Recently in Culture Category

I feel very much like that today. I rejected reality by leaving work early. It's been a hard week. I am rejecting more of reality by not bothering to do any more studying of this chapter.

I am attempting to reject some more reality by putting off doing something or another with a digital photoframe for the Mother In Law. Pfft. I suppose I better do it really. That way it is over and done with.

I had been rejecting the reality of clothes needing washing but plain and simply ignoring them for the past 10 days. Now they're in the washing machine. Had to be done I suppose. Bleh. It's the bit afterwards that I don't like.

Now that leaves me wondering...what am I going to do this afternoon? Well once I have fucked around with the photoframe a bit, I shall...get back to my Pensées. I only have it on loan until Tuesday and I don't want to take out an extension on it - I would rather read it quickly so that I can move on to another book. Mother has left me Brick Lane by Monica Ali, which I think that I will read. After that, I plan on a little bit of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, John Le Carré, Virginia Woolf and then in a twist I was going to read The Godfather.

Why am I reading Blaise Pascal's Pensée? Why? Why? Why? I truly wish I knew. I heard about it somewhere and decided to read it. For those who know the french, they will realise that "Pensée" means thought, and is apparently where the word "Pansy" comes from. Well yes, thoughts indeed. It is truly just 300 pages of one man's thoughts of all of the elements of the world. Some of them, from what I have read thus far, actually seem to still stand today. As he was around in the 17th Century, that's pretty good going. I am yet to get to his Wager of Faith.

I suppose it was an early form of a blog. Most blog writers, my shite self included there, write about their thoughts on things. The philosophise about the world based upon their experiences, beliefs or what they think is correct. Pascal's Pensées is no different. It is just a fairly young man theorising on the world based upon his beliefs. Good on him I say. They must be good as they are still being read almost 400 years later.

And then, in a complete turn around from my philosophising there, I am going to play on the xBox. I'm not sure if I shall listen to any more of Broken Skin this week. I might save it for a night that I cannot get to sleep, or an afternoon next week when I need an hour or so doing nothing, and entirely to myself. However, before that I have to actually get the next lot on the bloody thing. It's more difficult than it sounds.

Right well...I shall march on with my Pensées before I get put off.

One of the most boring things in life is having to wait for someone or something to turn up. I missed the electricity meter reader yesterday afternoon, the note in the door said that he would come this morning. I got up before 8am. He hasn't been yet, although it is barely beyond 9:30am. I thought that, as I was waiting around I would muse on a few of life's issues.

Getting older scares me.
I had a mini discussion about this the other day with the Boss. I asked him what age he would like to be if he could be one age forever. His answer was the age that he is now, which is 24. I concurred and said that I would like to perpetually be 22. It's a nice age. I'm not yet "getting old" as I'm not near 30, but I'm not so young that I'm still excluded from doing things. I am a proper fully-fledged adult. It's a nice age. However, later this year I turn 23. Next year I turn 24. In 2010 I turn 25. In 2015 I turn 30. Ugh. Just the thought of being 30 strikes fear into my heart. And to think, this is coming from someone who, mentally, feels about 40.

At the age of 22, I know that I have another 40 years worth of work in me. At the age of 30, I still have another 30 odd years of work in me. By the time we get to what is considered "retirement age" now, I am sure that the retirement age will have been changed to..."never". You retire when you die. That would solve a pensions crisis.

Underneath this rough, and rather sharp exterior is really someone who is quite worried about getting older. Uncertainty worries me. Wow. That's coming from a person who doesn't give a flying fuck about decisions being laid down. It's not uncertainty in terms of "oh, what am I going to have for dinner tonight?" That kind of thing I don't care about. It's not me being worried about how much I will be earning aged 30, or where we will be living, or who we will know, or whether members of my family will still be alive. No no. Nothing like that.

It's the uncertainty of what I am going to do. As ever the student does, I do not know what I want to do with my life. I never have, not truly. I've theorised many a time about what I might like to do, but I do not truly know. I don't think that anyone ever does. They may think that they know what they want to do, they may get that "dream job", and then realise that they hate it - therefore they did not know.

[Slight pause while I make myself a pot of tea...]

What possibly makes it more difficult is that the Boss reminds me on a regular basis that it is a soft, bit of a Mickey Mouse, "arty" degree. Heh. Yeah. Says he, the one who is always asking me on correct English usage!

A large proportion of people who take an English degree end up in secretarial or administrative roles. No thank you. Been there, done that, it made me lose any faith I once had in humanity, and made me realise that a majority of the great British public are a little on the dim side. I'll give that one a miss thanks. But where does it leave me? A good degree in English generally proves that one is good at research. I enjoy research.

Would I take up a research role? Well, there are research roles, and then there are research roles.

There are research roles for large companies, whether that be in their production, testing or marketing departments. The kind of thing where you are researching the same thing, day in, day out. Can you imagine me working in a marketing department? Meh. I don't believe in anything - I certainly wouldn't believe in a "product". Except maybe Twinings Teas. But what research can you do about that? Tea is good. Tea is wonderful. Drink Tea. There you go, research done.

And then there are research roles. The interesting research roles. The ones for television production companies, whether that be the Discovery Channel or the BBC. That would rock my rainbow toe socks. Many different subjects over time. Good shit. And there's another type of research role that falls into the interesting category. That of research in a University. Heh, that would generally require me to take a PhD. Yeah, any PhD that I took would be a crock, lined with 200 pages of bullshit. It would be an absolute crock of shit.

And then when I think about where this degree might lead me, and I become ever more confused and uncertain about the whole thing, I start to wonder if that's the only reason that I'm taking it - to get a job. Of course it's not.

A very shallow part of me is taking this degree in the hope that it will turn me into some cultured, learned, well read, literate polymath. Will it? Will it change the way I think? The way I speak? My sense of humour? My social (in)abilities? Who knows.

I want to do something of consequence in life. I want to read Pascal's Pensees, John Le Carré, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and other frightfully pretentious sounding authors. I want to appear well read. I want to think that I am fairly well read. To look at my collection of books at the moment would just appear a joke. Full of Fry, Wodehouse, Sociology, and Wilde. To some, insipid up to the hilt. Oh well. I can hope that this year, my bookcase (when I finally bother to get one) will start to fill up with the likes of Blaise Pascal, John Le Carré, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, and Ernest Hemingway. Now let me chuck a few poets in there too, Philip Larkin, John Clare and of course Wilde.

But why do I want to do this? The answer to life, the Universe and everything does not lie in good books. No of course it doesn't you bloody fool, it's 42. You see, I must have learnt from this bloody sociology course, because I have come to what feels like the end and I am no bloody closer to an answer, I am merely getting more fucking questions. Arse.

Perhaps I'm not really meant to know what I want to do? Perhaps I need to do a whole load of things and see what fits? Perhaps I need to make a huge amount of mistakes before I realise what is for me? Then again, perhaps somewhere out of the blue something will fall into my lap which is just perfect? Hmm. I don't hold my breath. I'll keep trying and searching for something and see if anything does just drop. Until then I shall get back to my pretentious authors.

Written by one of Britain's greatest poets (he was voted so - it must be true). Philip Larkin wrote this poem entitled "This Be The Verse". Oh how true it rings.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.