High Hats and Mad Cats

God's Dramatist

2009-09-14T09:25:00.001+01:00

I’m a pretentious writer, if one at all. This is, at least, the adjective to which can be applied whilst reviewing any entry from my weblog. I think what exists there most particularly resembles the convoluted submissions for which a fifteen year old would have overemphasised a thesaurus. Without having a focused or complete idea to elaborate on, I transform a timid notion into some kind of farce expression of vocabulary (one I am unsure about claiming to myself). Instead of taking time to furnish off, and polish, and perhaps train what of which I hope to one day become an ‘accomplished’ authority, I hide behind delusions of grandeur that place unreasonable expectations over every single word, syllable, letter; all my instincts to write and to tell, to create, are murdered by this crooked social inhabitant, this villain inside of me who only wants for himself what masterpieces are predicated to birth from inside.

This is absolutely, unequivocally preposterous. Over the years, over time, over life and growth and death and over myself, I have spilled away the fleeting moments of actual, honest writing for something that for which only exists a naive illusion. I want to write because I want to write, because of what comes out from inside of me when I do so, and I want to write about more than what comes out from inside of me! I want to write from inside the world, about what inside of it. I want to write without the predication of perfection, I want to write absent of those stipulations into which my most iniquitous self censors the truth; I just want to sit down, every single night, at this black plastic keyboard, beneath the bosom of an overbearing white light, oppressed by night’s dark veil and wrapped into it’s cold and peaceful blanket, and I want to write. Half a page, thirteen, fifty, ones I submit, ones I don’t, ones I throw away, ones I lock up, ones over which I weep and ones over which I cry out in hysteria, ones out of which I grow and ones under which I hide, regressing. It doesn’t matter. The athlete trains, night and day, dieting and fighting for the prize towards which he or she missions, and that prize is no golden trophy or blue and red ribbon; the prize is built into the struggle itself, the fight, the constant and ever-engaging need to compete, to move forward. Is this not the common ground for all hopefuls in their secluded time of ambition, of meditation in achieving a set goal that beckons their every breath to roam the great distance between? This is for me, this is the struggle I yearn to endure, and not so regrettably do so at every single corner and curve, the treacherous road towards no particular end that bends and shapes, a ship that maroons me only to return, begging me to board and row so desperately, a sailor boy sinking his way into oblivion by means of his need for movement. This is precisely what it means to be in the mind, to be a thinking thing, a calculating, callous, scandalous thing that latches upon life as a leech to suck it dry of whatever feeling, sense, consolation it can spare; all in pursuit of not satisfaction, but of what it means to pursue, because no fisherman, no honest fisherman, would drop its net if he or she knew that it would mean to catch all of the fish. Only those who chase satisfaction cannot ever be satisfied; only those who are eager to catch all of the fish will go hungry and starve. Only the writers who sit down to exclusively produce masterpieces will find themselves completely out of touch with what it means to write, to create, to speak, to think, for god’s sake, to be! I am here to be, and my writing is only a reflection of what my being knew and saw and tasted and loved and hated and everything, every last thing my being was to be. To write, not to write, but to make, and to feel fulfilled within the voyage to fulfilment, not fulfilled at paradise. To write what comes as an example of me, and what surrounds me, not what is expected or necessarily wanted to be.

This is the first time in a long time that I feel as though I am doing something, as though I am actually being and not merely pretending to be. This is the writer without his inner social inhibition, but his drunken banter and his boisterous inebriation; his every slipping word, syllable, letter; his moments, dreams, his abilities and his inabilities. This is him, in all his imperfection and all of his insecurity, his immaturity, giving himself up and pushing away to be shredded apart by society’s vultures, captured and caged in their own false worlds, raping each other with immaterial delusions, the unfortunate public orgy of all people incarcerated to their own commercial lust and vanity. This feels more real, more of what is, this writing makes me a happy sailor boy crashing down his brave ship, with a fleet prepared to join him down the oceanic slope, slipping, drowning, fading into a vast black nothingness, smiling, without regret, knowing that before there was the light of struggling existence there was the dark of peaceful absence, and this dismal voyage is maiden only inside of him, but the fate of all timid ships racing to a race, and not to an end. I think the ship’s name is God’s Dramatist, christened in the bay of angels who bless the journey with harmony; the privilege of strife and famine, but also of joy and ecstasy, with contention and absolution, questions and answers, understanding and confusion, a sailing ship endlessly burning, neither sunken nor afloat.

A Letter To A Young Man

2009-09-03T23:22:00.000+01:00

Dear David,

Your optimism precedes you. As you wander in your juvenile frivolity, you only graze the plains of discovery your mind has already observed. This summer, under a humid midnight moon, you have eaten the weeds around which you once nourished a latent and thirsty valley of comprehension, and modest understanding. A youth to behold, one yet who asks only that he drink from the God’s goblet of truth, saturated by the power and honesty of reason. Why you, weary explorer, to taste the tangy treacherous watercress in your mind’s most abundant supply of illusion? Why dare to dig in the furrows and troughs of the malicious and devious deviance that cheats its own conclusions? Your absorption of adolescence has only forgotten you in the same time it remembered you could be consumed. It ate you up and spit you out so vindictively, but left you begging with possessed eyes, on your broken hands and knees, calling out for but a mere moment more with what it told you was ecstasy. Fear not your susceptibility, but your eagerness; for all of mankind is damned to an infinite void that conflicts desires and necessity. Success is but a travesty in the language of your person, for what can satisfy a compulsively unfulfilled being? Two vast pastures exist at opposite ends of understanding towards which you can place your passionate pursuit, but you cannot forget the line that draws them. You caught in a persistent tugging between the planks of an enigmatic dividing fence, with spectators eyeing your every move, perceiving your insecurities with outlandish gossip, taunting you to plant your seed on one of the competitor’s prospective sides. Dear young man, foolish young man, synthesise their feuding beliefs! Unify the land so that all can embrace a fundamental division; harmonise the beauty of both sluggish fiends beating their fists on the foreground of peace. Show the foreign the munificence of the domestic, and force the domestic to embellish themselves the traditions of the foreign! Let not these weeds poison your mind with habits and convictions; cultivate the fruits of knowledge and nurture the vines of progress, exalting both with love and devotion. Let your valley grow with experience, and narrow not your opportunities; for as age weighs down, so it turns around the slope of time and your end is the final luminosity.

Sincerely,

Your Hearts Content

Our Own Hopeless Selves

2009-07-15T16:03:00.001+01:00

Dad,

Thirteen years of our lives to make up for your pathetic excuses at difficult pain medication and your sudden realization that perhaps you are okay without an excessive amount of them is hardly a model to overcome. Your factitious claims of reliance upon your children have with themselves stitched a bad odor of which, in lieu of your stubborn nature, we can only be cleansed through ignorance. There is much, much work to be done on your part before anyone lifts a finger to the string you struggle more every day to pull.

Like a courtyard lawn that has been improperly irrigated, so you saturate your own mind and ours with muddy falsities and a vast lake of lies. I am dumbfounded in believing anyone who subscribes to your perspective, save your “attorney” whose name you so conveniently have yet to mention. You are quite possibly one of the most selfish men I believe I have ever met, and in this selfishness you are blinded. All you want is money; all you have spoken of since I returned is money, money, money, me, what about me, and what about money? The five of us have offered you an enormous tantamount of gracious and compelling opportunities, at every corner have tried to pick up a wish you dropped, and have exhausted ourselves trying to please a greedy and iniquitous man whose true desires can only be satisfied through the loss of everything, and the moans he then shall protrude. You only want what you want and what you can get your own way. We, and specifically I mean your children, have become entirely irrelevant and it is obviously clear that what we need of you is about as important to you as a vegetable is important to a lion.

Any sensible, reasonable person in this situation truly in an attempt to do better and make change would have first heard the desperate calls of his already damaged children what was needed of him for their slow repair. Unfortunately, your actions were now and I imagine mostly only ever have been based on yourself, which is why our family fell apart. A family is a decentralized connection of sharing and willing unconditional love; I realize now that this is impossible for someone as narcissistic as you are who needs to be the irrevocable and unequivocal center of everything and everyone. Like a virus, you continue to consume the minds and lives of your loved ones, draining them of their inner and outer selves until they bear no more and you prepare to move imperviously onward. The matters of another human being are of so little concern to you, and I get the lingering sense that even this very text will be received with deliberately deaf ears.

Your writings are wrought with your expectations of us, both your children and our mother. I regret to inform you that since we have done so much for you already, to act another time on your mocking and pretentious demands would be to continue to hack at our own scabbed necks. You have gone too far. It is over. As far as I am concerned, the house is worth enough for you to sell it on your own and make enough of a profit to leave and live comfortably for a very long time. It is solely your mess nonetheless, and though we had dreamed of you cleansing this enclave of filth yourself in an attempt to show us wrong, you instead handed your mess off to another family. And when that didn’t work out, you returned crawling on your shaking and frail knees, begging once more for a finger to be lift in your fake absence. It is your mess and your mess alone. No one damaged your things, only you. Your lies know of no boundaries, and your manipulations only further drive a splint between you and the recovery of a relationship with your soon-longing children.

I made you yet another offer two weeks ago, saying we would help you with everything; finding a place, cleaning your disgusting chaos, and selling the house to a gain for everyone. You declined this in a showy exaggeration and in the process, have released any grip you once had on my feeble and young mind. There is no one left to help you but yourself. You had a wealth of moments to let your family help you do the right thing, and you spit upon our heads! Our names! Our dignity, you disgraced us and now you have severed the bond that once was considered unconditional. You should be ashamed, though I suspect you aren’t and shan’t ever be.

But, you will live with the consequences of your conceited decisions and manipulations. I am employing the advice that no one in this family lifts their broken fingers to help you; may it be physically, emotionally, financially, etc. We presented to you with ourselves as gifts in exchange for mere compliance, and you sold us out from underneath our own hopeless selves. Besides, if a man can fish and play golf, he can hold even the most innocent vocation. Your income is of your own concern, since you are your own person.

There is yet another blow I am obliged to deal to you. In regards to that “troll” of which you speak, he has been more of a man in the month I’ve spent around him than you have been a man in the last decade I’ve spent with you. Only a fool speaks on matters of which he has no knowledge. This likely phrase sums up a good amount of your personality.

I think perhaps the most concerning thing to me in this situation is not the reality of you and your actions, but of my response to them. Beneath some of the anger is a being who stores no guilt for the path upon which he is about to place his diligence. I don’t feel the sense of abandonment, because I believe in the midst of a gloomy horizon, you will shine your colors of truth and they in themselves will be of abandonment. You are the only one who has deserted anything, and your desertion stretches vastly across the totality of our lives. Now, the absence of presence will not be yours, but ours, of waiting at your every need. I have seen people much older and more decrepit than you work jobs and make incomes for themselves. I am not going to support your viciously needy behavior, and I doubt anyone else in this family will continue to do so as well. The time is now, for you to claim your life!

Wield this and I imagine you shall flourish beyond that of which we comprehend. I suspect that, however, as your tendencies recommend, that you will only allow this to push you into defeat, and you will continue to beg like a fool, bending your knees at the turned cheeks of a beaten dog. I only want what is best for the father of mine whom I do indeed love and for whom I much care. My nimble finger only extends to a length where it cannot be bitten by the monster whom it need feed.

The mould of a Christian is a many righteous doings, none of which you have ever displayed. From any usual man of himself, I would expect such a negative and degrading character, but never from a man of God. This is where I do not understand why you consider yourself a man of an absolute, when you so clearly and so dearly only live for your own unjust self. I have heard many miracle stories of men in despair stricken suddenly out of it by their letting go of all vain and immoral things; exclusively, the ones that you hide beneath a shell of like a hermit crab in a its own seclusion. Keep your ungodly confounded beliefs and bitterness, for it is nothing of which neither the Christians here nor my own conscious need. Their God holds to them their goodness for letting go and moving on, with their faithful prayers and tearful sorrows.

In these final concurring lines, I connect the advice to which I assure you the lot of us will adhere. Attorney or not, threats or violence, beyond anything you may muster to your defense I maintain that your responsibility in all of this is yours to keep; you only want yourself, thus you can keep yourself. We want you only so far as it does not poison our lives with your continued games and tricks, lies and like a broken record I proclaim; manipulations. Like an amputated and quarantined limb, you are cut off and will rot away unless you heal yourself in time to be healthy enough to become reconnected. This is not a healing that anyone can provide to you, only your own mind thus upon itself. A moral and distant support will continue to exist from your evolving children, one which will ascend with your adamancies regarding this process. This is a certainty of which to be sure, that we always route in your favor, never against it, and with admiration and always with a glistening eye of hope. The only chains to which you are bound are the ones in the dungeon of your own being.

And with that final thought, my influence shall faithfully depart. I love you Dad, more than I think you may appreciate, and every word, every action, every thought, is motivated by the passion by which you have endowed me. For that, I am indeed grateful.

From the one who knows not but understands,

David McDonagh

Our Own Calamitous Selves

2009-06-09T20:56:00.001+01:00

It’s a difficult thing to realise the reality of your most calamitous self. This is the self that forces your hand blindly over matters exclusive of your concern, and grants a grand imposition of your will and senses. This is the self that barricades how you really feel in the corner of a gossip cellar, near to where the factitious wines you store ferment contrived bottles of pseudo-speak. This is the self whom pours the poison in those bottles around into the glasses of the gala that you gloat upon, without regard to the manner and distaste of which you so boastingly perform. Everyone sips it down, wondering about the connections they keep with the portions of your more modest and subtle self, who can display a much more munificent character than this cantankerous beast of a man. Beasts that confide within us all, each with our own calamitous selves, slipping away in the moments it appears and returning with a shameful grin.

