Goodbye Composure

Happy Birthday, get up” she said. 

“Whynaa?” I replied groggily, partly because it wasn’t my birthday and partly because it was 9am on a Saturday.  

“We’re going to see a play. And some coffins. Meet me at the Southbank at 10. Oh, and wear a shirt”. 

There goes my weekend lie-in.

As fräulein is perpetually late for her life in general (this time she had fallen asleep between calling me and getting up herself), I had to negotiate collecting the tickets on my own, armed only with the time the performance was starting and a vague knowledge of where it was being held. After interrogating a pimply youth for several minutes, I was told that the only play at that time was called Goodbye Mr Muffin.

“That’s a kids’ play, though,” he warned me.  

This somehow confirmed it in my head. 

Fraülein turned up a flurry of second-hand-shop fleece (I suspect an old woman may have died in it while waiting for her winter fuel allowance cheque to cash) and boyish shirts. Standing in the queue it was conspicuous that we were the only ones who hadn’t been either in, or pushing a pram in the past 4 years. We considered standing next to one of the stray kids but decided that, on balance, this made the whole thing even creepier. Despite my wishes, we avoided the low benches at the front, and instead attempted to mingle inconspicuously with the adults at the back.

As the lights went down and the front row stopped wriggling, the woman on stage started plucking a cello in a sweet child-like melody and I started worrying that this was going to be one of those patronizing Tweenies-esque affairs. Thankfully, it was nothing of the sort. The man with the charming Danish accent and the 1960s children’s presenter manner started off by calling Mr Muffin (guinea pig, puppet) out of his house and reading him a letter. 

“Dear Mr Muffin. I am so sad because my dad says that when a guinea pig gets old, it can suddenly die”

Within 20 minutes I was telling myself that it was probably inappropriate for a 23-year-old well up at a kids play, and that I would pull myself together an start watching this academically. Three minutes later, the nice Danish man was burying the puppet in a hole in the AstroTurf scenery and with the sole cellist bowing back and forth on my heartstrings. I’m not a rock, damnit.

Of course, when the lights went up and fraülein and I sat in a sombre silence, all the kids ran forward to take an almond (Mr Muffin’s favourite, sniff). I heard one of them say, quite casually, “That was quite sad, wasn’t it Mum?” Curse you kids and your carefree understanding of the ways of the world.

* * *

Thankfully to brighten our spirits, next on the agenda was an exhibition of coffins, ranging from the weird (an egg, to house an adult in foetal position, symbolizing rebirth or a deep love for kinder eggs) to the downright creepy (a custom made coffin in the shape of a train, along with the (living) gent for whom it was built). I made a mental note to ask (demand) to be buried in a ship-in-a-bottle arrangement. The real joy of that would be the circular nature of having my friends standing in front of my coffin asking the same question that my father must have asked standing before my newly pregnant mother’s stomach. How the fuck did he get in there?

 — Dusk

poetry

is composed
                     up there

and ought only to be

  written down

---as an afterthought.

pangaea

land amassed between us

our being split in two

all I can do is trust the tide

to bring me back to you.

I did not sleep last night at all

I try to say in eye contact
what I cannot say in words
but mine can't share that great perhaps
when all you see
are hers.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

SO many posts today. But I don't care, It's my blo-og and I'll post if I want to, post if I want to...

I have had lots of short-term boyfriends, and love-interests and crushes in my life and about 8 of them were serious/long-term. Here is where I describe them and what became of them and try to spot the patterns. Here is where some of my mystery is unpacked, and you maybe understand why I'm so ambiguous all the time. Here is where you're maybe a little disillusioned with me. NB-numbers are entirely unrelated to any previous series of numbers written, ever.

