The Philosophy of the Murse

I am fed up of the debate over next week’s referendum. I am fed up of the last ditch efforts being resorted to by both the YES and NO campaigns. I am fed up of the egomaniacal, misleading pronouncements from on high. I am fed up of the Facebook notes, blog posts, letters to the editor and weekly newspaper commentaries. I am fed up of seemingly intelligent people debasing themselves to the lowest common denominator in order to get votes. I am fed up of my own intelligence being insulted every time I listen to or read anything about the proposed constitution of this country. I am voting on Wednesday next week (soon eh?) and I am voting based on my conscience. I am voting based on my worldview and how this proposed constitution syncs with my worldview (or doesn’t, as the case may be). That’s how I’m voting.

And I’m framing the letter that I received from my Prime Minister urging me to vote yes since it is probably the only letter I will ever receive from someone in that position. It doesn’t bother me that almost everyone I know received the same letter. Nor does it bother me that the letter addresses me by my first name, as if I am regularly at cocktails with my PM in ambassadorial circles, rather than being a lowly teacher who would rather not wash his feet, thank you very much.

And I think I’m going to youtube the YES campaign advertisement that features a prominent Vincentian businessman saying things that he clearly knows nothing about. It is hilarious.

And tonight I am not going to blog about any of this. Instead, I am going to blog about my one time bromance with murses. Just to clarify, by murse I mean man-purse, not male nurse. Urban Dictionary says that the word can mean both things. So I just wanted to clarify.

I’ve always thought that the murse was a useful, functional tool for a man. I’m not a fan of bulging pockets. I usually have several things to tote around with me: my wallet, my mobile phone, my sunglasses and my keys. Sometimes, there are even other things like letters or odd bits of paper. I don’t like these things in my pockets because they make me feel loaded down below the waist, and I have enough weight to carry around in that region as it is (booyah!). Also, when I put my wallet in my back pocket I usually end up sitting on it and breaking my credit cards.

So, for me, the discovery of murses was like the discovery of… well… something really nifty. The unfortunate reality is that murses only really work in Europe or in very specific parts of North America (not the parts where they grow corn or wheat or potatoes or raise cows or anything like that). I had several when I lived in the UK – all different styles, colours, fabrics and pocket amounts. When I moved back home I, with a heavy heart, packed them all in a barrel and never saw them again, except when traveling North. Apparently, real Caribbean men have bulging pockets.

I did find a solution, however. Nowadays I’m all about messenger bags.

Anyway, the point of this whole thing (this entire murse discussion is only the preamble to more wonderful stuff) is that I had occasion recently to dig up in that old barrel. I’ve lost a substantial amount of weight of late, and I went hunting for my skinny clothes. In my search, I came upon three of my old murses. I held them, stroked them and opened them all. The first is a sort of washed out, soft, blue denim (doesn’t even feel like denim), the second is brown and full of pockets and the third is sleek and heavy. It is in the third murse that tonight’s story really takes off (finally).

About four years ago I accompanied my dad to the UK for medical attention (his medical attention, not mine). I took this murse along for the ride. I also apparently took it to Toronto with me a few years ago on another trip. Anyway, here’s what I found in my murse:

• Colour coded e-mails from the friends I’d planned to look up in the UK, and who I’d already told to expect me;

• Two pens – one from ECGC and the other from a marketing company my friend started, which went under when her business partner stole all her money;

• One of the weird clip/ticket type things you get at museums; this one is from the Royal Ontario Museum;

• Body Shop Coconut lip butter (don’t ask);

• A couple credit card receipts from some place in Wales; and

• The photo negatives from a tour I took (along with über friends Analisa, Geneva & Analisa’s mother) of some of the all-inclusive resorts in Jamaica; this is a particularly odd thing to find since I took that trip in 1997, long before I even entertained thoughts of owning a murse!

Of all the things in my murse, the one that gave me the most pause was the sheet of paper with the colour coded e-mails from my friends. For the life of me, when I was in the UK with dad for those three weeks I could not find that e-mail list anywhere. I searched high and low, completely turned my murse inside out… all to no avail. I was unable to look up any of these friends when I was in London, except one, whose number I had written on another piece of paper somewhere.

Consequently, I did not get to reconnect with people who were, and remain still, very special to me. I’d contacted a couple other people who either never got back to me or weren’t in the UK at the time. Anyway, I spent most of the time nursing (mursing?) dad back to health, so it’s not like I would’ve been able to spend much time with these guys. But a phone call is always nice.

On a slightly related note (but not really), one night while we were on that trip I went out and left dad alone in the flat. I was out for about four hours. Now here’s the deal with the flat we rented. It was below street level and there were two doors: one to the foyer and the other to the stairs leading to the street. In the foyer was a walk-in linen closet. About ten minutes after I left, dad thought he heard me coming down the stairs and decided to open the front door and scare me. He let himself into the foyer and the door to the flat closed behind him. It was not me he’d heard. When I returned to the flat four hours later, dad was sitting in the linen closet, covered in towels (it was late November) and wearing nothing but his underwear, a shirt jack and the bandages on his face. The poor man had huddled up for all that time waiting for me to come home and let him back into the warm flat.

Now back to what I actually set out to talk about.

Opening my murse was like opening a magical bag of memories. I remember that trip so clearly. I fondly remember each of the friends that I never got to see. I remember the entire life I once had in London. Hell, I even remember how dry my damn lips kept getting, prompting me to buy the (now greasy – I checked) lip butter. So not only was my murse once stylish and practical, it is also the repository of an entire segment of my life. When I packed my murses into that barrel and shoved them into my parents’ cellar, it is also as if I shoved a piece of me in there with them.

We all like coming home. Home, no matter how contentious a place it is, will always be the ultimate comfort zone (by home I mean your physical country, town, parish, whatever – not the house you grew up in), but being away from home made me who I am today. It is being away from my comfort zone that made my brain expand; it is being away from home that made my realm of experience grow beyond what is on my doorstep, that made me see my home culture through eyes that can both appreciate and criticise in equal measure, rather than operating in polarities. I would never wear my murse while walking through Kingstown, but I would cheerfully carry it around with me when trawling Knightsbridge for a pair of boots or walking up Yonge Street in search of the World’s Biggest Book Store.

Does this mean that I am hiding my true self in order to navigate the streams of my home? Does it mean that I am assimilating to the colonial mistress’ culture when I traverse her pathways? Perhaps it means that I am a chameleon – ever changing the skin that I am in, in order to fade into my surroundings. I’m not really certain, but I’d like to think that it simply means that I like murses, but only in a certain context, and that the Vincy context is not a murse context. It just isn’t. But this doesn’t mean that murses won’t catch on eventually, so I think I’ll hold onto mine a little longer. ☺

And in a very strange, roundabout way, this blog post was kinda, sorta about next Wednesday’s referendum after all. My murse reminded me why I’m going to vote the way I’m going to vote.