I fear that I am more often than not unable to discern this calamity from what I really am. I fear often more than that that this calamity is not a trait, or characteristic; but rather, a more wholesome aspect of my being. This is mortifying. I see myself attempting to puppeteer those around me, and for them to puppeteer me. I feel trapped in this intricate network of lassos and loops that have snagged the edge of each person around me, and we all try to escape at our own strength, pulling and knotting the web at each pulse. This is also a decentralised network, where all must slip together away in an aggregate agreement of departure, for otherwise the responsibility of the entanglement is not shared; and thus, there becomes exemption. There is no one exempt from this colossal disentanglement, and we must all understand this in order for our caught necks to find breath again.

I make this my personal admission to the entanglement of my calamitous self inevitably into a barren, envy-ridden social experience that has corrupted the propensity of my goodness, and my frame. Let us all endeavour to make no longer these excuses, and to further step into the direction of giving up the tugging of this tangled web that only constrains us further upon ourselves.

Our Own Delusional Selves

2009-05-06T22:39:00.006+01:00

That old phrase 'I'm beside myself' has never been more true than it is now, in this decade, and in this generation. Do we know ourselves? I mean - do we really know ourselves? Internet networking websites, digital cameras, glossy windows and shiny car panelling; we are bombarded by mirrored images of what we are, and we feed into it. This, however, just builds a gap between who we are and what we perceive ourselves to be. We don’t spend enough time within ourselves, within our own thoughts. We are now connected to the idea that is portrayed from us, not actually the idea within our heads. We don’t care how we progress as who we are, and we really don’t care what we see ourselves as, only others. We just move through the images and expectations that are held in some kind of model up above our heads, and we stretch an arm’s length out; disappointed that we cannot reach.

Well, of course not. Infinitely, we are unsatisfied beings; our food becomes dull, our routines must be managed and changed, our bodies transformed. When the song has been played enough, we change it, and when our lust becomes too much for our spouses, we find a fresher fancy. Then, one can understand how living against the image and the idea of oneself in a social performance can be not only completely ridiculous and naive, but regressive to any real potential growth. If we spent more time inside of ourselves looking out onto others, then how marvellous our social activity would truly be! We would no longer be beside our own delusional selves, trying to see what everyone else sees of us and just being happy that we can see those magnificent others that pace our company time after time. This is to me why the concept of individuality within the ethics of a social being must be trained, and must be disciplined. Otherwise, we place value only on what our clothing looks like to our companions, and not the real person who fits into those clothes. We only care about how our bags look against the bags of those around us, rather than caring that we can be one who owns a bag among many. Or even that we can be among many. This is the detriment of culture; this pursuit of values that exist only on our placement around objects and conceptual connotations of taste and class. I pity Baudrillard for spelling it out so clearly, and pity more that not everyone wants to challenge his ugly but honest words. We attempt to allow external arguments and material things to sculpt our ‘persons’, and then patch the label with that word, ‘individual’, or those other hypocritical two, ‘free-thinker’; rather, we are individually letting things and people think for us freely.

So here we sit; beside ourselves, attempting to catch a glimpse of how we look next to our name-brand and lifeless things. Our soon-becoming a godless people puts us closer to these inanimate objects; or rather, just the omnipotent visions we place upon these objects to replace the necessity of our yearning for that being beyond that we have just ignored. “I don’t have ‘god’, so just give me some things to make up for it.” Even worse are the ones who claim the deity without providing a reason for one to believe their belief. What a mess.

We don’t see ourselves. We see what it is that is near to ourselves, and juxtapose our satisfaction around that vision of being beside who we are. We need to come back down, and back around to seeing what we really see. I really see this screen, and this keyboard, and I am really hearing this music, and it really is almost midnight, and this is really being written. There is no one to see this for me, but me myself. And I see it, and I know it, and that is where the value lies.

Our Own Unreasonable Selves

2009-04-22T19:07:00.001+01:00

Many believe unreasonable people are difficult to deal with because; they allow their emotions to overcome them. I ardently disagree. I think unreasonable people are difficult to deal with because they are unreasonable. I think the way you feel is more of a method; it’s more a mode of reason rather than the effect itself. Someone calmly not using the cognitive logical faculties within their minds is vaguely different than someone screaming out at you in the same frame of mind. And it seems as though appeasement is the only (if perhaps just abrupt) liberator from such daft social interactions. I would consider myself (in if at least most situations) a relatively reasonable person, especially in my actively and less intimate social experiences, but then I also consider myself more emotional than many others. But I do not serve these emotions, and I think perhaps that is the fundamental difference in how it is I interact versus those who most find insufferably difficult to bear. A person unable to acquire their reasoning to endeavour around the arena of thought and discourse I would rather think as lacking the necessary emotions required to be considered an “overly” sensitive person. But then, perhaps there is a problem in assuming the relevance between someone’s sensitivity and someone’s reason. Are these mutually exclusive? Do my abilities of reason play a separate role than those of emotion?

April Perhaps

2009-04-12T17:27:00.001+01:00

I am unsure as to whether I am hopeful or wishful. Perhaps both. I am connected. I am hungry. I am prepared to live check-to-check. I am prepared to beg, and prepared to command. I am here. I am there. God is everywhere. I am not. Perhaps neither. Perhaps. April is deep, but May isn’t shallow; so where shall I be?

Thoughts for an Hour

2009-03-23T11:40:00.001Z

She wants me to write. For an hour. Who writes for an hour? What could I do to track the time? I want coffee. I can’t stop to make the coffee, I need to type for an hour. Just keep typing, see what does and doesn’t come up. Some kind of stream of consciousness. It’s almost like channelling my thoughts without actually thinking that I am doing it. No revision, no looking back to see what mistakes are aren’t made. I’m not even looking at the screen, I’m just looking at the keyboard. Type. Type. Type. Just keep typing. I almost stopped to read it, but. I shouldn’t. I am thinking, and writing. It is such a bizarre task! Quite interesting, though. I feel like someone is dictating myself, but there is no one else here. Typing my thoughts, its almost like there is someone else in control. When I write characters, I take their voices, their inner monologues, but right now I am taking my own inner monologue. How this tricks my thoughts! My ego and my superego, battling. My superego wants me to look back and see what is being typed, to revise, t o correct; to condition, to discipline. I don’t care. This is exhilarating in and of itself. Just....typing. Just writing. Like some kind of online digital streaming, where the public comes to witness my insanity. What am I thinking? What will this look like? So many mistakes, I can hardly look at the screen to see all of the fragmented sentences. I’m sure if you were to perfectly document everyday conversation, that it would be wrought with all kinds of grammar errors that go completely unnoticed. I paused, I don’t know why. And fragmented sentences, I mean all the time we just .... say things, and don’t realise how they are actually being said. That they are wrong, and that you should correct them. I like being articulate, which I think I am as well. I think it wordsmith is a feat I would like to obtain. However, I am still so sloppy, so careless and yet careful; I want to just shed out all the bullshit of letting others think for me. My expectations are altogether entirely too high. I think everything should be the best, the highest, like there is some grand plateau in life to be reached where I will remain for the rest of my days. This is foolish. There is no threshold in life. Threshold is right now. There is only one time, no past or future; only now. And now is the time within which to occupy. I pause. It has barely been ten minutes and I am supposed to do this for an hour. I don’t know what to do. If I am struggling to want to break, I seriously doubt that there is anyone else in that fucking classroom who is going to actually do this as well. So if I quit, I am with them. If I complete, then where am I? Ugh. I still want to pause. I don’t want to streamline my thoughts anymore. I feel like someone is watching now. I want to type. I want to write. But I don’t want to think. I just want to super-type. Type Type. Type. I don’t want to type sentences, I just want to type words. Type long, eccentric sentences that don’t have any focus or meaning. They just string on into eternity, sliding around my throat, finding new ways to be said and new contexts of which to be pictured. I just want to keep typing, and listen to Brand New. I pause again, thinking about the song. Listening to it. Not long, maybe a few seconds. That doesn’t count against time, does it? I don’t want to go over an hour. Or do I! It has been five minutes now, and I have barely stopped typing. I’m sitting here thinking that I should have typed double what I have typed by now. I wonder how people who used to hand-write their journals did stuff like this. Just sit down and spill it out. It would be quite time-consuming if I can imagine. Crazy. I never kept a journal. I always tried, time and time again, but when it came down to committing to it, I always gave up. I wonder why that is. I wonder what would happen if I had to do this once a day; just type, and type, for an hour, just spill something about whatever is in my head upon this page. This is crazy, and exciting, I am nervous with excitement. This is absolutely no different than what or how I usually think. If anyone ever wanted to peek inside my mind, this would be a perfect way to do it. Just typing, thinking, typing, capturing my mental incapacities on this glossy white Microsoft word fucking page. Ugh. I don’t want to stop. This is making me feel. I am feeling. I want to scream, and cry, and laugh, I want to just write and be. I want to be, for fuck’s sake I just want to be. No one chains me down to those expectations quite is hard as I do myself. I feel so much regret and envy, so many feelings that are iniquitous and unrighteous. I just want to break down what I am, teach myself to just be, without stipulation. I just want to go travelling, go walking, and write while I do it. I want music. I to play music. I want so badly to just design these concepts that I have within my mind, and somehow get them caught in the eye of some big time industry and then produced. Oh, what am I saying. Part of me wants to justify my thoughts and my inarticulateness when thinking like this, this streamlining. I haven’t really looked at the screen much. I can’t imagine how this looks, it s probably so funny. It is scary, though! Someone who reads this will peek inside an hour of being in my head. Speaking of an hour, I am looking at the clock now and it is 44. I won’t say the hour. Nonetheless, I would like to say that it has been twenty minutes. Wonderful. I have been writing strait without looking or thinking for twenty minutes and all I have is barely over a page. I don’t know what that says. Why should I care? What does it say. That I endured twenty minutes of a task. What if I had to do this every single day. That would be amazing. I would have this living, breathing, organic record of my pathetic and feeble thoughts! I could bind them all together at the end of my life and let them decay with my. I pause. I wanted to finish that sentence, but I don’t know how. I feel like the train is moving too fast for me to stop it. I could stop thinking and typing, look back at that sentence, think about it, and then find a ay to rewrite it, but then I would stop the train. You can just stop something that has an intense momentum. Hmmmmm. So what then. I can’t remember the sentence if I don’t stop and think about it. I just want to keep focusing on the typing, and nothing else. I am nearly halfway there. I can’t imagine novelists. I pause, ugh something keeps taunting my thoughts. Novelists write so many pages, so carefully with wonderful words and prose methods, and they certainly don’t write like this. But they come out with hundreds and hundreds of pages. I have, after almost twenty-five minutes, barely a page and a half. What the hell. I’m not sure I could ever write a novle. I can barely write movies. I am too unfocused; I come ip with an idea and then just lose sight of my vision, I convo0lute it with entirely too many words and ideas. I just realised something. I am on this page. I am not inn my head. I paused for a second while I was typing that last sentence, and thought almost like, “who is this?””where have I been?” So is this streamlining me? What is it? I don’t know,I don’t know. I feel trapped on this page. I am just typing, and thinking, and typing. I don’t want to go to a full hour. I am nearly halfway there. The music is still playing, I am still anxious. Like my shoulders, tense and eager. Asdfadgaf I just paused again. Peeked at the screen to see where I was. Almost two pages now. Nearly anyway. I don’t know why, but a picture of Africa just came into my head. Like a scene from Lord of War. I want to go to Africa, I don’t know why. I just want to travel. This is really what I think like most of the time. Just thinking. But people are watching here, so is this really me? I mean, is this really exactly how I think? Hmm, I odnt know. I don’t want my thoughts to be criticised, so should I let anyone even come near this? And if I had to do this everyday? I just got annoyed with myself. I paused and looked at the screen. I am becoming frustrated, claustrophobic. I don’t want to type as much anymore. Almost thirty minutes of just typing. And two pages? That is like, one page almost every fifteen minutes. I can’t imagine how Jean-Paul Sartre wrote Afhafakfaljkdf I can’t remember the name of the book, BEING AND NOTHINGNESS is the name. That book is like, a thousand pages, and its denser than a black hole. How can someone pay so much attention, and so carefully craft a work of nonfiction to that length? Is it really full of necessary concepts and explanations? Most of us don’t apply that much effort into anything. Not even reading, we don’t want fiction that is 1000 pages long. Maybe. I don’t know, I shouldn’t generalise. I wonder what other people’s thoughts would look like. After half an hour of streaming their thoughts onto some page, what would come out? Imagine if I stopped to correct my grammar, and my word usage. That would be insane. So, if I keep to this writing I’ll have written four full pages. Of nothing. Someone can come read my thoughts. I type to carelessly, I can see red coming up every now and then. I have decided that I am going to go back and make all of the necessary corrections afterwards. Not statements or sentences, just words. I know how to spell, dammit! I’m just typing too quickly to worry about it. Ugh. I don’t know what to think now. I like Brand New. A lot of this is repetitious, ad that is going to annoy me. Especially when showing this to other people. Ugh, I am going to have to print this out and use ink up. And next week. Four pages of bullshit to show the world. Bullshit about what goes on inside my head. This isn’t even that bad. This is a slowly paced version of what it is like to be inside of my head. This is chained to having to type. I can think sentences much more quickly than I can type them. I am trying to keep up thought. I am just staring at my keyboard, thinking, typing. If I had to name this I should call it type, or streamline, or something. I don’t know. Every day if I had to do this. I just thought about squirrels in the park. I love the park. I went there every single day last week. My grammar is getting worse as I type quicker, and more focused. Haha this probably looks so funny. I look retarded. I wonder how different the beginning is from the rest of it. I don’t even remember what I was talking about on the first page, I remember mentioning Brand New. And I do love them. Almost forty minutes in, it looks like I am going to make it. Perhaps. Ugh, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I want to stop, but I don’t want to. God, I want coffee. I talked about coffee on the first page, I remember now. I love Brand New, their music is so wonderful. I want to sing the lyrics to the song, and stop typing. I haven’t paused in a while, I’ve just been typing. I’ve rearranged my chair a few times, but that hasn’t affected how I type. Well. It has, but it hasn’t interrupted it. My ears are weird, when I clean them out they lose the ability to hear. Hmmmm. I want to sing this song, hahaha, I want to stop typing and sing it. I shouldn’t, I should type. I’ll type what he’s saying. I really do wish that you wear my ring, no matter what they say, I am still the king. Now the storm is coming. That wasn’t me, that was Jesse Lacey’s thoughts. Oh man, I love this song. I’ve written 2199 words. Wow. I shouldn’t have looked at that, that is crazy. I have written two thousand words of thought. Insane. Soooo let’s see, it is 00 now. 02 to be exact. I have been writing, for, how long? I want to pause to figure it out, but shouldn’t. I shouldn’t. I mean, okay, over thirty minutes. I have been writing for almost forty minutes. At forty five, I will only have fifteen minutes left. So I’ll only have like, I don’t know, a page left. I am over half of this one. My mind is still racing waaaay ahead of what I am typing. It has been this whole time. It is almost like I have been on autopilot, just writing whatever is suddenly in my head or on my tongue. Ugh. I love this song. I love things, I am enthusiast. Yeah, you were right about me. Can I get myself out from underneath – I was singing. In my head. Tired of my laments, said I’d die for you one time but never again. There I go again. I can write constructively, and creatively. I wonder what this looks like in comparison to my other work. This is pittance, this is probably so naive. But that is what I am. A child, a naive little boy who only desires and expects, who certainly does not do anything. Forty minutes. Maybe I am ahead of myself. I have five minutes to finish this page, or else I otherwise will have to wonder about my fifteen-minutes a page thing. I wonder how strict that is anyway. Maybe I’ll have written 3000 words by the end of this. I wonder if I should do more than just print it out and prove that I did it. Is this what the assignment wanted of me? I feel like I have wasted time now. Oh man, so this sucks. Maybe she just wanted us to sit down and write something, whatever we wanted, FOR sixty minutes. Here I am just typing constantly, and relentlessly, for sixty minutes chained to my own personal pathetic thoughts. I don’t know, maybe it’ll be okay. I’ll have written 3000 words of nothing. Four pages, one hour. Wasted? I don’t know. It’ll have been better that rotting away on the internet, or just laying in my bed doing nothing. Forty-five minutes. Ugh. I don’t want to finish. I’m on page four. It hasn’t even been forty-five minutes yet. Maybe I’ll reach five pages. I hope not. I cannot believe I have sat down and for forty-five minutes just typed. I think this could potentially be a bad thing, though. I mean, what if having down this, I say to myself, “Well, I don’t have to write anymore. I’ve written all I need.” Now I’m looking at the screen, I am going to look away. Back down at my keyboard. I wonder if I type and write and think differently when I am looking at my keyboard rather than if I was looking at the screen and what was coming up. Oh , I just noticed, I revise when I stare at the screen. There hasn’t been a mistake for a while. So, I guess the only difference is that it is cleaner and easier to read. I can’t believe I’m on page four. I’m going to slow down typing. I don’t want to print this out. I don’t want to waste the ink on whatever this bullshit is. Should I stop? I should stop and make coffee. I want to adjust my eyes, I want to look somewhere else. I have closed them. Here I am with my eyes closed, typing. This is actually very strange. I can’t, wow. Crazy. Haha, I am just listening to music, typing, writing. It Feels like I am a thousand miles away from the keyboard. If I am ever going to make a mistake, it is going to be right now. For sure. I want to write like this more often, with my eyes closed. It isn’t any different than when I was typing before, except right now I am more into the music than I was before. I am hardly focused on my hands, I am more focused on the music. That usually works, music overwhelms when your visual senses have been thrown out. I wonder how many mistakes I am making. I wonder if I should go back and revise even after I open my eyes. I just made a mistake, I can feel lt. Haha, I paused. For the first time in a while. I don’t want to open my eyes. They have been closed this entire time. I paused again. It is the music. I just opened my eyes. Only ten minutes left. Ten minutes until I give this up. I am going to close my eyes again. Just type. My neck bends down, it feels nice. I think I am a pretty skilled type if I can type pretty gracefully with my eyes closed. I know when I make mistakes. I can feel it. Now I am putting my head on the desk. That is crazy. I wonder how much worse my typing has become. Haha, type type type. I guess that having the marks on two of the keys helps me. What is strange is that I couldn’t tell you what key I was pushing when I pushed it. Type/ Hmm. M. That is m, I know rhatr fuck I messed up. It is getting worse, I can feel it. I am becoming clumsy. Better pull me head i[ and o[pen my eyes. Haha looking at the screen, there are so many mistakes. This was pointless, I think I should have spent an hour writing something for real. If I spent an hour actually working on something, who knows what sort of masterpiece could have unfolded. Here I am, typing this bullshit. It is good though, I’ll know whether I did alright for next week or not. And someone who wants to peek into my mind can do so. I am not terribly interesting, anyway. At least, this exercise hasn’t captured what it actually is like to be inside of my head, only a glimpse. I am tired now from it, I want to sleep. Only five minutes left. I can’t believe I typed for an hour. I just paused to readjust my headphones. Readjust looks like read and just, haha. That is funny. I wonder how I would read that if someone else wrote it, I mean if I would notice that it looks weird. Wow, I am at 3300 words. That is crazy. I think I use crazy and wow together a lot, at least close to each other. I may stop at the end of this page. I don’t know, nonetheless I shouldn’t feel like I wasted an hour, should I have? Hmmm, I don’t know. I am sleepy after closing my eyes and listening to Brand New. Oscar just came online. I wonder if the boys want coffee. Oh, man, I want coffee so badly. Well, only a few minutes left. Maybe I’ll make some and do some more writing. Maybe I’ll write something better though, haha, not this. The first page seems so distant. This is probably just like going to be 3500 words of me thinking about writing this exercise, and talking about it. My favourite part is when I closed my eyes. That was such a strange experience, especially with the music. This is the end. Goodbye.

