Meanderings at Christmas (long journal)

The hour is late but tonight I feel an odd con­nec­tion with lan­guage. It is as if words are pou­ring from my mouth and they must be writ­ten down somehow. I have a great admi­ra­tion for the English lan­guage and its unbrid­led elo­quence, although my love does not carry itself into the gram­ma­ti­cal empire due to the short fallings of my lite­rary cons­truc­tion skills. Words and sen­ten­ces form in my head, yet once on screen they are long, dis­con­nec­ted and ridd­led with errors. Re-reading my pas­sa­ges I pick up on nuan­ces that hint at a mere pseudo-intellect behind these mean­de­rings. I wish for flo­wing and invol­ving sen­ten­ces; yet I con­jure jerky and bitty con­nec­ting words and all pos­si­ble beauty is gone.

I desire to be crea­tive in my life. I have ideas, I am an ideas per­son — yet there is no great way of sprea­ding the plans in my head. Com­mon metho­do­lo­gies require skills and fun­ding I do not pos­sess — movie, music and lite­ra­ture. Sure, anyone can write a book but few can write a good one. A book would be the easiest of pas­sa­ges to go down as I am neither musi­cal nor thea­tri­cal in the talent sense. I can­not com­mand peo­ple, I can orga­nize, but not com­mand and hence direc­tion is not my path. My mother can play piano yet I have never once suc­cess­fully ven­tu­red into the musi­cal lime­light — I aban­do­ned the trum­pet when I was ten because my noi­ses were pathe­tic, I pla­yed the trian­gle in the school orches­tra — that is the extent of my accom­plish­ments. This is not me being depres­sed, loo­king back at my life, this is me coming to terms with the skills I so dearly wish I had. It should be clear now, that the path I must take is that of lite­ra­ture. Yet I mourn at how bitty and nasty my pre­vious works seems, maybe I am a per­fec­tio­nist, maybe I just can’t write expres­si­vely. Now I have writ­ten two full para­graphs, I will spend twenty minu­tes rea­ding them over and trying to per­fect them — never fully satisfied.

I find myself being a tra­di­tio­na­list. At nine­teen (shortly twenty) and without stub­ble on my face this is a strange conc­lu­sion to draw. I am fin­ding myself fore­ver fear­ful at the route society and the world is taking, des­pite my opti­mis­tic out­look on life. Tech­no­logy and science are dri­ving us down roads with no sign­posts, we don’t know where we are going and there’s nobody to ask for direc­tions at this speed. When will we run out of petrol? What will be at the end of the road? Maybe we should take our foot away from the acce­le­ra­tor and give our strai­ning engine a rest. One hun­dred years ago stress was rare, these days it’s almost man­da­tory. Tech­no­logy with all its joys and won­ders only brings us further stress; it seems some sort of twis­ted pro­por­tio­na­lity has for­med. In choo­sing elec­tro­nic engi­nee­ring as a pro­fes­sion it seems iro­nic that I have this opinion. 

I have run out of things to say for the moment and three para­graphs in a row have begun with the same word. I’m put­ting on some cogi­ta­tive music to get the cogs rota­ting again; some slow expe­ri­men­tal elec­tro­nic dro­nes should do the trick (Fen­nesz). The pre­vious text-block was going somewhere that could lead to mixed and uns­truc­tu­red thoughts on paper, a short novel with the pages mudd­led if you will. If I pre­sent my opi­nions to someone I really want them to be in an unders­tan­da­ble and likea­ble form. No one will ever think wise of someone who can­not form a decent argu­ment. That’s what I want, I want to be wise — I have know­ledge, com­mon sense, morals and I can spell a lot of words correctly, but does that make me wise? I’m unsure as to how you could define wise; most liken wise with the elderly and the cryp­ti­cally spo­ken fic­tio­nal cha­rac­ters such as Gan­dalf. They seem all kno­wing in their short yet hea­vily weigh­ted words of com­fort and know­ledge. Does a know­led­gea­ble per­son simply become wise at a cer­tain age, or do they need to speak in a cer­tain man­ner, reveal only that which is neces­sary and main­tain a veil of mys­tery? I’m sure I’ll learn with time. It seems the more ele­gantly spo­ken are grea­ter reve­red within inte­llec­tual circles. 

Inter­lude. My favou­rite novel is Vla­di­mir Nabokov’s Lolita. My favou­rite song is Angelo Badalamenti’s heart­felt orches­tral “Lauren’s Wal­king” from “The Straight Story” by David Lynch. My opi­nion on my favou­rite movie and that which I think is the best are of course dif­fe­rent. The movie I enjoy most is “Ghost World” for rea­sons I do not has­ten to add. I hope you have enjo­yed this inter­lude, now it’s time to raise the cur­tain again and return to the tex­tual glo­ries that are my Christ­mas meanderings. 

My play list has reached Gas’ fine “Pop” album — track two. The hour is now an hour later than when I did start this piece. Being an elec­tro­nic engi­neer I rarely encoun­ter an oppor­tu­nity to evolve and deluge myself in lite­rary ram­blings. It is this blog and this inter­net that keep me wri­ting, albeit rarely. 

I no lon­ger enjoy the con­di­tio­nings society has bur­de­ned me with. I find myself desi­ring a 42″ inch plasma TV — but what prac­ti­cal ser­vice can such a thing pro­vide me when com­pa­red with a com­for­ta­ble and pur­pose ful­fi­lling SCART Roads­ter that can be bought for the same price. I do not want to be drawn towards the mena­cingly fan­ci­ful bodies of the thin and pho­toshop­ped when per­fectly con­tent and happy with my current rela­tionship. I’ve reread that past sen­tence four times now. Society is fee­ding me dreams I do not want yet can­not deny. I guess it’s time my ram­blings should stop for now, I hope you have seen a little bit of me and I hope this prac­tice adds to the poten­tial within. 

Ciao. Paul.