It's funny, these fractured perceptions of ourselves. I just read through my post below and have come to the beginning, to write some kind of disclaimer. You - my reader - can absorb the following with an air of disdain and a kind of "wow that's kinda... weird. who talks like that?", I know you, I know all of you. You make it hard to be sincere when you want to mean it. It makes it hard to write serious... ly. Maybe I haven't outgrown that telling sign of adolescence, that monster of gnawing self-consciousness. Most of us are drowning so much in what we think is another's perception of ourselves that we forget what our own perception of ourselves IS. And isn't supposed to be the most important thing? I've made enough blog-related social faux-pas to know that writing what we deem to INNERMOST FEELINGS is usually greeted with ridicule, because other people are made uncomfortable by the shoving of our (god-forbid) REAL thoughts down their throats. Unless there is a person out there who actually, in actuality, in reality, in lazy days, on crazy days, in post-coitus, in heartbreak, GETS you. But that's just wishful thinking.

ANYWAY. HERE IT IS:

Another ripe day for introspection. Time to me is never in days and hours... and today feels like one of those days when everything congeals around the edges and I'm uncomfortably aware of the time that has passed, and the infinite time that is to come.

I'm never thought of myself as an intensely private person, yet I find myself being that infuriating type of vague when I talk about my life, as it is, right now. In younger days (bah, yes, there are many out there who would slap me for thinking I am "old"), there was always a cacophony of heartbreak and that cool cool smell of a The Ruse / Nick Drake / Youth Group soundtrack to keep me occupied. And I was always able to talk to other people about my life, and the grotesque details of what I was going through. I was able to construct myself as a kind of sad heroine suffering in the utilitarian regime of a boy's mind. Oh god, that was almost five years ago. Suffice to say I've outgrown that, but I'm not really sure what I've grown into.... In a roundabout way, I think I'm having an IDENTITY CRISIS. I could easily blame this on the messed up time I had with the love of my life... but that's too easy, and gives him more credit than he is due. So what now?

I feel like I've ticked all the boxes of the life I thought I would lead after heartbreak.

And I think I have those physical trophies to show for it.

But what does it mean now?

I'd hate to think that this is futile, this struggle to manufacture meaning into the everyday, when a kind of mundane existence becomes the every day. When it's like this I can't help but think of the protagonist's whore in "The Age of Reason" by Sartre, "she sometimes had the feeling that her life had come to a stop one day at noon, and she herself was an embodied, eternal noontide brooding upon her little world, a dank and rainy world, without hope or purpose". She waited, day in day out, for the protagonist to come visit her in her bed. I don't remember one scene in which she was involved in the rollicking, poetry-reading, discotheque-visiting, songbird-courting, bohemian life of his. Her life consisted of waiting, forever waiting for him. And to him, she consisted of a black sludge of resentment and quivering emotion. And then she falls pregnant. But every day, in every one of those character's lives, there was no need to manufacture meaning, to make themselves more palatable to... themselves. Cf. the (currently) painless life I lead right now, and the glaze of having to, gel everything together in a coherent fashion, enough that I can understand it. Have I been brainwashed by a brand-spanking-new-plastic-wrap consumer culture to make everything more... shiny and bright in order to be acceptable... to me?

I just want to feel like my life is a book again. A better, more subtle, more everlasting impression book. Or a song. Or a film. Anything, anything, other than a mere puff of life that will be extinguished too soon by merciless time. When I first understood and learnt about death ("Dying is when someone loses the ability to wake up. And then they die forever") at the age of six, I made my grandparents with whom I lived with then PROMISE me that they would not die. I think I still feel that way about every person I love. Promise not to die, and not let this existence, and subsequently my consciousness... Eventually become nothing.

This blue funk, may I note, can probably attributed to the ominous prospect of turning TWENTY-THREE. When I was 14 I made a pact with my then best friend that when we turned 25 we would be celebrating life in NYC, because it was the place of our imaginations - partly because of a continuous diet of US pop culture, partly because we believed the earth was a hill and NYC was on the top of it - and because 25 was a magical, THIS-IS-WHAT-LIFE-IS-ACTUALLY-LIKE age. I'm two years away from that and if I choose to, I can see that I'm in exactly the same house, still doing the same thing (studying... goddammit when will the force-feeding of knowledge stop). 25 seemed so adult, so grown up, so cool it hurt. 23 is only two years away from that and I am terrifyingly aware of that.

