Liquidity

The third 17C night in the middle of spring. In my room at this end of the world, its quiet, solemn and cold.

Cold.

Old wounds and past mistakes have a habit of catching up to you from time to time.

Today, yesterday, are one of those times.

Regrets, mistakes, what ifs, the many maybes and could have beens start to swirl into a tornado of distress. I think, I wonder, I wish… but what good does that do?


The shot glass, the beautiful golden hue, the woody aroma… this isn’t the first time the thought has crossed my mind today.

And it wouldn't be the last.

I can survive without it, I tell myself. Repeatedly.

Last Legs

 

My recent disgust and distaste at almost everyone around me has been the cause of a huge self-driven mental and emotional wall.

This walled-garden of mine is serene, quiet, and predictable.


But this forced, self-imposed isolation is a lonely and testing existence.

You tend see all those around you in a considerably less-than-favourable light, and the cycle continues, deepening into ever more catastrophic feedback loops.

Can’t exactly say that I’m delighted or pleased at the current situation, but I’d rather it be so than to stoop down and accept alien values, ideals or realities for which I do not share, or beliefs that make every sinew of my soul cringe at the sheer monstrosity of their absurdity.


I was once passionately empowered against religion, against the belief of imaginary omnipotent men/women/being[s] floating in the blue skies above us, and I thoroughly railed against the people who lived their lives under these ridiculous little umbrellas of illogic.

That was one lesson in life I never forgot; I still haven’t the slightest respect or regard for religionists or believers. The greater their beliefs, the farther I wanted to be from them.


Today, I am empowered once more.

Today, I say enough to stupidity.

I will not be cowed into accepting nonsense, misinformation, prejudices or idiocy, just because that’s how the way the world is, or just because that’s the norm.

There is a better way than this.

 

Spheres

 
I find myself drowning in a sea of mediocrity.
 
An endless continuum of boring people.

Pathetic ones who cannot for the life of them stand up to their own judgements. Pathetic ones who cannot for a moment see beyond the facts and figures that lie before them. Pathetic ones who cannot overcome their ridiculous little prejudices that reside deep within themselves, even though it is ironic that, for the most part, these are the very same people who’s very existence has been the subject of such prejudice and discrimination.

In this huge chasm of differing values and idealism that separates me from everyone else, I feel the four walls closing in.

I feel alienated; trapped in a reality I cannot un-clutch myself from. 

Suffocating in these vile waters, I so hope and wish I could be home where love and warmth and material wealth and time run abundant.


Tonight I again write by the yellow lamp, not unlike how I did all those posts from this time last year.

Tonight I wished I had huge concentrations of alcohol gushing down my bloodstream.

Tonight, those two bottles of Budweiser left in the fridge from my past habits cannot seem more appealing.

But such is not to be.

My Fascist regiment of four-hourly meals of carefully choreographed pro:carb:fat amounts in perfect ratios and the weights and the jogs would all make alcohol the most blasphemous of things I could ingest.

Such then, is life.

I Made It.

Honestly, I feel like deleting every single post I wrote for the past five months.



Success is sweet, though watching your closest, truest friends and comrades fall most definitely isn’t.

Theirs is a solemn reminder of the grave consequences of not having made it through.

Theirs is a bitter reminder of the human costs behind the thick cold faces of ruthless academicians who trump the “standards” flag.



Where most expected —especially coming from me, of all people— is the relentless gloating and praise of all the wonders and joys of life, there shall be none. 

This seriously isn’t at all funny, or worth celebrating for.



I am lucky to have just scraped through, to have saved a brand new Gen.2 and twelve additional months to repeat two subjects.

These were perhaps the two most expensive marks in my life.

Cycles

 
Last night was the second I spent drenched in a blaze of alcohol, a state initiated by conscious choice of course.

Sometimes, doing what feels right needs no explanation. And for the past two nights, swirling in pool of quarter-consciousness under the sheets of a 16°C night was something that felt good, and justly right. 

Sometimes, one must accept that there are just too many things in life that one can never control, and can never foresee. We are forced to do things we never wanted to do. We are forced down paths we never chose to take.

We are just little pawns in a continuum of chaotic variables.


I have lost sense of everything.

For once in my life, I know not what it is that I actually want.

For the second time in my life, I am consuming my self like a cannibal.


What if being, studying, and failing in (and perhaps one day graduating from) this tough, glitzy and expensive place isn’t what I want?

