26.9.04
//WARNING. ENTER AT OWN RISK. PSYCHOTIC RAMBLING AND SELF INDULGENCE FOLLOW.//
I intended to post before I left the country. I had even written it; a would-be funny about mistranslations and my personal experiences with them. But things got hurried, I left for the States for two weeks and figured, hey, I’d post it from the local library when I got there. When I got there, most of the time I spent in the local library was spent watching the little ascii emails as they showed my life nose-diving three-thousand miles away.
Well, it could have been worse. Someone could have died (although they might have in February), someone could have been hurt (although they nearly were in September), someone could have gotten into big trouble in college (although that was three months ago). And after all, I’ve lost friends before, right?
I did not post my blog. I didn’t want to. I looked through my recent posts and discovered, to my alarm, just how many were depressing. I never wanted this to be a sob-story-corner for my personal life. I wanted to talk about things I saw, and noticed, and read, and thought.
So I thought about it, and wondered what was up with that, and it bothered me. Then, halfway through a sixteen-hour inclusive all-night trip back to this side of the Atlantic I kind of realised what was up.
This has been a really fucking shitty year.
Not perhaps in the grandest scale of things (although I don’t think politics is fairing too well, and third world debt is still there) but on my own, sheltered, suburban scale, I figure this year counts as a six on the Richter scale.
So maybe if I say it all, maybe if I start fresh next year, I can get back to where I was supposed to be. So let’s see...
There was the Autumn, like a prequake, when I fell behind and sat, stupefied, rude, insolent because I felt unwelcome. And irritated. And silent because there was nothing to say and to fail in my attendance, and to whisper, "but she doesn’t like me," would be like breaking some secret secret. I apologised for their inability to notice me.
There was the Winter when my grandfather fell down with a stroke and we were not sure his legs would lift him again, when my house became a warzone and then a police state, when someone we believed older than us shrank to the age of five and pulled GTMo’s hair and spat at him and said in every way, "I won’t be your friend no more you thick dipshit," except he used longer words.
When, across the borders of Winter and Spring, an asshole threatened to leave us because we did not pay him enough attention, because he was perpetually wronged, because he carried a whole battery of crucifixes on his back, and an agony of invisible thorns in his side. We should have let him go. Instead, we heard him say, "But I need my scapegoats," in a strange, incomprehensible defence. I heard him tell the others in a shared house he did not want me staying there - I made him feel uncomfortable. I thought he knew my home was a police-state. We asked him back. Again.
There was late Spring when I realised she was framing someone and called her on it and finally whispered, out loud, "she doesn’t like me." She lied on the telephone, later, flailing like a dying fish who has been caught talking trash about two other fish about each of them when the other isn’t around, who tried to blame it on an octopus and instead got thrown up on the pier for the seagulls, and she says, "I just spoke to him half an hour ago. He said I didn’t do anything." Which was interesting since I was in his fish and chip shop twenty minutes earlier listening to him scare away the other customers with the steam he was still blowing off. In the end she said, "Everyone does it. You’ve done it to me."
I didn’t tell her that I hadn’t. I hadn’t. But I wish I had.
There was Summer when she left, we thought forever, and took a stolen boy with her, and stole the best friend of another. There was Summer when the casual, easily forgotten, unthought, accidental half-truths my teacher told me landed me in meetings with heads of departments, when I stared at disciplinary catalogues.
There was late Summer when apparently the Scapegoats chased their herder "out of town" without having spoken a single word to him, but this was not before he directly, or indirectly managed to threaten or imply both physical violence and legal action (although never from him, never from him; actions like that require vertebrae, it was always someone else’s idea. Someone else is coming to fuck you up, the woman at the letting agency misunderstood!). Not before he swallowed a chunk of my money, a chunk of most people’s patience, including the police.
There was late Summer, when she reared her head again like some undead thing that just won’t quit, demanding a clean slate, with her brainwashed sidekick who no longer remembered the events that brought about the quarrel but was ready to hate me all same. Did so with a placidity that belied belief. The last time Denmark was brought up, he was nearly in tears for not wanting to go. Now she says they’re leaving and he shrugs.
I’m tired. Everyone left is tired. (And everyone left has had a bad year. One of them spent a month with crippling knee pain so he was falling down, screaming, literally. One of them watched his parents threaten and rethreaten divorce and an overseas move. One of them became embroiled in his girlfriend’s family’s manic, epic custody case, became embroiled as the only sane point in the entire family, and the first port of call for runaways.) Is it any wonder we want to get out of here?
Kind of sucks, though. We’re all stuck there waiting for at least one more revolution. But here’s hoping that the 2004/5 academic year revolves in a slightly better atmosphere. Because this is not who I signed on to be.
So next week you’re getting a funny column. And after that, who knows. Maybe something deep, and mysterious, about the nature of the universe. Or possibly about trout. Yeah. Trout.
