Where Was I Again?

I feel almost like we have developed the habit of prefacing every interaction with “First of all I have to again apologize for the delay”. So much is going on, on both sides.
And, I regretfully admit, I have been avoiding this.
I refuse to talk about my end of year results. I am in the thick of it and caught between modest assurance of a great score and conceited hopelessness against the standard of my school and the pressure of exams.
So now to your… I feel compelled to call it more of an ‘entry’; it does indeed rival some of my lengthier entries and I dare say I only have a handful longer. I got all excited about my web traffic when I saw four comments on the page; but then excited to deconstruct your obviously detailed and untiring entry.
I love the way you describe the holiday pursuits “passive, unconstructive, asocial type of things” in an increasingly “defeatist state of mind”. This is me at my procrastinating best down to a tee.
I also like the quote from Italo Calvino, “The ultimate meaning to which all stories refer has two faces: the continuity of life, the inevitability of death.” As a fellow information sponge, I will be using this in future essays.

I am working on that email. Maybe later, maybe when the exams are over. When I can give it my full attention, we can reminisce about (or lament the loss of) my wonderful future and adult life; as I prepare and endure the long wait over the summer.

I liked what you said about sport; it was something that was very obvious to me when watching other people, in a more brutish caveman fashion; but until you phrased it as you did I never realised that this was what I got out of it too, but on a different level. “Sports have this great way of not having much to say about it. You win, you lose, you get what you expected of yourself, or less, but it's all very mechanical, very primary” And I like that, it’s a effort to get out there and do, but I enjoy the contrast to all my general over-thinking.

Twilight and its hidden anti-abortion and housewife life message. I never noticed. Of course I can see how it could be interpreted that way. But it never influenced my reading. I like vampires, I like the element of the supernatural, I like romanticism, I like the way it was written. I couldn’t help but not be into it. There were very few qualms I had with the books; namely the predictability and triteness of werewolves in the plotline; and Bella’s inferiority complex.

Ah, snoring. It is good to know I am not the only one dissolves into insane thoughts in the face of it. Tell me, after the hit list, have you got to the stage where you say to yourself – if they snore again, one more loud snore, I swear I am going to (carry out the death threat/kick the adjacent wall/scream/sneak in and hold their nose/set off the bedside alarm)? And then you hear a little tiny noise and you just think – nah, fuckit, I’m not getting up for that. Then a big snore – No. I’m too comfortable. Next one. And the next one. Until your body is like a coiled neurotic spring, and you jump out of bed and… fail to have any impact at all.
Earplugs do not work for me. I tried them again upon your recommendation, but quickly realised why I hadn’t been using them all along. First of all, I can still hear through them, even when an air-tight seal has been created with Blu-Tack. Second of all, every single brush of my hair or the blanket or the pillow on them is magnified to unsleepibly loud proportions. And third, it amplifies my tinnitus beyond belief. So I get the snoring, what sounds like the rustling of a thousand bits of paper, and the reverberating ringing and rushing of my own head. My mp3 player is a worthy distraction, but in tends to waste battery having it on all night and results in rather chaotic musical dreams.
And speaking of music, you are definitely right about the structure of music courses. They are indeed “the science of music itself, and all its tedious work and rigor, strainful training, academic expectation”. They want people doing music as a school subject, like I said about Uni only being the final narrowing of your high school courses. They are not there to take creativity and enthusiasm and add to it musical knowledge; they are there to take musical knowledge and manufacture creativity.
I am glad that you weren’t too harsh on my song. Did you see the video? Maybe you should have seen the video. It may have been funnier and less rough. Nobody likes it anyway. Not many views on YouTube, just enough for it to be utterly disheartening that nobody has cared to comment – good or bad. I tried getting my mother’s friends to watch it. I told one that it was me. He sniggered and said nothing. Maybe something about the animation as a pause filler.
I didn’t tell the other one. He started the video and before the second line was uttered he exclaimed “Terrible voice.” I waited until it finished and declared that it was my ‘terrible voice’ that he was listening to. I felt like hanging up the phone then and there, I was so cut. I’d felt like spitting that it was my voice and slamming down the phone down the moment he said it. All my friends, all my mother’s friends, people on YouTube I don’t even know… but I smiled and I made small talk and I didn’t push it and I tried not to notice how the conciliatory compliments came flooding in afterwards. ‘Singing is for other ears’. I shall remember to enlighten my singing teacher of this fact when I discontinue her services with a rather sick satisfaction.

You said “university is still much more full of possibilities and freedom than the real world behind it.” I am hoping this is not the case. Yet I know it is. The thought of university is lulling me into a false sense of security. Delaying the idea that this is my life and I am the one in control. When you are in school, you have no choice, and you are doing the most you can. When you finish school, it seems like this great big leap into the unknown; and in some ways it is, but for me I know I am just transferring into another institution. I am playing it safe and getting into a nice course to amuse and educate myself; and find an answer to (or at the very least delay) my state of complete and utter purposeless.
I don’t know where the evil acerbic exam nerves came from, but I spent most of last night dreaming up awful scenarios that would mean that I couldn’t sit the exams; and would resultantly get a Derived Exam Score set out by my teachers. My teachers love me, the think I will do so well, but I won’t. I would give anything not to have to do the exams. It never used to be a big deal to me. I sat a three hour exam to get into my particular high school. I hardly remember that now. I knew I was smart back then. That’s the attitude you should approach the exams with they say: “If a student is adequately prepared they should relish the idea of the exam and treat it as an opportunity to show the examiners what they know.”
I always fear I’m losing it these days. I used to be the smart one. Now everyone is catching up. I knew how to say ‘antidisestablishmentarianism’ when I was in my first year of primary school. I knew how to spell it too. It’s fucking amazing and cute when you’re five, and don’t think I didn’t know it. But now it means nothing. The kids think three people will beat me at English. When you’re so young it’s easy, there’s a lot of basic knowledge still out there and it doesn’t take much to set you apart from the rest. But as you get older it takes more and more, the distinctions become slighter and slighter, and the freedom to be different becomes lesser and lesser.
That, is why I overdid it on the Poe essay.


I don’t know where I am with half of this stuff. This blog spans from the 30th of September to the 18th of October. So much has happened. I went to Melbourne, I saw my campus, I met my course co-ordinator; he said I was very calm. I began a very uplifting bout of ‘fuck yes!’ attitude. It ended with the holidays. I went back into re-adjustment jetlag mode flabbergasted by the children of this generation. I heard a young unexceptional boy use ‘downright demoralising’ conversationally when talking about bullying, I got over it. I missed a party with my friends. I found a fantastically funny excerpt from Margaret Cho’s blog. Exam preparation began. Realisation dawned about all I still have to do and all I am going to miss.


Much love.

☆