Day 3 – Frustration

Hmmm…. despite commitments to the contrary, the cabinets are not all installed, and not much more will be done until Monday. A plasterer will be coming in tomorrow to tidy up the walls ready for tiling, but otherwise, nothing will be happening for the next few days. And that’s as it should be – tradies are entitled to their weekends.

Take a look at my pantry.

(Description: Table covered with bottles and jars and tins and packets – standard pantry contents)

One table is covered with food stuffs, the other is covered with crockery, we have no stove, no sink, no dishwasher. All that we have is some promising gaps in the kitchen where such appliances will go, on Monday, or so I’m told.

Mr Strange Land is philosophical about the delays. But he is not the person who (mostly) does all the food organising and preparing around here, he has an office elsewhere to escape to, and even better for him, he’s heading out of the country for a few days, and by the time he gets back, it should all be done.

So here’s where we’re at. If you find it frustrating not finding out any more just yet, I promise you that your frustration is nothing, a mere soupçon, a bagatelle, compared to mine.

(Description: kitchen cupboards, covered with long bench, angular piece of wood on top of bench, at far end, various cabinets, general air of half-way there)

Earlier posts in this series: Day 1 – The problem, Day 2 – Deconstruction

Friday Feminist – Maria Lugones (2)

Extract 3 in a series of 3: extract 1, extract 2

You are ill at ease in our world. You are ill at ease in our world in a very different way than we are ill at ease in yours. You are not of our world and again, you are not of our world in a very different way than we are not of yours. In the intimacy of a personal relationship we appear to you many times to be wholly there, to have broken through or to have dissipated the barriers that separate us because you are Anglo and we are raza. When we let go of the psychic state that I referred to above in the direction of sympathy, we appear to ourselves equally whole in your presence but our intimacy is thoroughly incomplete. When we are in your world many times you remake us in your own image, although sometimes you clearly and explicitly acknowledge that we are not wholly there in our being with you. When we are in your world we ourselves feel the discomfort of having our own being Hispanas disfigured or not understood. And yet, we have had to be in your world and learn its ways. We have to participate in it, make a living in it, live in it, be mistreated in it, be ignored in it, and, rarely, be appreciated in it. In learning to do these things or in learning to suffer them or in learning to enjoy what is to be enjoyed or in learning to understand your conception of us, we have had to learn your culture and thus your language and self-conceptions. But there is nothing that necessitates that you understand our world: understand, that is, not as an observer who understands things, but as a participant, as someone who has a stake in them understanding them. So your being ill at ease in our world lacks the features of our being ill at ease in yours precisely because you can leave and you can always tell yourselves that you will be soon out of there and because the wholeness of your selves is never touched by us, we have no tendence=y to remake you in our image.

Elizabeth V. Spelman, “Have we got a theory for you! Feminist Theory, Cultural Imperialism and the Demand for ‘The Woman’s Voice’ ” by Maria C. Lugones and Elizabeth V. Spelman, in Women’s Studies International Forum, 1983