I am stuck doing nothing. My life is a mess and I am terrified. I fear that I have fallen into something bad.
So I am writing this blog,
I am sick of all this living. I sick of all the evil looks I see in others when I see them on the street or in the library or the noodle joint. I'm sick of sneezing out malapropisms when I speak faster than I think. I am sick of petite misunderstandings; the not quite catching whether the cashier said 'How
s your day" or "Anything else", the mumbles to myself repeated twice when somebody just didn't catch that.
I'm trying to live in the world more. There is always something on in the evenings. There is always a public lecture, book launch, or market with food, even if it is just a slice of gherkin toothpicked to bread and odourous cheese. It don't really care what. I am unfortunate to hate food in a generation which loves it.
I have all these ideas, that I am too disorganized to give reality's shape to. I want to take a photo (I can not draw) with two people standing; a woman wearing jeans and a man with his jacket tied around his waist. Light being throw silhouettes them against the wall; but the shadow of the woman is the masculine shape used on bathrooms, while the man's is the feminine (his jacket becomes the skirt.) Its not even that I want to make a statement about gender identity, it is just that the image contains sufficient irony to become something interesting to look at for thirty seconds. But it is too much effort to organize such an image. Firstly I need to secure a camera. After that organize two people, So the idea goes in my notebook and is never organized.
So I am writing this blog, Mashing my mediocre musings for public perusal just so I feel I have left nothing undone. That is the way to look at life; I have to do something so that I will feel that I have left nothing undone.
It is important to feel that we are doing something, even as a distraction, as the world descends in to chaos. Putin's in Damascus helping Assad win his war. China's building up Islands in South-East Asia, and claiming them as territory, Some say this is a Second Cold War, others the Third World War. (The British style of naming world wars adds a double, prescient meaning to the term.) Neither of these seem accurate. Therefore, for the next conflict, I think we should use that Dorothy Parker line to describe it; What Fresh New Hell is This.
After the fall of Singapore, FDR said in a speech "So far, the news has been all bad." We are not there yet. There is still good news. The Tunisian Quartet just got the Nobel Peace Prize; their revolution stands, if none of the ones it inspired have. Democracy is still functions in most of the world. If the next great slaughter begins, I believe one thing. There is this banner, part of the ANZAC celebrations at the National Archives (NZ), with a quote "I don't think we have seen the last of war." We should reverse this notion. "I don't think we have seen the last of peace."
So I am writing this blog, An organised ritual, a regular post will give structure to my life. And, for no other reason but to leave me feeling I have left nothing undone, here is a video of me reading.
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