1. combat pants.My first love. 2 years plus and I was probably too young to start a lot of the serious adult relationship stuff. I lost my virginity to him, he wasn't a virgin. He was...into punk rock and smoking, and smoking weed, and drugs and motorbikes. It was good for a very long time until my naivety kind of wore away, I saw his interest in other girls, his lack of interest in anything academic, the effect of the drugs... but it was too painful for me to let go so the relationship drew out longer until he eventually broke it off. By text, no less. Every time I get my heart broken I revisit this moment because it seemed like the end of the world and I went a little nuts for a while but in the end it all turned out OK. What happened to him? Dropped out of school to pursue his music.

2. Lippy Broadhurst. A year and a half? He was different. Hyper-intelligent but also hyper-depressed. We got on really well because we shared this half-life in an non-existent third space, both tortured artistic souls too smart for the world around us. We became so involved in each other that the world around us sort of ceased to exist. It was perfect for a while. I was his first girlfriend, he lost his virginity to me, he was all about big romantic expensive gestures, part of the reason I guess that my romantic expectations are spoilt today...eventually he became very clingy, perhaps as in my way I was sort of half-engaged with dusk (a factor that's kind of spilled into all of my relationships ever since) and he could tell I was drifting away. Perhaps it was just depression, a disease that kicked up. He became reserved and reclusive, stopped seeing any of his friends, stopped going to school, didn't listen to his parents/teachers/anyone...but me. I was his sole activity and I did well with it for a while, looking after him, trying to get him to keep going to school, taking him out, he became all I did with my time...but eventually I couldn't do it anymore, I couldn't shed anymore tears forcing someone to live a life they didn't want to live, I couldn't keep letting him suck the life out of me as well, I couldn't be his mother for him. I broke up with him, as kindly as I could. No one ever saw him again. Well, his family did, but literally none of us, or his friends ever did. He dropped out of school and he still hasn't gone back. I blamed myself for the longest of times, and even now I still dream about him...feeling guilty for destroying him.

3.Dusk I can't really give a timespan for this one, because it sort of overlapped everything else, and to an extent is still going on today. It was never really a relationship, either. No Terms were ever set, no lines ever very clearly drawn. What happened between us is as close as I've ever got to love at first sight. It might have played out as a normal relationship if we'd lived in the same place but after we met we lived on different land-masses (hint, hint), which is why there was a blurry-overlap with my other relationships. I can't describe our relationship because it's not as paltry as all the others because it's real friendship, something transcendental that I literally could not describe. It confuses our close friends and family. It never began, it never ended. He was very smart, very fun, very interesting/interested. It goes here because it went into the sexual but romantic relationships are, as ever, doomed to fail. And it did, and it took us a long time to get over that and go back to being friends. It's hard not to be physical together sometimes but I genuinely feel that it's better to deny ourselves a part in order to preserve the whole. He doesn't feel that way, which makes things...hard. He is definitely a huge reason why my romantic expectations are so skewed.

4. ARJ. About a year. Because of dusk, the circumstances of entering in to this one were...bad. Hard. The Reason 3 sort of ended. I regret the manner in which it happened. Deeply. But I can't regret that it happened. He was a hyper-intelligent, hyper-depressed recluse. I was attracted to him because I could see I got on with him so well on an intellectual level and wanted to draw him out on a social level, show him how fun life could be. In a way I suppose I gave him hope; our relationship brought him out of a crippling depression. I'm not sure if part of me was trying to atone for Lippy. in the beginning but the relationship grew to be mutually beneficial. We both had radical viewpoints (mine very liberal, his verging on sociopathic) but we shared our thoughts and learned so much from each other, both smashing the other's naivety in so many ways. It was not a passionate relationship. It was very critical and very hard at times but eventually moulded me in a positive way. It ended for many reasons. I guess one of the main ones was that its continued existence was keeping dusk. from my life. However, the break up was mutual; no passionate end for the passionless. I think we felt we had taken enough from one another and were ready to move on.