Packages of Lipstick and Cardboard Boxes

2009-03-20T20:03:00.003Z

Here is space; this white page, unlimited. On this webpage, there is space; unlimited. In this room, space is plentiful. There is space on the walls and around the floors, between the corners and above the panels; beside the bed and beneath it. In the corridor there is space; the walls, lined, and the doors that prison beings behind. Down the staircases, there is space but slanted; tilted, a bit awkward. In the courtyard, there is great, vast space that stretches well above the complex. In this coffee cup, there is space. There is space in the absence of presences; there is space in the abundance of them. There is space on Waterloo Bridge, and Tower, and Blackfriars. There is space around Colonel statues and Monument, there is space around Trafalgar Square and within it. Piccadilly. Oxford Circus. Regent’s Street. Heathrow. Philadelphia. Dubai. Those places have space. There is space behind my ears and within the spirals of the slinky. There is space between my fingernails and there some within my folded shirts. There is space upon the shirts. There is space unlimited in a notepad, there is white glossy space on a canvas and there is abrupt auburn space upon brick. There is space around my speakers and within them; there is space on my computer screen and around the keys of my keyboard. There is space on the seat of a car, on the surface of a car, on the notion of a car. There is space in God. There is space in denial; space in hatred, love, hunger, warmth, empathy. There is space in space, in Milky Way, in the universe altogether; unlimited. There is space in water and upon an empty pedestal; there is space on strings of guitars and there is space on the waves they omit. The deserts of the Sahara have empty, desolate space; the warehouses of Columbia have dusty, snowy space. Reels of film have space; packages of lipstick, cardboard boxes of pastry treats upon container ships between Los Angeles and Hong Kong have space. Deep underground bunkers and spiralling augmented skyscrapers; they both have space. These black words have space and my mind has space. Souls have space, emptiness has plenty of space, and narrow heads have space. Forests of space, oceans of space, space within playgrounds and within cubicle offices, space on airplanes and space in cramp apartment complexes, space in cafes and space in nightclubs, space in churches and space in laboratories, space in air hangars and space in shipyards, space in software programs and in neatly intricate hardware systems. There is space. There is space. There is...space. Unlimited.

Our Own Unsuspecting Selves

2009-03-05T00:35:00.001Z

Often I have found myself unable to write to music with words. It happens in almost the same way I watch the television; I must change the channel if the entire program has already been captured and packaged for my unloosening. I need what is yet to be discovered, and in the way we create images in our brains from the deepest of delicately written contexts, I want my music to open my mind to a universe of opportunity. I want it to broaden the spectrum, to beg of me that it be captured upon sheet; to be expressed in such a way as to be, if fleeting, understood. And if music is but captured in and of itself, like a photograph; an elicit moment of human history, through venue of time, however tantalizing or expressive, boxed into a conducted sequence of waves and numbers that stir our eardrums, our heartbeats, our brains and souls alike; then both the linguistic articulation of such a spectacle, such a wondrous phenomena, and its echoed sibling, dance together eloquently in the sphere of artistic harmony; waving their hands through the halls and corridors within our minds, synthesizing the communicable with the incommunicable, teasing our thoughts with our counter-thoughts. They press upon us, imposing an emotive response that shames us in the most constructively human way; our ability to mirror the natural feelings through the manipulation of physical instruments, including our pens and pencils, to our own unsuspecting selves, force-feeding the throat of integrity to be realised and further; imposed. This place, this musical realm, the idyllic voice of God, uplifts my mind in such a way as to never have imagined ground! Never can the sea be land-locking me, nor can its mighty presence fail! It is now but a paradoxical testament of whether the chicken came first, or the egg; can the sound be exhibited without the word, or the word without the sound? For frequently, my mind rests in this transcended place of solace, but more frequent does my tongue speak it to be true, and to, like the prose proprietor, contextualise what it means through the mirror. I cannot hear without speaking of it, or thinking of it; it is all a variable of my mind’s addiction to language. Nothing comes to me but through the vehicle of linguistic communication, and thus to coat the car with beautiful propositions whilst the car travels through the illogical, intangible, and completely abstract land of music is quite an astonishing endeavour; and thus, a peace must first be provided. No words can before occupy its magical realm, as much as one buys a canvas upon which something has already been painted. In that sense, I consume music with the motivation to paint upon it! I do so to begin to attempt that synthesis, that coalescence of ubiquitous phenomena that taunts us, glaring within those preposterous mirrors, to unknowingly accept the ability to feel, and the nature of humanity to do so.

Looking Throuth the Lens

2009-02-26T14:08:00.000Z

Like lenses our eyes capture existence. Like monitors, our minds reflect. This circuitry reveals quite a varying truth through the different qualities and propensities of man. Focusing my lens is so uniquely different than yours, our apertures and shutter speeds would never work together in conjunction with the models we retain. Our equipment is intrinsically the same, but our tuning much more ambiguous and precise; we see what we see and what others cannot, and they see what they see and what so potentially we cannot. I spend time with my frame rates whilst you record more and more, but we both gather to review at a later date. Rather, we are persistently reflecting the pictures we have captured, often with critical analysis that goes much deeper than we even realize. Sometimes it seems as though we will never come to a complete set of answers, accepting our inevitable lacking; but the picture always recommends to us a new consideration. Something we thought we knew previously, but can’t quite explain why; and we’ve certainly never said it before. And of course the truth is the most sceptically considerable thing we could ever contemplate, though its pursuit lends us all of our drive, our desires, and our passions. As I write something and label it libellously as ‘truth’, someone across the mighty earth negates it with something they, also, claim ‘truth’. It is but a perception, revisiting what it is that they saw in their picture. This vague obscurity that becomes the differences in our knowledge, in our experience, in our values; this oblique picture that confounds our interactions is yet what provides us with ourselves; it is what gives us definition. I suppose it is part of what sculpts our individualistic components, and what scolds the normalcy of an ecosystem. The peculiarities that promote us to each other are, in question, the most attractive and valuable aspect of what it means to be human. No longer does a species, if at least our species, move so forcibly on the basis of the natural, instinctive, habitually traditional methods of interaction, but a new mode in which our ability communicates initially begins to transcend our nature. We can super-tune our pictures, the view from our lenses, to expose more closely the most embedded virtues of humanity. We now have the opportunity to change our lenses, to look forth with new scopes seeing depths undreamt; widening the peripheral, seeing more from our highly defined monitors.

Media Markets Essay - February 2009

2009-02-20T00:45:00.003Z

This is an essay I wrote for my media markets class discussing various concepts we've covered in the class. I worked for a few weeks researching and writing it up, so I thought I'd put it up for review from more than just my professors. If I am vague about explaining something or you want to know more of what is being discuss, just let me know. Enjoy.

Analyse the difference between idealism and materialism. How does Baudrillard’s work develop the Marxist notion of commodity fetishism?

Capitalism, and its intrinsic marriage with the economy of commodities, is as cunning as it is clumsy. This is a system that has the ability to incorporate the ideals of its antagonists and, within its own borders, manufacture and produce that ideal as a sign-object to its very own members with profitability. The image it bears is one of mass imperialism and commercialism, with preposterous gaps between classes, and where its members drift around effortlessly and boorishly in praise of a materialist lifestyle. But, is materialism truly the image we can draw from this in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries?

It isn’t. This materialist notion of exchange, both the production and the consumption, has become outdated. Marx developed the materialism of commodities, remarking their fetishized values and with the concept that it was production that controlled consumption, in an age that was just witnessing the birth of industrial manufacturing and technology. Physical objects in Marx’s time gained their value in part because of their scarcity. Marx believed that the products themselves are what transform society, and the human relationships that operate within it. For Marx, this is all because the material objects retain certain exchange-values, but not ones that differ so far from the objects initial functionality. He says in his preface to A Critique of Political Economy, “The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political, and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness” (Marx 1997: 389). Marx understood that materials were what conditioned the consumer’s consciousness and positioned his or her role in society, and that the physical role and the exchange-value of the object itself shaped his or her status in society. But if this was once the case in a pre-modern society, it certainly is no longer the case now. Materialism, in the sense of which we are speaking, is no longer applicable to our evolving cultures.