What if taking the easy way out, what if a simpler, easier, less pressured and less grand or impressive piece of paper at the end of a three year programme, all the while being closer to home, to the people I loved, and to all joys of a more sane and more ordinary life is what I wanted instead?


Perhaps acknowledging that mystery is an unavoidable part of life is the most sensible thing to do right now. It is, perhaps, the only thing that can be done. Which essentially means doing nothing but to sit here and wait for the hands of time to do their thing.

And hope. Hope that perhaps in time, things will solve themselves out (or not).


And no, I am not as "emo" as I sound =) 
 

Lines

 
With the renewed sense of urgency, and the crystal clear consequences of me not passing being so real, I put all cerebral engines on full, and pushed on without a care in the world.

But sheer-headed optimism means only so much against the harsh reality that we live in.

Sometimes it gets so surreal: a little unforeseen question that you cannot twist your head to solve, or worse still a little error in mis-substitution, the difference of a single minute negative sign in the equation, that collectively, could mean the end of your hopes, dreams and plans of graduating at what particular time-frame, and consequently, from which particular institution.

Having always stood by the sworn principle of being open to second chances, I find it particularly ironic that it is me who will --with almost all certainty-- not be given such an opportunity myself.

I have worried. I have despaired. I have been distressed. I have tried. I have done much, much more than I will or shall reveal on this open site.

I have not faltered even as I stand against all odds.

But I know: the war has already been lost.

The consequences trouble me to the extent that I no longer want to even think about them. What will be, will be I tell myself. But we all know that that is utter crap, because I will not stand for taking a defeatist attitude when the official white flag has still yet to be raised.

But tonight though, the surrealism took on a whole new depth as I cycled home thinking that in two months time, everything that I now see, touch, smell and feel might very well all be over and done with by then. 

You then realise a whole new layer of detail, like the dry, chilly crispness of the air, the absolute clearness of the night sky, the seemingly larger-than-normal moon, the odd sounds of the passing diesel-powered 5 Series, A4s, Tiguans and Golfs...

But perhaps weirdest of all is the soothing calm that takes you over.

Threads

I walked out of the library, exhausted from my revision to the thought of going home and taking a nap to end this half of what has been an extremely shitty few days that has led to my being constantly pissy and agitated. 

As I approached my bike, I noticed it no longer had a front wheel.

When we all this end?

As if I was not sick enough of everything already, this had to happen at such a time. 

All the people and all the things around me feel like they are hanging on a very thin thread right now: if I had said one upsetting word too many (or if I had not said or done anything when and where I should have), if I had decided not to care, if I had gotten fed up, if I had gotten tired of everything and everyone, if I really really preferred things to be otherwise, then so what? 

Another Late Night

It's almost 5 in the morning and I am still awake, gripped by a dark sense of dismay.

Petroleum is running out. The climate is at a critical point. A little over a billion people will —in the very near future— join the developing/developed world in its voracious consumption of energy.

Fusion technology is still half a century away at the very least. Carbon capture sounds like a childish fantasy. Wind mill farms don't really cut it. Nuclear stations cost too much time and money.

The country has lost it's lead in every single field to the once inferior competitors from South Korean and Taiwan. But instead of teaming up to get our acts together and to stand up to the challenges of the world, we're a nation gripped by ridiculous religious drama and a sodomy trial. Add that to a population intent on seeing even patriotic and unifying attempts fail, you know that we're in deep shit.

Lowering the scale to a more personal level -and perhaps upping the significance- is 3300 that awaits me, and the towering exchange rate and the heavy financial burden it will incur. 

I get the sense somehow that the coming decades will see humanity go through an extremely difficult and trying period, with deep and overwhelming changes to our way of life, and the way we see ourselves.

I feel like a fool and an idiot to worry over the problems of the human race, not least when a course in dynamics is impossible enough in itself. But is it absolute wrong to fret and to worry over things one has no control over, especially if there are smarter, wealthier and more-abled people in the world to lead us out of this pit?

All I want to do is to wake up in the afternoon tomorrow, step into my chilly air-conditioned car, burn a few hundred mils of black gold —putting my share of humanity's CO2 burden into the atmosphere— to get to town and have a lovely glass of white coffee.  

And when the festivities of the Chinese New Year is over, all I yearn for is to go out and get my freezing cold beer and drink well into the mornings with the people most dear to me, then speed through the city streets to get home.