I had no idea how I was meant to go about this, so I started writing.
My task for Friday was to have a plan on, and to start my speech. I didn't do that, because I knew you were on an excursion and my brain was elsewhere also. Fast forward. Last night I was staring at my scene analysis, and all I could think was, "I'm sick of this shit.” I mean, scene analysis, language features, motifs, inferred questions, I'm sick of it. I've never enjoyed English, but I've always gotten it done. Four years into my study and what little motivation that existed has been exhausted. The only substitute, an ATAR. Sure, I am well capable of completing the advanced course should I gain the drive or get the push.
The drive and the push are two things I've had experience with. The drive I've encountered time and time again. The drive I feel at the end of a set at the track, or in the final minutes of the ninety to stop or score that late goal. The push, was 10a's cricket, I got in on fielding and the potential I showed with a bat in hand. My coach, tough as nails, trying to best handle the child who was incorrectly graded and somehow get something from him. These examples however, are in a different world.
What about at school? Where do these examples lay? The Push would best be illustrated by my N award warning. The more and more I was pushed, the more you cracked down on me, the more apathetic I became, the less I cared. The more you pushed the more my mind was made. I didn't care. The drive at school? That's been felt a few times, my final 100 meters of the CHS 4x400m relay, school soccer against Canterbury Boys High School (which made me miss physics for the physio period 2), you get the idea. My drive lives on the pitch, the court and the track. The classroom on the other hand, it is hard to come by. Unless I can see a way in which it will be practical or useful in the real world, problem solving like in maths, understanding the local environment with biology, or understanding the universe in physics and the minute details which make it all possible in chemistry. On top of that, I discover how I work, what makes my heart beat, and what being healthy is all about in PDHPE.
Sure English will help me to express the beauty of what I learn in my other subjects but only in a manner that can be understood by those as, or better educated than myself. Basic definitions though, are the best definitions. A basic definition holds in it clarity and precision, which is why they're used by dictionaries. Should my basic definitions not suffice later in life, then I shall buy a thesaurus. I want to focus my studies on things that hold worth in the real world. On understanding. English we can never understood, which although holds its own chaotic beauty is nothing but the spaced-out supermodel. Everybody can agree, and nobody would deny that she is attractive, if not stunning but she is missing that defining characteristic which would make her beautiful. It's one thing to be loved, another to be lusted. Five of my six subjects I can feel their warm embrace, their comforting hold of my drenched body, soaked in information, trying to comfort me while I absorb it all. The sixth, an attractive figure, a thing of legend, sits staring. She is ridiculously striking, incredibly smart. There she sits, staring into my soul, licking her lips. The succubus, staring at her hopeful meal. However, I've broken eye contact, here and now, I'm avoiding her trap. After seeing what she did to my sister, I'm not going to consider flirting with her any more than I have. It's time to walk away to a safer place. It's time for me to go to standard.
If it would be easier I will drop after the speech, to make things easier. So I can start with the next topic. Until then, I'll sit in on lessons, I will keep to myself and I will keep quiet. I won’t disrupt you, if you don't disrupt me. Don't try to push me or I will either push back or do even less than I was beforehand. I will get work done, don't worry, but it will be work I see fit, don't expect anything too extravagant, or anything much really.
If not I'll leave now. I'll still do our speech though, because I guess I signed for it.
Why have I come to this realization now?
Relativity, a concept that has been applied, intentionally or otherwise, to countless things and time, something that is often overlooked. Time itself is relative, I'm sure a holiday with your fiancée would feel much shorter than a trip of the same length with some of the ratbags you're obliged to educate. Time is a human invention. Does your cat care whether it is Monday or Thursday? Of course not. Sure, summer and winter are important but there are biological alarm bells that go if inside that let it know. Urges your cat doesn't question, so they don't bother it. We have these urges also; personally the decline in temperature (which is also relative) has led to an increased appetite, because I'll need more fat to survive the harsh winter ahead. Time has got us chasing deadlines, lines which aren't there. Time has us chasing death, because we need to. Time is always running out, because time doesn't exist. Time is simply trust we place in things, in each other.