We can demonstrate this notion simply by analysing not necessarily what is consumed, but rather where it is consumed. The supermarket, a twentieth century invention, synthesizes the markets of virtually any product or service together to create an entity of commodity exchange through but one venue. This place is not a typical market; it is a monopoly market, thus existing in the belly of a capitalist market system. Only one body of ownership exists in the supermarket, and all the products within its realm bear the brand, or signature, of that ownership. This is Marx’s nightmare. His perception of commodities (an exclusive franchise for capitalism) is one where the consumer lives in fantasy, entering a market filled with products, and having no need for consideration whatsoever for the labour of those products. There is no more sufficient fantasy than the supermarket. One can enter without discrimination, expect the absolute lowest prices on practically any need you could think of, and you never have to search farther than your local ecosystem to obtain products that are made across the world. Tim Dant explains that for Marx ‘the reality of the commodity is its representation of congealed labour’ (1999: 41). Thus, because of the incredible convenience of the supermarket, and its infestation across the first-world nations, the human consumption of what is needed, without question or wonder, begins to die out. The supermarket has everything that is needed, and there is always one around. Thus, what we demand is inevitably bound to transform; we no longer allow the need for certain products to control what is produced. We begin to want; furthermore, we begin to have the ability to want. Baudrillard considers our contemporary production process as ‘[defining] its aims by reference to what is inessential’ (2005: 7, 8).

Last year, in February, I purchased from a local coffee shop a cup of black coffee. I did not add anything to this, and I asked the attendant to provide the coffee in a ceramic cup rather than a cardboard cup. I drank my coffee as blissfully as I did obliviously. There was something wrought surrounding this purchase that, of which at the time, I was completely unaware. Conditioned closely inside the system of consumer capitalism, I did not know that what seemed like a simple action of purchasing coffee was recommending my social, cultural, and perhaps even religious status to those around me. That purchase told a story about me that I could not see; a story about my personal sophistication, a story of me that is performed on an invisible stage in an invisible social arena.

Baudrillard unequivocally steals capitalism of its materialism and replaces the delusion of its fetishized commodities with something even more ‘magical’ than the commodities themselves. Baudrillard tells us that capitalism hardly exists any longer with physical production; or at least that this production certainly does not control its own destiny. Our consumption is not at all determined any longer by what physical object we might need, or the function of that object. Baudrillard defines consumption as ‘an activity consisting of the systematic manipulation of signs’ (2005: 218). Now, we want. Now, we desire, and we demand, and there is a production that attempts to satisfy us. This satisfaction cannot ever be reached. What we now consume is not real; it is not physical, and it is certainly not material. We consume what Baudrillard understands as signs; we fetishize these signs, or what they signify, not the commodities themselves. Baudrillard is saying that essentially someone buying a French-press coffeepot is doing so not only because of a preference over electric-press prepared coffee, but that this object bears a suggestion of sophistication, a connoisseur taste, a sign that that object has a greater value because of what humanity places upon it in regards to sophistication rather than the actual use-value of the functionality of initial object. That being said, a French-press coffeepot is virtually a French-press coffeepot, and has the same function, no matter what kind you buy or where you buy it from as an initial material object, but that the sign it bears of taste and sophistication is what causes it to become valuable, and is why it is produced. That object both has a value that is abstracted from its initial material value, but also has a value higher than that of its functionality. The French-press coffeepot only functions physically as such, and can never function up to the ideal standard the human considers of it. Furthermore, Baudrillard posits that consumption is perpetuated in that it is founded upon something already void. “Consumption is irrepressible, in the last reckoning, because it is founded upon a lack” (Baudrillard 2005: 224). Dant summarizes this for us:

The fetishism of commodities as objects is the fascination and worship of the system of differences, the codes of signs that the object or good represents. The system of objects as signs is continually shifting emphasis from one term to another so that, unlike the perverse desire of the sexual fetishist, the perverse desire of the commodity fetishist is constantly being redirected (1999: 50).

We chase an unachievable system of bliss, where we can get everything we need and want effortlessly, and still be unsatisfied. Thus, materialism does not provide us with the necessary tools for describing our culture. The actuality of the products is meaningless; but the ideals that, in a sense, “halo” around the object as a sign for the human possessor is what drives consumers to consume, and thus producers to produce. Baudrillard says:

Consumption is not a material practice, nor is it a phenomenology of ‘affluence’. It is not defined by the nourishment we take in, nor by the clothes we clothe ourselves with, nor by the car we use, nor by the oral and visual matter of the images and messages we receive. It is defined, rather, by the organization of all these things into a signifying fabric: consumption is the virtual totality of all objects and messages ready-constituted as a more or less coherent discourse. (2005: 218)

Our system is one of idealism; one where we ‘simulate’ ourselves upon a social or cultural, or perhaps religious, platform and perform. It is not the material objects in which renders our performance to be judged or marked in this regard, but rather what the sign of those objects represent and thus our capitalist system no longer bears the burden of a materialist title. It is an idealist culture, one where commodities are fetishized in a much more unusual sense than Marx believed.

I now reflect on my purchase of the coffee from the coffeehouse with two distinctions: that I perhaps have a suggestion of my social behaviour regarding my preference of a ceramic cup over a cardboard cup, whether it be for a better taste or texture of coffee, that I am aware of environmental problems and don’t want to contribute to them. Or, that I am simply a jerk who enjoys manipulating the service before me to make things more complicated. Either way, I am not buying the good based on my need for the function of the object, but rather for the sign that it represents and my social performance. If this is true, then our society is modifying the disparities between social classes. If consumption is the driving force of our idealist culture, and that whatever material goods you can acquire are irrelevant to the sign that is suggested from ownership, then class status itself is becoming soon extraneous. Someone from the lower class purchasing a French-press coffeepot can retain the same sign-value from owning that object as someone from the upper class. If the value of objects comes from an ideology, not the material and function itself, then capitalist markets provide every member of its society the same opportunity at social status. Furthermore, the markets do not exclude the lower-class from any upper-class performances. Not every member of this society has the ability to achieve the same exact social stance as someone else, but there are uncountable opportunities. My ownership of a thousand French-press coffeepots suggests nothing better about my cultural performance than someone a class lower than me owning only one.

Che Guevara confronted imperialist consumerism until the day he died, maintaining a position firmly against the systems that exploited ideals and values for profits. Today, a famous picture of him can be found on any commercial market as a material object; clothing, poster, hang-bag, button, sticker, etc. It is a representation of ‘revolution’ to a generation of deluded social capitalist consumers, worshipping a symbol that is absolutely misconceived and exploited through a capitalist system of economic market production. This sign of ‘liberation’ is bought and sold throughout capitalist society with its members boasting of the ideal it represents, but there exists nothing real in this consumption of the product and its actual value, especially because of the background regarding the representation. I think Guevara would be sickened by the abuse of his beliefs. This demonstrates how our capitalist system can consume even the ideas of its protestors and use them to promote a consumption of empty rhetoric and misconceptions. This is how our values have become obscure; in that we do not analyse the virtue of the ideas we consume, and are unwilling to compromise our traditions.

The very apparent problem with this system is both the obsession with consumerism, and the disconcerting history of prejudice and oppression. We are now also burdened with a media culture that fetishizes more and more of what is not really real. The venues from which we increasingly access our entertainment and information are moving, in reality, farther and farther away. This is the same as the supermarket, where the origin of our products is a complete mystery to us, and would take quite a lot of time and research to discover. Our unstoppable consumption of images and sounds explicitly recommends that we reform our traditional modes of living; our politics, our economics, and especially our production. Even religion is subject to the necessity of change, and in one way or another must make revisions to flourish in an era where our physical and biological lives are becoming virtually meaningless. If we allow the facets of consumerism to continually run rampant without allowing its members to sceptically analyse and question it, then we allow the dark potential of capitalist commodity fetishism to overcome. If all we are valuing in our time is ideas, then to a certain extent we must protect them. At least, we must not blind ourselves to the stage upon which these ideas appear.

Bibliography
1. Marx, K. Karl Marx: Selected Writings. Edited by D. McLellan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
2. Dant, Tim. Material Culture in the Social World. Buckingham: Open University Press, 1999.
3. Baudrillard, Jean. The System of Objects. Trans. James Benedict. London: Verso, 2005.

Questioning the Sensitivity Phenomenon

2009-02-12T13:30:00.001Z

What would happen if you tried to find the emotion that you put into your thoughts, your words, your general life? What would it look like? Where would you find it? If it could say one thing to you, what do you think it would say? I think mine would ask me politely to relax, and to more calmly approach the things that I do with a grace rather than hostility. What would you do if your emotion were to disappear? If slowly, over time and age, you stopped asking yourself about, well, yourself, and you slowly drifted away? When you looked into the mirror in the mornings, your skin would appear tighter more and more with the years, and you would begin to smile at that rather than at your own smile. Or frown, for God’s sake! Anything, any expression, just to be able to view across the glossy glass and peak into whatever that phenomenon of sensitivity really is. It isn’t warm anymore, is it? When you look into the mirror? It’s cold, and it is desolate; but it’s mature, so you can enjoy it with less energy spent. You can ignore it because no one else will ask about it. That is provoked by their own disregard, so now we all affirm each other through this infectious habit of putting away the deeper depths of ourselves. We don’t need to look for our emotion anymore because we’ve buried it so far down that we don’t even remember what it was like to have it. But when we did have it; when we did allow something to take the blood in our veins and boil it until all we could do was burst into a fiery vogue, expressing the phantom within us without knowing exactly what it was or why it was so damned searing! And we were okay with that, rather; we welcomed it; because with it, we could feel anything. But we welcome now its weltering away with time, and every single moment we spend with each other, abdicating its decay, is one we grow a piece of what we are away. A piece of who we are. An organ of our humanity, which we amputate swiftly because if we don’t; then we will not know what to expect from our performance out in the ‘real’ social world. We could fall apart at anything! We could embrace the ubiquitous and suddenly begin to dance; but this is too chaotic for our adult lives. We must destroy the provocation of such absurdity, such chaos! We are too old for childish antics of praise and overpowering joy; we are too grown and too sophisticated for the inexplicable and the unobtainable aspects of being. Ah, but herein lies a most obvious fallacy; our insecurity, and our pursuit of that which is calamitously unreal! Virtual reality, drugs and alcohol, pubs and nightclubs, commercial media, online networking, and for God’s sake that fucking television! Are these not merely replacements, prostheses of our amputated emotional and sensitive selves! How desperately we cling to them; completely unwilling to allow their unnecessary roles to drift away, as which we allowed their natural predecessor of organic feeling and stimulation. In our blindness, we create a bulldog of excuses that will ferociously bite the hand of he who sees its unreal consistency; and he who requests, no, demands that we revisit our emotions once more. We protect this canine of misplaced justification; we worship its ability to keep us free from ourselves. We spend time collecting evidence of its significance, and become increasingly angry when our antagonists refuse to accept the merit. Realistically, there is no value, and we know that but we absolutely cannot allow that to become apparent; otherwise, we totally compromise who we are in our social activity.

We are still alive, but the organ inside of us that gives us our reason rots away with age. In its absence, we obsess over our intellectual faculties to provide us with logical reasons to attempt to compensate for our emotional loss, but we always come up short. What is it they say, “The attempt to explain everything as close to probability as possible.” I will chuckle, and work to revive the reason that I was born with.

Our Own Naked Selves

2009-02-09T16:22:00.002Z

If I showed you yourself, you wouldn’t know it. You wouldn’t be terribly fond of the person you saw, and you would certainly spend your energy denying the claim that the person was you. If I wrote something, and showed it to the world; if it showed itself what it was really like, it wouldn’t accept it and I would not be allowed a career. But then, I wouldn’t have failed as a writer. I challenge you; begin to pursue and mix the formula that makes you, you. Let’s, together, adapt; or change, or form, or just motivate ourselves to anything but what we think we should be, and just what we can be. Rather, what we are. Let us show ourselves what we are. That is a beautiful thought. Allow ourselves our own naked selves, our bare and raw beings absent of expectations. Considering existence, questioning the cast of our ‘creaturesque’ selves is not something that should bring us down; it should transcend us, it should uplift us as many become uplifted with a prayer, or a particular lyric. Let’s allow ourselves the opportunity to revisit what makes us, us, and be happy for but a moment without anything else. We don’t need things, we don’t need to want things, we don’t need to afford our own happiness; its right here! We just don’t want to see it. We are conditioned to ignore what makes us happy inside, and rather find happiness as a necessity of the consumer world. Our desires control us; they consume us! We should be as happy as to desire out of necessity! A song and dance could be heard from our lowly mouths every morning we awaken for simply having a thought within our nimble minds, and a living nerve to again uplift us once more. This is enough for us to want to be more than just what we want. If you saw yourself now, you wouldn’t accept it. Just as the rest desert one that begins to hack off the overgrown weeds, beginning another trail in another unknown direction, we segregate ourselves from change because we don’t want the truth about who we are to be revealed. If the negative is true for the one embracing change, it may necessarily be true for the rest, for we are not recluse beings; we are innately social. We, as I have said before, are beings of each other. So I yet challenge you to begin the warm embrace of a simple change, and then begin to watch a total transformation follow like collapsing dominos.
I just want to feel as though our lives admit to us more than just what we own, or what we wear; what we think about certain things or where we are from. I feel like our lives are becoming automatic; an assembly line in a manufacturing industry that pumps out lifestyles and characters to be forwarded to what we believe to be a real existence. This is a real existence. I don’t know why I am suddenly obsessed with this necessity of confirmation, but there is something driving me to discover some singular secret about the world we live in. I am alive, and I am a person; but...