5. Le Noof. This one wasn't going to be put in, because again, it was never a relationship. It was from here I think that all my relationships with men became frivolous; I became unable to commit. We would have been together (I think this was something he desperately wanted) but I just couldn't. Having been through too much heart-ache, having known such Great Minds and thought such Deep Things I couldn't bear another relationship. I was more attractive and more intelligent than him. He was blindly obsessed with me, but I had out-grown his type. I treated him quite badly I suppose, I strung him along for the ego-boost/companionship and had sex with him but I couldn't offer him more. I think I broke his heart. I didn't feel responsible, because I had been Honest about my feelings from the start. Really though, I did care.

6. Not wanting a repeat of le Noof (desperate to be hurt and not to hurt?) 6. is a whole series of men who I couldn't be serious enough with to even count them as separate entities as they all overlap/ didn't go on for long enough/didn't shape me in any way other than to shatter my naivety about pick-up lines and found my post-coital feeling of rejection/ depression.

7. Shawty went on alongside Pratchett for a while. but ended before it so goes here. A tough one to explain. I may have been drawn to him at first through boredom, perhaps I was sick of number 6s and wanted another taste of something le noofy? Maybe I was just ready for something/anything non-frivolous. Of course he had a girlfriend (although I wasn't actually aware of that at first) so perhaps part of me saw it as a bit of a challenge. Also I think I may have spotted the reclusive traits of Lippy&ARJ that for some reason I've been so attracted to trying to change. HOWEVER, that stuff is all probably subconscious and was only really why it started. It only went on for like a month, but I think I mini-fell in love with him. He was funny and fun and good chat and I thought he shared that special third space with me. But perhaps I was delusional. It ended because I ended up caring more about him than he about me, and we both agreed that this was probably bad. He didn't fight for me. I imagine I saw more to him than was actually there and he's kind of why I'm conducting this study, trying to figure out how I possibly got everything so skewed. In one of the first conversations we ever had he said something like "I bet you've met loads of people like me before, but I've never met anyone like you". Maybe that's why I see smacks of Lippy, ARJ & le Noof in him and maybe that's why I fell for him? But hey maybe I'm just RIDICULOUSLY OVER-THINKING THINGS (as per) and actually he was just pretty cool and I should just be happy I met someone like that.

8. This is Pratchett, btw I've been seeing/screwing him for about 2 months. He's pretty fun, into music, into drugs (OH HELLO COMBAT PANTS NICE TO SEE YOU THERE). I'm not sure why I'm with him, like he's quite good as a friend for fun and bants, and he's good for sex but he's so not interesting enough to be my boyfriend. He's also not smart enough. I guess that's why we're in this limbo-friends-with-benefits thing. Perhaps he feels the same way about me. Like, he doesn't even know me, really. He knows the superficial laughing part of me but we've never had a real conversation, you know? It works, I guess. It's just so...boring. It makes me feel kinda shitty when I think about it because there's surely someone out there who gets me, but maybe that's just because I suffered mini-heartbreak from mini-love with mini-7.
AMENDMENT: we had a chat and I expressed these feelings. Turns out he actually mega-likes me and has only been playing. So maybe the reason I find it so difficult to break with him because he gives me noof-ego boost? I NEED TO STOP

Perhaps I need to take a break from men in general. Wait until I find someone who is a) really smart, b) really good looking, c) really romantic, d) really rich. Phyeah. Because that's going to happen. FML.

Apologies to Kike, ATM Guy, Gabriel, Tennis. You didn't make the cut.

what?

i am

cracked? I'm not cracked

like that vase in the kitchen that was too expensive to throw out but not expensive enough to get fixed

like the neighbour's window after last thursday night

like Noel fielding's fox

like ted hughes' wife

cracked.com

cracked. I'm not cracked

like the two crowns of the egg that drowned

or ophelia's goodbye song

***byebye, ***byebye

an aubade from 90s daytime television

a sun grown up to be a woman

still glowing

cracked

like the cobblestones 

or my ankles after walking on them in heels

cracked

like 

cracked.

like a melody, in my head...

