A first draft!

I woke slowly, like a corpse being dragged out of a grave. I could not feel my body, I did not know where I was. Slowly I became aware of my limbs, my appendages. All of me, covered in the cold sweat of terror. Darkness surrounded me, I patted down my body. It was all still there. “Must have been a dream,” I thought, with mixed emotions. In part annoyed that I couldn’t remember the dream, but also quite glad that I couldn’t. Something to make me react so strongly must be of an extremely unsettling nature. Needless to say, going back to sleep was not an option.
Not until the next night. When you don’t remember something going wrong, you’re likely to make it happen again. The Sandman visits me, and off to his world I go as called. Arriving there, I find myself in the back of a small plane, with a parachute strapped to my back. For some reason I am going skydiving. The draft from the door suddenly increased, as if it had just swallowed something and was waiting for its next treat. In other words, it’s my turn to jump.
The rush of air as I leap out and start accelerating towards the ground is thrilling, the ten-count worth of unrestricted free-fall being the epitome of freedom and the obvious explanation to why so many of mankind have a desperate wish to fly, no matter how.
I align myself in preparation to deploy the parachute as the count hits 10, and pull the chord. Nothing. My reaction is obvious; I repeatedly yank it. The only difference I notice is in the noise made by the wind as I slice through the air; louder and louder as I steadily accelerate in the hands of gravity.
Looking up, I see my girlfriend and the diving-instuctor both hurtle towards me in dives. I pull the backup chord; it comes lose in my hands as they pass me. The looks on their faces say it all, even as the wind in my ears drowns out their laughter. Approaching terminal velocity, I hope to be granted the mercy of blacking out. Instead, I get a visit from the eternal cliché as my life flashes before my eyes. Unfortunately, yet again, I get to watch the blooper reel rather than the highlights; all the biggest mistakes I ever made and all those mistakes I never got to regret making due to chickening out flashing before my eyes while at the same time the details I can see through them become clearer – my greatest face-plant ever nearing. With no trees, lakes or other softer options to direct my crash towards, my last thought was merely to close my eyes the moment I could see my shadow growing on the ground.
Somehow I expect an end upon landing. Not necessarily in the way that I know this is a dream and expect to wake up, but in the sense that death is the end of life. Instead, there a rather loud thud as my body hits the ground. And a second one as it lands again after having bounced.
Death, of course, is perfectly painless. The sight of my own mutilated body, as my view shifts from internal to drifting up from myself is something I could never have been prepared for. Slowly strolling in from the side comes my girl and the instructor, hand in hand. They walk up to my corpse, nudge it with their feet and, satisfied with a job well done, share a kiss before walking on.
Slowly my presence drifts up and out, before fading to black. My brain starts ticking again. Somehow I am still alive, and I can feel my limbs. No pain, though my skin is super-sensitive, and covered in the cold sweat we all know to associate with pure, whole-hearted terror and dread. “Was that all a dream?” I ask myself. “So lifelike, so terrifying, and with an ending like that?”
Seeing no other viable option, I roll my body out of bed.

Fear the return of androgynous men’s fashions?

Those of us who’ve had our eyes open for the last decade have probably noticed a few shifts in fashion; or if you will, a shifting back to things we thought we’d be over and done with. In short; I’m talking about the androgynous fashion styles. The most obvious examples of this will be the shirts that were all the rage a few years ago; salmon, baby blue, or even decorated in the same style as we’ll usually see women’s blouses. While we now mostly appear to have moved beyond that – most of what is akin to that fashion nowadays comes in a cut that you can accept. So much for that!
If you have recently seen pictures of the catwalks in Milan showing the next two season’s worth of fashion, you will notice something rather odd; men’s shawls! Yeah, that’s right. We’re now supposed to wear shawls too. Now, you can probably say, we’re already wearing ties, bow-ties, scarves when it’s cold – what’s the difference? Well, really. There’s a difference. A scarf can be tied to look masculine. A tie is quite simply one of the most stereotypical male items to wear – the old saying about who wears the pants in a household? Well, at this point in time, it would be more sensible to make it who wears the tie. The bow-tie is a tux-item that also works with other snazzy outfits, but it is clearly a male thing (outside of certain traditional outfits/costumes that is – the same goes for the tie I guess).
So what is the shawl, then? It is a traditional women’s item, that’s what it is. It looks feminine, and you’ll be challenged every step of the way if you are to make it appear even remotely masculine. I don’t deny that somebody might make it work – people manage the most amazing things! But the designers that are now trying to hype it as a male fashion accessory, well, it sounds like telling fat women to wear thongs to the beach. There are just some things the world is better off not seeing!

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