anomaly
the domestic minx
29 Comments
I almost didn't recognize my friend Rebecca.
Gone were the mummy jeans and the voluminous shirts.
Gone indeed was the mummy tummy. Gone, gone gone were the luscious Rubenesque curves, replaced instead by a lighter luminescence more becoming of my Botticelli Angel.
"Oh, you look. sooo. fucking. hot!"
Oh, she did and she knew it. 30 pounds had evaporated since our last meeting and she was glowing.
But then, Rebecca has always glowed. In the thirteen years of being her dear and darling friend, I have basked in the glow of everyman's Angelina Jolie. With her immaculate Mediterranean skin, her lustrous hair and oh, those lips, she has been a delectable and luscious fruit!! I have seen her swell and ripen over the years, blossoming from the 21 year old first-year-out-teacher/pin-up of my son, through a trinity of pregnancies to the 34 year old goddess she is today.
Incredibly creative, unfathomably intelligent and inestimably civilized, Rebecca has remained my precious confidante because, while being indefatigably darling and delicious, she remains as straight as a die, as wise as Athena and as predictable as clockwork.
So I was doubly surprised today when she exposed to me something totally incongruous with her persona. Rebecca hasn't worn a watch for two years.
Hello!
Doesn't everybody wear a watch?
Even I, bohemian adventurer and decadent minx, wear a watch!
And people like Rebecca are synonymous with The Watch, are they not?
They are the people that write everything in their diary, keeping lists, sending thank you cards, spending months creating the perfect invitation to their birthday tea party, manipulating and mastering their weight loss to magnificent result.
They are The Time Keepers. They are The Metronomes
While the rest of the world crumbles and disappears within it's own bottom in a whirlpool of flotsam, jetsam and rampant disorganization, people like Rebecca keep time.
They keep perfect time and they never miss a beat.
So when Rebecca asked me today, over lunch, what the time was, I had to laugh.
The Time Keeper asking the Butterfly Effect for the time?
It was as incongruous as it was enlightening.
Deliciously, endearingly enlightening and utterly, unexpectedly shocking.
And yet, not...
Because nothing is always as it seems, dear reader.
Anomalies are a delicious departure from the given order.
They shock, surprise and shake our foundation, but the shot of adrenaline works wonders for our system.
Instrumental in forcing us to look at things from another perspective, it moves us out of our comfort zone and into unfamiliar territory, where our subject ceases to fit in a box, it doesn't wear a badge, it isn't typical and it certainly isn't the same, all the time.
I must admit, after discovering that someone I know so intimately, someone I know to be so ordered, is quietly reliant on intuition and primitive forms of channelling to tell the time, is a shock.
I can tell you I was so flabbergasted I required another shiraz to see me through lunch!
The light had shifted and my newly nubile friend, sitting before me was shining in a vision fresh and splendid.
An anomaly, no - two - emerging, small, delectable and beautiful.
Meticulous management through intuitive impression.
And all ticking over in such a timely fashion...
I am amazed, as one should be when there is transmutation.
The shift in perception that occurs when things cease to be what they have seemed to be, is something deep, dark and disturbing.
Often it is disruptive..
Sometimes it is distressing.
Occasionally, it is simply devastating..
But sometimes, sometimes, it is delightfully delicious...
This double feature, for Rebecca, was exquisitely timed.
All without a watch too!
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Reader Comments (29)
let me start by saying you have the unique treasure of having beautiful (in all respects of the word) friends, all which have some uncanny resemblance to a celebrity minx (ie. scarlett johannson, angelina jolie, etc.). i could say you resemble calista flockhart or kylie minogue, but that might be depreciative toward you (in my eyes). anyweighs, being in tune with the physical world around us is a gift some have more than others. i wouldn't be suprised if you've ever woken a brief moment before your alarm clock was to shriek in the dawn. not wearing a watch is liberating, but some feel naked and lost without it. i, for one, relish those days i can't wear a watch and i can navigate with my own internal compass and hourglass. great post, minx.
Excellent post...(as usual!)
Now, where do you meet all these beautiful people? I may have to cross this OCEAN in-between us, just to get a glimpse of your friends. (Good for her, 30lbs is hard to do)
...I do wear a watch. I am a MOM, so I have to stay on schedule, but mostly, I wear a watch to see how much longer I have to sit in my damned office.
Darling Raffi,
I slept through the alarm this morning due to waking many times through the night, an unwilling victim of my incessantly aggravating (yet adorable) dog's body clock!!
Yes, although I do have enormous intuition and sensitivity, I prefer to wear a watch due to my penchant for getting lost in the moment. I literally lose track of time...a watch keeps me on track.
And there is nothing more delicious than having to ignore this.
Ah yes, my friends are all fabulous, not least because I think they are. I find it wonderful to attach some celebrity status to them, again, not least because they deserve it...
Oh the delight of AJ's lips and SJ's cheekbones...
I do, it seems, have Calista's eyes and Kylie's size..
and it is not depreciative at all - perhaps it is too much credit!!
xx
Darling Meleah,
I have collected my precious friends over many, many years..and I treasure them.
