old english
What was I like around the age of 17 and 18? If you’re going to base an answer on the things that I wrote at the time, one might suspect I was Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye incarnate. The total number of methods I possessed for finding and expressing misery about the world is an amount so great that it rivals the total number of words that the Sámi people have for snow. I don’t remember being that unhappy. I can only guess that I hadn’t yet learned how to express cynicism in the wry, gentle and subtle way that I feel it. Or maybe I really did think that I was goddam Holden Caulfield. That kills me. I was such a phony. Etc, etc. In any case, I have decided to compile a little (mostly non-miserable) collection of some of my old words for your amusement, horror and stimulation here, in an order that is not chronological, but is apt.
Old entries – 4.3.08
Don’t you love those lengthy sessions where you look back on your old writings and think “oh my, who is this devilishly talented person perpetually second guessing himself and describing a state of existential flux all over my screen? Oh, it was me!” Minus the extravagant self-congratulation, of course, although I do seem to come off more wordy and poncey (I love the irony of using a crap word like ‘wordy’) than I thought. It’s the combination of nostalgic bliss and epistemological distance between the present self and the past self (à la FutureMe), I think, that makes it so interesting.
Dream – 31.8.08
I was in an educational institution building, something like a university, which was coloured entirely cream: cream floor, cream doors, cream walls, and the young people who filled it were dressed in equally bland colours, so there was nothing striking about the whole place whatsoever. Think of the colour scheme of the TV Room from the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, only less white and more cream, and you’ve got it. The ceilings were low, except where there were staircases, in which case there were really, really, needlessly high ceilings above them. From what I experienced, having not entered any of the rooms at any point, it consisted almost entirely of meandering corridors, all very narrow. The thing I remember most vividly is a piece of dialogue I had with this guy donning a closely shaved blonde head, who seemed to be my friend, as we walked leisurely down a narrow corridor among a moderate throng of people.
“If you had to choose between leaving the island and leaving the universe, and if you could never go back,” he asked, “which would you choose?”
“The island? you mean… the UK?”
“Yeah,” he said, smiling a little, as if he’d decided on that parameter only upon my prompting.
“The UK, definitely.” Surely having to leave the universe, never to return, was much more grave than having to leave the country. “I guess it depends on how you define the universe.”
“I don’t know,” he said smiling again, then pausing to think. “Robust. Small.”
At this point he started walking quickly ahead of me, as if suddenly realising he had to get to a class, just as I had started reconsidering my choice in light of his definition. I had slowed down to think carefully, and chattering people filled in the floor space between us. Picturing myself outside of the universe was difficult. I would have objective knowledge and understanding, I’d be able to observe the whole world, I’d be at peace. On the other hand, I’d be trapped and in torment: separated from the people I know, unable to actually achieve anything in spite of my knowledge, forever in nothing but darkness and despair. I came back to reality when my short haired friend began descending down a staircase at the end of the corridor we had been walking down, so I tried to push past people to get to the top of the staircase and call out to him.
“Well, maybe I’d leave the universe then,” I shouted, uncertain, wanting to talk about it more. But he didn’t seem to hear me.
DS reviews – 24.2.08
I tried to play Rune Factory, the newest Harvest Moon game which incorporates fighting and gels it together with farming. As a result, you have to do stupid things like plant crops halfway through dungeons, in order to gather ‘runes’ from them once they’ve fully grown, which is necessary to replenish your action points and thus proceed through the dungeon without dying. It’s very silly. The battle system is lacklustre and the serene farming atmosphere is ruined by big cyclops monsters. I tried Harvest Moon DS instead, then, and was shocked and appalled that a heck of a lot of it seems to be directly ported from Friends of Mineral Town on the GBA, graphics and all. Its only redeeming factor was being able to tell the jovial mayor in effect to piss off when he tries to teach you how to play at the start of the game. Then his character portrait becomes angry and he walks away. Presumably later in the game when you win a competition, as he’s about to award you the trophy, he instead tells you to piss off and gives it to whoever came 2nd.
31.1.08 – Zero tolerance
I got stopped by a police lady coming home from the city the other day for biking on the path which, she said, has been illegal since 1835 and can incur a £30 fine. I thought about how the expected response to such reprimanding would be “why aren’t you stopping people being beaten up and mugged instead of something as petty as biking on a path?”, and then I thought about what I’ve learned from sociology about zero tolerance, how it stopped New York becoming the capital of crime in the 90s, and so on. I was reminded of the time in high school when I think it was Scott and Seb who were told off by a patrolling teacher for quietly sitting at a bench using their PDAs, whilst out on the field there were people smoking weed, crucifying year 8s and god knows what else. I’m not sure who I side with. Lack of zero tolerance equals more crime, zero tolerance equals loss of liberties and a potential police state. What we can say is that zero tolerance didn’t and doesn’t work at Hellesdon High; it just results in teenagers with tucked in shirts and appropriately sized ties still slicing off each other’s limbs and whatever else.
It was at this point I realised I’d been standing there with my bike for six hours thinking about sociology, and as such caught pneumonia and have now been hospitalised.
18.1.08 – The Long Day Wanes
… Now the year is laid out before me, stretching out like Stretch Armstrong, complete with his big fake charade of a grin. I still feel singed and confused from last year, i.e.: little over three weeks ago, subsequently meaning that I’m reluctant to set my sights on something new. Well, being me, I’m naturally reluctant anyway, especially when what I’m resigned to doing is getting a damn job. I’m a little bit worried about what sort of effects the next 9 months or so are going to have on me when you consider that most of the things I can conceivably do, like getting a job, are just to kill time. If there was a film of my life, this section might be represented by a scene of a translucent clock filling up the screen, spinning quickly through minutes, hours, days, with a calendar eventually fading in behind it; its pages being blown by a wind that makes it rustle through the months, all the while with me, behind these see-through layers, standing in the middle of Gentleman’s Walk or somewhere in real-time, but all the people and the sky would be in time with the clock and the calendar.
Actually I’d fire the director if that happened. It would be one fucking self-aggrandising and clichéd film if it went like that, like in Garden State where Zach Braff sits on the sofa looking pensive while everyone else is partying around him speeded up, and you’re just thinking “jeez, at least get drunk and quit congratulating yourself if you’re going to be depressed,” right? right? right!?