//END PSYCHOTIC STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS RANT//
I intended to post before I left the country. I had even written it; a would-be funny about mistranslations and my personal experiences with them. But things got hurried, I left for the States for two weeks and figured, hey, I’d post it from the local library when I got there. When I got there, most of the time I spent in the local library was spent watching the little ascii emails as they showed my life nose-diving three-thousand miles away.
Well, it could have been worse. Someone could have died (although they might have in February), someone could have been hurt (although they nearly were in September), someone could have gotten into big trouble in college (although that was three months ago). And after all, I’ve lost friends before, right?
I did not post my blog. I didn’t want to. I looked through my recent posts and discovered, to my alarm, just how many were depressing. I never wanted this to be a sob-story-corner for my personal life. I wanted to talk about things I saw, and noticed, and read, and thought.
So I thought about it, and wondered what was up with that, and it bothered me. Then, halfway through a sixteen-hour inclusive all-night trip back to this side of the Atlantic I kind of realised what was up.
This has been a really fucking shitty year.
Not perhaps in the grandest scale of things (although I don’t think politics is fairing too well, and third world debt is still there) but on my own, sheltered, suburban scale, I figure this year counts as a six on the Richter scale.
So maybe if I say it all, maybe if I start fresh next year, I can get back to where I was supposed to be. So let’s see...
There was the Autumn, like a prequake, when I fell behind and sat, stupefied, rude, insolent because I felt unwelcome. And irritated. And silent because there was nothing to say and to fail in my attendance, and to whisper, "but she doesn’t like me," would be like breaking some secret secret. I apologised for their inability to notice me.
There was the Winter when my grandfather fell down with a stroke and we were not sure his legs would lift him again, when my house became a warzone and then a police state, when someone we believed older than us shrank to the age of five and pulled GTMo’s hair and spat at him and said in every way, "I won’t be your friend no more you thick dipshit," except he used longer words.
When, across the borders of Winter and Spring, an asshole threatened to leave us because we did not pay him enough attention, because he was perpetually wronged, because he carried a whole battery of crucifixes on his back, and an agony of invisible thorns in his side. We should have let him go. Instead, we heard him say, "But I need my scapegoats," in a strange, incomprehensible defence. I heard him tell the others in a shared house he did not want me staying there - I made him feel uncomfortable. I thought he knew my home was a police-state. We asked him back. Again.
There was late Spring when I realised she was framing someone and called her on it and finally whispered, out loud, "she doesn’t like me." She lied on the telephone, later, flailing like a dying fish who has been caught talking trash about two other fish about each of them when the other isn’t around, who tried to blame it on an octopus and instead got thrown up on the pier for the seagulls, and she says, "I just spoke to him half an hour ago. He said I didn’t do anything." Which was interesting since I was in his fish and chip shop twenty minutes earlier listening to him scare away the other customers with the steam he was still blowing off. In the end she said, "Everyone does it. You’ve done it to me."
I didn’t tell her that I hadn’t. I hadn’t. But I wish I had.
There was Summer when she left, we thought forever, and took a stolen boy with her, and stole the best friend of another. There was Summer when the casual, easily forgotten, unthought, accidental half-truths my teacher told me landed me in meetings with heads of departments, when I stared at disciplinary catalogues.
There was late Summer when apparently the Scapegoats chased their herder "out of town" without having spoken a single word to him, but this was not before he directly, or indirectly managed to threaten or imply both physical violence and legal action (although never from him, never from him; actions like that require vertebrae, it was always someone else’s idea. Someone else is coming to fuck you up, the woman at the letting agency misunderstood!). Not before he swallowed a chunk of my money, a chunk of most people’s patience, including the police.
There was late Summer, when she reared her head again like some undead thing that just won’t quit, demanding a clean slate, with her brainwashed sidekick who no longer remembered the events that brought about the quarrel but was ready to hate me all same. Did so with a placidity that belied belief. The last time Denmark was brought up, he was nearly in tears for not wanting to go. Now she says they’re leaving and he shrugs.
I’m tired. Everyone left is tired. (And everyone left has had a bad year. One of them spent a month with crippling knee pain so he was falling down, screaming, literally. One of them watched his parents threaten and rethreaten divorce and an overseas move. One of them became embroiled in his girlfriend’s family’s manic, epic custody case, became embroiled as the only sane point in the entire family, and the first port of call for runaways.) Is it any wonder we want to get out of here?
Kind of sucks, though. We’re all stuck there waiting for at least one more revolution. But here’s hoping that the 2004/5 academic year revolves in a slightly better atmosphere. Because this is not who I signed on to be.
So next week you’re getting a funny column. And after that, who knows. Maybe something deep, and mysterious, about the nature of the universe. Or possibly about trout. Yeah. Trout.
//END PSYCHOTIC STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS RANT//
