V e r i t a s . S o p h i a . I u s t i t i a

I've found a quiet little work station for myself, a store room tucked in a corner of the Mac Lab which, God be praised, is air-conditioned. It's actually used to keep all our multi-media equipment, but all that stuff goes into two steel cabinets, and I have a large desk in the middle of the room to work from.

This is so, so much better than the staff room, which is overcrowded and noisy, and you're within talking distance from your boss. Here, I am isolated, I can do my work in peace, and really come up with some decent lesson plans.

I'm stoned this morning though, physically and mentally exhausted by a sleepless night. Woke up at two and tried everything I could to get back to sleep, but nothing worked, so that right now I am literally forcing my eyelids to remain open and my head to stay upright.

Can't function like this.

close your eyes unclench your fists relax your muscles close your eyes

i'd prefer not to why? is it something you see?

no, no. nothing like that. you don't relax you can't

when your eyes are shut can you? i'd prefer not to answer that

what my eyes see have nothing to do with it since

at times such as this

i don't see at all whether or not my eyes are open or shut

it makes no difference. it does. i apologize.

strops of yellow, normal. blind spots, normal.

pretense, probably seeking sympathy with those tremors

all a matter of exaggeration i don't mean to lie shut up about stretching the truth

i am a master at manipulation. what do i manipulate?

if i told you, i wouldn't be able to pull the wool over your eyes, now would i?

i'd know anyway. you've already given yourself up

it doesn't matter. i could confess everything and still make you believe

every lie i tell you.

Day two of term two. I have yet to begin even conceptualizing the revolutionary art history syllabus I intend to implement this term, and I am just biding my time... when push comes to shove, I know I'll come up with something. I hope so. Just got to remember, these are sixteen year olds. They don't need to possess the kind of mastery over critical and cultural theory I failed to manage myself in my university days.

I'm very bored. My bag is packed and I am just waiting for 2:30pm when I can log out, log off, go home and sleep till dinner. Or I might go out and have coffee, read a chapter or two of my Ted Hughes or Paul Bowles... note: I do absolutely nothing related to work outside of work hours UNLESS I ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO. I've absolutely not got an ambitious bone in my body.

I just want to finish my contract and become a full-time writer of SERIOUS FICTION. Oh, and, I hate all the people I used to think were my best friends. One was and still is an airhead, the other's become a WASP.

What a puddle of mud.

It's very early in the morning- half past six. I'd be late for school if I woke up at this time on a regular work day. I wake up at half five most mornings; sometimes I'd turn off the alarm after it's gone off and lie in bed promising myself I'd be up in a couple of minutes which invariably turn into a good half hour or more when I am finally awoken by my mum (my second and undoubtedly more alarming alarm clock). I'd chant "shit" or "fuck" while I brush, rinse, change, while my dad waits impatiently downstairs to drive me to school. He never says a word throughout, which only makes me squirm.

No doubt my story is not a unique one. People oversleep all the time. It's during the school holidays that I wish I'd really, really sleep till nine or ten, but no, my body is tuned to six and it's no use trying to force myself back into wherein I was and so I am up, dazed. As I am now. Good God. It's the last day of the March break and I've done fuck-all preparing for next term this entire week. I hate waking up at six on a non-school day cos I am just utterly useless and semi-comatose in the afternoon.

On Wednesday afternoon, in one of those idiotic moods I get into sometimes, I downed a bottle of sleeping pills, and while I knew I could finally get the sleep I desperately craved, I did wonder if I'd go the way of Heath Ledger and whether I should write a note just in case. Now here's the amazing bit. I made my way onto a bus- number 143- and went shopping for books at VivoCity. I bought All the Stories of Muriel Spark at Page One and along the way, I bumped into two friends, separately, and had conversations with them. I took the bus home and woke up.

I don't know if I'd slept-walked or if I'd just been in a trance-like state, but it all seemed unreal, except for All the Stories of Muriel Spark beside my bed. I called S and he verified that I'd chatted with him at Page One, even given a few comments on a book he was thinking of buying... I also called A, and he said I'd said hi in the music store. Both of 'em had told me that I looked dazed and ought to go home and rest... it's all quite disturbing.