I'm editing Purely Dicta this year for the LSS. For those of you who don't already know what Purely Dicta is, go to http://www.mulss.com/purely-dicta and marvel. OK I joke. Not really.

Anyway so I'm about 12 hours away from deadline to printers and finalising a few things about the magazine: layout, tone of articles, cutting out articles if necessary (it hurts people's ego's acutely but sometimes it's better for their long-term reputation and well-being that their crap isn't published), and colouring up the whole thing. I'm riding the pre-deadline adrenaline high and feel ah-may-zing. I'm enjoying it so much I want to do this for a living. Yes, I want to edit my own magazine, but which girl doesn't, right? I love the sense of being able to create a project that I saw from scratch - from a few pieces of blank paper and pencil sketches of an idea to a full glossy flick-flick-flick-able magazine.

In The Age recently (well, not recent by news news standards but by my underwater-slow-motion student existence) revamped their Sunday Life lift-out magazine - it is fantastic, by the way - and Mia Freeman is a regular columnist, full colour pictures and all. I've always looked up to Mia Freeman in every way, she became editor of Cleo at age 24 (which I will be in 2010, the age not the position), had a baby at the age of 27, has had countless offers from the media giants, and has had an amazingly full life outside of that.

..... I want that.

Recently the thought of having to soldier through my law degree to the end and not actually see any of my ambitions come into fruition was too much to bear... I couldn't sleep and called a long-time friend. He thinks I should become a writer. I want that too. Is it scary to think of actually pursuing my dreams? It feels like lately I'm always happy and a little more than grateful to settle for second best, and tell myself I should just be happy 'with what I've got'... I know I need to shake it sooner or later. I do so hope sooner.

PURELY DICTA COMES OUT EARLY OCTOBER: look out for your own copy in the mail if I love you enough :)

In the course of editing Purely Dicta I've been referred to this amazing piece of prose, written by a young Hunter S. Thompson to 'the youth of [his] generation', which couldn't be more relevant these days. The cynicism in this article is exactly the attitude of almost everyone I know. 

Taken from http://hstbooks.org/2008/08/03/hunter-s-thompson-essay-open-letter-to-the-youth-of-our-nation-1955/

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Hunter wrote this essay in 1955 for The Athenaeum Literary Association’s bound yearbook, it won third prize in The Nettleroth contest. Great writing for a 18 year old, and makes for a funny read too.

Young people of America, awake from your slumber of indolence and hark-en the call of the future! Do you realise you are rapidly becoming a doomed generation? Do you realise that the fate of the world and of generations to come rests on your shoulders?  Do you realise that at any time you may be called on to protect your country and the freedom of the world from the creeping scourge of communism? How can you possibly laugh in the face of the disasters which face us all from all sides? Oh ignorant youth, the world is not a joyous place. The time has come for you to dispense with the frivolous pleasures of childhood and get down to honest toil until you are sixty-five. Then and only then can you relax and collect your social security and live happily until the time of your death. Also your insolent attitude disturbs me greatly. You have the nerve to say that you have never known what it is like to live in a secure and peaceful world; you say that the present generation has balled things up to the extent that we now face a war so terrible that the very thought of it makes hardened veterans shudder; you say it is our fault that World War ll  was fought in vein; you say that it is impossible to lay plans for the future until you are sure you have a future. I say Nonsense! None of these things matter. If you expect a future you must carve it out in the face of these things. You also say that you must wait until after you have served your time with the service to settle down. Ridiculous! It is a man’s duty to pull up stakes and serve his country at any time, then settle down again.

I say there is no excuse for a feeling of insecurity on your part;there is no excuse for juvenile delinquency; there is no excuse for your attitude except that you are rotten and lazy! I was never like that! I worked hard; I saved; I didn’t run around and stay out late at night; I carved out my own future through hard work and virtuous living, and look at me now: a respectful and successful man.

I warn you, if you don’t start now it will be too late, and the blame for the end of the world will be laid at your feet. Heed my warning, oh depraved and profligate youth; I say awake, awake, awake! 

Fearfully and disgustedly yours,      

John J. Righteous-Hypocrite.