Hi From Neptune

Thoughts for the future

[ Blogmaster stuff: tried out the new updated template, but couldn't decode the sidebar - I need my personalization. Oh, and I'm back! ]

Ever feel like life just never changes? It's a delusion, I know - but so tiring! Lately it's been as if I never go home: as if I emerge from a restless dream, go to school, focus, listen; and then get on the bus, off to some nameless place where there is no respite, and back once more to school. It must be because this is my last year, and I've been considering, really considering, things which have only been vague half-thoughts before. University, for one: NZ$15,000 a year, just to live. The flat, the food, transport, clothes: $15,000. Add in $3-4000 for each paper, and I'll be tackling at least twice the living costs... Need a job. I really do. For me might be the gap year, not to travel (or not just to travel) but to make money for food! *rueful headshake*

It's odd (or not so odd), but coming from a family where money is scarce, the dingy, damp-ridden flat of the typical student holds no appeal at all. Not one ounce - and I don't need luxury here, just something waterproof. Noodles are the same. No appeal. Ah, I've got the soul of a well-off person (it would make sponsoring a child slightly easier as well :P).

There's something magical in my mind about the knowledge base at uni - about sunny days and majestic oak trees, reading some beautifully obscure textbook while sitting on the grass with a bottle of water at your side. About, too, rain on walls of glass (see the Otago Uni library) and a bright, well-lit room, the soft hum of talk and tap of keyboards as you surf the net for some website equally obscure. I find myself fantasizing about a place where people care about what they learn... *sigh* People who want to learn.

A dramatic school, artsy and (just) sporty, LPHS tries to appeal to everyone, not just the academic elite. It's human, inclusive, positive - but it has its downfalls. There are, always, Y9's running around like lousebitten jaggedhearted squirrels. They shriek. They shriek! It offends every geeky sensibility in me. The soft-spoken, wide-eyed "Wow, that story is gorgeous - the delicate interplay of words, the rhythm" child that I am is utterly bewildered by people who shriek. Why? They're friends, for goodness' sake! What will happen if they touch you?

Intimidation happens too. There are some people with a talent for broad, arching sweeps of generalisation: for useful, considered definitions of character, ability, situations. I'm not one of them. They make me nervous, because I don't feel I can respond: what use, when they speak in such vibrant, bold terms, to add in my little bit of detail? A doubt, appearing in my mind, does nothing to enhance. It’s colourless, insipid. It adds nothing but its presence. I must say here that I’m (usually) secure about what I know – but some people just unnerve me. The decisive, dynamic ones… I’m undone by admiration. I turn into a sponge.

I was invited to a friend’s party a week ago (just skip this bit if you’ve got that sinking feeling :-P). She’d come over for a holiday from Oregon to catch up with all her Kiwi peoples, spending time with people she hadn’t seen for 4 years. I was apprehensive, pleased to see her, anxious – a ball of nerves, really. Only these weren’t useful nerves. They weren’t the kind that fill you with adrenalin, get you bouncy and rambling, turn you green in the face: no, these were more like chloroform. I was just present. (Of course, it didn’t help that I’d thrown myself into painting the hour before, switching off all the outside pathways.) I was in, in my own mind, watching and considering, utterly absorbed in the being of things. In short, no more capable of interesting conversation than a tea towel.

At this friend’s party there were: her mother, father (both very well-educated, well-travelled, good-hearted American intellectuals), family friends (including a potter with a passion for second-hand shops and a V.I.P. at Otago Uni, ex-USA academic), mutual friend Adele (who, because she’s such a social soul, couldn’t help believing in me to make it on my own), her German exchange student Anka (really, really nice but only slightly less awkward with the crowd than me), Adele’s parents (opinionated, joking, inclusive), and a girl from our school named Sibby. Now, she was the clincher. Sibby is… gorgeous. Stylish, well-spoken, tactful, witty and blonde. She’s our Head Girl, and for good reason. She terrifies me.

I was trapped, nearly inanimate, in a noisy, crowded room for hours. It was agonizing. Everyone was talkative, friendly – and, in my painfully impressionable frame of mind, loomed as cool and distant as the Himalayas. My awareness was a hundred million miles away, being incinerated in the midst of some outlying star… (Just an example of the images that floated across a muted perception:

Betelgeuse, in the belt of Orion… Orion, famed hunter-constellation of the Ancient Greeks… Ancient Greeks, who give birth to Heracles, Zeus, Athenian democracy, the heroes of Thermopylae… Sparta, warrior-state and martial consciousness… Persia, ancient to the ancients, built in the very cradle of humanity, conquered by Alexander the Great… Alexander, ancient to the ancients, hero of Cleopatra’s Egypt and legend to Julius Caesar himself… Caesar, who met his death on the Ides of March … et tu, Brute…

I learned some things. First, which I don’t quite yet believe: that these people, imposing, impressive and inspiring as they are, are just like me. Second: that I should not attempt anything social while in this state. It. Does. Not. Work. Oh, maybe with close friends, the kinds of people with whom you laze around on sunny days: the kinds who pelt you with chocolate chips, who clear their junk-scattered couch for you, who pull faces at you in a boring class. The kinds who never, ever let you leave without having a piece of cake. They are immune to anything – you’d do the same for them. But with others, the reflex-smile acquaintances… To them, it’s unfair. So I’m not doing it again.

Labels: dreams, job, money, school, shy, thought, uni

posted by Anonymous @ 2:13 PM