i never wanted to fall asleep

until i found the morning

love-sprung from a beam in the roof

where time stopped for us

and then, to see you in the cold light of day

was not a disappointment, but a reward

my heart, whispering poetry 

paused its beats and the tic-toc of the day 

resumed only

when we let it

CONSIDER ALL THE THINGS

OK so here's the deal, I lost my alphabet sheet from the open letters c.2009-10 sooo I'm starting again=> for posterity's sake so I don't get confused, new letters= new people. EXCEPT FOR GOOD OLD O

Dear A,
I'm sorry for flipping out on you about 'us'. I tend to get intense when something confuses me. I'm not used to it, see. I appreciate that you've given me The Space to get over the whole ordeal. Or, well, to realise that there really was no ordeal to get over in the first place. Like, I tried being mad at you for hurting me, and being sad for being rejected, but then I realised both of those sentiments were pointless because a) you didn't hurt me, and b) this was MY IDEA. I just get all up in my head sometimes because, you know...that place is pretty cool (think of what it and I could accomplish if we work together?!)
The Space is confusing me though because I have no idea what you're feeling about everything, or whether you're feeling anything at all. Like, I don't know whether you're doing it for me, or if you just got bored, or if you're not conscious of avoiding me, or if you're purposely ignoring my messages or what. and I literally cannot ask you these stupid questions because you'll think I'm an obsessive psycho. I wish things could go back to how they were, or that we could just be friends because I see shit I think you'd enjoy and then don't want to say anything about it because of this whole mess.

Dear B,
I JUST WANT TO BE FRIENDS. I literally can't deal with this head-messing thing that is our relationship. Like...I'm sick of being in limbo and I don't think I like you enough to be devoted to you seriously. But you're cool, and we laugh and everything is good apart from the fact that I overthink it all.

Dear C,
I know you're attracted to me. Hah.

LOVE
day

Swim, or Sink.

A shark has got to keep swimming, no matter what. From the moment it is born until its very last breath, swimming is imperative to its survival. That much had been drilled into Milly her entire life, as if Nature hadn't programmed her to work that out the second she burst through her amniotic sac. It was something about the mechanics of a shark--water had to constantly be pumped through their gills for oxygen to keep them breathing or something. There was something about floating, too, something not unlike the mechanics of an airplane meant that if they stopped moving not only would they cease to breathe, but they would also sink. It was simple really: swim, or sink/drown. And Milly had never before felt the urge to drown.

But she felt like she was drowning now. Something about the conditions of that day, perhaps the dim light shining through the water, perhaps the high tide, or perhaps a lack of company had her thinking heavy thoughts. Drowning, ultimately, as Milly saw it, was the final state. Whenever she didn't feel like she was drowning she was merely being distracted by superficial pleasures brought to her by friends, family or entertainment and generally occupying herself with banal activities that were all considered light. Funny that word 'light', she thought. It was positive, the opposite of darkness, but it was also the opposite of weight. Sharks like Milly were forever encouraged to stay light; to keep swimming. For Milly though, weight was synonymous with meaning, and she couldn't give that up just to be light. Sure, she would be the first to admit that darkness was no bed of eels, but weight, now, if she didn't have weight surely she would just float away? Milly knew that the other sharks were too preoccupied with playing, hunting, and, well, swimming, to notice any of this. They didn't ask questions, or if they did, they had already realised that the alternative to their lightness was drowning and so had decided to push it to the back of their minds. Perhaps, they had convinced themselves that to think about the heavy things was futile, that there was perhaps some sort of higher being that had sorted all that meaning business out, and, after all, they were only sharks and could hardly be expected to understand something so complex[1]. They were wrong though. Milly could see that the life she was leading, however miserable and dark, had weight and for that was it was more honest, and more likely to lead her to the Truth. Now, what that Truth was, Milly didn’t know, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to find it out tending to her own fucking garden[2] now, was she?