Health is also relative; it is how we see ourselves compared to others. If there was a tribe where everybody was obese, nobody had any cardiovascular endurance or skill, and it was normal to pass away before aging took control they would all see themselves as perfectly healthy. Should an odd member of this tribe not gorge himself, exercise and outlive his peers, the community would don him a freak, see him as strange and unhealthy. As he grew older the tribe would see his long life as a curse. They would see him cry as he out-lived his friends and become terribly lonely. Then he would grow frail and weaker than the toddlers who could barely string together sentences. I feel like I'm one of the healthiest people in the room, not because I play sport, but because I live.
Looking around each of my classes I can usually find a few people who are already dead. There are more who are dying. Josh is one of them. Slowly he is dying, becoming a zombie. For the most part, it's best that he does. He will stop living and get through school fine, with good marks and then, hopefully, he will start living again. But this is just the start, The World and I sitting in a tree, T-E-S-T-I-N-G, first comes school, then comes university, then a boring job of no joy to me. Frankly, that's not the way I want to live my life. Even now, there are lots of funnels, lots of water being poured down them and out the bottom. Every which way we try to move, we will be swept along and down, drowning in what we were told was wine. "Life is a waterfall, we're one in the river, and one again after the fall." (from Aerials, by System of a Down) lyrics that never meant too much until I started to see what was happening to me. I'm not going to struggle much, because I know it's pointless. I can run around planting quotes, like Guy Montag planting books, but it's useless. The hound is after you from the day you're born. These dystopian texts hold so much power because of the sheer reality they strike in us.
The reality is, the world we live in is pretty much a dystopia. We're almost all slaves to money in one way or another. Numbers on pieces of paper or a computer screen. It runs our lives, a bittersweet symphony, slaves to money and then we die. Sure money is great, it helps us get cool stuff we otherwise wouldn't be able to get our hands on, but is probably responsible for more crimes around the world than any other factor. Some of the saddest lives that money has claimed are those of the people still breathing, slaving in an office, earning a good salary, because the world told them that's what they were meant to do. However, money isn't quite a concern for me as of yet, being an unemployed 16 year old, money is handled for me. However, I face a different set of numbers on paper and on computer screens. Test results. My zombie classmates, including Josh, who has been bitten, are slaving away over numbers on a page. They work and work and work so that they can get better numbers, which is great because it opens opportunities to them, but the opportunities they pass up for those may not be worth it (not that there is any way to tell).
Fahrenheit 451's burning of books has made me see that marks are truly just that, writing on a page. One match, and it's gone from sight, the python's venom takes care of the permanent results. All the time and effort, those perfectly selected words and elaborate plotting, so much time effort and thought. Gone in an instant. What would happen if all the marks were destroyed? What if everything was lost? Everybody would be equal on paper, but in the real world the zombies would be at loss, whereas those that went out and lived would hold all the cards.
This world is thoroughly unpredictable, which can be shown through the extreme example of my Grandfather. Two weeks ago he was healthy and seemed fine; he hadn't had hallucinations or anything bad for ages. He felt excellent and went to get the paper, which was the extent of his capabilities. He had a fall. On Tuesday we were told he was on the way out, Friday night he passed away. I guess that's the frailty of life we spoke about. This however, isn't a rush of carpe diem, I've always been hit or miss with English and I just entertained the thought that if I could sustain myself closer to hit than miss then I'd do pretty well in the HSC. This is not a way to plan. Old habits die hard, and before the HSC I'm not suddenly going to become a model zombie. It's not going to happen.
My time on this planet is limited; my time in this school is (hopefully) relatively a lot shorter. I want to enjoy my time here as much as I can, and for that I need slightly easier English work, to hopefully prolong my rage quit from school until after I've sat my HSC. Although irresponsible, sport will almost certainly continue to take priority over school in most situations. Call me childish, but I still love climbing trees and, as far as I'm concerned, first comes love, then comes marriage, then a baby in a goddam golden carriage. I'm not dying for numbers on a page. I'm living for something real.
This may be painful to read; I did a quick spelling/grammar check, but ignored most of it. What I changed may also make even less sense. Word bloody loves semi-colons, so I threw a few of them in there. If they don’t make sense it’s words fault. God knows I don’t know how to use them. I think my laptop does heroin.
Thanks for putting up with me
- You know who this is from