Determine the Circumstances

2009-02-08T16:08:00.000Z

We are as dominated by our own culture as we are afraid of it. This isn’t an administrative tact or some kind of government control because even they share no immunity from it. We are all within it, and we all fear it. We all protect and manage it as though t is a weak and sickly child. You don’t go to university to study how to affect or change culture; you study how to maintain it. We serve our culture, and we serve our society; it does not serve us. It is because we are too afraid of it. We are too afraid of our own selves, so much so that we cover this fear with apathy, and ignorance. It is so much easier to allow something to be for us than to just be ourselves. We fear it because we don’t want to accept how far we have let ourselves go into a society where we work jobs to sustain lives we don’t want. And we certainly do not want them. Even to word “society” is our scapegoat. Culture is quintessentially our friend and our enemy; our support and our protest. We give ourselves to it, and then claim it to be “fucked up” beyond our control. Which is it? You want to believe the world is dysfunctional with or without you so you can keep yourself safely inside of it? The voice inside of your head is telling you to ignore me right now, it is telling you that I am a sceptic and an unnecessary antagonist; but I am not. I am just as much a part of this as anyone else, if not more so. But I recognize my need to change it, and to discipline society to not keep us serving it. It isn’t as though it is this system of being that intentionally and consciously keeps us connected to it; it is merely a machine we created that we cannot now destroy. And we don’t want to destroy it. However, we have reached an age where if we do not tune its delicate gears, then we will perpetuate what are indeed our real problems into an elongated society of total dysfunction. We will never be the same, because we will never be ourselves, only what culture allows for us to be.
We don’t want to believe our inadequacies, our vices, we don’t want to give things up nor do we want to take new things upon ourselves; we merely want to just stay the same, to maintain. We don’t want to condition ourselves, but we are perfectly capable, and willing if I may add, to allow ourselves to inescapably be conditioned by circumstances both now just almost out of our controls and provoked by the worst within us. I don’t believe the world is as many say “fucked up”. I believe the world is as the nature of man would need it to be. Our first-world societies no longer struggle for what is necessary, or needed; we are now in bare fisted fight with our wants and desires, and we don’t want to admit it. More even, we don’t want it to change. But it must change, if we ever wish to gain ourselves. We cannot let society and culture determine the circumstances of who we are, we need to begin to change society and culture to be determined as our nature needs it to be. The world will be less dysfunctional if we give up sustaining our wants and desires, and then calling the world “fucked up” because there is greed and poverty. We need to admit to ourselves the truth about ourselves, and only then can we discover who we are, and what changes need to be made to culture. Otherwise, we let culture determine who we are, and sustain a society where the nature is to use that to get out of changing, to escape the need for need.

The Highlight Is Now

2009-01-28T13:25:00.003Z

There’s something mystic about going home. Such anticipation! I find it unprecedented as well, considering how thirsty I was to incorporate myself outside of the nest and fly with the winds of the world. However, I suppose it is quite a task to be asked to venture into a world where it is unclear when you will have an opportunity to return to from where you came. Home seems unchanged from my perspective. I will go, and the physique of the appearances of rooms and grown people will be obvious; but the much more sunken notion of “home” is the consistency. That is what makes it such a comfortable and attractive place. It is where the world stops for you; a bit of a sanctuary, where there are people bound one way or another by unconditional love. Perhaps not even just that, but in regards to the place itself and not the specificity of my personal home, I doubt much has changed. Perhaps a new commercial shopping plaza, a few fresh faces here and there and always the wonder of what one will find in the thrift stores. However, there is considerable doubt that not only nothing has really changed, but that the people I know aren’t perhaps doing anything at all a bit slighted, or different, than what they were when I left. I cannot say whether this is a disappointing realization, a notable one, or if it’s even the truth at all. But, I nonetheless have changed in so many ways, and have stayed the same in probably just as many. I perhaps have taken vanity to my expedition home, because now I wonder if I simply want to showcase myself and ask for approval. I don’t know if I feel that way, but sometimes I just want to sit down with all of my closest companions back home and explain to them some of the ideas I’ve postulated and ingested while I’ve been here, and further show them my new inquisitions. I want to be around them, and expose them to something different about themselves. Because we were all virtually the same, weren’t we? I am a product of them, and they of me. We spent so much time around each other, learning, absorbing, living, that we presumably became differing ideas stemmed from the same ideology; we want know what it feels like to be alive. And for me; I left. I exited. I decided that being alive was about changing, and moving on rather than just around. Walking forward, ahead, and being happy with the journey. I think that we all dream up the highlight, or the apex if you rather, of our lives; and we spend our times envisioning the when of getting to it. And then we assume, we’ll live on, happy to look back on that glorious moment in history that we can claim for ourselves. But this is wrong. We cannot assume there is a future, and thus every point we are conscious and alive is undoubtedly the apex of our lives. The highlight is now. It is not a second ago when you read it; it is not three seconds from now when you’re finishing this sentence. We are all disillusioned to a better future through hard work and persistence. But, what if there was no future to look forward to, and we just drove ourselves because hard work and persistence were necessary of a better future. We are saying to ourselves, “Now is pretty cool, but the future is going to be awesome.” Perhaps we can alter our motto to read, “Now is necessary to any future, no matter how wondrous or bleak. The future will be wondrous because now is wondrous, and because we made it those ways.”

Thus, home is the current dreamy apex of my approaching future; but not only because right now is somewhat of a dreamy apex, but because I have the ambition to need them both to be so.

My Misapprehension of Security

2009-01-23T19:26:00.000Z

I don’t how to feel. I could tell myself I am aware, and concerned, and realized to the conditions necessary to create my lifestyle, but what would it mean? Would I have not only the wisdom to try to understand, but the willingness? Is courage such a pale aspect of this subject that I would need it to even consider approaching such a circumstance? And these conditions are supported by situations unconceivable to my middle-class mind; and further, funded by means undefined and unfiled. This really causes me to wonder who, or what, I really am. I am only a transparent product of the conditions surrounding me, but it has recently occurred to me that what surrounds me, what truly surrounds me, is an illusion. Everything here, my environment, my peers, my things, my studies; they are all contributing to my misapprehension of security. What would I be without it? What am I, with it? I know none of the people who stitched my clothing, plastered my walls, sculpted the plastic of my kettle, forged the metal of my mechanical computer, crushed the trees of my paper, who really wrote the tunes of the music coming from my speakers, or stamped the marks on my newspaper? What schemes are in place, what paperwork exists, that keeps me in London, enrolled in school, available to access of healthcare, an arrangement that runs my transport, powers the supermarket where I purchase my food, imports my coffee, cleans my water, that hires my police protection and my flight attendants, that incorporates my phone service and that reduces the risk of identity theft? I know nothing of the complexities that are in place to give me the discrete opportunity to even sit here, at this electrically-powered keyboard and screen, and write these inconsequential musings about what the fuck it means to be me. Further, to dismally approach a more deterministic and less individualistic perspective, does it even mean anything to be me? In the frustratingly dogmatic mechanism of science and socialism combined, there is really very little room for “me”. It’s as though everything has been put into boxes and stored into a warehouse, and my being is but a product of the variables within those packages. I can synthesize and manipulate a being, namely, me, from these products, but ultimately they are all predictable and the only existence of any kind is available exclusively within the walls of this desolate warehouse. Nothing is real, and the individual doesn’t really exist.

Notwithstanding, what it means to be “me” in the capitalist aspect is a strictly competitive and blinded understanding, wrought with the iniquities of profitable gain and greed. It is true, the bold exploitations that exist within the imperialist society, and the terrifying truths about commercially driven commodities. I still have more optimism in this frame, however imperialist it seems. Thus is born the consideration; “me?”

Thoughts From Class

2009-01-22T13:59:00.000Z

Ambitious Blind People and The Inescapable System

2009-01-16T17:54:00.001Z

What aridity. It has been stretched like putty to its thinnest extent, neither allowing the necessary awareness an adult should understand to be seen through its glossy elongation, nor obscuring it; proving the foolishness of an unlucky many. With Kant’s enlightenment glaring them in the face, I find myself faced with doubt when regarding a particular lot of my university peers to realize themselves. It’s as though they missed something along the line; they continued, in a rebellious engagement with their perceptions of others all while forgetting about their own. We all project the social arena; as adults, it is but a stage or an arena, a field or a ring. We know the game, or the production, and understand well our abilities and boundaries within it. This allows us to maintain control of our surroundings, and awareness of environment; but it is when we begin to convince ourselves that we can justifiably and righteously manipulate and conduct the abilities and boundaries of other’s in that social setting that we inhibit our ability to grow. Furthermore, we become shallow, and pushy; arrogance can surely confide itself soon after we have decided what the showroom floor will look like. And it is this very same immaturity that Kant speaks of, that we overcome with our footsteps into inquisition! For many, it is much easier to forfeit the struggle with these ambitious blind people and maintain themselves illusively, only appearing submissive to appease a confrontation with the aggressive nature of their foolishness. But it is only for so long, and to a punished extent, that this appeasement can continue. And nevertheless, there are many who are unwilling to compromise their personal maintenance in the social arena, who will not permit another being the delusion that they have influential dominance over everyone else in that setting. I must be modest; I am the latter, for it is a difficult plate for me to swallow that I should sheepishly conform to the fantasy that these people maintain, in that their rules of the game are what can only be. It more fundamentally not my being that is against the grain; rather, it is their refusal to abide by these unstated practices (whether by simply being feeble minded or perhaps just unaware) that the conflict begins. This is not to say that unconventional methods of participating in society should be scrutinized and obliterated. It alternatively suggests that if one is to attempt at manipulating, or influencing, or affecting the society altogether, one must not only be able to have all participants agree, without illusion, that they will come along into this new transcendent set of rules, but also be willing to adapt to the unpredictability of such a newly established frontier.

It is, then, questionable to me, how perpetuated Kant’s ‘enlightenment’ can become. The proverbial mould of existence and our progression through it (by vehicle of time) appears to come with a healthy amount of foresight; we all adhere already to the abundance of hindsight. This realization precedes the inevitable endeavour of exiting said realized system. But, that reminds us of the concept of the system altogether. If this practice of realization is to be encouraged, and emphasized, in an evolving system, would it then not become an incorporated system itself? There is now a percentage of beings becoming realized to their reason, sapere aude, and then exiting the primary facets of the system only to enter into a whole new set. And this is applied on a broader scale, especially when groups exit systems. As discussed earlier, it is when the counter-culture exited from the rest of the capitalist system. It then became incorporated within itself to be counter-culture, exiting in the same kind of patterns that one would live under while still within that capitalist system. It’s a trade-off; you give up one system for another. Whilst exiting one system to enter another, one is still engaged with a system; it is simply a system that one uses to get to another. Thus, it is ever possible to actually reach enlightenment and exit every system altogether? I am sceptical.

Fabric That Forms A Doll

2009-01-15T01:57:00.003Z

A catalyst has formed within me. It wields such tantalizing tentacles that concurrently grapple concepts as quickly as it will concede them. They extend from my mind and pinch their surroundings; they import ideas while exporting tradition, and all at the will of someone profoundly untraceable source that conducts itself in the core of my being. I have no say; I am the puppet; I am fabric that forms a doll. I am a cog, in my own system; the machine of being has demoted my role, and my say, in the intrinsic administration of me. What a tricky catalyst, as well, sneaking in while I tasted but ripe fruit in an adolescent garden. But we were all there, weren’t we? Recommending to ourselves grace, and blissfully biting from the eternal goodness of imagination. And how swiftly that garden was burned. Now, chaos manifests itself autonomously. On autopilot I am, and no better yet I can be. The introduced theories of postulated existence, an introduction that began thousands of years ago and I would argue is still transforming; now run through me like clockwork. If I think this, then I must think this; and I therefore assume this, which is unfortunate because there’s always this. There’s an A, then B, then B coincides once more with A before getting to D, skipping C until E can correctly be grounded in X, and we cannot do that until we figure out Y. I turn right which tells me to turn left, which tells me to look down, which wonders why I turned right. There is god; there isn’t. Freedom? Determinism. Order...madness. My tentacles are burned from the stove before it’s even been turned on.

I can live with a catalyst. I can accept the good of my reason to manage itself for the better of whatever it is I am. I can read, and search, and think, and know, and learn, and teach; but I cannot, and I will not, become so assertive about what I think about truth as to let my thoughts corrupt it. Truth needs not my own ostentation, nor my own arrogance. Truth, whatever its parameters, wherever it may hide, however it may appear, will ultimately and unequivocally determine itself without the cantankerous embodiment of foolishness to interpret and boast it. I furthermore cannot believe that truth would be so desirable, and appealing, and honest, if it were absent its most belligerent antagonists. That being said, I am ashamed of my brethren in the struggle to achieve it who so boldly and ignorantly cease to continue to seek it! I don’t want to replace truth with a convincing misconception, nor chase that delusion to my own end. This is quite unfortunate for me to say, especially having very specific cases in mind bearing the subject. I’m not sure if it has been the presence of dramatically varying conclusions on truth all pulled from the same basis and understanding of knowledge that has aided me in my journey. I am, however, sure to say that I have sailed upon the ship of both contenders and found myself marooned in both scenarios. These contending perspectives have all boorishly maintained their positions regarding the matter of truth, and I believe that this has ended their journey to it. What articulate sailors, damned to an ocean of brazen infinitude and confusion. The sentiment “what is right?”will be replaced with “why isn’t it accepted that I am right?”, and “that’s interesting” shall be degraded into muttered vulgarity. I think this is perhaps the case of those who manage their reason, and don’t allow the truth, whatever it may be, to manage itself.