They all share the similarity of being as beautiful on the inside as they are on the skin. Like you, Meleah.
Cross the ocean, darling, and join me for lunch. We can even throw the watches away for the afternoon!!
xx
You never know... I JUST MIGHT!!
What a fabulous post...
I also don't wear a watch. I feel tied down and constrained if I do. A boyfriend once gave me a watch for Christmas and it lasted on my wrist till about New Year. It is now ticking away merrily in a cupboard somewhere.
However if you wear a watch or not you are still a time watcher. There are clocks everwhere. On your computer, on the office wall, on your mobile and outside certain shops. It is impossible to escape the grips of time.
Oh please do Meleah!!
It will be a wonderfully decadent visit from start to finish.
I will make sure of it!!
xx
Hello darling OL!!!
How wonderful that you don't wear a watch! I imagine it must be deliciously liberating!!
My dear frind A who travelled to Santorini with me (see various stories on this fabulous place) never wore a watch. She refused, always relying on her intuitive body clock. It failed her a few times but, in essence, shaped the fascinating, freedom loving free spirit that she was!!
And yes, clocks are everywhere...on our phones, on the wall and right here on my computer!!
xx
How lovely your friend sounds. And how fabulous her loss of 30 pounds. Would that I be as diligent as she in my quest to firm up the old carcass!
I used to be meticulous about time. Never late. Always knew when and where at all the appropriate times. Now? Well, let's just say I'm working out whether it matters. The results are quite interesting.
I have phases where I wear a watch and then there will be months I don't. When you are wearing one you think its indispensable and you can't imagine not wearing a watch... but if you stop you realize that it too like most other things in life is dispensable!!!
You make everything sound so much fun and so alive one can picture oneself being on that table with you....
How did she loose it I too have to loose at least 15 extra I've put on :(
Darling Kellypea,
Rebecca is doing my head in with her focus at the moment. She is a force to be reckoned with!!
Isn't it funny how working at home changes your entire perspective on the importance of issues...
I too weigh up the relevance of things in relation to how it will upset my equilibrium.
Having TIME is so blissful I am afraid I will squander it accidentally...
xx
Darling Amber xx
One has to be without something to realize how important/not it is.
I fear if I take off my watch I may literally disappear down/up the rabbit hole that is my bottom and never be seen again. I teeter on the edge most days...It is possible I am the Mad March Hare!!
Rebecca is excrutiatingly devoted to the Cohen Weight Loss Program and has lost 30lb over 6 weeks.
She looks brilliant.
However, such is her devotion I had to force a champagne down her throat while I casually swilled two glasses of Shiraz with my lunch!!
I am very persuasive.
I suggest you join us next time, darling, especially if you enjoy lots of laughs, titillating conversation and a glass or two!!
And I suspect you do!!
XX
'Who Knows Where The Time Goes?' as the song err ... goes.
Don't you think that the watchless are better able than the rest of us to hang onto their youth? Those languid summer days of yore when, as children, we never knew the time, had never become slaves to it's ceaseless ticking?
More power to your friend - and maybe there's a lesson there, for all of us enchained by the clock?
I'm so sorry my visits to your parlour have been so fitful of late, darling Minx. I seem to be 'on the road' so much these days, that it's a struggle to fit in all the required reading (in which category I of course include your fine blog).
Oh Lord, I am most definitely sinking in the mire of flotsam and jetsam. I've never owned a watch. Rebecca sounds perfect in that she is creative and magical, and yet also - a metronome. Secretly, I would like to be a metronome. Entire days go by, weeks sometimes, in which I achieve absolutely nothing. I comfort myself by saying that 'cool kids never have the time' but heck, I could use some.
I would listen to your heartbeat, Minx. That's the kind of timepiece we gorillas like.
Oh LOL! I don't wear a watch either, not for several years. I used to have a watch for every day of the week, such a collection I had. How odd, I hadn't thought about it.
It is delightful to discover new things about people you know so well.
I also do not wear a watch. Because they stop working when I do. I have this effect on many electronic devices. Maybe I'm actually made of kryptonite...hmmm... I have a rather strong electromagnetic force field. That sounds very super heroesque doesn't it?! Maybe I'm a super hero.
Or maybe not.
I do have clocks everywhere and they annoy the crap out of me. Time is an illusion anyway.
Your friend sounds delicious, just like you. Another fabulously written post by the ever fascinating Minx.
xoxo
Ms. M
I have days with or without...days without are of course the best ones!
I rarely wear a watch but I do utilize the clock on my cell phone much too often for my taste. I do not have clocks in certain areas, though, my garden/pool/patio for example. I refuse to allow the blasted timepiece to dictate how long I languish in the liquid abyss or meander through my herbs and swarms of butterflies!
Lovely post as always dear Minx!
How sad indeed that we have become slaves to the incessant ticking of the clock...
I often wish for 48 hours in my day!
There never seems to be enough time to do all the things I want to do..
No doubt you have been feeling the same lately, dear Bill, with all your time "on the road"...the hours just disappear en route. So glad you popped into my parlour for a bit of refreshment along the way.
xx