Having tried to discuss her feelings with other sharks her age and finding their attention spans lacking; their concerns entirely too far from meaningful conversation, Milly resolved to look elsewhere for her answers. She went to visit the Elder sharks—a confab of wizened, toothless creatures who had dedicated their lives to thinking about these things as they swam perpetually in circles. To join them, all Milly had to do was pass a simple test that involved, as legend told, answering a riddle. Watching them, she felt less alone and made a bid to join their high society. However, before she got close enough to be tested, the oldest and wisest of the congregation, referred to by the others as The First, or The One briefly dissociated from their ring and bellowed,

“YOU SHALL NOT PASS[3], child! I will not allow it! Return to your friends, while you still can, unless you wish to spend your life swimming in endless circles, drowning in the obscure and uncertain. At some point in our lives we must all face a choice: to go on breathing, or to drown. To swim, or to sink. Do you want wisdom? Ontological certainty? I will share with you what I know. Your peers who choose life are the wise ones and we, we are just old fools. A shark is not meant to understand.[4] That much is clear to me now.”

But he didn’t understand. Drowning, for Milly, hadn’t been a choice. It had just happened, and she was obliged to confront her thoughts; to go on living in ignorant bliss just wasn’t an option. But if what the Elder One had said was true, that there was no hope of ever coming to an answer—to what? She thought bitterly, she didn’t even know the question—what was she meant to do? Suddenly, a thought occurred to Milly. Struck her like lightning[5], actually. The answer had always been there, really, niggling in the back of her head, gnawing at the mantra that was always running just keep swimming just keep swimming. No, Milly hadn’t chosen to drown. But she could.

She had to try, of course. It wasn’t easy to go against your instincts, your autopilot that’s been running for you your entire life. Ultimately though, it wasn’t that hard. About as hard as it is for a human child to swallow a lump of chewing gum[6]. And just like that, Milly stopped swimming. Drowning, ultimately, was the final state. Living had just been putting it off.

---

[1] This is sometimes referred to in theology as the argument from limited perspective, and is used in an attempt to justify the existence of a god in the face of the problem of evil in our world. 

[2] Here, Milly makes a reference to Voltaire’s Candide and the eponymous hero’s final mysterious precept that we must “tend our own garden”. One interpretation of this statement is that following a series of unfortunate events, Candide has become disillusioned with an indoctrinated Leibnizian optimism (care of his beloved mentor, Pangloss) but rather than rejecting it outright, resolves to keep busy and avoid thinking about the problem of evil… It is, however, an inadvertent reference, because Milly is a shark and knows nothing of books or reading.

[3] This is a reference to popular culture, a remark that Gandalf makes in the cinematic adaptation of J.R.R Tolkein’s fantasy series The Lord of the Rings. The Elder shark of course, was unaware that this coincidence might distract the readers of Milly’s story from the very serious point at hand. If he had been, the Editor is almost positive he would have revised his exclamation.

[4] While this again seems to refer to the limited perspective argument, The Editor does not, however, believe that Milly’s intentions in telling her tale were in any way theological, and therefore discourages the reading of it as a theodicy.

[5] Benjamin Franklin, to prove that lightning was electrical, conducted (excuse the pun) an experiment in 1752 using a kite to collect some electric charge from a storm cloud. This later led to his invention of the lightning rod.

[6] The difficulty there being, of course, the multitude of myths concerning the horrible, sometimes gory deaths you will suffer if you swallow gum.

and into ashes all my lust

fuckin

why am I like this? Like, I always let this happen.

I always feel the same way, and so I know it gets better, and that in the end of the day I don't really care as much as I thought I did. That doesn't change the fact that my stupid illogical girl-brain is itself.

The world is a game of Poker, and I'd be extremely good at it, if I weren't playing with fucking idiots. And I'm not talking about how I'm smarter than everyone else, it's just that when you're playing poker with someone who doesn't know how to play poker you're overthinking everything they do, when really, they've no strategy at all. Really, you're not even playing the same game.

