A few vignettes

vignette

Pronunciation: vin-ˈyet, vēn- yet

Function: noun

Etymology: French, from Middle French vignete, from diminutive of vigne (vine)

Date: 1611

1 : a running ornament (as of vine leaves, tendrils, and grapes) put on or just before a title page or at the beginning or end of a chapter

2 a: a picture (as an engraving or photograph) that shades off gradually into the surrounding paper b: the pictorial part of a postage stamp design as distinguished from the frame and lettering

3 a: a short descriptive literary sketch b: a brief incident or scene (as in a play or movie)

Although I'm using the term to describe a blend of 3a and b, I'm not anticipating achieving anything "literary" here. I just like the word - and it sounds better than "miscellany" or "observations."

So, in South Africa, movie theatre seats are assigned - or, in some cases, selected - when purchasing tickets. I forgot about this when I took myself to see "An Education" a few weeks ago. It wasn't very crowded, so I settled into a comfortable seat smack in the middle of the house, American-style, with a nice buffer of empty seats around me. After the previews had started and more viewers had arrived, I realized my mistake. Fortunately, the four young women who arrived and found me in their row were just as happy to sit a few more rows forward. I've had a lot of these moments where relatively familiar and routine transactions (such as paying for groceries or getting a train ticket) have been just different enough for me to feel disoriented or at least clumsy.

A reader of this blog recently pointed out to me that my blog's name is not original. In picking it, I made an Internet 101 error. As it turns out, "blair abouts" are a model of slip-on shoe long available from (though perhaps now discontinued?) from the Blair corporation in Pennsylvania. (Read the company story here or go to Blair.com to shop). The lesson: check out a name before you use it by running a basic Google search - although I think I still would have gone with the name...

It was hard to sleep last week as the temperatures neared 40°C (that's over 100°F!). Actually, even when the nights have been cooler, the stories of fatal muggings, home invasions, and other violent crimes that are always in mind have often been enough to stave off any truly restful sleep. Then there are the mosquitoes. Even though Cape Town is malaria free, it only takes one buzzing invader to get me to bolt up, turn on the light, and seek to exact a mortal toll. Since the windows in my cottage have ventilation holes cut into the pediment above them, the mosquitoes can easily get in. To deter them, I use a plug-in repellent dispenser. Nonetheless, every few nights I am tormented by a few pesky blood-suckers that seem immune to the poisonous fog in the room (perhaps another obstacle to a good night's sleep?). At least it's been easier to go to bed early now that it's getting dark so early.

Even though the days are getting shorter, and so the bright sun is rising ever later, my days start early. Three days a week it's to get to 6:45 soccer training sessions. I set an alarm, although I don't need one on Monday mornings. Since this is trash day, my wake-up call each Monday is sounds of the "trolley people." Starting as early as 5 a.m., competitive waves of resourceful scavengers descend on the neighborhood, pushing shopping carts (trolleys) to see what of use or value can be recovered from the garbage bins lined up on the streets for collection. I was caught off guard by this at first (how would I react to this at home?), but now I greet them as I pass by on my way out to start my day in a Cape Town that, I imagine, is largely unknown and certainly inaccessible to them.

That sentiment reminds me of an Adrienne Rich quotation that I came across in a teaching textbook yesterday:

Invisibility is a dangerous and painful condition... When those who have power to name and to socially construct reality choose not to see you or hear you, whether you are dark-skinned, old, disabled, female, or speak with a different accent or dialect than theirs, when someone with the authority of a teacher, say, describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing. Yet you know you exist and others like you, that this is a game with mirrors. It takes some strength of soul and not just individual strength, but collective understanding- to resist this void, this non-being, into which you are thrust, and to stand up, demanding to be seen and heard.

"Invisibility in Academe"