Anyhow, it's half past seven now. I want to get some work done. I hope to get some work done. I need to get some work done. Term two starts tomorrow.

Reading 4 books at once (what am I doing???):

I love watching Maria Sharapova and Venus Williams play... their go-for-broke hitting, their thunderous serves, the wingspan of Venus Williams, allowing her to retrieve would-be-winners and turn defense to offense with a single stroke, the glint in Sharapova's eyes just as she's about to serve, a look of pure hatred that must make her opponents tremble... but when these two play against each other, the lines-people, ball kids and those with court-side seats should really be given ear-muffs cos this here can cause some serious damage to your hearing.

Crank up the volume and take a look at this:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=oTgGWMJLrck

Now I recall it, when I decided, between there and then and here and now,
I decided to call myself a recluse because it seemed more bearable
than what?
ignored? Passed over? Presence is passed over; not this. You cannot
pass over, ignore, pay no attention to something invisible.
It just wouldn't make any sense to pay no attention to something that does not exist.
So I am not ignored, nor passed over.

It's really quite terrifying to be this invisible, like I'd have to run headlong into you to make the slightest impression, a dent.

Walking back home from the bus stop, I sometimes want to clench my fist and run it hard along the brick walls of houses. I saw Juliette Binoche do it in Bleu.

Regards,

have a listen

Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse do 'Valerie'
http://youtube.com/watch?v=RI_xYIxUTE0

Mark Ronson does Dylan
http://youtube.com/watch?v=oCeKkJlMJDQ

Mark Ronson and Lily Allen do 'Oh My God'
http://youtube.com/watch?v=EqtF2xfOOtk

My nephew recognized me, us, rather. He looked at a photograph of myself carrying him when he was barely three months old, and he knew it was he and I.

Obviously he'd recognize me. But I am not sure why I find myself so moved that he should at the age of almost three be able to look at a picture of himself as a newborn and know that it's not just any baby, it is him. It is just so beautiful.

One of those days when I feel the itch to write something even though as usual I have no idea what to write about, since really, nothing much happens in my life these days that's noteworthy. I guess I've grown more sullen in the last year, feeling like I've lost all the friends I made in NIE, which oddly enough I now miss. Not the classes certainly, but the time we had to ourselves, the time to go to a coffee joint, sit and talk. Everyone's busy now, as am I. And now I realize I'm not half as tough as I was or thought I was.

The body is breaking down. It started as early as when I was doing my contract teaching more than 2 years back now, when I begun to stop exercising. And as how they put it these days, like men of "a certain age", I've let myself go. Sure I miss when I had a physique I didn't mind walking down the coastline with. These days, billowy shirts are the norm to hide a protruding stomach, and it aches to have to look in the mirror and see myself without a jaw line I can properly discern. All of which makes me feel worse about myself, makes me lethargic, makes me less of myself.

Just a crazy sentence, but one that popped into my mind and I can't help, despite the egotism of it, to note that it summarizes my condition entirely- "I don't feel entitled anymore".

Where is that young man with the broad shoulders his aunts loved to squeeze? Where is that young man whose opinion was the final word? Where is that young man whose teacher once called "the golden boy of the school"? Where is that young man who never, ever, ever doubted himself, because he believed so fervently, so religiously, that banter from Shakespeare in Love applied to everything he did...

Philip Henslowe: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.
Hugh Fennyman: So what do we do?
Philip Henslowe: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.
Hugh Fennyman: How?
Philip Henslowe: I don't know. It's a mystery.

It comes and it goes. I miss London. I miss the years of opportunity, the years of potential, the years ill-spent. Good grief, my luck has run out, hasn't it? I have been blind all this while, haven't I, played those years away, swindled myself of them and now I look at those who esteemed themselves not so highly as I, who now have all I never thought I would desire but now do, do with such a pain as would bring me to my knees sometimes as I walk home from a busy day, busy, busy to an empty room that is all artifice and holds no promise but that tomorrow will be the same.