If not speaking to me was a double bluff, playing the game, I'd allow it. But there is no fucking game, it's literally all in my head and I'm the only one playing.

it doesn't even make sense. it's like some cruel mind-trick that makes me want someone for the sole reason that they don't want me. it's literally not like there's anything else there that i couldn't get the same of, or better, elsewhere. So why does my life feel like it's revolving around STUPID CUNT COW FUCK SHIT WANG. I've never said wang before. new low.s

I expect too much of people, maybe because of you, michael, for raising my hopes and intensifying my belief in romance

Conor's infiltrated my subconscious now as well, so aside from seeing his phantom apparition literally EVERYWHERE I FUCKING GO, there's not a night that goes by without me dreaming of him, too. 

AGH SO FRUSTRATED

and miserable

like, why, even? This always happens to me. It's like a side effect of ... something. 

Subject: Quit my head. Date: 13.01.09

It actually isn't jealousy
(you probably think it is)
It's really more as if I see
—as we pass hand
  in hand by glass—
There, not my face 
                           but his.

disillusionment is what reality is made of

I'm so freaking tired, and I can't get the heating to work, and I read the fault in our stars, then I read Hamlet because I'm just that girl but I cannot seem to fall aslee

--

I fell asleep. But at some point in my night-time rambles I wrote a...thing. It's not a real thing, but hey I don't have anything else to do with it

if I could live in tinseltown

i'd still be warm in winter

their skyline nightly changes round

and romance is coated in glitter
if I could live in tinseltown

I wouldn't be disillusioned

I'd neon waltz upon the sound

closed off to all intrusions

here routinely rundown walkways

and steeples that stay the same

drive the drudgery of days

as predictable as the rain

eyes don't dazzle, instead they're dull

i've always felt disjointed

and every time I meet someone cool

I'm always disappointed

If I could live in tinseltown

you would not have dashed my hopes

the place itself is made of dreams

so I wouldn't have had to wake up 

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.

Whenever I walk into a bookstore or a library and take in the infinity of books lining the walls, I am overwhelmed by my own insufficiency. The image puts squarely in focus the thousands of thoughts and the millions of lines I have yet to read. There is not time enough. Reading things is a huge part of me. The ideas put forth - sometimes radical and iconoclastic, sometimes modest observations - cause me to question my assumptions and to think more deeply about myself and my opinions. e.g. Zamyatin pushed me to clarify my conception of liberty; Nietzsche to question the Apollonian category of thought foisted upon me from birth; sure even Faustus, rather violently, helped me to realise the virtue of concentrating on my goals (however sedentary they may be) instead of letting distractions soak up my time.

Reading has always been my chosen form of escapism, a haven from the trillion little bits of distracting noise that rain on me daily. I read because I can associate with fictional characters, characters that have helped guide and support me. I was tormented alongside Stephen Daedalus in a nationalistic and religious Ireland and I struggled with him to find a cultural identity. In Brussels, I found I could relate just as easily with the existential begaiements of Vladimir and Estragon; I struggled with Don Quijote de La Mancha to understand the many inconsistencies in our belief-systems and I suffered the absurdity of the human condition alongside Camus’ Mersault. I was always an outsider, too. In my childhood I was the one un-baptised heretic, my dual nationality two halves that mutually excluded one another. In Brussels I was always an ex-pat, even after I grew to think of it as my home. In my late teens I have been a foreigner, a Belgian, a European. (in the least angsty way you can read this) I have never belonged anywhere real. It’s not that the real world is bad, or that I don’t love a lot of people in it, it’s just that I’ve never seen myself as inhabiting a space of my own for enough time that I could ever make an impact in (and I'm almost certain I'd feel the same way even if I'd spent all my life in one place).