Prototypes, Cabbies and Beasts

2008-12-13T13:35:00.002Z

I can’t find a thought. Well, okay, I can find many a thought. Rather, I am engulfed in an endless bombardment of thoughts. But that is not to say I it is so easy to have them organized, wrapped up tightly in comfortable brown packaging and shipped off for redistribution. Nevertheless, this weblog venue deserves attention in the same manner I would attend to my notebook, my performance piece, SMS...etc. Its presence does linger around the backroom of my mind, away from the angry and ostentatious obligations that shake their fists in demanding fury like brokers on Wall Street. It is, though, obvious to me more now as the first term of my college escapade concludes that I am escaping from any shell left upon my back. The notebook, perhaps, and this electronic journal (as one could say) have always been quintessentially showcases for my passionate literary muscles as well as a haven of safety for my weak and feeble tendencies. And to such, as we many are, weak and feeble, I am chained. It has been very fortunate that I could weld together the strengths and weaknesses into this cold, steel frame of written word; a firm structure grounded into the foundation of my life.
But now are the days in which those foundations receive unequivocal pressure. I am no longer bound to the ink and the keys, or the pages into which they permeate. Days are spent grazing the halls of the lecture theatres, or buried beneath the abstractions of a book; never a word shorthanded, never a lesson short-staffed. Abundance, at university, is faced with a question of material and not the other way around. I have no knowledge of boredom, no experience with apathy, and certainly I am no longer faced with lethargy. From time to time, rolling out of bed earlier in the morning is tricky; however, the duty of the student transcends the desire for sleep within me. The role of student needs not to turn cheek to the outside monster of the world; rather, it should explore the realm of the snivelling and drooling beast with much inquisition! Confounded beings, we humans are, and as students we are insured of using any means necessary to examine and understand the theories and practices of our chosen paths. I am just as easily found in the foreign seat of an LSE public finance lecture as I am in the domestic halls of the Dreadnought library. My arm extends to any resource in London, and attempts to reach yet even farther.
And the term, as aforementioned, concludes. A dear new friend expressed the notion that we are, indeed, one ninth of the way through our degrees. What a prospect! That we are yet even closer to becoming something we know nothing about and that we haven take a step forward in a direction we cannot see. This has been accompanied by many a night at the pub. We’re stamping coins on damp and stale bar counters and hailing down a tender like a cab; hoping he’ll provide us with a service that, like the cabbie, will take us farther away. The result always takes us away from ourselves, into some willingness for exposure. Those nights, though blurred and conflicted, allow us to perform and exercise our opinions and beliefs to a peer forum. We all have our prototypes; but very few of us truly want to use them for truth. I discover more and more about people those nights, and who they really are, because there is no more poker face when your inhibitions are gone; there is no shadow. There is only you, and the best of you has stepped out. I always thought that my desperate searches and questions were motivated by this longing for truth, but; when I observe closely the motivations of my dear companions, it would seem that they, and perhaps myself, and perhaps even many others, will take a compelling and easy argument over a truthfully honest one. This disturbing observation has no conclusions, because I cannot know on the comment of these companions what is true for them; however, it is very apparent to me. For many, it is as simple as they do not have any awareness of the power of our metaphysical existences; our senses, or emotions, our (I daresay) spiritual selves. There is no account, for many, about the wonder and the mysticism that encompasses this life, or the peaceful solace of its nature. I feel so awakened by it and that even in a simple meditating prayer my thoughts and my mind and my feelings are all so uplifted into an optimistic tranquillity. It is what, beyond doubt, makes me feel alive, and it is what keeps me moving along.
The flat is quiet today. There are but three of us left now, the others have migrated back home to their families and will spend a joyous Christmas vacation relaxing as the rest of us. The Swedes went home today as well, and I don’t expect many more to come around until New Year. I am thankful for the end of term; there was a grand hustle and bustle to complete and submit coursework before the due times which created a crazed panic. Everyone disappeared into the bowels of study and organization; we all took, at the very last possible time to do so, our studies into consideration and seriousness. The buckled down took most of the week off, as they had taken advantage of the early submission times; the rest of the whole took every possible second to furnish and fine-tune their works. Whether this was out of procrastination or neuroticism, I am very unsure. What is known, however, is that next term should be expected for much more excitement. This term was a test run over the concourse to shake us alive, and into action. I fear for many that there will no difference in patterns of study, but I also recognize that I work much differently than they do. Perhaps their last-minute shove into working will produce something much more worthy than mine. It is not beyond reality, and that is absolute.
The kitchen beckons a steward to come and scrub its dirty innards. I had hoped to account for more of what I have actually done in this recent month I have been absent, however I must answer that beckoning call before it’s too late. So long, dear friends.
Much love from your brother abroad,
David McDonagh

The Road Bends Again

2008-11-16T16:51:00.001Z

I went for a walk today. Despite the dreary overcast and fizzy rain, I decided the conditions of both the atmospheric weather and my mental state were adequate for a trek beyond Greenwich. I wore a long-sleeve shirt with a sweater and some shorts, with an olive-brown suit coat. When I first arrived outside I thought that I would indeed be much colder than I once expected, and received frequent glances of confusion from the public around. This was of little concern to me, however; my reasons for my apparel are my own. I had managed down a pot of coffee earlier in the day, thus I was prepared for whatever length my legs brought me to with vibrant energy and a high thoughtful incidence within my brain. Greenwich is very busy on weekends, thus I decided to escape to the bosom of Blackheath just above the park. I walked up the square, and took short path between St. Alfage’s to quickly check the service times. I am having a difficult time here waking early enough to endure the 8:00am service this parish offers. To my disdain, they provide no afternoon services, but an alternative morning service on Thursdays. Damn.
I walked up past the alley jazz club, which is on a small road next to the park and student union, and acknowledged the modesty of the little Greenwich theatre across from it. The markets in Greenwich spill across several areas of the square, and by this point I have finally begun to march a bit beyond their reach. I pass less and less people, thus giving more peace of mind to contemplate perhaps actually doing a bit of running. I couldn’t amputate the notion of exercise from the body of my journey, for now I am obligated to both intellectual and physical stimulation, rather than just the former. I make it to the foot of the large hill that the road to Blackheath rests upon. This particular hill, within the park, ascends the Royal Observatory, as well as the Meridian line where measurement and time both begin. The road rests beside the fences and gates of the park, unable to escape the fate of the hill. The road is very European to me, being laid brick stones that seem much older than myself. The houses all have that style of earth, one that is obviously tailored by man’s preferences and that you won’t likely find back home in the states. I begin my climb up to the top of the road, and for an interval of about two minutes I decide to jog. Nearing the top I see the apex of the steep and slow down, completely out of breath and humiliated by myself that I have allowed my lungs to such bitter frailty. Consumed by this, I hadn’t realized that I was on more flat ground. I look to the right as I walk forward catch a pretty glance over most of London. I think this is the first time I had a very realized perspective of living in a metropolis. I walked more slowly, taking a path that curves around the bend to notice the view, looking at the imperfect skyline and telling myself I lived there. I saw the London Eye, a few particular buildings, a bit of Canary Wharf, and attempted to even see Parliament. I was very satisfied at this moment, and overcame the feeling of complacency that seems to have snuck into my affairs.
I continued down the bend, comfortable with the thought that I would perhaps have difficulty finding my way back. I was still catching my breath from the brief run, wondering if I was going to try it again. I saw a bus stop ahead and simultaneously planned to run again once I arrived to it and then planned against that and to walk the rest of the way. A hill downwards obscured my path as I walked. I was looking around at the residences, in their tiny compacted spaces with small walkways and black-painted gates, and absolutely no room for a parked vehicle. Sometimes here I notice when walking, roads will come out of nowhere, so I am more carefully aware of looking down to the path in which I am walking. I look at the Greenwich Council garbage bins on the sidewalks, and the road signs sticking from the curb. I always watch the cars passing by for an automobile with a left-side driving seat. To my advantage, I have seen quite a few in the two months I’ve been here. Though, none today, I don’t cease observing, because it makes me feel closer to home.
The road bends again to the right, so I can see a bit more of Greenwich and Deptford on both sides, but not ahead because of the buildings and the radius of the bend. A road headed right signaled a better view, so I boldly took it and ventured farther from the known path. The flats here seemed gloomy on the outside, but a glance inside gave me more hope. I will soon have to be searching for a new home, so nothing is exclusive. I walked deep within what seemed like a living community, and found a long complex set of brick stairwells that seemed to lead far down. As I descended, it was gravely quiet for where I was. The only sounds I head were the echoes off the brick from my footsteps and a very distant siren. Sirens are synonymous with London, and I don’t think that’s just in my brain anymore. I found the bottom, and a wider road than what there had previously been. The only roads as wide as this one were main roads with busy traffic, but this was quiet. I enjoyed walking down it. I looked above to try to see if I could spot the top of St. Alfages, or even Canary Wharf, but couldn’t. I walked away from the direction of what I assumed was Blackheath and Greenwich and towards what, again, I assumed was Deptford. I passed an import wine and beer shop, but declined my interest to go inside. I realized by this point that I was no longer cold, at all. My body temperature had risen high from the exertion of running and walking, and thus my legs were very warm despite the attacking cold chills brought upon by the weather.
I reached nearer to the end of the road, which approached an intersection. I trotted across the street to examine a closed guitar shop, hoping they sold hand percussion instruments. I was disappointed; the tiny shop was lined only with guitars and banjos. But, something happened when I turned around. I had stopped, and when I looked back towards the road, there was a bus stopped at the light, queued behind a few other vehicles. I looked around within the bus, and on the upper level I saw this stunning girl looking outside the window. I couldn’t look away! So when she noticed me, I had no other instinct than to smile with humility. I was so pleased when she replied with such a heart-warming smile. I felt I could see her eyes so clearly, though I didn’t catch their color, and she had beautiful brunette hair that fell down her shoulders almost in harmony with the air. I looked for but a second more, and turned to continue walking. I wore a smile on my face as wide as it could be until I reached the corner of the intersection. The bus passed on beyond me, and I as turned my head to see her one last time, she was looking right at me, twirling her hair and smiling.
I felt like I was gliding from this point. I really had no idea where I was, but because of the marvelous feeling the instance with the girl left me, and my physical resistance to the sparring cold, it didn’t have any affect. I continued on down the road, confident that it would spit me out in the right direction. I looked at more of the residences, imagining myself living there and always looking at the businesses that were open across the street. I passed a man on his cell phone and a man on his bike, wondering if I’d ever see them again (assuming I was to be living in the area). I saw a train station ahead, but nothing I could recognize. I saw a billboard advertisement for the North Pole Piano bar, and instantly knew where I was. I looked down the road the train station crossed over and remember the one time I had jumped on a bus to Lambeth from. I turned right down the road the billboard pointed towards, and realized that this is the road the Auctioneer and the Greenwich DLR station were on, where the end landed in front of St. Alfage’s in Greenwich square. I had no worries.
I walked far down the road for a while, eventually recognizing Canary Wharf over the skyline. I watched as more and more people came across me, and I looked into their faces with a smile much brighter than the day had wanted to allow the sun to be. I smiled at an old women coughing, and at a businessman passing. I snickered at the young adults who were laughing and one man saying to me “hello, gorgeous!”. I turned to look when I head someone yell “hey!”, realizing it wasn’t for me. I finally arrived back upon the path in which I had diligently begun. People were everywhere once more, hustling and bustling boldly in a busy Greenwich, to and from the scattered markets. I received quite a few more disapproving and confused gazes regarding the garment situation I had provoked for myself. I was neither cold at all, nor was I tired. I could continue on for hours if I had felt. Thinking this, I check the time and it had only been forty-five minutes. It took me much longer to write the account that it did to actually experience it! I walked passed Wetherspoons, stopping to say hello to my Russian friend Nick, and eventually arriving within Cutty Sark Hall.
All in all, I enjoyed the endeavor the past two hours brought me; both the actual event and the account of it. I will definitely walk around this city much more often in hopes of such a rejuvenating time.

-David McDonagh

Celosias Caracas and Apple-Cinnamon

2008-11-05T22:53:00.000Z

I find it difficult to believe that coincidence is betrothed to the ways of the world. Life, and time it’s stitched upon, gains its attributions from themes, and strings of proverbial instances. When something comes to me, it comes in pieces; glass that shatters upon the floor, impatient to reflect in division and needs a constructionist to give it that picturesque unity of one thing. My life is an alliteration; God conversing in consonants continuously, composing cordially a quintessential motivation for action, as well as the reason and truth which lie beneath. I wake with a waning wonder, soon provoked by examination and corresponding to events that bring but calm resolution. There is a certain rhythm to it; a beat the taps it’s tricky toes to tantalize us into living our lives and loving our Gods. It’s this universal motion that simultaneously provides us with foresight and hindsight, telling us a place and a time but no reason, and letting us contemplate the result. A beautiful song playing somewhere in reality, and humanity tunes in; the natural tranquility disturbed and distorted by our inability to relate to pure absolution. So, He brings me carefully along the strings tied between truths burdened not by my speculation, but to it indifferent. I see the answer before I know the road, and when I finally find the road I can no longer see the answer. What paradoxical pittance my mind binds itself within, that this rhythm is perfect and yet with it I cannot seem to sync. But He pulls me along nevertheless, bearing my screams and anguish; ignoring my apprehension and my disparaging doubt, just patiently smiling while another ignorant son works desperately to come home. I loathe that I left in the first place, that my meek and meager mind aspired to search for something could never truly be sought; that is entrenched to all the realities the human can conceptualize and conspire, that he can witness. I can only hope, and pray, that I would not have burned myself away before I can arrive to the road. What accomplishments are there but to gain access to that divine road; to place step upon its marvelous length that eternally ends beneath the bosom of an infinite and obscure answer. Such a trek, then, it is attempting to arrive at the crossing-way where you will find the road. Alas, I digress; we shall arrive, and it shall be stupendous.

