Saturnalia (dec 17-23)

Saturnalia, the Roman festival held in honour of the Roman God of Saturn, the god of agriculture: wheat, barley and donuts. The Romans invented bread (which Jesus broke, making the Romans mad) and it was good and everything that was invented after that was compared to bread. The printing press, the trouser press, and all the types of buttons that one can press. "This the best thing since bread!" people would declaim in the streets and down alleys too. A few more things were invented like teabags and helicopters then in the 1920s Jackie Inglenook from Swansea accidentally dropped a sharp knife onto a loaf while shaving and sliced bread was born. It was good, arguably the best thing ever although Jackie ended up with an unbecoming handlebar moustache. Over a century later all things are still measured against the benchmark of sliced bread and although a few good things have been invented (penicillin, light sabers, cluedo) nothing has surpassed the advent of sliced bread, except for toast.

the transcendental nudist

I was in a foreign country recently because I have to travel a lot with work (not that it feels like work because I love what I do, I’m fortunate in that respect and my heart goes out to the people who work purely for monetary reasons like money and not both a lot of money and creative fulfillment) but to me it didn’t feel like a foreign country. Because I am broad-minded cosmopolitan man of the world with a subscription to the National Geographic, it just felt like home, or a former British colony. I was in Belgium. Is Belgium a former colony? I don’t know and I don’t care to know. If it is, then that’s history now and my transcendental meditation teachers forbids me from having anything to do with the past. I have to remain at all times, physically, mentally, and emotionally in the present. Which makes it very difficult for me to plan anything for the future. Train tickets are very expensive for me because I’m not allowed to book in advance. But my spiritual riches more than make up for my financial losses. When I leave my meditation class I often say to my teacher, “See you next week Guru Jonty” and Guru Jonty chastises me for invoking the future and breaking the spell of the eternal present. One time, finding myself in a grammatically adventurous mood I referred to the tense of the “future perfect” and Guru Jonty lost his temper, twisted one of his chakras and punched me in the groin.

“Tough love,” said Guru Jonty.

“My favourite kind of love,” I replied, as Guru Jonty stroked me better - without charging me extra.

Where was I? In Belgium. Or at least my body was in Belgium. I was there on a conference for work, I have to go to a lot of conferences for work, I’ve only ever missed one conference for work and that was because I had to go to a symposium. That was for work too - in Athens of all places. The subject of the symposium was the history of symposiums from Plato to the present - it was so meta! I had to keep that one a secret from Guru Jonty or he would have blown his crown and slapped me in the penis.

Back to Belgium. I was early for the conference so I walked away from the Brussels Town Hall and stood in front of Le Petit Julien, the famous bronze sculpture of a naked little boy urinating into the basin of a fountain. It was so beautiful, and pure and inspiring that I decided to remove my own clothes, even my glasses, and relieve myself next to the little boy. It was a very liberating experience, even for an extreme liberal like me. As I stood there, uninhibited by material attire, and unburdened by regard for petit bourgeois social acceptability, I felt at one with the universe.

After all, your body is temple so why would you ever cover it up? is a question I routinely ask myself. Incidentally, there’s a condition called erotomania, it’s a type of delusion in which the affected person believes that another person, usually a stranger, a high-status or famous person, is in love with him or her. Sometimes I think I have this condition but then I realise I’m just getting carried away with my own reflection in the mirror.

Back to Belgium. All the unrest and disharmony in the world seemed to evaporate and in that moment I forgot all about the plight of the polar bears, the inequality of the sexes and most importantly, my outrage at the ignoramus I overheard in the supermarket mispronouncing quinoa. (And you wonder why I only buy food online now, honestly I think Waitrose should introduce an entrance exam). So there I was, in a blissful state of Belgium reverie that would have made Jean Jacque Rousseau have some kind of mystical orgasm - just me sans vetements and a little naked boy, standing proud, members out, as God intended. Not however, as the Brussels Gendarmerie intended. 

Arrested for being free, rest assured the irony wasn’t wasted on me.