My mother once told me that I was born in the wrong era, and that resonated quite deeply with me. When I used to listen to punk rock music, I wished I could go back to the 70s and kick it with Sid vicious; when I read Austen I could just as well picture myself waltzing off into the sunset with Mr. Knightley. When I think about it though, it’s more than just living in the wrong era; when I read contemporary literature I still find myself placing Me in the environment of the characters I identify with and, hell, when I watch Gossip Girl I’m positive I belong in the Upper East Side. Actually, the realm I belong in is probably outside of the scope of time and space altogether so I can be unlimited by boring reality. Fictional, sure, but I’m not crazy, It’s not like I run off into my head because reality sucks, I mean I do have friends and family and fun. It’s just that I am an incorrigible romantic.

Today I read John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, because I’ll probably keep reading young adult fiction for as long as I can still read (whoever said Rowling and Pushkin don’t mix?), and one particular thing the protagonist thought (besides, like, a million actually deep things) was when she was on the phone to her boyfriend: "...even though I was in bed and he was in his basement, it really felt like we were back in that uncreated third space, which was a place I really liked visiting with him." It’s that uncreated third space that I belong in, I think. It makes me feel really weird and uncomfortable when someone else articulates something that I’ve always thought was my own personal revelation. I hate to be predictable but I guess that’s the rub of the human condition. No matter how deep your private discoveries seem to be, it is unlikely that you will ever have an original thought in your life. Which, obviously, makes the whole dream of doing something Great or Important sink away into oblivion. But I guess it’s comforting too, because it means that I’ll probably find someone who wants to share a bed with me in that third space. Most people want to Mean Something in this world, and even if like Shakespeare or Rachmaninoff, etc. you create a temporary legacy in your words or music or whatever it is still just that: temporary. Human existence, and memory, is temporary and you know, what are we quintessence of dust and all that? No matter how much we strive to achieve the infinite I am, it’s all bound for oblivion anyway.

I guess that’s why the uncreated third space is my chosen home. I’m still living my day to day life in the real world like a normal human being, realistic and unencumbered by impossible dreams, but when I want to go to my mind palace it’s there for me. There indeed there will be time place, and meaning enough for me. So let us go then, you and I?

Subject: Rawr. ...Date: 20/06/07

I'm a forgiving fellow, so if you're down, I'm willing to give this Archie chap one last try.
Then he's straight out on his ass, onto the cold hard digital streets of the internet.

Where could I go from here? I've already whored my way through two hosts. I think yahoo is my next port of call. I'm really avoiding hotmail, mainly from my memory of my first email account, and the hours that too to load. Although this was before broadband and patience were installed into my household, so maybe it will get a look in.

Anyway yes. More physics from the unbelievably stupid text book for my exam tomorrow. It wouldn't be quite so grating if it wasn't so damn nice outside. Anyway, to flesh out today's poorly premised email, here's another gem courtesy of Advancing Physics A2.

"Fates, spirits, gods lost their powers, and science acquired its reputation for reducing everything to basic mechanical principles. Hated by some, gloried in by other, this shift in the imagination still drives thought today. All down to clocks? Maybe."

 

Really. Unless the question in the exam is:

 

"Name three mythical entities which lost their powers due to the rise of the Clockwork Universe.

1.

2.

3.

 

                  [3 marks]"

 

 

Other than that, I feel like I've wasted a day reading the entire textbook cover to cover. Although it's more fun than actual work. Luckily I'm a fast reader.

 

What does your school throw at a load of teenagers who know they don't need to turn up to keep them going?
My bet is alcohol/drugs/sex/music or a combination of all three: A load of naked hotties* playing guitars in a paddling pool of beer whilst a light snow of cocaine is dusted down upon them from the ceilings. + Leprechauns. And fire. And oh so many other requests in my head right now. If someone handed me a blank cheque right now, I would most definitely organize the best leavers' party in the oft-overlooked history of leavers' parties. Wanna come?

*Fondle*

xx
Dusk

*Amazingly, hotties was the best gender-non-specific noun I could come up with