I bought a plant. I bought; a plant and I bought a candle: Celosias Caracas and apple-cinnamon. Two items of about ten in which I purchased at the IKEA store. I soon plan to return to IKEA, both for the shopping of utility items as well as food. They have a food court with food that tastes excellent for the price that you pay. IKEA is pretty great for everything. I still need to buy a comforter for the bed in my room, but I am unsure about where I plan to purchase this because I think perhaps IKEA might be a little more expensive. I’ve been food shopping at ASDA, which is owned by Wal-mart and differs very little from it. I’ve usually been to Tesco’s, which has a more notable selection of fresh food items, but neither of the retail stores differ greatly except that ASDA is a short train ride away, whereas Tesco’s is about twenty minutes on the bus. Granted, the bus is twenty pence cheaper, but I think it to be a worthy price to pay for timely convenience. I’ve been purchasing a lot of fresh foods and then making large portions of containable meals with them. I cooked down a ton of vegetables to both a large container of awesome vegetable stock, but also fed the flat by mixing in a few things after draining the stock to make the cooked vegetables a meal in themselves. I bought a head of red cabbage for seventy-four pence and stewed half of it in tarragon vinegar for about thirty minutes, which has contributed to about four meals already. I still have some left that is cooked, as well as a whole half of a head to still actually stew down! I have half of a large box of fresh mushrooms left that turns over today, so tomorrow I’ll cook them in a pot for about fifteen minutes with white wine and save to top potatoes with. For about twenty pence I bought a bag of Pakistani pasta, which is excellent because in a small bag you can get at least four meals. It’s delicious paste, too, very slender and takes no time at all to cook. It swells pretty nicely, thus providing me with more for less. At the bakery I buy a loaf of bread about two feet long and portion for both sandwiches as well as to go with sauces, or perhaps just a midday snack. I always spend a little extra on some nice cheese, but can’t seem to make it last! I eat it too quickly! I’ve been buying skim milk, but heavy cream. I also have oatmeal and cereal, rice, penne pasta, a bag of potatoes, some crackers, pork and pastrami (the “Value” kinds). Usually I have quite a few other things as well, but those are on-hand items.

I received a package from back home. It contained some books I requested, sweets and snacks for my indigenous English friends, delicious Three Goats coffee, a coffee mug, and candy corn. I hate candy corn. But, thanks for everything else, Mom, I am already prescribing another list of things to request (including another box of Twinkies). I won’t be spending Christmas in the United States in two-thousand and eight, ceasing an eighteen year long streak of tradition. I am quite excited, however, because I shall be venturing to my very lovably friends in Stockholm to spend the holiday with them. I cannot yet conspire of a more comfortable alternative to coming home for Christmas, and I am wonderfully anxious to see those Swedes once more! They are gracious for taking me in, my predicament being that it is much cheaper to fly to another country in Europe than outside of it. I will, however, be returning to the homestead in March, and I plan to bring a couple of new foreign companions with me. Thus booked is but one young man named Artemas Roof who has never been to our humble nation, so I hope to give him an exceptional impression of what grew me. I plan to have others gather onto the journey, and encourage, because we are considering a classic American road trip from Charlotte to New York City. That would be such an enjoyable experience, to travel my home roads with a foreign forum! I still really hate candy corn, though, seriously. Yuck.

I have plans to attend church on Sunday. Another American, a girl named Peggy, has invited me to join her, which is fortunate because I have been searching (not diligently, though) for a congregation to join every now and then. Peggy, Arte and an American named Erin attended an election party last night at the London School of Economics. There was a terribly long queue, but we made it in. I was, regrettably, very drunk and incomprehensible. I drank the most of a bottle of Bell’s and bit my tongue as our nation stepped forcibly and blind into yet another anxious chapter of history. I pray the most for out new President, that he make wise choices and always seek confidence in his presumed faith, and that his color have no bearing on his success. I won’t comment so much on the virtual political side, because I am ill from it and prepared to simply take hiatus to breathe for a short time. I was unable to vote in this election, though I did vote in the primaries. This disparaged me initially, but I am a dedicated and diligent young man who is but seeking to figure out who he is, and I cannot feel in any sour manner about the unfortunate subject for long. I did not receive my ballot card when requested, but yet I let time slip variably beneath me while I watched ignorantly, so I can no more blame them than I can blame myself. I have been spat on by Obama-supporters, and haven’t had a single McCain supporter give me a real reason why they wanted him other than why Obama was bad. History is the only winner of this election, because we have proven that this nation no longer is chained to vision of black and white; but the sanctum of the grayscale.

I want to write all night long, but must arise early in the morning and remain energized for a long day in central at the National Theatre, and then the Barbican Exhibition. I live in London, and I find it difficult to realize this. But alas, it won’t be but months before I visit my first life. Farewell, friends.

Much love from your brother abroad,

David McDonagh

My European Windowsill

2008-10-21T14:21:00.001+01:00

London’s vast sky is a youthful blue, blotched with white and gray cotton-like clouds. The weather is temperate and chilly, with a slight breeze here and there crossing your cheeks and stroking your hair. An easy, warm coffee keeps my company upon the desk. My clothing hangs strewn across my bedroom, much like those cotton deities, drying up the soap from the washing machine. Trousers hang blissfully outside my European windowsill waving with the wind at the wandering passerby. Once more, that buzzing and brilliant sun bounces about a busy Greenwich, and I eagerly help myself to gander its elegance. These portraits are an example to me of the waste in political debate. How shameful for us to be liable of our beliefs upon the judgment of fellow gentlemen, and to simply allow these scenes to slip away. If I spent my entire afternoon embezzling my thoughts to contemplate and discuss the tedium of politics, then I would surely have trashed an afternoon. I’ll rather walk along the brickwork of this beautiful day, skipping thoughts into God’s grace like stones across the water façade, in the true company of not gentlemen but brethren; embezzling not thoughts of vanity, but of goodness and wonder. How terribly ill I am of the political arena. We have turned administrative life into a sport, with the contestants in a vulgar race to govern your choices. What wicked competition, that we the spectators must be convinced of the superiority of a bias, and commit our lifestyles to a wager. And we are but addicted gamblers, putting our quarters into the slot machines of disgrace, cashing out prejudice and profit for all. They are dealers of a different sort of drug, allowing the addicted to decide and the apathetic to reside alone. But then, I’ll still vote, won’t I? Still sit in the arena with all my friends and family, watching us fight against ourselves. Until then, I’ll just admire the marvelous day outside, and hope we do not hang each other on the darkened November day when there are so many more to be recognized.

I am enjoying my classes. I caught up last night one hundred pages, I was behind because they could not produce the reader the same time the reading was due. I find the more technical the class, the more interesting it becomes. Creativity is a difficult thing to assess, thus the more formatted the subject, the more likely I am to excel and achieve a grade of standard. I cannot adhere to any “standard” of creativity, thus providing little motivation for me to attend creative classes. Media markets is a fascinating subject because it is actually about creative markets, and how you apply a very simply piece of art into the technical markets of the “commons”. It’s probably my favorite class right now, simply due to its constant engaging content. I put in word to the university reception about my interest in representing the student body on the school board, which meets as both administrative and educational bodies three times a year. It is supposed to be a very interesting and simple position, though there are only six positions available. I was one of the first to inquire, but if more than six show interest then elections must be held. Despite my previous rant about politics, I will indeed like to run for the position. I also am planning to be the Current Affairs coordinator of the Philosophy society; the sub-group has been organized and should soon meet together for an inaugural session. I am very excited about this, and hope potential participants are as well. I asked a student union head yesterday about the school paper, and have hopefully obtained a spot writing for the soon-to-be news publication. I am uncertain, however, about this, because I have also achieved an interview for the student Ambassador position, which is priority numero uno right now. This theoretically will bring in a new source of weekly income, a very healthy income at that, for a mere ten hours work a week. If I can get the job, I would pick and choose my own work at my own convenience, and would no longer have monetary concerns. This will be a fresh peace of mind.

I went to the British Museum in London this past Saturday with Erik and Oscar. It seems that perhaps these weekly ventures into central will become a routine. This week we plan to go to the National Gallery, and will hopefully by the end of the year seen every free museum London has to offer. Perhaps even multiple times! The British Museum was absolutely stunning, with a roman-like entrance and fiction-like courtyard inside, leading to different exhibits containing a diverse range of artifacts from almost every region of the ancient world. I would put this on the top of the list of must-see free things in London, second being the exploration of the SOHO district. We went to Oxford Street, and even in lieu of the credit crisis, still walked among hundreds of thousands of people exercising the commercial transacting of money. We, ourselves, participated in such a phenomenon, buying some coffee and a cheap Italian lunch. It was hard to imagine us as citizens of the metropolis. It seemed like such an alien idea, that we indeed live in London! We still feel like tourists, snapping pictures of the area and consulting our maps to find the nearest 188 bus stops. One day I hope to have overcome this foreigner syndrome with which I am plagued.

My clothing is beginning to dry and the roads in Greenwich are summoning my presence. I just finished the last few sips of my coffee, and am sitting restless in this seat. It felt good to write today, and seemed to a certain extent like the right thing to do. It shouldn’t be long before I write again, these unjust editions of my typical life. Take care, everyone. Thanks for reading.

Much love from your brother abroad,

David McDonagh

The Crooked And Narrow Edges

2008-10-13T00:18:00.000+01:00

I’m sitting here asking myself what I want to write about. Any time any sort of idea begins to spin around, I immediately toss it out in some hopeless attempt to find something better. Writing about anything seems as equally pointless as writing nothing at all. I want to write. I just don’t know what I have to write about. Perhaps a writer is more than just one with the desire to write; but rather, one who simply has something to write and is willing to write it down. I feel like I have nothing to write about, probably because I have become as comfortable here as I was back home. I am still tempted to sit around and do nothing, I am still tempted to procrastinate my responsibilities and privileges, and I am still taunted with unnecessary and irregular eating and sleeping habits. My ethics haven’t changed, nor my overall attitude or motivations. I am still chasing the same dreams and I still lament the ones I didn’t. I guess I felt like something inside of me would dramatically change when I came here, that I would force myself without actually forcing myself to become a stronger and more reasonable person. I now find that the distance is almost a scapegoat, an excuse for not having to live up to certain names because of the simply association of have with them. I now realize the deviance in this, and utter ignorance. I sort of understand that I have to make the decision to not ignore the alarm in the morning, and to not put off what is most sensibly done sooner. This man that I want to be has to be more than just that, an intangible desire. I feel that one must forge himself out of the spirit of beauty and motivation, and to sculpt his character from the clay of buoyancy and liberality. I have yet but to begin to trim and sand the crooked and narrow edges of my adolescent madness, and to perhaps abstain from comfort of but for a time, to vindicate not the labors I have endured, but impervious efforts of those who labor for me. Whatever I may write, for whatever reason, goes to your tireless keenness about a crass American boy who just couldn’t turn his brain off.

So I have somehow found the same lifestyle, and slipped into closely the same routine. I am hoping to climb out from it, because I have only found it to become a monotonous cesspool of self-loathing and detriment. I am going to run a current affairs sub-group in the Philosophy society. Essentially, we materialize a list of contemporary issues and hold them under critical examination, and then we decide how we can interact with it. It is as theoretical as it is practical, in the sense that we won’t use our philosophical and intellectual skills for aimless debate; but make an educated decision as young adults regarding important issues that will matter in the real, practical world. I also want to look into publishing a compilation early next year; it would be a concoction of both writings and drawings/paintings/inkings from artists both here and back home. I’ll sort of be a composer of what were the most magnificent peer influences for me, bridging them together over the gap of the Atlantic. Of course, I plan to include things I have written, but I would not be showcased or favored throughout. I think it would be something great for everyone who shares the same artistic ambitions as myself.

I went into central London yesterday. I do indeed live in London, but central is sort of like this exclusive place where the only inhabitants must be worth millions and billions of pounds. High Kensington alone is a place where one small apartment costs about thirty million pounds. I went with Oscar and Erik, two Swedish students who are only here for one year. Oscar is a lot like my older brother, passionate and sensitive but built like a rock and determined in a sense to achieve whatever satisfaction he wants. Erik is a lot more like me, in that our minds are always revolving to the tune of inquisition, and never seem to achieve any sort of satisfaction. They are both a bit older than myself, but nonetheless I would like to think we had a marvelous time. We took the bus in, which on a Saturday was considerably dumb. I routed the journey on bus because of how admirably cheap it seemed, however I had not considered the terrible road congestion London suffers. It took us much longer to arrive than once hoped. We stopped at Waterloo, the same station we left from, and walked down to Borough Market near Tower Bridge. We didn’t spend too much time in the market, probably because there was not enough room to compensate for three more bodies. It was awfully full of people, so we took some coffee at a café just outside. Afterwards we ventured across the river and strolled down the Thames on what was a lovely London afternoon, ending our trek in Trafalgar Square. After some quick lunch we gazed around the center, and eventually headed back home to Greenwich. Perhaps nothing eventful seems to have happened, but one must not hastily judge; one must consider the absolutely stunning architectural guts of London, and around every corner awaits some mystical man-made structure with hundreds of years of layered history. One can simply walk around London, and leave in many notions, fulfilled. I would especially say so when one can make the claim that the majesty of London is partly theirs, as they so dutifully live here.

We plan to make more trips into central, two particular motivations being a musical or play, and to spend a day in the National Gallery. We also are planning to perhaps take a day trip to Paris next year (sorry Mom!) and in January we are going to Oxford for a large media conference where there will be a lot of guest speakers. I want to see Elton John in December, but this is a luxury I must unfortunately have to put on hold. I also paid for a school trip to the National Theatre in November, where we will have the opportunity to spend a few hours behind the scenes, understanding to process in which a play is produced. Afterwards, we will go to a gallery called Barbicon, and listen to a very special guest speaker discussing the featured photography at the time.

I have an early class so I must depart from this infinite white page and shut my eyes down for the evening. I will write again soon, perhaps with a few more exuberant words and a meaning embedded deep within them. Farewell, friends!

