn from the whole and, like the Flying Dutchman, destined to wander forever detached from it.  Better to have loved and lost, as they say, than never to have loved at all.

The people in my life have proved to be problematical.  I need and love the people to whom I am close but all relationships require constant negotiation and tactical redistribution according the moods of those involved in them.

I try to be constant and amenable but I'm still accused of being difficult on occasion.  I often think this is because of the other party's change of mood.  You know the situation: "It's not me, it's you."  The problem is, it is all relative no matter who is right and who is wrong.  Perhaps no one is right or wrong.  Certainly there are rarely winners.

I do know, however, when I'm in a mood.  I feel guilty about it and even tend to apologise instead of just letting it rip.  As an only child to a charming yet depressive mother prone to moods I learned to do what I call 'the Boston two step' around her throughout my childhood.  This is a bad habit as it didn't prepare me to deal with other people.

I am strong and do stand up for myself, but even when I do I tend to see what the other party is thinking and see myself from their point of view.  When I was married and at twenty-four years of age I finally stood up to my mother and lost my temper with her.  She hardly spoke to me for the next six months.

My father had always been oblivious to her nature.  He didn't understand people at all but just treated everyone well and the same.  The result was that he never understood why my mother and I fought.  Eventually after he died my mother mellowed and we became close in the way I had always wanted.  It may have been late in the day but it finally happened.

Holidays and vacations away always give me pleasure because I love to explore the unknown.  I haven't had the money for a while and this has been very frustrating.  It's not cause for unhappiness though because I am healthy.  I wasn't for a long time.  I suffered from Chronic Fatigue for twenty-four years.  I first came down with it when everyone thought it was a psychological condition.

Because I had previously suffered from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Panic Attacks, it was assumed I was imagining things.  The fact that I had overcome both those conditions didn't seem to count.  Gradually the medical profession along with other professionals realised it was physiological.  That was a relief in itself.  I was fortunate in that the condition gradually lifted five years ago.  I was thrilled to bits.  Life became easier again and it's so great to feel good that lack of money doesn't matter.

That brings me to what really was the happiest day of my life.  I can say unequivocally that it was the day I was born.  Being born is a privilege and there'll always be bad along with the good.  The fact is I'm here to experience everything as opposed to not being here.

Life is a happy surprise which is why, I believe, that it's the awful days that create the strongest memories.  They don't add up to much in the whole span of my life so I can count the number of these, whereas I can't count the happy ones because there are too many.  The former are too rare in the happy event that is life.  There are days that are neither happy or sad but just run of the mill.  At least they seem run of the mill.  Just have flu for a week or feel rotten for some other reason and you'll come back to 'run of the mill' and revel in it.  Sometimes, we just take things for granted.  The fact that we do is positive in a way.  It means nothing really bad is going on.  I think that's all part of being happy.

I like to imagine the little spermatozoon, that made up one half of me, swimming against millions of other hopeful, competing spermatoza towards the egg that made up my other half.  It's the first race I ever won.  It made me the unique person I am against so much competition.  I am not going to fail the little guy by not enjoying myself now that I'm here.

THE END.

WHY ARE CAR MANUFACTURERS SUCH DIPSTICKS?

I think that when you are going to criticize something it is best to start by saying something positive about your subject first.  The subject I have in mind is modern car design.

OK here's the positive remark.  I really love reversing cameras in cars.  The car I drive for work has one and it lets me know how close I can back up before hitting something behind me.  It has a red line on the screen and I must be sure not to let this touch an object on the screen or the car will too.  This allows me to get nice and close without causing damage.

Right, now onto criticism.

Why do I have to get into a car that has become an oven closed up in the sun?  Even once the air-conditioner is turned on, it takes up to twenty minutes for the upholstery, glass and internal plastic to stop pulsing with heat.

I have long tried to devise a system for fixing this that would sell.  The trouble is that no car needs add-ons attached to its exterior or interior, at least the number it would take to shade the car.  Roof racks are the exception to this but they are designed to look modular and hug the roof.

The attachments for shading a whole car would have to be big, light and able to be rolled into place and later back into their holders.  There would also need to be hooks attached around the car to hold the screens when they are rolled over the windows.  Not only this, they would look bad, be easily damaged and pulling them over all the windows when you leave the car would be incredibly time consuming.

The answer therefore lies within.  I thought of a roll screen that started on the dashboard and could be pulled over the front seat and hooked behind the rear seats.  This would only protect the steering wheel and upholstery and they may still overheat.  Internal roll up screens on each window and front and rear windscreens would, unless they were automated, also need time to put up and need attachments to hold them.

The answer lies with the car manufacturers.

I have asked myself why they don't come up with internal black or heat proof screens that slide up inside the power windows and front and back windscreens.  These would be automatic, totally integrated within the car and not an eyesore.

Cost, I hear you scream, that's why.  Well how about a vent or something?

It's a lot like cup holders and wheels on suitcases.  These were such darned obvious inventions that no one bothered to make them.  Obviously wheels on suitcases have nothing to do with cars, I'm just making the point that the obvious tends to get overlooked.

The manufacturers are too busy putting in hands-free phones, key-less entry, GPS and the Internet into cars to think about simple and effective improvements.

For example, windscreens; once these were more vertical and had a sun visor to protect passengers from the sun.  There were quadrant windows that you could adjust to get a breeze directed straight at you.

Now you can roast like meat in the front of a car under the sloping windscreen.  And isn't everyone concerned about skin cancer?  Don't children at school have to put on hats before they go outside?  But you can get a fabulous tan in the front seat of your car without even going to the beach.  A car must look aerodynamic even if it kills you by allowing you to get malignant skin cancers.

Doors are another pain.  If you park on a sideways slope or a hill, you have to hold them open or they'll slam on some part of your anatomy as you try to clamber out.  Hasn't anyone thought of hydraulic doors that can stay open?

It's hard to believe how much money is spent on new designs when nothing innovative or sensible is added to new models.

It wouldn't matter if I bought a Mini or a Maserati, they are both just cars and don't have any of the features I would like to have added.

I like rear windscreen wipers that many cars do have and some clever cars have two sun visors so that one goes down in front of you and one at the side window so that, as the car turns, your eyes are shielded from the sun.

One amazingly stupid thing about cars that have power assisted brakes and steering is that, when they stall, the brakes drop to one third of their efficiency and steering becomes like driving a tank.  This strikes me as being an enormous safety risk.

One last problem with modern cars is that the elderly and people with knee problems have trouble lifting their legs over the sill of the chassis as they get in.  I don't know why it has to be higher than the floor.

It would be great, if possible, for the front passenger seat to be able to swivel so that the elderly and those with problem legs, could plonk their butts down first and then deal with their legs.  It may not be possible but it's a nifty idea.

And how the about the boot/trunk?  Although some people have managed to stuff bodies in these, getting heavy suitcases into them is always difficult.  A handy little winch system would be well received.  All right, that's probably pushing things a bit but it's a little dream of mine.

All this may be wishful thinking but, just as cup holders took a century to make their way into modern cars, so maybe some of my ideas will eventually be taken on.  In the meantime, I don't care what I drive as long as it has four wheels, power windows, air-conditioning, goes forward at a reasonable speed and brakes as required.  I do like an automatic these days as I've become lazy.

But what I want, what I really, really want is a heat proof car.

I'm amazed that a new car can cost over fifty thousand dollars and after a few years, be valued at less than five thousand.  If it still works what is the difference?  If you bought replacement parts for such a car and fully rebuilt it, it would cost more than a brand new Porche.

Imagine if your house devalued with age the way a car does?  It provides the same shelter and the car does the same job.  Life is nuts.