Much love from your brother abroad,

David McDonagh

Supervising The Tides Of Time

2008-10-03T23:25:00.001+01:00

The cold crept upon London this morning. I’m not talking about that typical morning chill, the one caused from the common stillness and gloomy shadows of night. This was a winter cold, a signal to fall that it’s end will be met not long after its anticipated arrival. This cold dug deep into the crevices of one’s clothing, through the knitting and above the stitching, around the seams and beneath the folds. It’s a temperature that taps into your heart, your thoughts, perhaps your very soul. It’s that setting that convinces you of better comfort, of brighter days and warmer coffee. It’s the quintessential provocation and redemption of additional layers to one’s appearance. In a sense it is the forecast for ourselves, because together we all inhibit the truth that we, like the Earth, are seasonal. Our attitudes, our perspectives, our characteristics and our behavior are embedded deep within the tides of time and nature. We are pulled inevitably back and forth as though to be at the will of some crafty and numinous moon, the supervisor of what Emerson called “the endless circulations of the divine charity.” This, is what the cold gestured to me.

I began classes this week. During the induction week I heard a lot of stories of students becoming frantic about classes before they even began. That they were terribly presumptuous and hasty to judge the outlines of the course, and that the first week of classes was the busiest time for transfers. I had difficulty understanding this until after my first day, when I was frightfully spooked about the rest of the year. I kept thinking to myself, “Oh my God, is this it? What have I signed up for? I have to change courses, I hate this! I don’t want to do this!” Unfortunately I now see that this was as the class was underway, and sort of experience hindsight to the fact that I wasn’t thinking clearly and was but alarmed at the thought of even being in University. The University of Greenwich is a lot like a community college in the sense of its diverse range of students, both in an academic sense, as well as in a sense of age, or even maturity. I notice a lot of students that have worked very hard to get here, and students who are simply here because they were inundated with the overbearing rhythm of educational enrollment. Also, school before University here is a lot different. What I can regard as close to the equivalent of “high school” is finished at roughly sixteen or seventeen, and then one transfers to an actual “college” (our equivalent of community college) where they study until they have achieved enough scores to then venture off to what is so cleverly phrased “Uni’”. Thus, I feel as though I am sitting back in a community college, with a range of people who have no idea what they want to do, with people who have been in school and are still attempting something, with people who so dubiously enroll with no intention of achieving anything at all, and people who are like me and are eagerly always wanting more. In a sense almost bitterly if you will, now as far as I can tell, because in that moment of utter resistance towards the programs, I realized not only why I am here, but how. I had a problem accepting the fact that I wasn’t at Harvard, or Oxford, or Cambridge or Yale or anything that the world would look at and say, “Wow. Well, this man can cash in a free ride to life!” I don’t think that I have any business comparing myself to that standard, let alone to anyone or anything else at all. I have traveled difficult distances to a place that is eccentric, studying things I second-guess and budget finances uncertain. In most ways I know that it is out of my hands, and that though things sometimes become blurred, these tides of man will exonerate the glass and allow for a better view. I overcame my apprehension and rather than gamble complacency in its absence, I drew a card of confidence, and perhaps of appreciation of my opportunity to have ever even succeeded the position I currently occupy.
In a surprising turn of events, I consider myself most excited about my media markets class. The lecture theatre is a full house, as well as the entirety of the class is broken into five different blocks. Each block is four weeks and provides diversely different lessons from two of my writing teachers as well as three others, one from the philosophy department and two from the business. The first hour is the block lecture, and then the following hour is a seminar with a given professor. I was unfortunately sent to seminar teacher whom with I already attend two classes. I was upset at this because one of the seminar professors is a man I had the pleasure of previously meeting at a media school gathering, so I approached my course leader and asked for a transfer to his seminar. Interestingly enough, she and him had already discussed me after the gathering and wanted to make sure that I ended in his seminar, and said they had no problem switching me. I was very pleased, as well as a bit flattered, that it wasn’t an ominous task nor was it a bothering request. Walking back home this afternoon, I gathered a refreshing first breathe at the end of my second week here.

I have successfully registered with a local doctor, which was not at all a tedious errand. I filled out one very simple form, showed proof of address, and then was given phone numbers and the statement, “Call whenever you need us!” I have also acquired to my benefit a bank account, so now I can worry less about the cash on hand. I also opened a free savings account that accumulates a bit of interest, something that will hopefully fund such future endeavors as an Elton John concert in December or perhaps a trip to the local theatres. Perhaps even a volunteer trip, it is not so audacious for me to budget into my savings the vision of a trip to a foreign country to help build communities, or teach kids English. It is, as I believe, a duty to myself and intrinsic if I want to believe I have earned anything in my life. I am awaiting the arrival of my student Oyster card; it is a pay-as-you-go travel card that discounts a lot of money to ride any London Transport. That will mean more trips to Central, as well a cheap bus ride to Tesco’s when I want to go food shopping.

I am finally feeling that sense of being out on my own, that notion of turning into an adult. Though I report back home (to my “investors” ha-ha!) I essentially have to account for myself, and have to overcome that adolescent dependence and procrastination. As they like to say around here, the world really is my oyster. As long as I accept that it can be done, there is no reason to believe I myself cannot do it. “It” can be absolutely anything at all. As far as I am concerned, nothing is exclusive for me.

Well, I think I’ve rambled enough for the evening. Hopefully tomorrow is another gorgeous sunny London day so I can bask in the magnificence of the park with a few of my books and some good thoughts in my head. I truly do miss everyone back home, and hope everything is coming along as splendidly as is my new adventure. If you enjoyed what you read here, spread it along. Everyone is invited, and no one is excluded. Make sure to leave your thoughts, or “rebuttals”. Farewell, friends!

Much love from your brother abroad,

David McDonagh

The Buzzing And Brilliant Sun

2008-09-27T02:02:00.000+01:00

It was such a beautiful day today. It was a perfect breezy temperature, with a buzzing and brilliant sun to illuminate the sky and not a single cloud to obscure it. Vision, I suppose, was easily obtained in both this sense of physical setting as well as a more intangible one. Greenwich is truly a wondrous little village in London. All sorts of people fleeting about the town with various motivations, none the same but all accepted. I wouldn’t want to escape the notion that perhaps I cannot know everyone here felt the same, but I would certainly hope they could somewhat enjoy it as I had. With many it’s many small restaurants and shops, of all types and cultures, and of course the elegant market taking a very vicarious role in an outsider attraction, this place can easily be enjoyed by anyone. I am not mistaken when I say that absolutely two of the most extravagant scenes Greenwich has to offer are the University campus and the park. The architecture that steals the façade of the massive campus buildings, as well as the Trinity Music College building are worth a trip out alone to gander upon. We picnic in the park in the morning, so perhaps I can better account its majesty in full next time I write.
It’s been a week since I’ve left. I suffered an extreme apprehension immediately following the departing of myself from my family. I missed them so incredibly much even before I could even leave. I miss everyone now, I know, but at that moment in time I felt like I could bear nothing without them. And I still believe that. Simply, I know now that the there is little distance between us, because it won’t ever be long before I’ll have seen them again. I had a rough first thirty minutes on my journey here, but they were necessary.
I was terrified I would not make the flight to Chicago! They had me waiting until seats were confirmed, and of course, I panicked about it and incessantly bothered the ticket man. But successfully, I arrived at both destinations. I slept most of the flight to Chicago, where I had to take a train to get to the Air India terminal. The Air India flight was, well, very comfortable. We flew on a massive double-decked Boeing 777, one in which all the seats had not been filled. I achieved a solitary three-rowed sanctum in the rear of the passengers cabin for the total duration of the flight. I was very happy about that. They served a tasty Indian meal, as well as didn’t charge for two cans of Heineken beer. Everyone on board was polite and helpful, and let me stretch across the seats as if I were going to sleep forever. I slept five hours on that plane. I promise I will fly Air India again.
The arrival at the airport was terribly easy. I didn’t have to wait for my bags at the claim, and going through UK Customs took literally about forty-five seconds. They checked my Visa, asked me a few questions, and welcomed me to my new home for years to come. The University staff “ambassadors” waited directly outside the arrival terminal, in droves, with directional signs and beaming smiles. They really made me feel calm and collected about everything.
I collapsed into my room, and took a shower. I spent a bit of time unpacking and cooling down, and then I looked around my flat a bit. Three of my neighbors had gathered in the hall and chatted for a bit. I said hello, but moved discreetly into the kitchen. We eventually all walked down to a welcome lecture that was just someone telling us to be careful drinking and having sex. They were Jess, Arte and Rob. People I now spend the majority of my time with. Most nights have been bar hopping, beginning with a bite to eat at the Flat 20 (My flat), then a drink and Flat 33 (new friends!), and then to the Student Bar for a drink. After that is anyone’s guess, we’ve been to pubs and a club. Last night was a costume part, but I was mistaken because they called it a “fancy dress party” so I just dressed up nicely. I’ve never really been dancing before, but plan to do so again very soon. We went to Camden the other day for some “vintage” shopping (I bought nothing, cannot really afford it?) as well as into Central London for pizza in Leicester Square and for me to register with the police.
Interestingly enough, I didn’t have to. I am not required to do much because of my U.S. Visa; I am exempt from most required things. Monday or Tuesday I’ll get my bank account and my doctor, it wasn’t until today that I could obtain all the correct forms necessary to do these things. However, I am ready to begin classes on Monday. I’ve only had two introductory lectures so far, which is strange because the business students here have had tons. They went very well, I am very excited and enthusiastic about the work yet to be done. My courses this semester are How to Argue and Introduction to Journalism all day on Mondays from 9-4, and Thursdays is Introduction to Media Writing from late morning to early afternoon. Friday I have Media Markets classes from 2-4, and the rest is my time. I’m going to the Job shop tomorrow to apply as a Student Ambassador. They can set their own hours and have really interesting opportunities to work and direct people around the campus. Oh, and they make ten pounds (GBP) an hour. I also plan to attempt at another magazine around here, I think I have quite a few people interested in joining up already. I’m entering a photography contest in October, might win a bunch of money! I’ll also find another open mic around here and spit some poetry for the folks out here across the pond. We’re going to go to a play, probably either “The Blood Brothers” or “We Will Rock You (The Music Of Queen)”. I’m so excited about that. And this Wednesday we will head back into Central for a massive London “freshers” (first year students) party. Free entry AND free shots. Cool, no? Monday I’ll apply for a student discount “Oyster” card that will make it dirt cheap for me to ride the buses and trains around. We went grocery shopping today and I bought at least a week and a half, if not way more, worth of food for about fourteen pounds. There’s a very large shopping center a bus ride away called “Tesco’s” that has great prices for broke people like me! Speaking of which, there is a local pub called “The Auctioneer” that runs one pound pints for students every Thursday night. It’s pretty great.
I feel out of breathe. There is way too much to tell to fit it all in this space. I have a bunch of things going on, but I really do miss everyone at home. I want to come visit already, and it’s barely been a week. I hope everyone received information regarding my new address and cell phone number (my friends even hooked me up with a brand new cell phone, I only had to put a few bucks on it) so that you can contact me. I’ll try to individually say hello to everybody, but it’s close to impossible, especially starting on Monday. Thanks for all the support, and I’ll be in touch again with some updates very soon. It’s late, so I must go and sleep.

Much love from your brother abroad,

-David McDonagh

Empty White And Obnoxiously Red

2008-09-16T22:12:00.000+01:00

Well, it has been some time since I’ve written a weblog. Many times throughout the past few months I have sat sort of perplexed before the empty white electronic page, just looking for anything to say. I wasn’t attempting to discriminate between any sort of style or consistency; I simply wanted anything to type. I suppose there was a necessary lapse, an interval of recuperation required in order to move ahead in my tireless efforts to define things. Interestingly enough, that seemed to have been the theme of my latter writings, but should not resume for this particular entry.
As many of you (assuming there can be a many in total who read these) may or may not know, I am to be venturing to London for an extended time to continue my studies in writing. I leave this coming Friday, September the nineteenth, with but a few bags of luggage and tireless support erecting from all forms of family and friends. I cannot, for obvious reasons, perfectly predict the outcome of the endeavor, but can expect to collect only a strengths and skills in knowledge and experiences. The institution resides peacefully in Greenwich, an outskirt borough if the city of London, where I can maintain a certain balance between incongruity and discretion. The program is officially Media Writing, a degree in the school of Humanities, and will provide me with the tools that I need to professionally perform writing in a comprehensive selection of vocations. None are particularly named in any peculiar manner, nor to my discrepancy, for I hope to obtain titles that are virtually unnamed.
I believe that college is not just for students graduating high school, seeking to study in schemes that provide them with “good jobs”, but for anyone with a vision, or at least wanting to access one. I do not limit my aspirations to this exclusive degree of study, for the majority of my writing is done without the influence of higher education institutions. A lot of admirable people have claimed success without the investment in their undergraduate education. And thus, the idea of “success” is disputable! My success does not require printed bills and bank accounts, rather, the approval of history to defend itself against humanity’s ceaseless repetition. I do not want to be remembered by my worth in money, but literature. I don’t want records of my victories, but the struggles attempting them. I want something more real than a cliché breach of “stardom”, or to hold the heading of “celebrity”. I don’t want to be a politician, or a professor, or a bureaucrat. All that I want is to be, without the colloquial pressure of becoming. I am, and my increase is only felt with my neighbor’s. Maybe I am doing something that appears somewhat trivial, or naïve, or maybe it even seems dubious. Regardless of what this turns out as, or whatever it is I plan to do with whatever it is I have, it will be defeated if I spoil it all for only myself.
Today I finally found and purchased an obnoxiously red blazer. I also found a sort of brownish one that is one hundred percent wool and feels like a cloud. Ten dollars these articles cost me. Ten dollars well spent, I think. I am pondering the idea of bringing my four blazers; olive, black, brownish and red to wear to my classroom everyday. I would like to maintain a certain level of sophistication, not in any competition! Dearly, no, but rather a sort of vagrancy, and that I might remember everyday to uphold the devotion I value over comfort.
I plan to write on these what happens in my daily life while living in the United Kingdom, as well as posting thoughts and comments on things happen around our tiny little globe. And perhaps I’ll sneak in personal contemplations about whatever impetuous thoughts plague my mind. Thanks for reading again, this lonely little page, but I am glad to be back on the information superhighway again. So long, everyone!

-David McDonagh